As part of the 20th anniversary celebrations of Revenge of the Sith, StarWars.com has taken a look back at Pablo Hidalgo’s 2003 summer on the set of Episode III, sharing a daily journal of life on the production of the Star Wars prequel film with Hyperspace members.
It was every fan’s dream to spend the summer on the set of Episode III. Beginning in May of 2003 — a full two years before the release of Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith— StarWars.com Hyperspace members lived the next-best thing through the daily journal of the life of the production of a Star Wars film.
In celebration of the film’s 20th anniversary, StarWars.com takes a fond look back…
Looking Back at Episode III Online
It was an audacious idea; I can’t take credit for it, but I was tasked to execute it. It completely altered my trajectory at Lucasfilm as well as my relationship with Star Wars and made Revenge of the Sith a unique and major experience in my life. Looking back, 20 years after the release of that chapter, I am still amazed at what we pulled off.
Back at the beginning of 2003, my title was “Internet Content Developer.” If asked, I’d simply say I was a writer at StarWars.com — one of two at the time. It was a very small operation, and the internet of 2003 was a very different place compared to being online today. Text was king. Video was a chore. Information was one-way, and interactions were rare and hardly social.
Image: The first Episode III Set Diary, circa 2003.
The Lucas Online division was thankfully not on the hook to revolutionize the web; we just had to cover our operational costs. The proposition was a subscription service, dubbed Hyperspace. For an affordable annual subscription of $20, you could get exclusive content worthy of the attention of the most ardent Star Wars fan. (As an aside, it was almost called StarWars.com-Plus, ironically anticipating the streaming future that would follow decades later).
With Episode III — widely believed to be the last Star Wars movie ever — gearing up to start production in the middle of 2003, the film’s creation would be the heart of the subscription offer: an inside look, unparalleled in the industry, at the making of the movie. Such a promise would require a dedicated, embedded reporter on the set, filing stories every day. They would need to be trusted to offer an inside look while not giving away closely guarded secrets. Could such an idea work?
Ultimately, I’d be the guy sent down to Australia — the shooting location of the production — to make this happen. It would require earning the trust of George Lucas and Rick McCallum. The head of marketing at the time, who oversaw the movie website as well, Jim Ward, vouched for my journalistic chops, as did Steve Sansweet, who helped manage content across media that included the internet and fan magazines. So, too, did my manager, Paul Ens.
I had started at Lucasfilm in 2000, so I was only three years into my tenure. Remarkably, George and Rick agreed. So, I gave up my apartment and put all my stuff in storage, and moved down to Sydney, Australia for four months to live the impossible fan dream of watching a Star Wars movie get made.
I cannot overstate what an incredible opportunity this was. Just a snapshot of the bucket-list things that followed: I sat next to George Lucas as he directed the first shots, and as he screened the final cut. I got a walk-on role in Episode III. I was witness to John Williams conducting the London Symphony Orchestra at Abbey Road Studios. These are all accomplishments I will never take for granted and cherish deeply.
Thanks to the current team at the official Star Wars site for unearthing some hand-selected samples of the Set Diaries from those days. I hope you get a taste of what a special time that was, and how fortunate we all were that George Lucas backed this unlikely proposal. Read on to make the jump through hyperspace back to the years anticipating the release of Revenge of the Sith.
Here’s the first set diary from May 24th, 2003: –
Always an Adventure
May 24, 2003
It was Thursday, March 27, at 10:40 am when my manager almost casually mentioned across the office, “Oh we got the word. You’re going to Australia.” A whirlwind of paperwork, packing and planning later, I’m now sitting at Gate 94 of San Francisco International Airport, waiting for the plane that will take me down to Sydney to cover the filming of Episode III, the final missing piece in the Star Wars puzzle.
I forget exactly how the idea of planting a correspondent in the thick of things came about. It was something that just wasn’t feasible with Episode II. Our starwars.com team is so small (you probably wouldn’t believe me if I told you), sparing a body for an extended trip Down Under just couldn’t happen. But now, we’ve got more experience and resources under our belts to make this possible.
Around the Ranch, there’s a business-school buzz-phrase called “managing ambiguity,” a laudable skill in this kind of work. It fits rather well with this ongoing set diary since we won’t know what we’ve got until we’ve got it. It’s doubly fitting since that applies to filmmaking as well, particularly in the organic “living document” approach favored by George Lucas. This online journal is a new adventure, and who knows where it’ll take us (I honestly don’t… but I’ve got a few ideas).
My task is to communicate my experiences on set through regular updates, but there’s a lot of room to maneuver within that very vague direction. So expect this journal to develop and evolve as the production continues. Since my own background is from fandom, I’ll try to point out the things fans would find unusual, remarkable, or just plain cool.
I’m sure many readers out there are eagerly — or nervously — asking “Will there be spoilers?” Yeah, well, probably, depending on your definition of spoiler. But that’s too narrow a view of what this journal’s about. Sure, some of the story of Episode III will be touched upon, but this is the story of the making of the movie. If you’re afraid of knowing too much, I’ll be sensitive to that with appropriate warnings and whatnot. On the other hand, if you’re convinced that nothing substantive will leak out through these reports, I can say that I will need to put certain things into context, and if doing so lets attentive readers deduce Episode III secrets, so be it. And, on top of that, you get the added benefit of knowing that these reports are true and not misheard Internet gossip or bogus news.
The last few weeks, I’ve been re-reading Alan Arnold’s Once Upon A Galaxy and Derek Taylor’s The Making of Raiders of the Lost Ark to see what other precedents there were for chronicling a Lucasfilm venture. Those aren’t completely compatible examples, however, since this journal and Episode III are unique ventures. The writers of those books knew their works would come out scrubbed clean years after the project began, with several pairs of editorial eyes that knew the end of the story looking over their works.
This journal doesn’t have the benefit of that safety net. It’s just a writer on one side of the world, and an editor on the other, serving this up to the Hyperspace community. “Raw” will probably end up being a good word to describe this.
So here’s the first entry. I’m getting my routine preflight butterflies, and am shaking away those oh-too-common spasms of uncertainty where I’m convinced I forgot to pack something, pay that one bill, or shut off an iron I don’t even own.
They’ve started boarding passengers. I’d best unplug and get ready for the next fourteen or so hours airborne. See you Down Under
Read the article in full along with more diary entries at StarWars.com.
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