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New Lucasfilm Campus Breaks Ground at Presidio
GuyMannDude writes "Lucasfilm has broken ground on the new $300 million special effects campus that he hopes will help San Francisco rival Hollywood as a producer of movie magic. Some see the project as a way for the Presidio (a national park) to become economically self-sufficient while critics claim that level of commercialization is unnecessary."
Which dark lord will win? George Lucas, or the faceless conglomeration known as Hollywood?
Well, at least there'll be more work up north, though with Davis taxing things, that might not last too long...
Hopefully the Lucas compound will be able to use the close connections to create better products all around. Lucasarts has produced some great games over the years but the teams have always had a hard time dealing with NDA agreements with the other Lucas companies and tailoring a specific game to an upcoming movie release.
With everything in one boat maybe future titles will improve upon titles such as Bounty Hunter which surely could have been much better if the process was streamlined better internally.
Will this campus actually improve films, or is there still room in films for plot and characterisation? Or have all films become so obsessed by graphics that the story no longer matters....... Scrab
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I'd rather see Lucas break ground on a writer's workshop.
Romana: "How did you know?" Doctor Who: "Ah, well, knowing is easy. Everyone does THAT ad nauseum. I just sort of hope"
I am sure this will be useful to other producers as well. There is such a demand for land and room to do movie effects that this should really make it a lot easier to film movies in a timely fashion. As well as bring in cash for LucasFilm when they decide to rent out some of their campus. Very smart move.
Perhaps it's just my jaded and cynical view of recent movies, but it seems that this new San Francisco-based studio wouldn't really have to do a great deal to rival Hollywood as a great movie producing town. Sure, Hollywood has the name, and has a long and glorious history, but the really good, honestly-worth-seeing films of the last few years have come out of other countries, not Hollywood. LOTR is just one example one that immediately pops to mind. Star Wars of course was done in England (and Marin, CA, of course). Lest anyone forget, The Matrix was an Aussie production. A personaly favorite of mine, The Boondock Saints was East-Coast, USA made. My list here is short for the point of brevity, not due to a lack of examples.
The last really good Hollywood production I saw was The Score. Hollywood may have a name synnonymous with movie making, but ? at least recently ? not so synnonymous with good movie making.
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I'm sick and tired of being responsible for the preservation of the universe and its outlying suburbs.
A special effects campus? Sounds fun! You walk in and every room is blue - the campus is added in using special effects. Watch out for the destroyer droids. ;)
But they ARE spectacular...
San Francisco has the only bars stranger than a Mos Eisley cantina.
One country you forgot to mention is Canada, which is attracting more and more filmmakers. The reason is that Canada provides a number of tax credits and incentives for production companies who film there and use Canadian labor. It's easy to spot movies filmed in Canada under the auspices of this program, as one of the requirements is that the Canadian government and the tax credit be mentioned in the movie credits. This mention is often the first thing that pops up when the movie ends, even before the cast (or "The Players," as many Canadian-filmed movies call them, that may also be a requirement).
I'm seeing this with ever-increasing frequency. It's just plain cheaper to film a movie in Canada than it is to do it in Hollywood; it's often cheaper than filming elsewhere in the U.S. as well, even for fairly low budget stuff. You can't beat the tax breaks. British Columbia (among other locations) is becoming sort of a mini-Hollywood in its own right.
I would have thought that breaking ground in an earthquake zone is possibly not the most intelligent thing to do. Is the campus consuming earthquake to be the first special effect ?
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
From the sfgate article:
Lucasfilm and Letterman Digital Arts Ltd., as the new venture is called
Is that the Letterman of Late Night fame? I wonder. Imagine a Late Night home game. You as Dave shooting blue cards and pens at stupid pet tricks. Paul Schaffer as a help bot. The goal: rescue Mujiber and Sirajul.
If Mr. Edison had thought smarter he wouldn't sweat as much. --Nikola Tesla
rival Hollywood as a producer of movie magic.
Surely raising the bar involves rivalling Weta Digital (NZ)?
There used to be a language school at the POSF... Alas I studied and later taught Korean Language at the Presidio of Monterey instead... I really wish I could have been stationed there, as SF is such a great place. Well, Monterey isn't all that bad at all...
Anyways, perhaps Lucas could reopen some of the schoolhouses, teaching Jedi Knights the language of the Sand People, which could be useful for recovering stolen droids, or, maybe the Stormtroopers could learn the language of the Jawas, also good for recovering stolen droids, or better yet, teach us mere mortals the Hut Language, so we too could someday acquire our own Princess Leia (dressed in the golden bikini w/chain and collar, of course!)
All that aside, I'll bet it was a real bitch to have to run up and down all those hills for physical training... it is bad enough on the Presidio of Monterey!
Particularly since Marin is wall-to-wall NIMBY and upscale enough to make it stick both politically and in local courts. Of course I'm an ex-resident.
While land further north in Sonoma County would have been cheaper, there are certain resources in San Francisco that Lucas probably didn't want to be any further away from. The other case for the Presidio is that it's about as close to the Golden Gate Bridge as one can get, and the commute hassles involved with SF get more unpleasant as one gets further into the city... check a large scale street map and see where the freeways are and aren't to get the idea.
Even post-dot-bomb, there probably isn't enough loose commercial space in the art/media community South of Market for the company physically to fit. 850K square feet is close to 20 acres.
So if Lucas wants a reasonable commute and given the other parameters, this actually makes sense for him. Though possibly not for the park or the surrounding community.
