With its marble-encrusted walls and its frescoed rooms, the sumptuous Royal Palace was designed to be home for the Spanish kings of Naples in the 18th century.
On Tuesday, it was occupied by a queen, along with Jedi Knights and the numerous otherworldly creatures imagined by Star Wars director George Lucas, said the Associated Press.
The American director is in Caserta, 18 miles north of Naples, for a two-day shoot of Star Wars: Episode II, the fifth movie of the saga that started in 1977, reported the AP.
"It's fun to be directing again," Lucas said at a news conference in the court theater inside the palace, which will serve as a backdrop for Queen Amidala's planet, Naboo.
Episode II starts off about a decade after the end of Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace. Anakin Skywalker, grown into a teen-ager, learns the ways of the Force from Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi, Ewan McGregor, and falls in love with Natalie Portman's character, Amidala, the future mother of Luke and Leia.
Their love is doomed as Anakin begins his journey toward the Dark Side and becomes Darth Vader.
Lucas told AP that the film is a "romantic story" and "basically a fairy tale, but there's a lot of action, too."
Most of the live-action scenes for Episode II, which is due for release in 2002, will be shot using digital, high-definition camcorders instead of film cameras. With Episode I, Lucas pioneered digital projection in a few theaters.
"The advance of cinema into the digital world is just a normal transition that's taking place, an addition to the tools" we use to make movies, Lucas said.
He likened it to the transition from frescoes to oil painting.
"Oil painting freed the artists up to change his mind, go home... and know that the colors they're using are going to stay there," he said.
The use of digital cameras also has been a time-saver on numerous parts of the production. The first phase of the shooting ended in late August in Australia; other locations for the $150-million-movie include London and Tunisia.
The Royal Palace, nicknamed the "Versailles of Naples" for its splendor, was completed in 1774 from plans by Italian architect Luigi Vanvitelli. It is considered one of the greatest — and last — achievements of Italian Baroque architecture. Some scenes from The Phantom Menace also were filmed there-Albawaba.com.
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