Star Wars has changed our lives, and not just with Jedi and X-Wings.
May the 4th be with you!
It’s Star Wars day, which means plenty, especially for fans of the franchise everywhere. Disney+ rolled out a new show and I’m sure we’ll see some announcements before the day is through.
Like many of you, we grew up on Star Wars. Our formative years were spent dreaming of a galaxy far far away, wielding any stick in reaching distance as a lightsaber and building a Millennium Falcon out of chairs and blankets. But Star Wars isn’t just space battles, sword fights, and romance.
Star Wars has always been a pioneer in the use of technology, often to great affect. Since we’re a technology company (and a room full of sci-fi and tech obsessed nerds), we wanted to recap some of the ways that Star Wars has been instrumental in helping to develop technologies that we see in our daily lives.
Industrial Light and Magic
Any discussion of technology and Star Wars must begin with ILM, George Lucas’ technology company formed when creating Star Wars, which has continued to do incredible work pushing the limits of what is possible.
ILM was founded in 1975 when George Lucas realized that there was no in-house effects department at 20th Century Fox. ILM went on to do the visual effects for all of Star Wars, and has gone on to work on a number of franchises, including Indiana Jones, Pirates of the Carribean, several superhero films, including installments in both the MCU and DCEU, Transformers, James Bond, among many many others.
On the technology side, ILM has consistently been a pioneer in the development and use of computer graphics technology, from “Go Motion” to animate the Tauntauns in The Empire Strikes Back to creating the first computer generated 3-D character to show emotion in The Abyss to creating the IMocap system which allowed motion capture from a single camera view.
These, among many other advances in computer graphics technology, can be seen throughout our lives today, from films to video games to websites to billboards. Computer graphics are all around us.
Filmmaking
We can thank Star Wars for quite a few innovations in filmmaking.
Star Wars was among the first films to use computer controlled cameras, a system known as Dykstraflex, after John Dykstra, one of the most important figures in ILM history. This technology allowed the precision shots necessary to create the iconic space battles in Star Wars. Additionally, Star Wars was responsible for updating and improving the then decades old blue screen technology, bringing it into mainstream use.
One of Star Wars’ most important contributions was going digital. While we take for granted the flexibility of recording film in digital formats today, George Lucas really took the idea mainstream.
2002’s Attack of the Clones was the first major Hollywood blockbuster to be shot completely digitally (though not the first film to do so). Sony and Panavision had been working on digital cameras for use in films since 1997, but were not ready for The Phantom Menace.
Ever the technology pioneer, Lucas was resolved to use the new tech in his next two films, deploying the Sony HDW F900, which is a precursor to many of the digital film cameras still being used in blockbuster films today.
Today, creators big and small use all sorts of digital filmmaking technologies to create content posted to the internet. While these innovations have come from a number of different sources, we can count Lucas and Star Wars among some of the most influential.
The Volume
We can’t talk about the innovations of Star Wars without mentioning the latest incredible technology to come out of the franchise. Also called StageCraft, the Volume is a technological innovation that combines cutting edge video game engine technology with practical effects in a way that is truly innovative.
Jon Favreau partnered with ILM and Epic Games to build a new kind of sound stage. A huge room is lined with curved LED screens from floor to ceiling to create a 360 degree backdrop around a stage filled with practical vehicles and sets. By putting high definition images on these screens, the room is able to simulate a real environment, allowing actors and sets to feel like they are on location in the fantastic environments.
Epic’s Unreal engine provided the final piece of the puzzle by allowing the worlds to be rendered in real time. This allows the actors and camera to move around the set, and for the backdrop to shift with them as it would in a real location.
The implications of this for filmmaking, especially in fantasy and science fiction, is staggering. The real question is how this technology, which requires massive spaces and massive budgets will find its way into our daily lives.
THX
While Star Wars and ILM pushed computer graphics into the mainstream, George Lucas also had a profound impact on another of our senses: sound. Return of the Jedi introduced THX, a quality assurance system for sound that has since become industry standard.
While most of us have heard of THX, many may not know that it does not actually have anything to do with the way that sound is recorded or formatted. Instead, THX is a quality assurance system for theaters. Theaters which are THX certified are required to meet certain standards regarding acoustic quality within the theater.
The idea is to ensure that the sound quality in the room for movie goers as closely as possible matches the filmmakers vision. As Star Wars was groundbreaking in its use of sound effects, to say nothing of its incredible score, sound quality in the theater was very important to the overall experience. THX certification requires a number of elements, including a floating floor, baffled and acoustically treated walls, and a perforated screen.
Since THX’s acquisition by Razer, THX’s standards for sound quality are being applied to home theaters and personal sound equipment.
Inspiration
While Star Wars has pioneered many technologies in its pursuit of better methods and more realistic worlds, it has also inspired a number of new technologies which are just now starting to come into their own.
Hover technology is being innovated now, with hover bikes not unlike Return of the Jedi’s speeders starting to pop up. While we don’t necessarily know exactly how the physics worked for speeders, the new hover technologies are using concepts from helicopters to achieve the lift and speed characteristic of these vehicles.
While robots are certainly not unique to Star Wars, there is no doubt that the droids to be found in the Star Wars universe have continued to inspire engineers and innovators. The autonomous robots we see from companies like Boston Dynamics are fascinating in their capability. It will be very interesting to see how they will affect our lives in the future (hopefully more Star Wars and less Terminator).
Faster than light travel, lightsabers, sliding doors, and on and on: there’s no end to the kinds of technologies that Star Wars can inspire.
For our part, we’re happy to live in a world where science fiction can create not only great stories, but great technology that enriches the world around us.