Cinema: Ready, Set, Glow!

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The other crew assembled "animatics": rough computer designs of the script's scenes using stick figures, artwork, bits of film. "We previsualize the movie," says animatician David Paul Dozoretz, who was in charge of the digital whiz kids. "We're Lucas' toy box. We do lots of experimentation." Thanks to these sages and sprouts, 45 min. of Episode 1 was viewable as a computerized storyboard before principal shooting began.

Iain McCaig, a children's book illustrator, "conceptualized" the costumes--and some of the creatures inside them. For Darth Maul, the dark-side warrior who battles Qui-Gon with a prototype double-edged light saber, Lucas asked McCaig to draw his childhood nightmare come true. The artist drew one so frightening that Lucas said, "Do your second worst." That was Bozo the Clown, who had terrified McCaig as a child. "His face had long red tassels, and he had big metal teeth."

McCaig admits he tried "to get Lucas in trouble over the hair" by designing coiffures every bit as grotty as Princess Leia's bagel buns. One of Amidala's dos looks like a fan belt, another like huge shoulder pads. He designed Amidala's raiment to be elaborate too. "George wanted the Queen so regal she could sneak out the back of the dress," he says, "and no one would know she was gone." Trisha Biggar spent a year fashioning the costumes. "It's George's first costume drama," she says. "The movie will have lots of girl appeal, especially the Queen's costumes. She has a different fancy dress for each of her eight scenes." The throne-room dress alone took two months to complete and features globules of lights around the hem. It's a wowser.

In a movie world of many worlds, where humans interact with other intergalactic species, it just makes sense that live action should consort with puppeteering (Yoda is still voiced and manipulated by Frank Oz) and digital auteurism. So, yes, there must be real actors. It takes a real actor to stand on a bare stage and pretend it's the gigantic Galactic Senate, or to have an argument with an invisible junkman. And it takes a trusting actor to endure the secrecy attending a Star Wars production.

"It had to be a leap of faith," says Neeson. "I couldn't get a script. Forget Woody Allen--this was like trying to get into Fort Knox. I finally got to read the whole script in George's office with Darth Vader standing outside the door. Seriously." Even now, Neeson won't talk about his role, though everyone knows he's the lead in Episode 1. "I can't say," he says, unsmiling but with a flick of laughter in his eyes. "I am forbidden by my Jedi code of ethics."

To Alfred Hitchcock, actors were cattle. To Lucas, actors are pixels--visual elements whose performances can be refined in computerized postproduction. For a certain scene, Lucas liked Take 4 of one actor, Take 6 of the other; he patched the two together and digitally fixed the middle. "Most directors wouldn't manipulate the scenes as much as we've done," says film editor Paul Martin Smith. "If we don't like how it looks, we change it."