For a nearly half-hour long student documentary film, "The Emperor" is fairly decent, if not the greatest as a documentary. Knowing George Lucas's masterful craft in previous works of his such as "1:42.08" and "Herbie", I honestly expected more from this twenty-four minute work than I got: the quality of the film itself is a bit on the lower end, with camerawork that seems much more amateur considering the great cinematography from those previously mentioned films. Maybe I expected a little too much from the short, which is something I never normally do, but the technical side isn't all that great, except for a nice blend of voiceovers and music. It feels as though the thing could have been more visually well-composed, and this surprises me when you take into account how well-made his other work is.
Lucas's student film focuses on the disc jockey legend Bob Hudson, who was apparently quite popular back in the day. While the views of the interior of the studio work quite well, a lot of the film itself seems to be far too reliant on the audio side, something that should never happen in any mainstream film (and "The Emperor", while being an independent student project, definitely leans into that genre). Most of the interviews are audio recordings, so that while we get a somewhat accurate portrait of the titular person, the visuals often don't have much to do with what is being spoken of. There is an entire sequence of voiceover with shots of cars going by on the road accompanying it, which feels irrelevant; visuals of studio equipment or records would have felt better. It seems as though Lucas had a lot of great audio stuff to add to the project, but struggled to come up with images to match, and this is definitely something to work on. Additionally, chaotic camerawork is used - not the well-composed cinematography in his previous films, but more along the lines of a home movie's camerawork. Not a bad film, but with some flaws to be sure and I prefer his conceptual shorts.
