Golden Moments
Golden Moments
Though initially developed as a place to focus on what he felt was truly important in life. These days, Skywalker Ranch was as much the Lucas' family home as a miniature movie studio.
When George was younger, he wanted a place where he could make movies, tinker with technology, and tell the stories he wanted to tell the way he wanted to tell them. To that end, the ranch had sound stages, recording booths, workshops, and all the other assorted facilities a filmmaker could want to make a film by himself.
As he got older, he found to his surprise his interests and concerns had changed, and his motives changed along with his dreams. A loving wife and a small child arrived and moved into George's heart. Movies, while still a close second, were no longer the most important thing. Family was, and the dream that was Skywalker Ranch changed to reflect that.
Once intended as a place to lay a head between feverish productions, the house became a proper home. Time was spent outside the various workshops, talking to people, maintaining relationships and being a father and husband, not just an overstressed filmmaker. Likewise, the change of focus of the ranch gave his wife Marcia the means and opportunity to truly connect with her husband and build on and maintain their relationship away from the pressure of the Main Lucasfilm campus.
So means motive and opportunity combined to make the place a happy home and a wonderful place for a specific type of small child to grow up in. The child in question answered to Wally.
Wally was an intelligent, if quiet, child who took after his parents in their love for movies and capacity for self-amusement. That was not to say he had no friends or disliked the company of others. He had a best friend in Mary O'Brain; she even had younger siblings and kittens who were included when they were around. He was somewhat jealous that Mary had siblings, who seemed to Wally like friends who never went home and asked if he could have some. Mommy and Daddy said that because of some medical things, it was unlikely that Mummy would get pregnant and have more children. Wally accepted the answer and asked if Indy or even Mummy could play with him if she wasn't too busy. She wasn't, that time. So, for the first part of Wally's childhood, his most often playmates were the Giant Alaskan Malamute Indy and his parents, who made a deliberate effort to spend time with him.
Wally was an early reader and loved watching movies, talking about stories, and discussing how and why certain things worked or didn't. Being a child, he also asked questions that many others would not think of or consider even needed asking. As so often in scientific discovery, the critical discoveries do not begin with "Eureka" but with "Huh, that's interesting."
So, one Saturday morning, when his father was home watching a classic movie with Wally, Wally made a simple observation about the film they had just finished watching together, which changed the world, at least a little.
"Daddy why Mary not have fuzzy blue or green on edges?"
"What do you mean, Wally?
"Star Wars lots of tiny fuzzy blue on edges. Star Wars 1977, Mary Poppins 1964. Why fuzzy blue?"
George paused and aborted tidying up the film, returning it to the player instead. "Um, one moment, Wally. Show me where you saw it."
"Dancing penguins", Nodded Wally authoritatively.
"The animated sequence where Jule Andrews and Dick Van Dyke are having that meal with the Penguin waiters?"
"'Yes."
"Well, let's see what we can see."
----
"Daddy?"
They had rewatched the penguin dancing and the actors interacting with animated characters. Still, his father flicked back and forward on the tape to reach several other scenes and then watched them intensely. At Wally's voice, George immediately shifted from the scene he had rewound and watched several times to the small child rapidly getting bored.
"huh. That's interesting. Well, spotted, Wally. Um, and there is no blue or green spill nor any other colours I would expect. Um, I don't know the answer. Shall we see if we can find out Together?"
"Yes." The reply was all but automatic. Wally nodded and started towards the Door, leaving his father scrabbling to catch up. While Mary Poppins was good and fun, watching the film being sped up and rewound while whatever scene caught his father's eye was watched over and over was rapidly turning out not to be fun. Tinkering in one of the workshops with Dad sounded more interesting.
----
Half an hour later, Wally was perched on a tall stool beside the bench in a soundstage / workshop on the property. In front of him was a mess of wires and parts, several TVs, and many panels and bolts that allowed for rapid jury-rigging or changes to the camera setup centrally located in the mess. Sitting on the soundstage itself was a bit of blue fabric and an X-wing toy
His father returned from where he had been adjusting a light to point at the toy.
"Um, okay, Wally. Let's start with how I make it look like X-wings can fly. If I just point the camera at the X-wing and move it like this, does it look like the X-wing is flying past?" George asked as he swung the camera past the toy, slowly at the starting and ending and quickly across the middle before fiddling with some settings on the machine.
