Image courtesy of Deron Yamada. © 2004 DYA367.

At the Visual Effects Society awards last month, Life Achievement honoree and visual effects guru George Lucas noted: “Thirty years later, art has bumped into the ceiling of technology, and you are at the forefront of that challenge.”

This brought up a slew of questions for me — a lowly practitioner and observer of this most captivating of industries and disciplines: What is the challenge? Is it a challenge of art or technology? Or something else entirely?

Ours is an alchemic industry, where art and technology collide to create a product that exceeds either of its parents. Since the dawn of the industry, when J. Stuart Blackton drew moving pictures on a static blackboard, or when Winsor McCay thrilled his audiences with a dinosaur onto whose nose he apparently climbed, we’ve been wondering: “How’d he do that?” And “why’d he do that?” For art? For technology? To tell a great story? If he produced it today, would it be for the box office? Or did they create their magic for the sheer thrill of doing something that hadn’t been done yet?

George Lucas speaks at the VES 2004 awards. What is the new challenge to filmmakers? Photo by Sarah Baisley.

The inventions continued. When Melies shot an astronaut into the surface of the moon, we winced, laughed and marveled. Though we were engaged in the story of the astronaut and his journey to the moon, we forgot everything when he took his lunar plunge: the visual punch line became more important than the story. By the time Kong fought airplanes from the Empire State Building, and Jason fought the skeletons with his Argonauts, more curious artists in the audience wondered, “How did he do that?”

Jump forward a few decades and where do we find ourselves? In the mid 1970s, when a young Lucas wanted to shoot a movie in space with all the environments and creatures his imagination could conjure, none of the technology existed to support his art. So Lucas started Industrial Light & Magic, a company that changed the landscape and our perspectives. Once again, like the viewers who preceded us, we sat in awe and astonishment watching the Mos Eisley Cantina, TIE fighters and the explosion of the Death Star, again wondering, “How did they do that?” But, whether we knew it or not, we loved something more. This was more than technical wizardry; this was myth and archetype, an epic narrative. We had a connection to the hero’s journey and loved each encounter along the way.

In the years since Star Wars, the visual effects world has changed radically. Yes, like Melies and Blackton and Harryhausen and those who followed, we are still trying to make the unbelievable feasable; we’re still creating worlds and creatures, and we’re still trying to move pixels in ways that have never been attempted. On the surface, the artists’ tasks are much the same as they’ve ever been: Artists still sit in darkened rooms moving characters, growing trees or building bridges one frame at a time: patience and diligence borne of an insatiable curiosity take precedence over either art or technology.