Lucas, George

1940–

Film Producer, Director

George Lucas is a screenwriter, producer, and director who has worked in the film industry since 1970. Regarded as a founding figure in the history of digital animation and effects, he is a leading figure in the use of digital technologies and computer-generated special effects for film. He is also considered a pioneer of cyberculture, due to his involvement with the networked computer-game environment Habitat, one of the earliest online gaming communities.

Lucas' name is synonymous with both the Star Wars films and his effects company, Industrial Light and Magic. He was screenwriter, producer and director of Star Wars (1977), and executive producer of the two sequels, The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Return of the Jedi (1983); he also wrote, directed, and produced two prequels, The Phantom Menace (1999) and Attack of the Clones (2002). He has also been involved with Disney, and with the Indiana Jones film series directed by Steven Spielberg (e.g., Raiders of the Lost Ark [1980]).

George Walton Lucas Jr. was born in 1944 in Modesto, California, and studied film at the University of Southern California. He founded Lucasfilm Limited in 1971, and also has holdings in LucasArts Entertainment Company, Lucas Digital Limited, Lucas Licensing Limited, and Lucas Learning Limited. This diverse set of business holdings represents his interests in various digital effects, including sound, filmmaking, and distribution, as well as in interactive entertainment, software, and multimedia educational resources. Aside from Star Wars, Lucas is probably best known for his filmic digital effects and interactive software. His collaborations with other leading film directors, particularly Francis Ford Coppola and Spielberg, have also contributed to his high profile.

Industrial Light and Magic (ILM), a Lucas Digital holding, is one of the major visual effects companies in the world, and produces computer-generated effects for the film industry. The company has produced some of the most high-profile special effects to date, such as those of Jurassic Park (1993), Titanic (1997), and The Perfect Storm (2000). The Lucas Digital company has received more than 26 Academy Awards for both sound and visual effects. ILM has been a major contributor to the transformation of the status of digital effects from an experimental and novel aspect of film-making to a central feature of contemporary cinema. Its contribution has also been a significant catalyst of the convergence between analog entertainment technologies and digital media. Lucas is a central figure in this convergence, because he is also viewed as a founding figure in discourses of cyberculture.

LucasArts developed the game environment Habitat in 1986 for the Commodore 64 computer. Chip Morningstar and F. Randall Farmer wrote up the project as a research paper, which was published in one of the primary cybercultural texts, Cyberspace: First Steps (1990). Habitat is a multi-user gaming environment that deploys computer-generated graphic characters, known as avatars, to represent the players onscreen. There are many such environments in contemporary cyberculture, for which Habitat arguably provided a template. An example of an online or networked gaming environment, Habitat is an early attempt at accessible modes of virtual reality, as well as the expression of early notions of online community. It has also become significant in the histories of computing and cyberculture, because it continues a tradition of discursive interrelation between the artifacts of computing and the science-fiction genre of cyberpunk.

...