Previsualization allowed creator George Lucas to show others the movie in his head before production started. All images from Star Wars: Episode II — Attack of the Clones © Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All rights reserved.

Previsualization — also known as previs has, among others, three main purposes: to sell a concept and to save time and money. For the Star Wars prequels, previs is an essential tool that George Lucas has used to paint an accurate picture of what his final films will look like long before, and even during, production. For a director such as Lucas, previs helps answer questions, explore options and aide in getting his point across to the numerous people in the production pipeline, offering more creative and financial control.

Throughout the Star Wars movies previs has been used to help convey the complex worlds we see onscreen. On Episode IV — A New Hope, extensive use of WWII fighter footage was used to help realize the final Death Star Trench battle. For Episode V — The Empire Strikes Back, hand drawn animated panels that resembled black-and-white Saturday morning cartoons were used to explain the Empire’s Walker advance toward the Rebel base on Hoth. Taking it even further, small video cameras were used with miniatures for the speeder bike chase in Episode VI — Return of the Jedi. With each movie, Lucas continued to use the latest easily available technology to describe complex scenes before a lot of money was spent on the final effects shots.

Daniel Gregoire of JAK Films.

With a track record of always using leading edge technology, it is no surprise that when digital technology became more readily available Lucas was at the forefront of using it for previs. For this reason, David Dozoretz, who headed up some of the first digital previs used in film production, was hand picked by the producer, Rick McCallum, for the job of previs supervisor on Episode I.

Episode I — The Phantom Menace started as a combination of the video technology employed on Return of the Jedi and new digital technology available at that time. Dozoretz had a small team who worked on many of the larger, more complicated scenes, including the pod race and the end space battle. Much of the early work involved using video cameras to go out and shoot footage to be manipulated later using digital technology. The actors were either artists or relatives who wanted to have some fun. Costumes were provide by the Lucas archives and modified by Gillian Libbert, the costume appearance manager. All that was really needed was enough to approximate the intended sequence of shots. After filming, these shots were then taken into the computer as plates, or the base of the shot. Depending on what sequence was being worked on, specific digital elements were added to fill out the sequence into what Lucas envisioned. Flying space age vehicles, lasers and lightsabers were added, just to name a few.

On set previsualization saves discussion and puts everyone on the same page.

While the software used then, Electricimage and Adobe’s After Effects, pales in comparison to what we use today, it was still more or less available to average people. It was not only cost effective, but also very powerful in the right hands. Electricimage, known for its speed and quality, had the advantage running on the Macintosh along with After Effects. No longer did you need expensive hardware to pull off rough special effects. With these tools together on an inexpensive platform, animatics artists were able to add digital elements to video plates with reasonable effort in a short amount of time. Short enough to be essential not only before production began but during as well.

As the process matured over the course of the movie, digital elements started to overtake the practical elements they were married to. At times digital elements were all that were needed. As the technology got better and better and the confidence of the artists grew, it became faster and faster to simply do everything on the computer — including the actors.