Posted: 09/13/01

"Episode I" Press Conference
July 27, 2001
Skywalker Ranch

Jim Ward (left) and Rick McCallum

Session One with Rick McCallum

Jim Ward: I'd like to introduce Mr. Rick McCallum, the Producer of "Episode I." [applause] Hello, Rick.

Rick McCallum: Hello.

Ward: Okay, there are some questions that were forwarded when we were in some of our international correspondents that we will definitely try to get to, but I think we'll open the floor up first for some general questions.

Question: Did working in the digital world on "Episode I" help when producing the DVD?

McCallum: It helps because you're in the digital realm the whole time, but you know, in the end of the day, it's like any tool. The real effort and the real work was actually making it. And if the technology can help you make it a little bit easier then that's fine. But it's still a lot of work. I mean, it's like making another film almost. Have you had a chance to see everything on the disc?

Ward: Yes.

McCallum: Yeah. I mean there's a lot of stuff that we did. You know, we had to assemble a crew, start new art directors, new concept work, new designers, new supervisors that we hadn't worked with before. So it was a major effort. But basically being in the digital realm does help, but not to the extent that you'd actually expect it to.

Question: As the approach to the documentary is so different, and it really seems like it was so much more honest, did you have any reservations at the time about letting somebody film everything? And did you have any reservations about anything you saw when it had been cut together?

McCallum: Just some of the language problems. [laughter] I was shocked. Well, you know, it's weird because we've always traditionally had an English crew and they're very reserved, and it took at long time for everybody to get used to the camera being around. I never really quite got us00ed to it. And there were, you know, issues that we wish they had been there. It's one of those things you know that guys can't be everywhere at the exact same time. But I think it was always our intention to try and open up the door a little bit more. And it's also very difficult once you're in a really stressful period, you know, when the quality of your argument, let's put it that way, really justifies whether or not there's any truth to any issue that you're dealing with. But it was fun.

Question: I was wondering since "Episode I" goes to such great lengths to appeal to children, will your colorful language in the documentary result in a different rating for the film or for the box?

McCallum: I think the DVD will be rated differently now. [laughter]

Ward: Well, no. Actually, all that stuff does have to get submitted in different countries around the world. But all of that has been through the appropriate filters and all that sort of thing. As you saw, you know we all, you know I didn't swear once in my presentation but you should hear me normally. But I think certainly we try to walk that fine line of doing what the censors would need us to do but also being true to the moment of what was happening. And certainly when you saw the producer of a motion picture and he had that horrible storm, you're going to say a few things along the way.

Question: I'm from Mexico. I was really glad to see that you included a Spanish language channel on the DVD. I was wondering about the documentary? Will it be dubbed or just sub-titled?

McCallum: Good point.

Ward: The documentary will just be sub-titled, correct me Van or anyone if I'm wrong, but I think it's just sub-titled in the [Spanish] DLT.

Question: What's your estimate of the total viewing time of the two-DVD set including the feature for one person to go through all of the myriad features that you've got?

McCallum: Well, actually, the total time I'm not sure what it is, but I would think that that would be some serious brain damage to go right from one end to the other. [laughter] I think it's one of those things you'd, you know that's one of the joys and I think one of the great things about the menus too is that you can immediately play the movie if you want to, and you can stop and move around in direct proportion to your interest in terms of the issues that you want to learn about. It's hard, you know, most DVDs that are done by film studios are basically they take the videomaster and just throw it in and put a nice little menu on. Or there will be a two or three day period where a documentary crew comes in, and that's nothing against the studios it's just very hard to put all the stuff together and it was one of the most difficult things that we had to deal with because we finished the film ["Episode I"] and we went immediately on to working on the next picture ["Episode II"]. And we were gone that whole summer [1999], George was writing, he was also scouting for locations, we were trying to set up in a new country. It's so hard to actually get all the stuff and put it together and approve it and look at it and change. I think it really is like making a small another movie. But I think one of the great things about it is that if you are interested in certain subjects, costumes, whatever it is, there is a place that you can actually get to and look at it. But the overall length…

Ward: There's six hours of value-added material plus the film.

McCallum: So that's eight, eight-and-a-half hours?

Ward: Yeah, about eight, eight-and-a-half hours. So if you really wanted to cocoon yourself and get a fix of "Star Wars"...

Question: What was the most challenging component in compiling all of the material for the DVD?

