Research libraries are specifically geared toward visual reference. The librarians there called the collection (both the one they built in addition to the ones GWL bought) as the world’s biggest coffee-table book library. Lots and lots of books on fashion, design, architecture, locations, historic iconography, rituals & traditions, advertisement, industry, military, and tons of other stuff. You’d actually be surprised how much of that material is not online, or is represented by books that are now out-of-print (and often oversize and difficult to scan in an automated way). Of course, that’s less true now than it was 10 years ago, but if you ask any professional librarian (I know quite a few), they’ll still admit that there are lot of great reference books that are a treasure trove of material that aren’t readily available on the interwebs.
These research libraries onsite included epic amounts of bound periodicals (Colliers, Life, National Geographic, et al) that went into the turn of the last century. These proved particularly valuable for the librarians, who were similar to ILM and Sky Sound in that they did as much contract work for other studios as they do research for LFL projects, because when an art director or costume designer wants reference material for a Boston home in the 1920s or classical Ming dynasty wardrobe, they don’t want 4 or 5 examples; they want dozens. And having an enormous amount of material at your disposal (both digital and analog) ends up being helpful for those purposes.
Most of the holdings are on the Ranch in a location not generally open to visitors or even staff, but the Main House does have the original library that is open to visits and is an absolutely gorgeous room. Here’s a pic I found online that’s part of a post someone else made from 2015 that includes lots of good pictures of the Ranch covering some of what I’ve described in the past.
did you ever get to go in the room where they keep/kept all the star wars video/arcade games ?
when the original CW miniseries premiered the host of the Friday night block on cartoon network apparently spent hours there when they did a behind the scenes tour and a bunch of contest winners got to see it in the onsite theater …(theres even shots of the guide looking at his watch several times while the host ran around looking like 12 year old ) I finally won a couple of arguments because of it confirming things I said for years …
If by orgies you mean “Chard for every meal on the ranch almost every day” it got old after a while.
I also use to work on the ranch, it was always impressed with my coworkers and it was the first place I had ever worked where people were focused on finding the solution to problems. Most places people dwell on why something shouldn’t be done or that it can’t be done.
Here is a fun story, that will seem Disney like. The ranch always had these deer that were almost tame but they would always keep at lest 20 yards away from you.
One night was leaving the tech building at 4AM as I had a hard deadline to meet and my car was in a parking lot behind the building. I didn’t have a flash light but the moonlight was just bright enough to see where I was going. Only ~100’ out the door I accidentally tripped over a deer sleeping on the sidewalk!!!
MovieMogul, were you there long enough ago to remember the lama and goat that were buddies just down the road. They were always my landmark for the turnoff until that land sold.
Yes, I remember the deer always roaming around! It was quite wonderful to see (though I also remember one getting killed by a car on the property; very sad). And yes, I remember the llama (actually, I thought there were two) that was indeed a good signpost for the upcoming, extremely non-descript turn-off.
Although the company did (from my understanding) do its best to keep at least one copy of every single commercial item it licensed across all retail categories, I don’t think that extended to stand-up arcade games (though it did for home video game systems/cartridges). So I was indeed in that building but most everything was boxed up so not much to see.
However, I do remember that there was such an enormous overstock of Episode I merchandise (something they admitted they grossly overestimated) that we did have an employee merchandise giveaway. A rear parking lot to one of the buildings at ILM was filled with retail excess–clothes, books, toys, collectibles, etc. Rows upon rows upon rows, with items stacked 4-5 high.
The rule was you were allowed one paper shopping bag and 30 minutes. And you were allowed to take with you whatever you could hold in one bag, along with what you could fit in/under your other arm. I mostly picked up things that weren’t bulky that I could use as gifts (stickers, t-shirts, etc.) since I didn’t need much of any of that myself. But I remember some colleagues going to remarkable lengths strategizing what figures they needed, their relative scarcity, and how much they could fit in a bag (since those often had weird or irregularly-shaped packaging).
I still have my green Yoda bar soap, never opened.
Shameless Plug: Since today is the 40th Anniversary of the release of the original Star Wars, here’s a new blog post of mine, going into a little more detail about my only acting credit, as “Rebel Pilot”.
