Alrighty folks, here's a report from our spy, Mr Day, that his friend Mr Night asked him to send in. I have done some rearranging here, so that you folks that want to stay away from spoilers... can do just that. About halfway down there will be a countdown to the spoilers. Do not go beyond that point if you don't want to see anything 'plotty' about the film. Mr Day describes a 28 minute video that was shown, images, and what he was told about the possible (though improbable) title change that Lucas is contemplating. Sooo, without further ado, here ya go...
I have never sent anything before and I've only been to your web site on Mr Night's computer, but I have some real neat, sorry cool, news of the Star Wars movie that Mr Night, who goes to your site everyday, DEMANDED I share with you.
I work for a (BLANKED BY HARRY) company that does tons of contract work for Hollywood films, tv shows, commercials and for the music industry as well as tons of stuff for regular folks and businesses. We are one of the bigger ones in the world with offices in (HARRY DELETED... IT'S JUST ABOUT EVERYWHERE IN THE KNOWN UNIVERSE).
Today my boss called a special "closed doors" meeting and read us the riot act about confidentiality, the need for secrecy, etc. This happens a lot with some clients who want their particular ad campaign to be a total surprise and splash in the industry - so basically it was nothing new. Car companies, Nike, and soft drink people routinely do this so they can surprise the competition and maximize their ad campaign's impact on everyone.
Anyways today's meeting was different. Four guys from LucasFilm came in (all no nonsense types) with lots of Star Wars Episode One stuff. It appears THE CORPORATION has landed a VERY lucrative (and cool) campaign for the next Star Wars film. They (the LucasFilm people) brought several hundred stills of the movie, its characters, story boards of the action sequences, pictures of props, sets (including stuff that is obviously computer generated) and TWENTY-EIGHT MINUTES OF THE FILM!!!
One of the more interesting things is that the LucasFilm guys said that any preliminary/design/layout work we do right now should avoid using "The Phantom Menace". Mr Bigg asked why and the LucasFilm guys said that George is apparently rethinking the title idea and will decide in the NEXT TWO WEEKS if it will change or not (most likely not everyone there thinks). They really stressed that the title won't change as so many people know it by that title, but apparently Lucas has always thought that something else might be better. It seems a lot of companies are pushing for the final title so they can get moving on stuff. LucasFilm wants a strict continuity and cohesion to all the products and ALL of them must be approved by Lucas himself it seems, hence we have to move fast on some things (apparently he will be very busy in the coming months doing all the approval stuff).
SPOILERS BELOW....
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OK HERE YA GO....
THE VIDEO FOOTAGE...(It seemed to be of the desert planet from the first Star Wars where Luke lives, a big space ship, a jungle, a space battle which was differnet from the death star and swamp planet and then a big city that looks amazing.) Lots of the footage was in the desert and there was some cool stuff (ceremonies and political goings-ons in the city area).
I suspect that this footage will be in the movie since I saw the Trainspotting guy (who seems to be really good), Liam Neeson from Schindler's List is a Obi-One jedi, a kid who was in a lot of the footage, a jedi sword fight, Yoda, a Queen, Samuel Jackson and a Senator giving a speech of some kind. There is also a character, JAR JAR, which is a computer character who is in some of the scenes. He seems to be the funny character.
They also gave us a sheet of spelling of characters and places (there are lots). I haven't seen the commercial for the movie yet, but the half hour footage we saw was amazing. I think the movie will be the biggest of them all. The stuff we saw makes it seem grander, darker and more intense then the original Star Wars movies. From what we could tell it seems as if one of the characters will die in the movie, although the footage we saw didn't say that, you get the feeling from some of the dialogue that there is a noble sacrifice of some kind and someone (of the good guys) will die. Unfortuately we couldn't keep the footage. It was designed to give us a sense of the film and to help visualize and conceptualize our ideas. All the photos and stuff were coded and were locked in our vault after the meeting. We risk losing the contract if anything goes missing.
We are now doing preliminary stuff using STAR WARS: EPISODE ONE and PHANTOM MENACE just in case. Again, we were stressed that the title might change, but won't. They showed us some of the early posters that are in movie theaters and they didn't have any title at all except Star Wars: Episode 1. One team is working on doing something on a character named Darth Sidious, Jar Jar and on a character named Darth Maul. Another team is working on Obi-Wan, Qui-something, and Yoda. And another on all the aliens and robots. I was not the biggest Star Wars fan as a kid, but I have to say this is really exciting.
Mr. Day
