George Lucas is my one of my favourite directors and because he is so successful (particularly with the best films ever made - Star Wars) I thought that it would be appropriate to research him...
Long before Lucas became obsessed with film making, he wanted to be a race-car driver, and he spent most of his high school years racing on the underground circuit at fairgrounds and hanging out at garages. However, a near-fatal accident in his souped-up Autobianchi Bianchina on June 12, 1962, just days before his high school graduation, quickly changed his mind. Instead of racing, he attended Modesto Junior College and later got accepted into a junior college to study anthropology. While taking liberal arts courses, he developed a passion for cinematography and camera tricks.
Lucas then transferred to the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts. USC was one of the earliest universities to have a school devoted to motion picture film. During the years at USC, George Lucas shared a dorm room with Randal Kleiser. Along with classmates such as Walter Murch, Hal Barwood and John Milius, they became a clique of film students known as The Dirty Dozen. He also became very good friends with fellow acclaimed student filmmaker and future Indiana Jones collaborator, Steven Spielberg. Lucas was deeply influenced by the Filmic Expression course taught at the school by filmmaker Lester Novros which concentrated on the non-narrative elements of Film Form like color, light, movement, space, and time. Another huge inspiration was the Serbian montagist (and dean of the USC Film Department) Slavko Vorkapich, a film theoretician comparable in historical importance to Sergei Eisenstein, who moved to Hollywood to make stunning montage sequences for studio features at MGM, RKO, and Paramount. Vorkapich taught the autonomous nature of the cinematic art form, emphasizing the unique dynamic quality of movement and kinetic energy inherent in motion pictures.
Lucas fell madly in love with pure cinema and quickly became prolific at making 16 mm nonstory noncharacter visual tone poems and cinéma vérité with such titles as Look at Life, Herbie, The Emperor, Anyone Lived in a Pretty (how) Town and Filmmaker. He was passionate and interested in camerawork and editing, defining himself as a filmmaker as opposed to being a director, and he loved making abstract visual films that create emotions purely through cinema.
After graduating with a bachelor of fine arts in film in 1967, he tried joining the United States Air Force as an officer, but he was immediately turned down because of his numerous speeding tickets. He was later drafted by the Army for military service in Vietnam, but he was exempt from the draft after medical tests showed he had diabetes, the disease that killed his paternal grandfather.
In 1967, Lucas re-enrolled as a USC graduate student in film production. Working as a teaching instructor for a class of U.S. Navy students who were being taught documentary cinematography, Lucas directed the short film Electronic Labyrinth: THX 1138 4EB, which won first prize at the 1967–68 National Student Film Festival, and was later adapted into his first full-length feature film, THX 1138. Lucas was awarded a student scholarship by Warner Brothers to observe and work on the making of a film of his choosing. The film he chose was Finian's Rainbow (1968) which was being directed by Francis Ford Coppola, who at the time was revered among film school students of the time as a cinema graduate who had "made it" in Hollywood. In 1969, George Lucas was one of the camera operators on the classic Rolling Stones concert film ‘Gimme Shelter’.
Lucas then created his own company, Lucasfilm, Ltd. and directed ‘American Graffiti’ (1973). His new-found wealth and reputation enabled him to develop a story set in space. Even so, he encountered difficulties getting Star Wars made. It was only because Alan Ladd, Jr. at Fox Studios liked American Graffiti that he forced through a production and distribution deal for the film, which ended up restoring Fox to financial stability after a number of flops.
However, Star Wars quickly became the highest-grossing film of all-time, displaced five years later by Spielberg’s E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. During the filming of Star Wars, Lucas waived his up-front fee as director and negotiated to own the licensing rights (for novelizations, T-shirts, toys, etc.)—rights which the studio thought were nearly worthless. This decision earned him hundreds of millions of dollars as he was able to directly profit from all the licensed games, toys, and collectibles created for the franchise. This accumulated capital enabled him to finance the sequel himself.
FILMOGRAPHY:
1971 THX 1138
1973 American Graffiti
1977 Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
1979 More American Graffiti
1980 Kagemusha
1980 Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back
1981 Body Heat
1981 Raiders of the Lost Ark
1983 Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi
1983 Twice Upon a Time
1984 Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
1985 Latino
1985 Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters
1986 Howard the Duck
1986 Labyrinth
1986 Powaqqatsi
1988 Willow
1988 Tucker: The Man and His Dream
1988 The Land Before Time
1989 Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
1991 Hook
1994 Beverly Hills Cop III
1994 Radioland Murders
1999 Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace
2002 Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones
2005 Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith
2008 Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
2008 Star Wars: The Clone Wars
2012 Red TailsAWARDS:
Lucas has won 24 awards overall. All of his wins and nominations can be viewed here:
TRAILERS:
Star Wars: A New Hope
Raiders of the Lost Ark
The Land Before Time
Beverly Hills Cop III
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