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I agree with Anchorhead, I think Star Wars is in sane hands now & I'm very optimistic we'll get what we want
Going off topic slightly, here is a quote from a former LFL employee, Jeff
I coppied it from a SciFi modelling site, you need to join up to see the thread:
http://www.starshipmodeler.net/talk/viewtopic.php?t=112066&start=30
I worked for Lucas Digtal Arts in the 90's I worked at Skywalker Sound South. So not the video game world, but the film world. I worked mainly on the Foley stage. I was just a PA but in that sense I was a fly on the wall at the place. It was cool and crazy all at the same time. I can tell you from experience that George Lucas's management style sucks. The people he hires as managers even if they are competent get hamstrung and end up being hated by the staff.
The orighanl SkyWalker South was a beautiful building. It had three mixing stages. Which were huge rooms the size of large move theaters. With a full size movie screen and a large mixing board in the center. A small TV mixing stage, a Foley stage, and a ADR stage. Two beautiful fair sized screening rooms. A room for ILM that was set up to be a LA based video conference room with its own server, and a large vidio screen so that people based in LA could have meetings with the Northern California based ILM. Add to this a separate but older building that alos had a mixing stage and folly stage of its own with a small cafe and editing facilities. it was a one stop movie sound facility, with extras. It had hired some of the best talent in the industry to staff the working parts of the stages. The sound mixing teams routinely were nominated for, and won Acadamy awards. it was in many ways a movie sound dream team. Many great films came through those stages, and I got to meet so many directors and actors that I really admired while working there.
Now all that being said, over time the people who worked there wanted raises They were doing great work the facilty was always booked solid as I said the work that was being done that was routinely nomated for awards. At the time it was one of the only parts of Lucas digtal arts making really good money. The people liked working there for the most part. but they were being offered more money to go to other studios and they wanted to stay at Skywalker so they were asking for more money to stay and sometimes not a lot more just a little more.
So a big meeting was held that George came down to. He stood in front of all the asembled employees of the money making part of his company. He procedd to tell all of these people he could care less about them. He said he only really cared about the part of the company that was based up North. He told them that the only reason they existed was to keep Skywalker North going. That was more or less it, he left. He left behind a demoralized staff. Shortly after the exodus started. When another studo came to head hunt the offers were accepted and the talent left for greener pastures. Quite a few went to Sony including those of us who worked on the Foly stage.
George may be a lot of things but a perople person he is not, and that is one of the main problms with him. If it were not for the toy money his empire would not exist. A few years down the line Skywaker South was sold off. A sad end to a part of his company he should have been proud of.
J