Tech Public Policy stuff
I grew up here, so don't get me wrong, I like the city. But why on earth would you base anything movie related in San Francisco? It's just far enough away from LA that it's not convenient, but you still have to deal with an expensive US dollar and expensive US labor. Granted, being near LA is becoming less important, but why give yourself a deliberate disadvantage, no matter how small? It seems like either LA or overseas would both be better options. *shrug* Maybe Lucas is just too infatuated with having his own freeway exit :)
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
Bah. this geological era will be identifiable by the layer of Phantom Menace crap visible in the strata. Is that a fossil or another JarJar binks comemorative cup?
Maybe in a few hundred million years, the evolved roaches will find enough stuff to start a religion over. Roach priests standing at the pulpit holding several fossilized action figures and having them do the force on each other.
Then they'll clone George Lucas, breed him in a Mamma roach and then he'll be the only human being in a world full of sentiant roaches, and they'll all love him. He'll walk around with a robe that has a C-3PO insignia on one shoulder, and a roach on another, and be transported to all the popular sideshows.
And then, maybe then, he'll decide maybe he should have stuck to being a filmaker rather than a Plastic Crap salesman.
... but Hollywood is no longer the standard for making movies. For making refuse flung at the long suffering or just plain fucking stupid morons who dont care, sure. That's Hollywood.
But consider, ILM is already outside the Hollywood system. Inhouse effects by the major studios just do not come close, do they? Wh do these major studios go to to get effects? Mainly ILM. That must piss the studios off having the best fx guys in the USA working there, cause ILM owe nothing to anyone.
So....
If you look around, who matches ILM? I cant name them, but I know there is a fx house in Canada, one in Aust and of course WETA. None owned by studio per say, but most are bankrolled to some degree. WETA's now industry leading effects work was bankrolled by New Line, owned by AOL whom own Warner Bros and a few other studios. Hey, watch New Line especially now go to WETA instead of ILM. WETA basically is now New Line's defacto effects house. Presto, problem of having to deal with ILM fixed!
Look, while it's cool as WETA has risen to genuinely challenge ILM in f/x (Competition will really drive effects tech forward I bet - watch these two try to outdo each other for the next few years), Lucas' present move is all about tryign to consolidate the f/x market. He senses real competition now with the smaller f/x groups doing things ILM have not done - or like WETA, beating ILM at their own game. For the studios, having these other f/x places is good, cause it gets them away from the ILM f/x strangle hold. Gives them choices or even the chance to basically have a f/x group basically of their own. You cant tell me New Line and WETA arent now quite closely associated. New LIne gave WETA shitloads of dollars to ramp up.
I'd say whatever New Line paid, they got a bloody bargain. LOTR (FOTR and TTT) so far has earned 640 million in the USA, 1.2 billion intl and 750 million in VHS and DVD in the USA alone. With more DVD releases and another movie in the already paid for set, New LIne could have 10 billion in revenue when it's all over.
This deal sets a very bad precident. The National Park Service was set up to preserve the outdoors, not spur the film industry and there is no other National Park with an 850,000 square foot office complex built on top of it. Though it's true that the Presidio does have a mandate to break even by 2013, a close analysis by a neighborhood newspaper (I've reprinted it here with permission) has shown that this development is un-necessary. Many neigborhood associations and the Sierra Club are against this deal.
I have just read the sfgate article as well as most of the comments on this site about the new Lucas Presidio headquarters.
It's interesting to me to see that much of the conversation here has turned toward the movies themselves rather than the impacts, both positive and negative of the new facility on the park and the city.
The article mentions that a group of residents have expressed concerns about the development. In my skimming of the comments, I did not notice any from that group.
I would like to see what you folks think of the development itself (not the films or the characters) and it's relation to the park.
Will it affect public access in any way? I know that Lucas has been very security conscous at it's Marin headquarters. Will this paranoia on Lucas's part adversely impace public access to the park?
Will this add any more jobs to the Bay Area? Or just move jobs from one part to another?
Being on federal land, will this project contribute anything to San Francisco's tax coffers?
Mark
Cleara
As a resident of San Francisco, I feel I should point out some things that were not made clear in the article. First, the Lucas facility will not be in any of the beautiful wooded park land that most people associate with Presidio National Park. Rather, it is right under the 101 freeway overpass and built on the site of an old Army hospital that has been nothing more than pavement and abandoned buildings for decades. It is on the edge of the park and will not affect any major throughfares into or through the park. None of the parks wilderness is threatened by the project. You bring up a good point about paranoia and security. The Lucas companies are very security conscious to the point of paranoia. Granted, some of that is justified as they have had a great deal of problems with people trying to break into their facilities, fans rummaging through the garbage, etc. I don't see security being as much an issue as it is easier to secure a small group of tightly knit bulidings than many locations in Marin that share office space or parking lots with other businesses. The complex doesn't envellop any major roads into the park, so I doubt that there would be any effect of park traffic due to security concerns. Overall, I think the move is a positive one for the Presidio. They get a non-polluting business on the edge of their property to help keep them self sufficient. None of the park will be ruined by the development and access to the park should not be affected. Sounds like a win-win situation to me.
While thinking philosophically, we see problems in places where there are none. -Wittgenstein
1. Lucas doesn't operate in reality. They make billions off of mickle investment. Where and how is unimportant.
2. Film isn't a significant industry*. One studio won't change the fortunes of more than a few hundred citizens. And George gets most of the profit from his companies. Banking on this to revive a city's economy is irrational. It's political hype.
* - the sum of the box-office grosses for every movie released in 2002 was on the order of Intel's 4th Quarter. Adding home video doubles it, but by then you're looking elsewhere on the financial page.