Rick McCallum • Live-Action Series Interview • January 18 2012

[Zaius]

January 18 2012

source: (collider.com)



MCCALLUM QUOTES

• “This is the best way to put it into perspective: we did Episode III—which is one of the larger of all the Star Wars films in relation to set construction, visual effects, the amount of visual effects and everything else—and that was made for $100 million which was unheard of even five years ago, because had it been made by any studio or anywhere in the United States it would have been easily double that price.

So imagine an hour’s episode with more digital animation and more visual effects and more complicated in terms of set design and costume design than a two-hour movie that takes us three years to make, and we have to do that every week and we only have $5 million to do it. That’s our challenge.”


• “It’s not a challenge that I think can be dealt with in the next year or two years, I think it’s gonna be a little bit more longer term goal.”


• “[Lucas] has come up with so many extraordinary digital characters that are onscreen for 30-40 minutes.

Most people who love movies and kind of understand the process realize that if you do a character like Gollum or Jar Jar or any major digital character, that costs twice as much as having Tom Cruise in a movie.

You get 150 people working for two years on a 40 minute performance and they all make serious money, you just add it up; that’s gonna be a serious $20-30 million character. That’s our problem, how do we get that down?”


• “[With] digital 3D matte paintings, how do we cut the time from 2-3 weeks to 2-3 days? On a television budget, on television screens it doesn’t have to be film res, but each one of these are major challenges for us. How do we get virtual set software?

Because we can’t build any of this stuff. I mean we could do it if we did it in a traditional format where we have one set with all the characters, but George doesn’t work that way. We have 40-50 set pieces per hour, every minute and a half to two minutes there’s another set.

Well we can’t build that and do that every week, that’s virtually impossible, so we have to come up with virtual set software and an environment that allows us to be able to do that on blue and green screen and be able to turn those backgrounds around really, really fast. We’re getting there, but it’s not perfect yet and it’s still too expensive.”


• “It’s much darker [movies]. It’s a much more adult series. I think, thematically, in terms of characters and what they go through, it will be…if we can ever get it together and George really wants to pursue it, it’ll be the most awesome part of the whole franchise, personally…It’s Empire Strikes Back on steroids.”


• “Obviously, we changed it for where we couldn’t go in terms of language. It was to be serious performances, very complicated relationships, unbelievable issues of power and corruption, greed, vanity, pride, ego manifesting itself at levels that only equal the world that we live in now, but, as I said, on steroids.”

[Mike_Droideka]

EzyDVD are jumping the gun just a little bit.

[thecolorsblend]

Maybe I'm gullible and Rick has an amazing ability to spin bullshit in a convincing way but this all sounds fairly legit and believable. At least to me.

Still, not to be a fly in the guy's ointment, but is it really that important that characters be digital? If the lion's share of the effects could be digital backdrops and CG ships and whatnot, a lot of that can be done on a weekly basis. If the end result is more meaty and character-driven writing with greater dramatic material, I think I can forgo all the CG creatures.

[Bandersnatch]

...I think I can forgo all the CG creatures.

Or if not all of them, at least some of them. For example, I have never understood why "Dex" in AOTC had to be a cross between a rooster and Ernest Borgnine. Why not just get Ernest Borgnine? Or any scruffy character actor, and shoot it one morning? Imagine the money they would have saved, not spending weeks or months trying to digitally perfect the hole in his shirt.

[thecolorsblend]

I'm willing to cut some slack in the movies because SW is all about spectacle. By the same logic, why did Chewie have to be a dude in a suit? Why not just find a really tall, strong-looking son of a bitch and just cast him as a human character?

But TV works on a different schedule and budget. It's the nature of the beast. It's weird for McCallum and co. to want to impose feature sensibilities onto a format that doesn't easily support those types of concepts.

[Inv8r]

...I think I can forgo all the CG creatures.

...I have never understood why "Dex" in AOTC had to be a cross between a rooster and Ernest Borgnine. Why not just get Ernest Borgnine?...

Because he's DEAD, you insensitive, lowlife, prick! I kidd, I kidd...

Yeah, that was the very first thought that went through my head when I read this BS "so, why fuck around with a CG character if that one item it will cut 30% of your ENTIRE PRODUCTION BUDGET?!".

I get it, they wanted to push the limits of what CG performance could do with Jar-Jar. Great, mission accomplished, technically he's a success and ILM knows it can do digital actors and stuntmen - move on.

He didn't narrative need to be digital, neither did Dex, or Gollum, or all the clones. Grievous probably did need to be, but how many Grievous' do you need? If they're talking about needing to find ways to get the budget down by half, that's the lion's share right there.

why did Chewie have to be a dude in a suit? Why not just find a really tall, strong-looking son of a bitch and just cast him as a human character?

He didn't, but he's more interesting to look at. Your argument doesn't really hold up here though because, let's say a Chewie costs you $100k to produce as a costume.

That's the production cost for that character for the run of the show - it's not like you need to pay an animator to key Chewie, then have effects run hair simulation and eat up render cycles, then get your comp department to integrate him in the frame every time you need Chewie to appear in a shot. It's exotic, and cost-effective.

[Bandersnatch]

...I think I can forgo all the CG creatures.

...I have never understood why "Dex" in AOTC had to be a cross between a rooster and Ernest Borgnine. Why not just get Ernest Borgnine?...

Because he's DEAD, you insensitive, lowlife, prick!

o rly?

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000308/bio

[TroyObliX]

Maybe they will rehash every other 'sucessful' sci-fi idea into an episode.

Next, a group of industrial space jockeys on a scouting/rescue/whatever mission encounter an alien species which, to their horror, incubates inside its host and then bursts through their chest! Or maybe a ship that was supposedly destroyed, but has suddenly just reappeared in orbit around some distant deserted planet. And then the ship tries to kill Laurence Fishbourne!

Wtf.

Seriously, George Lucas, call me. I will write better, more original material for your show. As a fan, I'll do it for the low, low price of: free schwag, some toys, and maybe a stray prop or two. That, and then it won't suck. If it does, it will suck in new, and original ways.

Not to beat my own drum, but after all, I am an award-winning, and published writer.

[Inv8r]

...I think I can forgo all the CG creatures.

...I have never understood why "Dex" in AOTC had to be a cross between a rooster and Ernest Borgnine. Why not just get Ernest Borgnine?...

Because he's DEAD, you insensitive, lowlife, prick!

o rly?

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000308/bio

YAY! Not sure why I thought he'd died a year or so ago. Love me some Ernie Borgnine!

The time travel thing - really, any of you think that there's ANY chance that's legit? Come on.

[yarq]

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