6-18-67

The two reviews posted in 2015 are critiquing a short that was never intended to stand on its own, and I suspect those viewers saw the fuzzy, bad copy on YouTube. I saw the original full project of four shorts that were all shot by film students who were brought by the producer Carl Foreman to the "McKenna's Gold" location and asked to each pick some aspect of the production and its location that they found interesting, and make a short film about that. I recall one of the films being about the horse wranglers, another about the producer - and then there was Lucas's impressionistic take on the desert location. The project was intended to he virwed as a whole, and as a whole it worked rather nicely. I saw it back in 1969 or 1970, broadcast on the PBS station for Los Angeles, and it stuck with me all these years.

A five-minute short filmed during the making of Mackenna's Gold which succeeds in ignoring the actual shooting of the film in order to focus on flowers and pylons.

6-18-67 (1967)

** (out of 4)

This four-minute short from George Lucas was filmed on the set of MACKENNA'S GOLD, the 1969 Gregory Peck movie. I'm really not sure why Lucas was on the set but I hope it wasn't to record anything that was actually happening on the set. This short movie really doesn't contain any behind-the-scenes stuff from MACKENNA'S GOLD outside of some fuzzy and out of focus shots. We get to hear a little from the cast and crew through voice-overs but that's about it. The majority of the running time is just shots of the sunset, various plants and items like this. There's certainly nothing bad with this short but it certainly doesn't contain anything special.

"6-18-67" is another one of the least known George Lucas student films, and also among the last he made. Shot whilst the twenty-four year old filmmaker was touring with the filming crew shooting "MacKenna's Gold" in Arizona, the film, often misconstrued as being a behind-the-scenes documentary of the making of this western (which I, by the way, have never seen) is much more minimalistic, being more about exercising cinematography and capturing the beauty of the desert location. Lucas certainly had talent in both regards, and it is rather a shame he never stuck with independent filmmaking - although he has hinted at taking the practice back up now that he relieved himself of the Star Wars franchise (to Disney, which quickly realized what a money-making opportunity it was).

It would honestly be a good idea to replace the plot outline on IMDb with another more accurate description, as "6-18-67" (which probably refers to the date it was filmed) really is not focused on the film crew or the action on the set. The majority of the five minutes instead consists of landscape shots, views of the sunset, a river, animals, etc., while only a small portion in the middle features voice-overs of the director starting a take and an out-of-focus long shot of the crew. The entire film is quite blurry, which is honestly rather a shame, considering how a sharper print would no doubt add much more beauty to the different shots. An interesting meditative piece, well-made as are all of Lucas's student films, although a nicer copy being uploaded would be highly appreciated.