As the production of Episode II continues at full pace in Sydney, the cast and crew are upbeat about work completed and the remaining tasks ahead.

The rapid pace afforded by the use of a digital camera is keeping Editor Ben Burtt on his toes. "On average, George can shoot one or two scenes each day," he explains. "Once the footage has been logged it comes to me, which can happen the same day. I try to put together one scene each day, so I'm not quite keeping up. This part of the work is fun because the big pieces come together and we start to have a movie."

"We've been shooting in Australia five and a half weeks," says Producer Rick McCallum. "But with about three weeks left it seems that my mind has already moved on to Tunisia and the other location shooting. We've settled in to a good rhythm and things are going remarkably smoothly."

Production Designer Gavin Bocquet is also looking ahead. "I've started to pack up my office today for shipping to the next locations, so I'm mainly thinking about that." he says pointing to an office full of half-packed boxes. "At the same time, I'm trying to pass along all of the information to my crew here for the remaining three weeks in Australia without me. In general, we started with the most involved sets and the schedule has had us working toward simpler sets with more bluescreen or simpler physical elements. But there are always challenges and surprises no matter what."

Because the digital camera allows Lucas to immediately see what's been captured in a day's shoot, Bocquet's crew has been able to aggressively tackle the sixty plus sets needed for the film. In previous Star Wars films, sets would need to remain intact for days or weeks using valuable studio space in order to ensure that it could be reused if needed. "It's very different this time," says Burtt. "Sometimes George yells, 'Cut' and there's someone with a crow bar starting to tear apart the set before I've heard him say 'and Wrap'."

Costume Designer Trisha Biggar is beginning to see the end of the tunnel. "A few weeks ago we reached our peak number of staff in the costume and props department at about 100 people," she recalls. "We have about 100 or so costumes yet to go, compared to over 1000 we've made already."

The set has an extra buzz of excitement with the arrival of actor Christopher Lee, set to play a charismatic separatist in Episode II having recently finished his latest round of commitments on The Lord of the Rings.

"It's going very well... chugging along," said Director George Lucas. "It's intense every day. Everyone has deadlines. Every day we come across new challenges of one kind or another. There's always something in our path that we have to overcome to keep ourselves on schedule. So far we've managed it."