Wally watched the lit screen. The Picture didn't look quite right, but if he squinted Juuust so, he almost couldn't see the blue fabric and ...
"Looks like aeroplane flying picture, Daddy," Wally said turning away from the Monitor that was playing the looped footage again and again.
"...but X-wing not fly. Camera moved. Movie magic?"
"Um, yes. That's right, Wally, it's a perspective trick. You can make something appear to move by having it move or having the camera move the right way. But it doesn't look quite right, does it , Wally?"
Wally shook his head. "Had to close eyes nearly all the way."
"That's because you could also see the blue fabric, which gave your eyes a reference, making you think the camera was moving and not the toy. So we need to remove the blue fabric. We could do that by getting a pair of Scissors and cutting out the bits on every fame we don't want, then carefully sticking them just right onto a new piece of film. This is a TV camera and takes 60 pictures a second. The camera took about ten seconds of footage. Do you know how many pictures it took?"
"No. But it big" said Wally a little sadly, then brightening, "Mary would. Mary is very good at Maffs."
George grinned, "Mary is indeed very good at maths, as if Bruce or even Mike would ever let me forget. But it is a lot, yes? Would it take a long time to do each one individually? Wally nodded as Geoge continued, "So we do a Movie magic trick and tell the camera that we don't want any blue. The important thing I use with physical film is a special Lens with all the parts together, but I want to show you how it works.
George reached into a large case and pulled out several triangles of glass and a torch, some plates with a hole in them, an eyepiece and a series of clams and stands. Finally, after a few moments screwing things together under Wally's fascinated watch, he pulled out a simple piece of white paper and another covered in squares of different colours.
George waved at the setup, "The glass things are called prisms, Wally, and they split light. If I hold a piece of paper behind a prism and shine a white light just so through the Triangle, I get a …"
A gasp of delight was heard, "Rainbow."
"Indeed, and if I put this next triangle prism here alongside the first so the rainbow shines into it, the light coming out is …"
"Is white. White is rainbow when stretched."
A grin crossed Georges's face as he put down the torch and paper and picked up two pieces of metal with a slit in the middle. "That's a good way of looking at it, Wally. But here comes the clever trick. Now, blue is about 460 to 500 nanometres, so the aperture should be... About here..." George muttered as he adjusted the hole in the plate now between the two triangles.
"Now, Wally, look at the way the light comes back together. It is not white anymore. It's just blue."
Wally nodded, unsure where this was going.
"Now, look through the eyepiece while I hold these colours up."
Wally scrambles to obey.
"Colours funny. Only blue and black. Maby other colours a little?"
"So, would I see anything that wasn't blue if I looked through the prism?
"Nooo?" asked Wally
"You're right. And if I put a piece that covered the hole perfectly and then took the cover away, only the blue would stop. Would I be able to see anything blue?" George asked as he matched actions to words.
"No? No only not blue. Other colours not proper just not only black and blue."
"Exactly right, which is why it was so impressive in Mary Poppins when they didn't seem to have that problem. At Lucasfilm, we can use a camera to see and not see blue to do some tricks, as I did with Star Wars. Now, rather than messing with film because we would be here all week, I will use digital camera tricks and this computer to make things go faster. Is that ok?"
"Yes. Do faster Please Daddy."
George reached out and flicked some switches, and on one of the screens, the blue around the X Wing disappeared, replaced with black, strengthening the illusion of the toy flying past.
Wally, with a grin on his face, applauded. "Movie magic make stand go away."
The X-Wing had very slightly changed colour too but a black background made it look more like it was flying now he couldn't see the blue it was sitting on.
"Thank you, Wally. But we are still going. Wouldn't a cleverer background be good? Shall we make it look like the X-Wing is flying past something? How about the house?"
"Yeah."
"So, if I take this camera and instead of doing a funny shot of the model, I go over to the door and move it like I am seeing the X wing fly past…"
Another TV lit up this time with a shot that focused on the distance swung around quickly, and then focused in the other direction, bracketing their home on Skywalker Ranch.
