How Star Wars Changed the World
The original Star Wars has certainly gone on to produce more than just sequels. It has created the people and the technologies that are now considered the best in the industry. Michelle Devereaux created this family tree for Wired magazine back in 2005 and I love how the line colors indicate people, technologies and company connections, but the tree is organized into movies, sound, effects and technologies.
I actually believe the tree is incomplete. I think Star Wars had far greater reach and influence that what Michelle mapped out here.
It all started with a band of rebels who wanted to help a farmboy follow his dream. Three decades later, the Star Wars empire has grown into one of the most fertile incubators of talent in the worlds of movies (Lucasfilm), visual effects (Industrial Light & Magic), sound (Skywalker Sound), and videogames (LucasArts). Along the way, some of the original Lucas crew has gone on to become his biggest competitors. This chart maps the people, companies and technologies touched by the Force. - Michelle DevereauxThanks Alwyn!
An interesting sidelight - at one point Lucas said that the later Star Wars films were so greatly delayed partly because of the AIDS crisis, and the number of creative people in Hollywood who died from AIDS in the 80s and early 90s.
ReplyDeleteWhich does fit the stereotype of the gay community and creativity/arts - which some people get a bit tense about - but having lived in LA it was actually quite true.
So, this chart of development also has a sort of invisible counter-chart of developments that were delayed, or didn't happen at all....
Interesting view of things. I absolutely agree - if it hadn't been for Star Wars, who knew how the movie industry would look like today. ILM is involved in almost all new movies with complicated visual effects in it. :) (and if it isn't, the effects look bad ;))
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