McCallum: I think, personally for me, it was just watching how much weight I gained and lost throughout the whole five years. [laughter] I mean that was, it was hard to get it in chapters. Well, it was such a great team effort. As I said we took off, we handed the rein to Pablo who you'll meet here who is one of the visual effects supervisors, and then Jim took the rein after Pablo finished his work. And for me it was really a great experience because I got to watch Jim and everybody else actually put all of this stuff together, and occasionally they'd send us stuff and we'd just look at it in total amazement. And so it was really their effort and you're going to meet them afterwards, and they can go through that process and how long it took because it did actually take a long, long time.

Question: I just want to know how much time and money was expended finishing the seven deleted scenes that are on the DVD?

McCallum: Lots.

Question: And did that have an impact on the window of release for the DVD?

McCallum: You know they're not easy to do as you can tell by the way most major effects movies are made now. You know, you have this really concentrated period of shooting where you shoot for 12 or 15 weeks and then you'll be in post for a year-and-a-half, two years. At least for us because we have everything digital. But on a large film which has four or five hundred shots you can be in post for 12, 14 months. And it's just the nature of the work. Are we allowed to comment on how much...

Ward: No.

McCallum: No. [all laugh] See, we all have our masters.

Ward: [laughs] Get that one on tape. [all laugh]

McCallum: But suffice it to say though, it was a major team effort and it took a lot of time, and you know it was, it was a big deal.

Ward: Great.

Question: Were there any deleted scenes that didn't make the disc?

McCallum: No.

Question: It was a little unclear in the presentation. Is the Air Taxi scene actually incorporated into the movie on Disc One? Is it now a different cut of the film on Disc One?

Ward: George did reincorporate the Air Taxi sequence that you saw in the documentary back into the film on Disc One.

Question: Is that the only difference from theatrical?

Ward: You know what? You're going to have to get the DVD to see.

Question: Fair enough. Is the long amount of time it has taken to get the first sort of Lucasfilm release on DVD, was that partly due to sort of waiting to see what the format was capable of? And were there any DVDs that you thought was a benchmark for the format, now we can do better than that?

McCallum: No it wasn't; it really was an issue of time. It was really a question of, I mean, when you came here you see the house and Skywalker Sound and there's ILM down there, but those are basically separate businesses. When you really get down to it, in terms of production here at Lucasfilm, there's really George and myself and the editorial crew, and that's it. But we don't have a huge organization, you know, that can just immediately go into something like that so quickly. And it was really just an effort. I mean again we won't finish this until right up until the very last minute, probably two weeks, three weeks at the very most before we release. And then we immediately go straight into "Episode III." George is writing "Episode III" now as we speak so we're always overlapping. It is just a question of time. You know, a time to sit back and say, "Oh okay, wouldn't this be great to do this?" And you've got to work within the context of what ILM is doing and who they have available -- you're waiting for all the same artists that you want when you're making a movie. I mean, we really were very lucky. It was very important to us to get somebody like Pablo to do the visual effects, and we had to wait for him while he was finishing one picture and to get the right team together. Just really an issue of time, and not a lot of resources in terms of people to hand it over to.

Question: Were there any DVDs that you thought were a benchmark to beat, for content?

McCallum: I loved "T2." I loved the movie but I also loved the DVD. I think that's probably my favorite DVD out there. Other than this! ["Episode I"]

Question: Good choice.

McCallum: Same producer.

Question: Why the decision to make "Episode I" as the initial DVD, as opposed to Episodes IV, V and VI which were made many years earlier?

McCallum: Well personally I think that's probably a question you need to ask to George. But the way I understand it it's "Episode I," and that's the way I think he wanted to start it, the whole DVD process you know in terms of this is Chapter 1 and then Chapter 2…

Question: You just mentioned a minute ago that you liked the "T2" DVD. Did that influence the decision to bring Van Ling to this project?

McCallum: No, he was already chosen before. But you know, there are again...it's such a new medium. I mean, there's lots of DVDs out there, but again, as I said, most of those are videomasters that are thrown out with a little thing. To get to the next level, there are very, very few people and Van is clearly the leader in it and he has always been our number one1 choice. It seems very easy. But it's actually a very complicated medium to be able to work successfully within. And you know the time to have it done, the amount of time to get all the materials, especially if the benchmark is quality, is very tough. You know, it's like going out with a digital movie...which we hope to do soon.

Question: You just mentioned about shooting digitally.

McCallum: Yes.

Question: I remember reading that George had said there were some scenes in "The Phantom Menace" that had been shot digitally, and he wasn't going to tell anyone what they were. Any chance you could reveal which scenes those are now?

