New York Times: For decades Lucasfilm, the director’s privately held company, and its two main divisions – LucasArts, the video game producer, and Industrial Light and Magic, a leading designer of movie special effects – were tucked away in barely marked structures in northern San Rafael and behind the impenetrable walls of nearby Skywalker Ranch.
But as of last week, the company has adopted a new attitude, embodied in this four-building complex, the Letterman Digital Arts Center, in the federally owned park that once boasted an Army hospital and a 13-acre parking lot.
“This is very public, and it’s deliberate on our part,” said Micheline Chau, the president of Lucasfilm, eating lunch in the company commissary, with its panoramic view of the Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz and the TransAmerica building downtown. “We spent a lot of years hidden away, and I’m not sure if it was good for the company as a whole. The world has changed. To be the epicenter of the digital revolution, we have to be out here, evangelizing the cause.”