Droidmaker: George Lucas and the Digital Revolution

I was there to witness a great deal of the story. The book captures in great detail a story, a time, and place that was of great significance to me. (Now I don't have to try and remember it all!) Rubin's narrative rounded out parts of the saga I knew nothing about. It is really a strange feeling of destiny as I look back over the passion and inventiveness of those years and connect it all to the tools I use daily in my moviemaking today. The book is a unique historic document of a unique subject.

Michael Rubin has done an excellent job of tracing the interdependent weave of threads that make up the history of digital cinema. He teases apart the fabric of this history in a way that brings us directly into the living world of the personalities responsible for inventing and developing the concepts and techniques many of us now take for granted. In teaching my courses at CalArts and USC, I have always tried to impress upon the students that the tools we are learning are the result of prolonged intellectual struggle and flashes of inspiration. I believe that some knowledge of the driving forces behind the creation of the tools forms an integrated understanding that yields a more sustainable recollection. I was familiar with some of the stories of pivotal moments told in "Droidmaker" (such as Ed Catmull and Alvy Ray Smith's initial conception of the alpha channel) and I have used them for years in my teaching, however many other stories were unknown to me and the retelling of them will now enrich my lectures. In addition to serving as a great academic resource for me, "Droidmaker" was a fascinating and compelling read. I found it difficult to put down in order to attend to my routine responsibilities. So many friends and family have become interested in the book while visiting that I have purchased copies as gifts so that I may hang onto my treasured copy --this book invites repeated rereading and I do not want to be without it!

I am the Co-founder of Pixar, with Ed Catmull. After years of reading mangled "histories" of Lucasfilm/Pixar, I am extremely pleased to read one by a guy who gets it right, including the arts, the technologies, the businesses, and the personalities. Michael Rubin not only gets the gist correctly imparted, but also those pesky details. I watched Michael as he carefully reconstructed our history, never quite believing all the stories we fed him, checking and double-checking the stories of the participants against one another and against the written record. Often he caught us (me anyway) having unconsciously edited out boring bits of the truth, and he put those bits back in. His book has allowed me to celebrate again a wonderful time of my life and, surprisingly, to teach me new things. For example, I came away from my first read of his book better appreciating exactly what George Lucas and Steve Jobs (and Francis Coppola) contributed to our part of the digital revolution, it not being in either case what is often claimed for them.

I'm having a blast with this book! I saw Ruben speak at a MacFilmmakers meeting at the Apple HQ (great place for this type of talk!) and I bought the book from him immediately. There's some pretty jaw-dropping stuff in here; I never knew Coppola had the vision for a completely digital filmmaking suite as early as 1970! This is a VERY comprehensive account of the development of digital film pre-, during, and post-production. At times the detail is a bit geekish, but Ruben never strays too deeply into technical waters (I'm an interested layperson and I can pretty much follow all the tech details). If you're at all interested in the explosion of indie film made possible by Final Cut Pro and other low-cost digital tools then this book is a great place to learn where it all came from. And if you're a Star Wars fan, this is the deep background of your life!