A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away … people used to
believe whatever they saw with their own eyes. But do you
really believe a man can fly? Do you believe aliens are invading
Earth or that an evil empire will destroy freedom across the
universe? For the makers of films like Superman,
Independence Day and Star Wars, their mission is to make
you believe and that’s when they come to someone like me.
Over the years, I've travelled through time, breathed life back
into dinosaurs and blown up entire planets. Today, I work at
Industrial Light & Magic, but my interest in special effects goes
back to my childhood. I remember seeing the alien in The War
Of The Worlds zap some soldiers with a ray gun and I thought
to myself, “I want to do that.” My father had a home movie
camera and I filmed my brother pretending to be a soldier.
Then I filmed some fireworks exploding. My mum went crazy
when she saw it, but my dad thought it was really funny and
that was all the encouragement I needed. I finally got into the
film business in the 70s. Stanley Kubrick had amazed
everybody with his beautiful film 2001: A Space Odyssey and I
found myself working on a similar film for a young guy called
George Lucas. He kept talking about robots, or swords made
out of light, and superfast spaceships, and I kept saying, “Sure,
George, but how are we going to make it?” Well, in the end we
found a way and Star Wars was a massive blockbuster. We
made two more Star Wars films, and I had a great time working
on the Indiana Jones movies, but then along came Jurassic
Park in 1993 and that changed everything.
Computer animation had been around for a long time, but now
we could make any kind of creature we wanted. Suddenly, it
seemed like every film had to have CGI (computer generated
imaging) and I think some people forgot that films still need
imagination. I enjoy films like The Lord of the Rings trilogy
because they’ve got drama and emotion as well as great
special effects, but my kids like computer animated films like
Shrek. Sometimes I try to imagine what kind of films they’ll be
watching when they’re older, but then I look back at how far
we’ve already come. Who could have dreamed any of this
would really happen?