Making Episode I - Q&A with Phantom Menace producer Rick McCallum

Q: So, how do you think you came off in the documentary?

RM: That's why I have a fast forward, I just skipped over it. It was very interesting to see how much weight I've gained and lost throughout the whole production. (laughter) That was the most interesting thing to me.

Q: You were very direct. For instance when the situation was very grim in Tunisia you said things colorfully and did you have any concerns about including this? Or did you not care?

RM: No, not really. I mean it's a very weird thing, especially when there's a documentary crew. It's not easy for me to be totally natural around it. But you know after awhile you get kind of used to it. But no, there's never any real issue because in the end of the day we knew the guys who were making the film and they were all pretty trustworthy so it wasn't too bad. I was glad that they weren't there for 90% of the time.

Q: Well I had to laugh because since you cuss so much in the documentary, are you concerned about the young kids that will be watching that?

Jim Ward: No, we bleeped it out.

Q: But, I think most kids these days know what that is.

RM: Everything I've learned I learned from my kids. (laughter)

Q: My real question is, as far as the DVD, are you excited about all the extras? As a filmmaker you work so hard, what about the DVD itself?

RM: There are two big issues for me. One of the things that was very difficult was that we virtually were making the film right up until three weeks before the film was released. In fact we were in London shooting six weeks before the film came out. Then we had to supervise the making of 5,000 prints. Plus if you backstep, for 10 weeks we had been working on the digital master for the four theatres that we had shown in New York and Los Angeles. So we were just burned out. There was nothing for us to do.

The film came out, we had three days where we rushed around to New York and Los Angeles and San Francisco watching the openings, and then virtually that following Monday George and I started prep on Episode II. The thing that we knew that we didn't want to do was just take the typical route where there's a video master out there for the videocassette, and then somebody takes that, throws it down, and lays it out on the DVD, you have 15 minutes of how great it is working with George and isn't Rick nice and his hair is weird and all the other strange stuff that you get on it. We wanted to make it special. But that that takes a long time.

I set up the DVD before I went to Australia. We worked on it for six months. We had to cast for a crew. We had to wait for the supervisors, we wanted Pablo as our chief digital effects supervisor on the DVD. He was on another film. We had to get the artists that we wanted that were available. We had to face the whole reality of was it possible to actually even do this? We wanted Van Ling. You know there's a whole bunch of real things, it was like making another movie. And you've got to remember that up until Episode I, the largest film digital effects wise was Titanic. And that had about 450 shots. We had just under 2100 visual effects. And this DVD represents, I think it has the third most effects of any feature film that's ever been made.

So you know it was a really complicated process and it was very time consuming, we knew it was going to take a long time. But I think it was worth it. You know we loved it, we loved the whole idea of it. And more importantly for me personally, is that at least within the context of DVD it's really about quality. There's nothing more frustrating than in the case of Episode I which was a process that lasted over four years, you spend so much time making it, then you spend so much time mixing it, millions of dollars. And then you let it out to the world and you know there's probably less than 100 theatres where you can actually see the film that we actually made, or hear it in the way we've mixed it.

So DVD, believe it or not, still represents probably, in terms of the audience, the largest possible audience the best visual experience that they'll ever actually see the film. Because most of the stuff when you go to a multiplex outside of a major city is just junk. So, on those two levels I was very happy.

Q: Is there any particular scene in making the movie Episode I that was challenging to you?

RM: They're all painful in their own little way when you think back. But no, I personally like locations the most because you never know exactly what's going to happen. And to me that dynamic is very exciting, especially when you're dealing with the temperatures that we had in Tunisia. Tunisia is a country I personally like. I love the crew that we had, we shot there before on Young Indy. They're all difficult in their own little way because you've got this army, and it's like a small village. And one day an actor will get hurt in a car accident, another person will get sick, you know everything is all off side, you never know what's going to happen. Studio work is much easier, you just know what you've got. Usually everybody can get home and get back to work relatively easily. So I think probably, I haven't answered that question but I like locations the best.
JW: Who was really the target for Episode I?

RM: Well you've got to remember it's a saga. It's a saga of family, it's also going to be in six parts. It's designed to be seamlessly interconnected. In fact in terms of DVD it's what Van Ling was saying, one of the reasons why we didn't go straight from the digital master is that you know there have been three previous films, and they were films, and there's a look. And as he also mentioned in terms of relationship to Bug's Life and some of the other Pixar films is there are two different aesthetics.

Personally, for me, and this is going way off the question, the digital release of the film that we had in four theatres came closest to the film that we actually made because it was the only time that we could be in a theatre and actually see the film and hear it that closely resembled what it was that we had made. But the issue about whether or not it's for kids, you just have to take a deep breath and wait for the whole thing, because it all makes sense. It has to start somewhere, and there is a reason why Anakin is eight years old in Episode I. And when it's all over it will all make sense, both thematically and in terms of the evolution of Anakin's character.