Within a Minute: The Making of 'Episode III'

This is the main documentary on the second disc of the Revenge of the Sith DVD release and as such strives to accomplish two things: finding an original way of presenting yet another "making of", whilst paying homage to every single crew-member that worked on the last Star Wars movie ever made. They succeed in both, though the novelty of the former soon makes way for the repetitiveness of the latter. Instead of featuring the entire process of film making from start to finish (like in 'The Beginning' on the Phantom Menace DVD), this one focuses on just one scene (#158): less than a minute of the light-saber duel on planet Mustafar. However, all the same bases are covered from the moment George Lucas first put pencil to paper to the penultimate screening (just like in the earlier documentary). The only difference is that they go out of their way not to mention any other aspect of the story apart from the duel.

So this becomes probably the first 'making of' ever made that lists the entire cast and crew, with their names scrolling up and down the screen, sometimes even with pictures. The molecule like family trees look very flashy hovering over fiery Mustafar, but soon become rather tiresome. Although we meet a lot of ILM staffers (including some amateur video of the accountants and caterers), George Lucas is in almost every shot, calling the shots and making sure that nothing is approved without his permission. He even tells John Williams where to insert a new piece of music, apparently. Rick McCallum narrates and proves he knows every one by name, finds each prop "exquisitely made" and bemoans the "tragic short lifetime of the sets". Lots of this footage and interviews are recycled from the short web docs (are also on this bonus disc), so there is quite a bit of overlapping and people who have followed the production on line learn nothing new.

If anything, this documentary is too informative. Do we really need to meet the guy who puts markers on a blue screen? I suppose they all have families, as Kermit the Frog once said. The cast hardly gets a word in edge ways, though Ewan McGreggor does say he'll never get used to blue screens. That's just about the funniest anecdote in the whole documentary, especially when you realize the whole thing is just one long technical summary. Towards the end even the original approach stars imploding on itself when McCallum seems to make the impression that everyone was working full time on just this one minute of film. Amazingly enough, though Rick calls the members of the London Symphony Orcestra "deeply talented musicians", they are the only group that does not get a complete on-screen roll call...

6 out of 10

I am not a fan of documentaries. I find them to be boring. I didn't plan on watching this one any more than ten minutes, yet I found myself watching the whole thing. It's incredibly intriguing how many people it takes to make such a big film that it really makes you look at movies differently, gives you more appreciation for them. Besides that, it's just cool to see how they did the lava on Mustafar among other things like that. Any good movie critic should see this documentary. I think non-movie critics and just regular movie goers should see this, too, because it doesn't spoil the movie magic. It really enhances the movie. It enhances any movie.

Using a single scene as a starting point for a "making of" featurette wasn't necessarily a bad idea... and wanting to give credit where credit is due is undeniably an admirable goal. Unfortunately, the resulting documentary just could have been better. Most of the footage that actually shows us something from the creative process was seen in the web documentaries, which are also featured on the DVD(and which are all considerably more concise than this), and those who followed the production on-line really won't find out anything new by watching this. The gimmick of the family tree winds up being dull to look at, something that should never happen to something which has no other purpose than to be a visual representation of something, and in the end, this is just too informative. Anyone who worked on the film may get a quick thrill from showing this to their families, sharing a brief moment of glee at seeing their name scroll up the screen, but for almost everyone else, this really doesn't serve as much more than a technical description of what the responsibilities are for the jobs on a film production, and a list of credits. Only one scene is dealt with in this, the well-known duel of Mustafar, and while a fine job of showing how much work and effort goes into just the minute or so shown at the beginning of this, the way in which no other scene is mentioned or referenced winds up seeming odd(for a special which is one hour and fifteen minutes long, that's *feature-length*). Rick McCallum narrates, and as with many other specials, much of it is purely a love-fest. As nice an idea as this is based on, it ends up a failed experiment. I recommend this to anyone interested in finding out who made the movie. 6/10