While the reason my initial interest in the Disney+ show Light and Magic - the studio George Lucas created while working on the original Star Wars movie - seems obvious, the show proved to be far more than a look back on the making of the galaxy far, far away.
Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) was a revolutionary studio that made its name for the visual effects work, particularly in Star Wars. But I was rather blown away to see how influential ILM was to the tech industry at large. Certain key members of ILM had a hand in making Adobe Photoshop, and seeing its application for visual effects in the late 80s/early 90s really made me feel nostalgic (and quite old). Lucas sold off part of ILM (mostly because he was always needing more money) to a team that later became Pixar. I remember seeing Toy Story in theatres for the first time, and while I was probably too young to truly understand the movie's implications on the industry going forward, I certainly remember how incredibly those visuals first looked. I was blown away.
A little before that, though, was perhaps the most significant moment in ILM's post-Star Wars history, and the way they told the story of Jurassic Park was captivating. It could've been its own movie. ILM apparently was making the movie twice. The production team certainly had no problems creating props and animatronics for the film, which would have been spectacular enough for a highly successful movie. But another group within ILM was working on computer-generated visual effects. The episode focuses on a "pitch" to Steven Spielberg, the director of Jurassic Park who had worked with Lucas and ILM many times before (movies like E.T. and Raiders of the Lost Ark etched their names in history, too). The pitch was a short, simple clip of a 3-D dinosaur walking. That's it. The clip literally shows a rough cut of a dinosaur taking not even a dozen steps through a field. To younger audiences who have grown up with the likes of Marvel movies, Transformers, etc., this clip would seem archaic and super old-school.
But back then, it was unthinkable. And that's all it took. Hearing about how Spielberg flipped out over what he was watching showed just how much insight ILM had to making cutting-edge effects. Whether it was Star Wars, Poltergeist, Jurassic Park, or a myriad of other landmark movies, ILM was the biggest game in Hollywood. For following the old-school documentary format, Light and Magic did a great job of highlighting the company's progression, impact, and growth over the years all while using, you guessed it, light and magic to hide the fact that these guys mostly were making it all up as they went along.
I did enjoy seeing the sets of Star Wars without the visual effects. The stop animation for those miniatures was cool to see, especially during the Hoth production for Empire Strikes Back. The paintings of the background up against the pristine-white snowy ground and the tiny miniatures made the planet seem quite desolate and empty, which, of course, highlights how impactful the camerawork and visual effects were.
The irony of ILM's journey, of course, is how the creative minds worked a lot with practical effects in its early days before becoming known for pushing the envelop on the technological side; yet, when The Mandalorian first streamed, the studio was praised for bringing Star Wars back to its roots with minimal CGI effects and a bigger reliance on practical effects. One of many reasons The Mandalorian is such a hit for old-school Star Wars fans.
ILM is a bigger part of technology and the industry than most people understand. This show gives the studio quite the recognition it deserves.