Charles-Stephane Roy sends us this great report from Cannes presentation today featuring George Lucas:

Hi, I've been to the screening of AOTC at Cannes this morning who was followed by a press conference by Georges Lucas and Rick McCullum later. First the film: for seeing it twice, first time on magnetic support, second digital, let me say that what you gain in precision and lightning you lost it in masking the defaults. The pixellization of the image allows the eye to see things that could bother your appreciation, specially the special effects. Some were amazingly real (clones vs. battledroids), other poorer (the new Yoda, the arena battle). To some level, you almost get the impression that it was a 3D shooting. One last thing: for now on, if you don't get a solid and efficient script (just as for some part of AOTC), you cannot hide the weaknesses behind techniques anymore, unless the technique has improved alot. And it will soon.

For the press conference (about 1 hour long), Lucas was very smooth talking, brilliant and articulate at some points, and most of the discussion went around the "what will you do next", "is there any chance to see Episode VII, VIII and XI" and "what is the future of digital distribution". Despite the fact that Lucas was giving some answers he already gave in the past three months, there were some pretty interesting analysis about what you can do with digital shooting, and the highlight of the conference was a demonstrating of shots enlarged 300% in regard of the limitation of about 17% with 35mm. Shots of McGregor and Morrisson in front of green screen, at the cantina, the waterfall scene. Not everything was convincing, depending of the light, but it was nice to know that this demonstration was showned to none others than Steven Spielberg, Robert Zemeckis, James Cameron, Robert Rodriguez, Michael Mann, Francis Coppola and Martin Scorsese during a private meeting at Skywalker Ranch previously this year.

Lucas felt also that Cannes was a good location for the World premiere of the film, because back in 1971, when he was in town for THX 1138, he causes the same reaction than today (surprise and anticipation) with AOTC, but most important, he said that he is currently staying at the same hotel (the Carlton) where he secured his first contract for the 1977 "A New Hope". He was hoping too that Europe would be less hostile to his digital ambitions than in North America. In a way, he is provoking that situation right now as he and Fox are getting unprecedent advantages when negociating with theater owners. If all the industry is imitating him (and they will), it will be a matter of time until the theater owners will jump into the cheaper digital projector.

Personnally, he's only defending his personal beliefs, but on a larger scale, Lucas is acting like Palpatine: distantly, but with a plan.

To raise the Digital Empire.