“Jar Jar walks so Gollum can run and the Na’vi could fly.” That’s how original Jar Jar Binks actor Ahmed Best describes the importance of his character in the advent of digital visual effects.
Best recently joined director Joe Johnston and a host of creative leadership from Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) to discuss the upcoming Season 2 of Lucasfilm and Imagine Entertainment’s documentary series Light & Magic, which returns to Disney+ on April 18, 2025.
“We start this season with Jurassic Park because it is recognized as the moment in the history of film when everything changed, when digital technology became viable as a visual effects tool,” notes Joe Johnston, himself an original member of ILM’s crew beginning on Star Wars: A New Hope (1977). “One of the important stories that I wanted to tell with Season 2 was the effect that George Lucas has had on digital technology and just film itself, all his influences, the things he’s contributed, the things he’s come up with and invented and inspired. That’s one of the focuses of Season 2.”
As the first all-digital main character in a feature film, Jar Jar Binks’ appearance in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace (1999) proved a watershed moment. Within a decade, other visual effects studios followed in ILM’s footsteps with characters like Gollum in The Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001-03) and the Na’vi in Avatar (2009). To realize Jar Jar on screen, Best collaborated directly with the artists at ILM to pioneer new performance capture technology whereby the actor’s movements could inform those of his digital counterpart.
“What Joe captured so wonderfully [in Light & Magic], and I was just thinking about this…because I just directed a video game that came out today which was all performance capture,” Best explains. “I was thinking about what performance capture directing is, and how we really created that during Phantom Menace. What is really special about this documentary is that what you see are two very important things…being in service of the story and having respect for each one of us and what we do, and how we do it. That comes from the top. What you see in this documentary is George giving us the respect to be the best we can be within his constraints, all of us realizing that we have to rise to that occasion because our job is to be in service to this story. I think this documentary captures that beautifully.”…
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