"Now, if I adjust it a bit…"
The two Screens slowly synced as George adjusted some knobs , and soon, the X-Wing flew past on the top Monitor in sync with the camera movements on the bottom.
"Looks good, doesn't it? Shall we combine them? Do you want to do the honours? Press that button and…"
Wally reached out and pressed the indicated button. His grin faded as he saw the result.
"Not look right. X-Wing is see-through."
"Yes, it is. We removed the blue from behind the X-Wing so the stand disappeared, but we did the movie magic wrong, so the screen sees the house and the X-Wing. We need the house to go away from behind where the X wing is so it only sees the X wing."
Wally nodded. That made sense
"We could do it the hard way and carefully cut the right X-wing shaped hole with scissors for every Picture. And put it back into the machine. Sound like fun?"
Wally made a face," No. Do more Movie Magic, Daddy."
George chuckled, then continued, "Using this machine and a process called masking, we can do something similar to what we did with the X-Wing, only backwards to cut the hole."
George turned to the machine and started adjusting the controls as he continued speaking.
"So instead of asking the blue for the X-Wing to go away, we can make it look at only the blue so there is a hole where the X-Wing was and put it on another monitor. If we put it over the footage of the house, it makes the house look funny, and the only clear bit where the X-Wing was. Do we want that as a picture?
Wally shook his head, eyes wide, waiting for the trick he was sure this father was about to pull.
"So masking, this machine can also see where there is no colour and has a space. So if we tell the machine to look at the blue piece and anywhere there is no blue colour, put the same no colour in the matching Picture of the house, there is a …"
"Hole in house. And no scissors." Wally exclaimed.
"Um, in the image, but yes, the cut out of the Picture means that the Picture is not trying to be the X-wing and the house at the same time, so when we add the X-Wing this time. Digital magic. We can do some tricks with film to achieve the same result, but it takes much longer."
"X-Wing look Better. Not ghost. Good digit magic Daddy."
George chuckled, "Almost Wally DigitAL. Digit means Finger or toe. The machine is digitAL, like numbers. Let's slow the frame rate down and look closely at the edges. See, there is still some blue on the edges. Blue is not just one colour; it is lots of colours in a band in the visible spectrum and about 40 Nanometres wide. Some of the blue is actually a really blue green or a really blue viloet, so it doesn't get removed, and that is what we see on the edges.
Wally nodded
"But as we saw, when we remove too much blue, the X-Wing's colours look wrong, like those on that colour sheet looked. The colours are a little off with the blue we removed. But other things can go wrong. If we change the prism and go a little into the green and violet part of the rainbow to be sure we get all the blue…"
George tapped a button on the machine, and the X-Wing's colour changed and the edges of the toy dissapered like the toy had been dipped in acid and melted.
"Well, it's a post-production problem to adjust and get the balance right to get the best shot."
"Mummy fix?" Wally offered quietly as they both stared at the looping footage. Wally knew Mummy was very good at fixing movies after the film was finished. The Eddy Thing Wally thought it was called. A man named Eddy probably did it first. But whoever Eddy was, Eddy wasn't better than his Mommy. Mary also said that Eddy was a bad man because her Grandma had said so, and Marys' Mummy hadn't said him wasn't. Eddy Cat was nice to sit quietly with and pet if he wasn't scared because Mary had just chased him up a tree.
Wally was so lost in thought and George distracted by watching the footage again that they were startled by the new voice.
"And what am I fixing here?"
"Marcia!?" "Mummy!?"
George Jumped as Wally exclaimed in delight
"Mummy, Daddy is showing why X wings little bit blue but Mary not."
"George?"
"The bluescreen process." George stated, indicating the pile of electronics and cameras with a wave of his hand, "Or at least what I can emulate with a digital camera quickly. Wally was asking why there was a little bit of blue in the X-Wings but no colour bleed when Disney did Mary Poppins."
"Well, unless it has something to do with those sodium vapour lights and that old camera those Disney folks were Messing around with when we were helping them with Blackhole, I don't have any idea. Now it's time for lunch for all hungry people. George? George, why are you looking at me like that?"
"You are amazing, Marcia. That could be it! Wally, I said we would see if we could figure it out today , and I think we have. Now, where are my…"
"After lunch you two. I saw that pout Wally. You need to eat before you and your father can go back to playing."
