According to your producer, Rick McCallum, you feel that as long as you're going to digitally manipulate the images, you may as well shoot them on digital tape. But some of our greatest cinematographers argue that using anything less than film will result in a tremendous loss of image quality.
Lucas: When you talk to musicians and they say, 'Well, I don't like to record digitally because it doesn't have that warmth, it's a little harder edged,' its' exactly—exactly— the same argument that cinematographers use. They are correct: it is a different look and it does have different qualities, [but] that doesn't make it bad; it just basically makes it different. And eventually, eventually, you will be able to make [the two methods] look the same. We're not there yet, but this is all in its infancy.
It's the same issue as when movies went from black-and-white to color. I grew up under the tutelage of Haskell Wexler [ASC], one of the premier black-and-white cinematographers. And I was around when he was the last guy shooting black-and-white films. Today, we all bemoan the fact that black-and-white films have gone out of vogue; we all love black-and-white films, and we wish there were more of them. It's a medium that has an honesty unto itself. But the issue of black-and-white versus color is the same thing as film versus digital. Haskell and a lot of other cinematographers didn't throw away the logic of black-and-white films; they brought those principles into the color era. The artistic principles that were developed during that period are as important today as they ever were, even if you're shooting in color. It's just that people have a tendency to throw that stuff away, and I don't think they should.
It's going to be the same thing with digital. It has a lot of advantages, and a different quality in terms of the way it looks, but as digital gets further along the line—and these are very controversial issues for a lot of people—you can ultimately manipulate an image to a much more sophisticated degree and get that film quality. That's what we're working on: software programs to use after we've shot digitally, which will create a quality that will match that of film. I'm just worried about matching in with the other Star Wars movies. I happen to be very liberal about imaging, and I don't have a strong bias for one type of look over another. To me, it's all very interesting and it's all very valid in its own right. I don't think one should take over from the other; I think we should actually keep them all. I think eventually you will be creating black-and-white looks, color looks and the new digital look. But it will all be done digitally.
So you feel that the art of cinematography won't be diminished just because the technology is changing.
Lucas: I like to think of the cinematographer as an artist, not as a technician. I am very much for the art of cinematography, but I don't worry about the technology, because the technology changes all the time. I deal with this in film schools. They say, 'Well, we need more 16mm cameras, the kids want to work in 16.' And I say, 'Why do you need film cameras at all? Give 'em Hi-8 cameras and let 'em learn that it's not how you operate the camera that's important, it's how you decide what the lighting is, what the images and the graphics are, and how they move in the frame.' Those are the things that are important not whether you can figure out what your f-stop is supposed to be. You can figure that out—that's the math and the technology—but the f-stop and the lens ratio and everything shift from year to year depending on what aspect ratio you're using, what kind of cameras you're using, and what kinds of mediums you're using. What you really want to focus on is the artistry—the thinking behind all of that—and not the craft, which is 'I can keep this in focus,' because ultimately, digital focusing is going to reach a point where it's invincible. But that doesn't mean that the art of cinematography is going to go away. There is more to it than keeping things in focus.
[ continued on page 4 ]