McCallum: I can't. We'll probably have this conversation when the release of the "Episode II" DVD comes out. By that time digital cinema will be such a mainstream reality that it'll be worth actually going back and looking and I can point those out. But it isn't worth doing that right now because there's so much hype and so much misinformation and so much fear and paranoia about, you know, the future of the way we're going to all see movies. I think it would be inappropriate at the moment. But there are at least, you know, more than a dozen shots in the film that were shot with a digital camera in London.

Question: How did working on the DVD affect "Episode II?"

McCallum: "Episode II" is such a far time ahead for me in terms of all I can do is think about just getting the picture done in time. But the DVD I'm sure there will be if not there'll be obviously different but equally interesting surprises for the DVD. The issue about, it was just complicated in terms of the thing, we were able to use the time zones really effectively while we were in Sydney. Jim and everybody else would send us stuff, we'd be able to have, we'd always be a day or two days ahead of everybody here so we'd use the weekends to catch up. But it made our stay in Australia different, because there was virtually no free time whatsoever. We were either shooting or we were working on the DVD.

Question: Is "Episode I" a sell-through product.

Ward: The DVD is a sell-through product. Yep.

Question: How did you find the process of doing the commentary?

McCallum: That I found a bit agonizing. Because again we were in the middle of shooting pick-ups for "Episode II" when I was doing the commentary. And I was on one side of London, and then the furthest part away was this small little studio which would take me two, two and a half hours in traffic to get to. And I just wasn't, you know, it was so hard to get my head around "Episode I" at that point. And I wasn't, it was, one year in the "Star Wars" universe. Partly I guess one of the problems is its such a big deal, it's 10 or 12 years of your life. And it took us five years to do all of "Episode I." And then by this time, with overlaps, I was in the third year of "Episode II" and I'd forgotten about "Episode I." You know it was just hard to get my head back into it. But there's some wonderful stuff from Ben Burtt and Dennis Muren, you know that I thought was really, really interesting. And for me I just remembered the, you know the painful moments and I didn't want to make it turn it into a story of gloom and sorrow. So for me personally it was harder, to do the commentary.

Question: Were they recorded separately, or how was that done?

McCallum: What, the commentary?

Question: Yes, by the different participants.

McCallum: Yes, everybody was all over the world. We were in London, Ben was in Australia, Dennis was here, people were all spread out so basically what we'd have is a tie-line, whatever studio that we were in. Then Jim would set up the scenes and we'd go through the scenes and try and remember some of the comments about the specific issues of what was going on in each day's work.

Question: Did you personally record one for the entire length of the movie that was then edited down?

McCallum: I did, but I think it was deemed to be inappropriate. [all laugh]

Ward: Yes we did record each individual full length and then edited it down.

Question: Did you think about making "The Beginning" even longer? Were you restricted by the amount of space available on the DVD?

McCallum: I don't think it was anything conscious. I just think there's only X amount of time. I mean, we shot close to 600 hours worth of stuff, and you know, the ultimate dream for me personally, and I think George and all of us is if there was a medium out there that could actually handle that, you know it would be very interesting to spend two or three hours in each department. And there are 22 craft trades within the context of making the movie that it would be really interesting to see from the moment George comes up with an idea to the actual concept of it, how it changes, how it impacts everybody, then how it deals, how we deal with in terms of scheduling. And in a fact we try to attempt that, but it would be, you know again for students and people who are really into it, it would be great to someday have a medium where you could spend two, three, four hours on everything: wardrobe, costume, visual effects. I mean, wardrobe and sound effects, visual effects -- every discipline that it takes to make a movie. We basically have that material, it's just, you know right now in the world we live in it's impossible to actually get it together on a format to release it. It's not where everybody says, "Oh, God," at least in my case almost the contrary, you know where normally it's everybody oh I love working with Rick and George is such a wonderful human being and the cameraman is so fantastic and you know, if you could go on and on and on, you wouldn't believe some of the things that were said about me personally. But you know that's part of the thing that makes it interesting and then changes the dynamic of a group of people that are essentially thrown together for six, seven days a week on location, away from home for a long, long period of time. Much longer than a normal film.

Question: Two quick ones. Will there be any paraphernalia with the disc; how will it be packaged? And also, will there be a preview or teaser reel for the next film?

Ward: The packaging itself is great, pretty straightforward. There's not a whole lot on the inside. There'll be the regulatory chapter stop information and descriptions of what's on the disc itself. But nothing really beyond that. We really wanted to focus on the discs themselves. Your second question, sir?

Question: Will there be a teaser or a preview for any future "Star Wars" films on the disc?

Ward: No, nothing on the discs. What we do have is a DVD-ROM link to starwars.com. Clearly at starwars.com we talk about "Episode II" so people will be able to get to starwars.com and have exclusive content from chats, things like that that we are planning in the future.