"Mommy play too?"
"Sorry, Wally, I have some very important. …George, stop with that look… Well, only if you come and wash up for lunch now and only for a little bit."
A cheering Wally abandoned the strolling couple to run ahead back to the house.
----
After being fed and watered, the trio returned to the space. George had the large case open again and some more tools. Marcia had come along with a sheet of white cloth and an old sodium vapour streetlamp from the prop shed that she had plugged in, and was watching carefully as it warmed up and shed A golden Glow.
George had assembled several prisms and a beam splitter into a strange lens attached to two cameras at the same time, He was just finishing calibrating it.
"Um. This is the same process as before, Wally, except for Gold instead of blue. Shall we see if it works?"
"YES" shouted Wally, almost vibrating in place with excitement. George gestured to the Frankenstein's monster of a camera and lens setup he had just finished putting together.
"so, we have our special camera lens set for seeing Sodium vapour Gold and for seeing everything but sodium vapour Gold.
Wally nodded excitedly
"There is a beam splitter in front, so half the light goes one way, and half the light goes the other. On one side, the light goes to a prism with a line blocking the specific Yellow and then back into a prism, putting the light back together. On the other hand, everything but Yellow is stopped, and the mask is created from that Yellow. Just like we did for the blue."
"Your wonderful mother has replaced the blue fabric under the X Wing with white. So if we shine a coloured light on it the fabric will turn will be the colour of the light. Sodium vapour lamps are special light. I have a light meter here.
"Dear, if you could turn off the other lights? Thank you"
"And what do you see now, Wally?
"Gold like C-3P0"
Without the other lights and with the doors and windows closed, the surroundings had taken on a rather particular shade of Golden Yellow.
"Yes, and if you look at the light reader, it is an exact colour too. Can you see the number on this? 589 nanometres. That is very specific. It also means all the light we can see now is the same. And that means something interesting. Can you see the red on the X-Wing? What about the rest of the sample colours on the test sheet?"
"Paint Broken?" Wally shook his head, looking around the room and blinking at the strange sight of it illuminated in a monochrome yellow.
"No, not broken. Just lit very specifically. If we shine a different light on the X-Wing like this sun lamp…"
"Fixed!"
"And that's how our eyes work. We didn't change the colours on the X=Wing, we changed the light. White light is all the colours. If a colour is missing from the light, things look a little weird, like the X-Wing did when we took out the blue to do the Bluescreen trick. With the sodium Vapor light, which makes only that Gold yellow, colours look, like you said, Broken."
"The blue we take out of the Picture was all the blues and was nearly forty times as wide. When we took that shade out, we could still see other colours. Um, what we are trying to do here is only take out that very specific gold and only that gold, so it is the only colour missing, leaving all the other yellows still there."
"So we have the White light on the model and the gold light on everything else, including the white fabric on the model stand. Ready to try the bluescreen Movie magic with it?"
"Yes. Daddy do movie magic Now. Then Wally and Mummy go. Wow."
"Lets see if I can then. If I swing the camera past again like I did when it was on the blue… And there we go, which should be close enough to the shot earlier for a comparison. Now your Mummy will turn the lights on and, dear, you were always better at editing than me, could you…?"
"Certainly, George", She replied from where she had been smiling at the interaction between George and Wally. She adjusted the studio lights and then the camera controls. In far less time than George had taken had the camera shots synchronised. A few more button presses had a screen with what looked like the silhouette of a black X-Wing flying through a yellow sky and another with the X-Wing flying on a pure black sky.
"It looks good, but we won't know until we combine it. Do you want to do the honours, Wally?" George said, gesturing toward a button Marcia was about to press. She stepped back and gestured to Wally, who eagerly pressed down.
"The yellow mask makes a hole in the background so the X-Wing fits in…"
"Much better, mummy. No blue. And can see through X-Wing window too. Daddy, Mummy?"
His parents were just staring at each other. His Mother shook it off faster and answered in a faint voice. "No Colour spill at all spill and Perfect transparencies, that's impossible with bluescreen, George. Well, test it a bit more, but that's the, Heh, Gold standard invented."
