by Edward Gross
JOHN DYKSTRA
When you photograph a real subject with a real camera and you are moving the camera during the exposure, the camera displaces and the subject displaces and the image is blurred in the direction of that motion. And nobody had the ability to slow the camera motion down to the frame rates necessary to photograph miniatures with extreme depth of field at that time with the exception of stop-motion, but it stuttered. So I knew that I wanted to be able to move the camera during exposure and the Natural Science Foundation provided me with a means to control the movement of the camera and the subject on a continuous basis. By changing the clock rate, I could vary the speed. I could run the thing at 100 percent and it would be twenty-four frames per second. I could run it at 1 percent and it would be 124th the speed. The idea being that I had the ability to make a continuous move and vary the rate at which that move was exposed with motion blur exposure, which replicated real-world photography in non-real-time and that was the key to making the stuff look real.
The motion blur was what made the spaceships when they whizzed past the camera have that long streak behind them, which is what you are familiar with seeing in actual photography of a car driving by at high speed. In individual frames, the car is actually blurred so that was the key. Full flexibility of motion, variable time base, larger-format camera to compensate for the duplication necessary for optical printing and repeatability, which was one of the elements that was necessary since we had so many ships in the individual shots it was impossible for us to shoot them all at the same time. In many cases, if there were three or four ships in the shot, they would be shot as individual components or as separate elements and the means to do that required that you be able to repeat accurately the movement of the camera. The other aspect of that was that because we were generating these shots as elements and shooting in non-real-time, we had to come up with a matting system that would allow us to extract the images and re-composite them over the backgrounds that we chose to use and that was where optical printing and the blue-screen process came in.
One of the restrictions was, we had to fit this big facility into the space that we had. The stages were limited size, which meant we had to build the miniatures small enough to shoot on multiple stages to complete the work in the time that we had, which dictated the scale and the construction of the cameras to a certain extent.
RICHARD EDLUND
There were all kinds of limitations. I had a forty-two-foot track, but that only gave me about thirty-eight feet that I could use because the carriage on the track took over three feet, and then you had to ramp up to speed and you had to ramp down at the other end. So you only had about thirty-five feet of actual usable track feet at speed.
JOHN DYKSTRA
There was a certain amount of reverse engineering that went into this. The miniatures were much smaller than miniatures were normally made and that was partly based on the effort that we had to make to fit this into the facility that we were working with. Plus, we had to displace the miniatures through great distances because of the speed they carried in many of the shots, so if you built a twelve-foot miniature and you wanted it to travel twelve times its distance, all of a sudden you had to have a 124-foot stage. So instead of building it twelve feet I would build it one foot and we would end up with a stage that was fourteen feet long—not that it was like that—but we were traveling much greater distances so the nature of the photography, the nature of requirements that we had for space, made it so that we used smaller miniatures to get much greater displacement of subject in a much smaller space.
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Over the course of those nine months, the facility in Van Nuys was transformed from an empty warehouse into a state-of-the-art visual effects facility. Key to that growth was the talent and integrity of the people involved, and their ability to communicate with each other. But there were definitely problems in terms of logistics between the main production unit of the film in the UK and the efforts of ILM.
JOHN DYKSTRA
Because the photographic effects were to be done in the United States and the live-action filming was to be done in England, some rather severe communication problems had to be overcome. George Lucas, Joe Johnston, and I described each shot in one or more storyboards, and its requirements were established, right to the frame count. Most of this information came from a cut battle sequence, made up of excerpts from war movies. This established the size and speed of the fighters and their positions in frame. With this first set of storyboards in hand, we set about finalizing our miniatures and photographic systems. Concurrent with the assembly of the optical department and model facilities, we continued the development of the photographic and motion control system. Having completed the design in July of 1975, we began construction of the Dykstraflex.
RICHARD EDLUND
We finished the camera and I had about a week to do two tests and then I invited George to come down so I could show him what we could do, what the camera could do, and what the limitations were.
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Two of the most impressive moments in the film in terms of visual effects involved the Millennium Falcon. The first is when it makes the jump to hyperspace leaving Tatooine, as well as in the film’s finale when it banks while escaping the magnificent Death Star explosion (by the late Joe Viskocil, subsequently modified for the special editions much to Viskocil’s chagrin).
RICHARD EDLUND
For the hyperspace effect, I had an idea. It goes back to when I was a kid in Fargo. We used to drive in the car and the snow would streak towards the headlights and I was thinking that maybe something like that would work. So I did a test; I did a streak shot. It was about twenty-four to thirty frames, I think. I shot the stars streak and disappear as a test and I sent it to George and he said, “Oh, I love that!” and he cut it in and so that was it. So it was just take one and that became an iconic shot in Star Wars. That cut to a shot of the Millennium Falcon zooming off to infinity, and because I was limited to a forty-five-foot track, or I was limited to being able to do thirty-five feet at speed let’s say, what I did was I shot a four-by-five Polaroid of the back of the Millennium Falcon and I cut it out. I shot it diagonally so it was about four and a half inches wide and I stuck it on a piece of glass and shot it in front of a blue screen and did a pull-back from it. And that shot maybe lasted fifteen frames or something like that. So you had the stars streak and disappear and then you cut to the shot of the Millennium Falcon zipping off into infinity and that shot costs about twelve bucks! I just shot this Polaroid against blue screen, but that was all you needed. That’s one of the essences of learning how to cheat.
