Thread by @TheSpaceshipper

[Thread] George Lucas, the three-second rule and the Jedi Starfighter example 🚀

It's a story that Doug Chiang (responsible for some of the finest Star Wars spaceship designs of the last 25 years) often tells at his conferences.
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It's about how Lucas chose the designs for the vehicles in the Prequels.

As you no doubt know, in the pre-production phase, numerous concept artists and designers draw hundreds of sketches to enable the filmmaker to choose the design that suits him best.
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We know a small part of this work thanks to the Art of (books).

Here's an early design for General Grievous by @alxartdesign
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However, when presented with these drawings, Lucas quickly made his choices.

Chiang: "During our art meetings, George came in the room, very quickly looked at the whole board, and right away identified the two or three [designs] that he really liked."
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George Lucas explained later that the designs had to live by themselves.

"When you see them on the screen, you're not gonna be there to explain what it is. The audience has to connect with it right away."
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"You have to know its function. You have to know where the pilot sits, which direction is going all those things, in less than three seconds. And if you can do that in a design without any explanation, the design will be that much more powerful."
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Basically, Lucas wanted a long-bodied dragsters with wings for the X-Wing.Or a World War 2 TBF torpedo Bomber for the Y. On the contrary, the TIE Fighter was something alien. For the young filmmaker, these concepts had to have a strong silhouette, readable in a matter of seconds.

Viewers need to be able to distinguish quickly between the different ships, and to which army they belong.
"Otherwise, it doesn't work," George Lucas explained. "We don't care how beautiful it is. You'll never get a chance to explain to the audience what it's all about."
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Colin Cantwell (the very first artist to work on SW ships): "In space, [the X-wing] had to be able to draw his weapons like in a western."
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Spectators instantly understand the vehicle's function.

George Lucas: "I'm a visual filmmaker as opposed to a literary filmmaker, so the movie doesn't rest in the dialogue. It rest in the visuals."
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The Prequels had to present the past of Star Wars, a world that hadn't yet fallen under the weight of fascism.

Chiang: "In Episode one, we established a very Art Nouveau, very fluid form, and Episode four had a sort of very industrial engineered angular shape."
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Attack of the Clones (2002) had to start showing the beginning of the fall, and so show the transition through design too.

By mixing a little bit of both art direction, and inviting symbolism.
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Doug Chiang: "The Jedi Starfighter is actually one of the very first ships [designed for Episode II]. You sort of tying the aesthetics design that we've established in Episode 1 with the pre-existing business of Episode 4."
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During the pre-production of Episode II, George Lucas visited the art department every Friday to review new designs, concept art and sketches. The case is well known: the filmmaker brought his stamp which allowed him to highlight the works he liked.
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The more OKs he stamped on concept art, the more he loved that design. A single OK meant that the design was not discarded, but changes needed to be made.
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Chiang: "George has the designs in his mind and as the master editor of all of this, he decides what is within the realm of the Star Wars universe and what is behind it."

Lucas: "For every design that I use in the movie, there's at least 10 or 15 designs that get rejected."

Obi-Wan's starfighter actually evolved out of dozens sketches.

Doug Chiang: "When [George] saw the designs, he started to incorporate his new storyline to it, and so the whole idea of taking that shape and turning into a Jedi fighter evolved with the design process."
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George Lucas: "Ultimately the overriding factor on Obi Wan's ship, and all of the Jedi ships, is that I wanted them to be reminiscent of the design of the Star Destroyers because ultimately that's where those ships grew out of."
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Doug Chiang: "George will typically pick up a pencil or pen and add his modifications to the designs or say, ' let's take the cockpit of the drawing here and put it here.'"
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Doug Chiang: "And one of the fun things is that, I remember George saying, "Let's just take a Star Destroyer and turn it into a fighter ship". That was such a bold statement. At first, I didn't think it would work, until I actually saw it on paper."
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At this time, George wanted to blend and blur the lines.

Doug Chiang: "So you can see here, even though these are Jedi ships, we actually kept them very triangular to sort of evoke a little bit of the transition towards the Empire Star Destroyers."
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Doug Chiang: "It's my job with the rest of the artists to come up with the background for that design and make it make sense so that no one questions the design when they see the film."
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Doug Chiang: "We were so familiar with this triangular shape being the symbol or the icon for the Empire that to take that and actually give it a new personality, a new identity which..."
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"...is the shape for the Jedi Starfleet, was actually a really brilliant move and actually made the whole symbolism very powerful. Because you can see how everything slowly starts turning towards the Dark side."
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For those who want to dig deeper into the subject, my piece on the creation of the Jedi Starfighter, of which this thread is in part an extract, is available on my Patreon:
patreon.com/posts/66488808

Of course, if you liked this thread, please RT (RX?) the first tweet 🙏

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