Lewis Beale

Digitized special effects are becoming increasingly common in Hollywood feature films. Using computer technology, filmmakers have created digitized spaceships, monsters, and tornadoes that look convincingly lifelike on screen.

Director George Lucas's Star Wars: Episode I- The Phantom Menace, released in 1999, incorporated more digitized special effects than any film had before. Below, New York Daily News writer Lewis Beale reports on Star Wars: Episode II, due out in 2002. The film is planned as the first major Hollywood feature to be made entirely with computer technology. The film will not be entirely computer—generated, since it will use real actors-but it will be shot entirely on digital video rather than on traditional film. As Beale reports, the advent of digital cinematography has many filmmakers excited, but it will be several years before digital video is as widely used as...