Question: I have a question about deleted scenes. Why isn't there an option on the DVD to put the deleted scenes in the place where they belong like on the "X-Men" DVD?

McCallum: That's a good point. We discussed it briefly, but that's a different kind of direction than I think we actually wanted to go to.

Ward: I think you can ask George that as well.

McCallum: At the end of the day, you make a movie and there are certain things that you cut out and they are always difficult and painful, or you think that they just don't work and sometimes they work later on. But if you don't think that they worked later on, but they are interesting, because they go through the process, then you leave the movie as the movie that you wanted to tell. And I think that's just a side thing to say that these are things that we were exploring before you actually realize that something just doesn't work.

Question: How many easter eggs are on the disc and who decides what goes on as an easter egg?

Ward: Well, I am not going to tell you how many Easter Eggs are on the disc because then they wouldn't be Easter Eggs anymore! I think that fans can have fun trying to figure that out. We showed you one earlier. Who decides what goes on as an easter egg? That was sort of an iterative process to be honest with you, to see what kind of materials we had, what we needed to do, what things were left over, etc. We then sit down with Rick and George and kind of say, hey, here's some fun things. The whole sequence that you saw, the easter egg that we did show you with those outtakes were really thanks to Rick and then ultimately George who had that stuff. And we didn't really know that they really even had that. Liam throwing his lightsaber, things like that, it was awesome. And then they said, well, guys if you want to use this as an easter egg or something, do it. So we did.

Question: Rick, I know you put it very clearly in the documentary, but I would like to know what was going through your mind when you were in front of the crowd at the movie theater?

McCallum: Oh, in San Francisco? Yeah, well, it was actually an interesting thing because there was a young boy who came up to me, and he said, "Could you sign my ticket?" And we were trying to find a pen and neither one of us had a pen, and he said, "You know, I am going to ask my girlfriend to marry me tonight." And he opened up and he showed me this ring, this huge 89-carat zirconium masterpiece. I said, "Are you serious?" And he said "Absolutely!" I think her name was Betty, so I signed the ticket to his girlfriend. And then we were standing in the back, because if you are a producer, you are behind the camera, you're not supposed to think - and all of a sudden I could hear my name being shouted to the audience and so I went up to the front, I did say, you know, "Is Betty here?" And she kind of raised her hand up she was like in the fourth row, and I said, "I think you both need to come up here." They came out into the front of the theater and it got very silent. It wasn't filmed.

Ward: We didn't film it?

McCallum: Jon was in the lobby. But I said, "You know, sometimes you gotta be a man, this is the time to do it." He got to his knees, the whole theater completely stopped, there was everybody with lightsabers and everything else, and he got on his knees and it was, I mean you could hear everything in the theater. And he asked her to marry him, pulled out the ring, she looked at the audience, then she looked at me, I didn't know what was going to happen, she was so freaked out. And then she said, "yes." And the place just went completely nuts. They picked them both up. Everybody came running off the seats, they picked Betty up and they pulled her all the way along to the very back of the theater and the place went nuts for 10-12 minutes. I wish we had that but Jon was outside and he was just about to come in. It was an amazing scene. That was the happiest moment of that particular opening. I then went to the Thursday night opening in L.A., Friday night in New York. It was amazing. It was those three days and then we were back on "Episode II" the following week.

Ward: Rick, we have time for one last question. It's going to be mine. I think that the Italian delegation had a question about an issue about a previous LaserDisc version or the original version of the Trilogy where R2-D2 is called something else in Italian and then with "Episode I," R2-D2 all of a sudden became "R2-D2" and they are curious as to why that's the case?

McCallum: It was a mistake on the first one. So I apologize. I mean, I didn't have anything to do with the first film. I saw it and we just couldn't understand why that was translated into a different name when R2-D2 was something so specific that couldn't be translated, so that's why we actually changed it so that it would be corrected from now on.

Question: Do you remember what the name was?

McCallum: Yeah, C-1P8. Could have changed the whole nature of history of movies: C-3PO and C-1P8. [laughter]

Ward: Who knew? Gosh, don't tell George. [laughter] Thanks, Rick, for stopping by.

McCallum: I'm glad you guys liked the DVD. Hopefully you liked it. [applause] Thank you.

--END--

Click here to read Session Two with Van Ling, Rick Dean and Pablo Helman

Click here to read Session Three with George Lucas

Click here to view the DVD's menus

Click here to read Introduction

Special thanks to Lucasfilm Ltd. and 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment

Look for our DVD review of "Star Wars: Episode I -- The Phantom Menace" to be posted soon