I couldn't even get them to do a digital effect for Young Indy. But within a period of two and a half years it was 100 percent digital. During that time, Lucas and McCallum prototyped their new ideas for a new kind of filmmaking on Young Indy. With a skeleton crew, they trotted around the world shooting 320 weeks on locations in 30 countries. Scenery was shot and archived as plates that were later composited in behind actors.
TV screens are more forgiving than movie theaters.
The duo upped the ante in 1994 when they applied the techniques to the feature film Radioland Murders, which Lucas executive produced and McCallum produced. The movie flopped, but the education proved invaluable. Many of the cost savings on Phantom are directly attributable to these years of experimentation and fine tuning of the team machine. One of McCallum's main contributions to the 21st century filmmaking model was the creation of an animatic unit. McCallum charged Dozoretz to create a low-res version of Phantom Menace.