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6.23.01
Episode II Update!
The Official Star Wars Site has the latest update on the status of Episode II.
The post-production phase of Episode II continues at a busy pace, and Producer Rick McCallum has started planning ahead for when the audio mix of the upcoming movie will come together.
"We won't do main looping until October or November, maybe a little more in January," says McCallum. Looping describes the process wherein actors re-record their dialogue in the controlled conditions of a recording booth. This is done for numerous reasons - sometimes, the dialogue spoken on set is muddled with background sounds. Sometimes the lines have changed. Sometimes, voice actors are called in to dub over another actor's performance (as in the case with Episode I's Darth Maul).
McCallum did oversee some preliminary looping in Australia last month, and in Northern California. "We did it 'live' through Skywalker Sound so George could be there and direct the actors."
No Star Wars movie is complete without a rousing musical score, of course. "The plan now is that we're going to start scoring in January in London, so that's all coming together," reveals McCallum.
Meanwhile, Industrial Light & Magic is hard at work completing hundreds of what will eventually be thousands of effects shots at a pace that McCallum can only call "insane."
"We've got our main group -- especially in animation -- really going now, and they're kicking butt." Helping speed up effects photography is the use of 24 fps digital cameras, tiny versions of the ones used for on-set and location shooting. ILM is shooting all their miniature work on digital, doing away with the traditional film medium.
Even with so much being completed at such a steady pace, McCallum does not predict any let-down between now and the 2002 release. "Even in Episode I we were shooting right up to two months before the film came out," recalls the producer. "That little scene where Palpatine arrives at the end of the movie, and sees Ani and says 'we will watch your career with great interest…' that was just one of those sweet little scenes we didn't shoot until the very end."
While the current focus is the completion of Episode II, the final installment of the Star Wars saga looms on George Lucas' horizon. "During the month of July he's going to come in every day and continue to cut in the footage that ILM delivers," says McCallum, "But he's going to stay home in the mornings and start writing Episode III. I'm not expecting to get a script in September, but he's going to start his research and start the process."
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