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Galactic News
Saturday January
5, 2002
Back to Work
The Official Star Wars Site talks about Episode II. The brief holiday break is over for the Episode II crew as Producer Rick McCallum heads back overseas to supervise the final phases of production. It's the Attack of the Clones home stretch as the time until completion is now being recorded in weeks instead of months.
"We're doing two days of shooting with the principle actors, and then we're doing the rest of the looping. We then have three weeks of scoring, so it's a very hectic schedule finishing around February 1st and rushing back to California," says McCallum.
January will see the crucial addition of a musical score to Episode II. "John Williams has been writing for 6-8 weeks with a couple of more weeks to go," reveals McCallum. Williams will join the London Symphony Orchestra at Abbey Road Studios to record the score. "We have to make our booking so far in advance, we actually made this booking three years ago!"
The production has just seen the delivery of a version of reel 2 with complete visual effects. "Basically, every two weeks, we get another reel done. Eventually, we're just down to the last reels -- 6 and 7 -- which we have to complete by April. We're really working," notes the Producer.
Industrial Light & Magic has been relentlessly on schedule, completing a whopping 50 shots a week, adding to their already astounding 1,500 shots. "They're doing great," says McCallum. "There's fantastic animation, great 3-D matte paintings, everybody's just really focused. We've added a new supervisor named Ben Snow who's terrific. I see him achieving great things in the future. All the teams are working their hearts out."
The production's momentum has spread beyond JAK Productions and ILM, but also to other parts of Lucasfilm Ltd. "Everyone is working really well together now," says McCallum. "ILM, Skywalker Sound, Licensing, Marketing, and production are completely inter dependant on each other. It's a great way to make a film: no ego, no stress, total teamwork with one goal in mind: release in May world-wide."