George nodded distractedly. "Um, it will be a bit of work with Polaroid to get the lenses properly sorted, and maybe it will take a few million and some workarounds to invent, but yes. Thank you, Wally, this will make filming a lot easier."
Wally turned and grinned at his Parents. "Thank you for playing moves. Potty now."
That very effectively broke the moment.
----
Later that night, Wally was safely in bed with the family, and Giant Alaskan Malamute Indy was asleep on his bedroom floor. George and Marcia retired to the lounge to finish the work Maria had put off, and Mary Poppins played quietly on the TV again.
As the scene with the animated penguins came on again, Marcia broke the silence, gesturing towards the TV. "Well, congratulations, George. You reverse-engineered it, and you won another victory for Lucasfilm and movies. Did you have a good day today?" There was a slightly hard edge to Marcia's voice.
"Um, yes. Wally seemed to have a good time and wasn't just being polite." Came Georges's slightly confused reply.
"So, Today wasn't a movie thing?"
George turned to look at Marcia thoroughly, stopping pretending to even look at the TV. "Well, only sort of. Wally wanted to do it with me. Bluescreen improvements were not my plan for today, Not with Personal Digital Polaroids launching so soon."
"But you made time for Wally?"
"Yes. Him, you, me, Us is more important than Moves or business ventures… Wally just happens to like movies and tech, too."
A laugh as Marcia relaxed, the hard edge of her voice disappearing. "Who do you think he gets it from then, you or me?"
"US definitely both of US."
"You know I was afraid that you would get too involved with movie making, too focused on your dreams to have any time for a US?"
George relaxed. "Blame Bruce. He really helped. But his attitude. It's like he has twelve important things to do in a month, and half of them are about his family. Like acquiring the rights to a TV series that could potentially make billions over the next ten years is just as important as family dinner."
"Or he demands to shoot Batman in LA so he could go home every night. Carrie really needed that…are you going to do anything like that for Me?" she asked playfully.
A slightly hurt look on Georges's face was almost missed before she continued, "…or have you already? That's what Skywalker Ranch is meant to be? You are a wonderfully sweet man. Everything we love about moviemaking here on our own terms. At our own pace. In our own home."
"Well, yes."
A hug
"We have got to get better at communicating, especially considering…"
A file lay on the table in front of them. The name Amanda is prominently displayed on the front cover.
A look passed between them.
"I love you, George started..."
"I know" Marcia continued. "But I am not Carrie, and you are not Bruce, so we have to talk to each other, no matter how hard it is. We are not alone in this after all," A picture of Wally smiling looked back at them from the far wall.
"Do you want to get Bruce to help?"
"No, not yet. We managed to talk today. Let's plan to talk tomorrow and the day after, too. If we start having trouble, then let's go to Bruce for advice. I am sure he will be willing to give it, probably while beating up the most recent Chinese assassin. " Laughter followed.
Thanks @Magoose
here is one that has been kicking around since I saw this video by Corridor Crew.
Remember all those actions that helped George and his relationship? With less stress, a healthier relationship, and no divorce, George can do things like reinventing a piece of technology that was more or less lost.
This technology, which won the 1965 OTL Academy Award for Disney and Mary Poppins, offers another incremental improvement to the film industry and gives ILM another process that will be reusable on multiple movies. It's not essential, but it could save a lot of time and frustration in the editing department and provide more flexibility in filming. It also means that any movie that does not use ILM will have its special effects look slighty wrong, another reminder why paying people what they are worth is a good idea.
Overall, it's about George Lucas having a healthy marriage, being happy as a father and husband, and doing something he likes, which is the real prize.
here is one that has been kicking around since I saw this video by Corridor Crew.
Remember all those actions that helped George and his relationship? With less stress, a healthier relationship, and no divorce, George can do things like reinventing a piece of technology that was more or less lost.
This technology, which won the 1965 OTL Academy Award for Disney and Mary Poppins, offers another incremental improvement to the film industry and gives ILM another process that will be reusable on multiple movies. It's not essential, but it could save a lot of time and frustration in the editing department and provide more flexibility in filming. It also means that any movie that does not use ILM will have its special effects look slighty wrong, another reminder why paying people what they are worth is a good idea.
Overall, it's about George Lucas having a healthy marriage, being happy as a father and husband, and doing something he likes, which is the real prize.
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