In an interview with the Chicago Tribune, George Lucas has said he’s working on a complete previsualisation system that will give filmmakers a simple way to plan out and watch entire movies on a computer before they actually film it. While computer pre-vis has been used for several years on big action scenes, where it’s essential that everything is completely planned in advance to avoid chaos on set, it’s been too expensive and time consuming to do it for entire movies.
Lucas’ innovation promises to change this, allowing filmmakers to completely plan out their films, so they know exactly what shots they need, which bits need different pacing and to see what scenes actually work on the screen before they get to the set and spend millions actually making the movie.
While this might sound like it’d stifle creativity, it’s actually true that people like Alfred Hitchcock planned every single shot in storyboards during pre-production, and filming was merely fleshing out this pre-exiting plan. He even took it as far as telling his actors hows every single syllable should be stressed.
It could actually save an awful lot of money, and it’ll be interesting to see if it actually happens. He also said he was working on a editing system that would simplify the process and allow many more people to be able to edit professional movies, which could also be a very handy innovation in the right hands.