The One Part Of Attack Of The Clones That Ewan McGregor Says We'll Never Experience
George Lucas was ahead of his time in many ways, and "Star Wars: Episode II — Attack of the Clones" is just one example. One of the first films to be captured completely on a high-definition digital 24-frame system, it literally broke the mold and helped usher in the digital era of film. Lucas really campaigned and fought with Sony and Panavision for what he wanted, which included the building of new cameras and lenses. In an interview with American Cinematographer, Lucas said, "Both companies really went out on a limb. This was a giant experiment for everybody, and nobody knew if it was going to work or if they were pouring money down a rat hole."
"Attack of the Clones" star Ewan McGregor, who's executive producing and starring in the upcoming Disney+ series "Obi-Wan Kenobi," also vividly remembers what it was like filming with the new digital technology. While it may have been cutting edge at the time, there were unexpected hiccups that McGregor recalled during a recent press event for "Obi-Wan Kenobi" that was attended by Looper. One of those issues wasn't discovered until post-production, and it's possible that, if it had been discovered earlier, viewers may have experienced a different "Attack of the Clones."
The dialogue for Attack of the Clones had to be completely re-recorded
While "Star Wars: Episode II — Attack of the Clones" was the beginning of a big leap forward for filmmaking technology, life on the frontier is never easy. As Ewan McGregor explained during the "Obi-Wan Kenobi" press event, the cameras used to film the second movie of the "Star Wars" prequel trilogy were massive. "Those cameras were like dinosaurs," McGregor said, describing how the cameras had to be connected via two large cords to some kind of machine in a tent that gave off a continuous hum. Because the technology was so new, it appears that the crew wasn't aware of how much that hum would affect the scenes being filmed.
"It was so noisy ... and post-production they realized that, at the end, that the noise they made was exactly in the frequency of the human voice," McGregor revealed. "So we had to ADR [re-record the audio] every single line of 'Episode II.' None of the original dialogue made it through because of that, because the cameras were so new and none of the bugs had been worked out yet."
And with that, McGregor has given "Star Wars" fans something to ponder: whether the dialogue in "Attack of the Clones" would've been improved if they had been able to use what was shot, instead of re-recording the movie line by line in an audio booth.