And then with it escaping the Death Star, the Millennium Falcon weighed more than a hundred pounds I am sure. I don’t know what it weighed finally, but all the other models—the TIE Fighters, the X-Wings, the Y-Wings—those all had like three-quarter-inch aluminum pipes and all they weighed was like a pound or two, but the Millennium Falcon was this great big mother and it had a two-inch pipe. It was two-inch steel pipe mounting on the back and I had to program this thing to turn and flop around. I can’t even remember now, it was really complicated, and I think I remember using all twelve channels to program this and I finally got it programmed. In order to make it work, I had to not only light the ship, but light the docking bay and that was a tough shot. There is actually a picture of me sitting back while the camera is shooting the scene. You can barely see me in there, but I am sitting in the far right side.
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And then there’s the classic, iconic shot that might be one of the most memorable in the history of motion pictures, in which the Rebel Blockade Runner is pursued by the even larger Star Destroyer blasting in from overhead, which truly astounded audiences when the film was originally released.
RICHARD EDLUND
George would come by and say, “Let’s build this miniature on the side wall of the stage,” and I would say, “Now George, we only have a forty-two-foot track.” So he would ruminate on t
hat and then we would change the subject and talk about something else. I knew he needed a really great shot for an opening and I had an idea that I could try doing a shot of the Star Destroyer that we had. The model was maybe forty inches long and I told Grant, “Put your best guy on detailing the bottom of the ship and especially the little docking bay and let me try a test.” Also, I said, “Can you kind of jam together about a three-inch-long Blockade Runner?” The Rebel Blockade Runner, by the way, was originally going to be the Millennium Falcon and George came by one day and said, “You know, that looks too much like Space: 1999, you guys have to come up with something else.” I don’t know if it was Joe Johnston or Grant McCune that came up with the round Millennium Falcon, but that was a brilliant idea and it was asymmetrical so you had the cockpit on one side. It was a great looking ship and it’s a monument to Star Wars.
So anyhow, I took a paper clip and straightened it out and stuck the Blockade Runner on the tip of the ship and shot the model upside down in front of the blue screen. I pulled back very slowly with a 24mm tilting lens to hold the focus all the way down. I tilted the lens in order to change the focus field like a view camera. I had the tilting lens and I was virtually scraping the bottom of the model with the camera. To get it perfectly level so I could go straight back with the model was not easy either. That took about an hour to get that straightened out. And so I did a test and everybody was flummoxed by the test the next day. It was going to work.
I think I did two or three more takes of the ship until we got to the final shot. But I always felt that that was the most important shot that we did because that was the opening of the movie, and if you want to grab the audience with a shot, that’s it. And if that shot doesn’t work, the movie doesn’t work. It did work and it’s another icon to Star Wars. And then the Blockade Runner was longer than it needed to be. It was about four feet long and I had to shoot that to make it fit into the bottom of the Star Destroyer. So that huge model wound up being inserted into a four-inch docking bay. So that was the next effect you saw.
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In addition to special effects involving spaceships, there was, of course, the introduction of the Jedi Knight’s ultimate weapon, the lightsaber, which would come to play so integral a part in the Star Wars saga.
PETER BEALE
We had the lightsabers and the obvious first thing I thought of was fluorescent lights, but that would have been too dangerous. Could you imagine trying to duel with fluorescent lights and it breaking and electrocuting the actors? It was obviously not the answer. One thought about animation, but this was before digital animation. It would have been frame-by-frame physical animation, and the cost of that would have been enormous. I didn’t have a solution in my mind. What I did is that I put in the budget about fourteen weeks of special effects money, and saying, “That’s their problem; maybe they can solve it,” and they did. I’ll tell how they did it; it was absolutely brilliant how it was solved.
One day, John Stears called me and said, “I think I have a solution for the lightsaber.” I got hold of Gary Kurtz and we went up to the workshop at Elstree, up above the carpentry shop, and he was there and he had what looked like an oval wooden blade with some gray material on it, and a fat handle. He explained that he had put a little electric motor in that handle, so that the blade could revolve. I said, “That sounds interesting.” He demonstrated it and the blade revolved.
JOHN STEARS
(special production and mechanical effects supervisor, Star Wars)
I devised a spinning sword. It had a lot of flat sides; some were coated with a reflective material and the other sides weren’t, which, when spun, achieved a stabbing forward motion in conjunction with a light fixed on the top of the camera. This was photographed through a half-silvered mirror.
PETER BEALE
I thought, “That’s not really what we were thinking for a lightsaber.” I was a bit worried and disappointed. Then he said, “I’m going to put this light on,” and he put a little 100-watt light bulb on and suddenly the lightsaber arrived. What he had used was the front-projection material that we were experimenting with for front projection, he put it onto this blade, this oval blade, and just with a 100-watt light bulb, it glowed and flared. The great benefit of that is that the 100-watt light bulb wouldn’t reflect on the actor with the normal set lighting, which is much brighter, and it wouldn’t create any shadows. It was an absolute genius solution. It deserved in my mind, that alone, an Oscar. He deserves to go down in Star Wars history for that invention. I don’t often see people talking about it, but he really deserves the credit.
JOHN STEARS
It didn’t look like much if you were an inch away from the camera eye, but through the lens, it looked like how you see it on-screen. In fact, we saw the rushes to this scene the next day. With an optical, it would have taken weeks to see the results. The effect of the light beam emerging from the saber base was due to camera angles and the sword just starting to revolve. I work with very few opticals. I like to do things in one hit for obvious reasons.
DENNIS MUREN
(second cameraman: miniature and optical effects unit, Star Wars)
They were actually holding simulated swords made out of front-projection material. A light source near the camera shining onto the front-projection material hopefully would bounce back brightly. However, it didn’t quite work. So what George had to do was put an overlay of the glow on top of that through rotoscoping. That’s how they got the different colors. I think the main thing you’re seeing is the overlay. A diffusion effect was created by shooting the overlay through a fog filter. [The original] looked too solid, I think. George Lucas wanted something more like energy, something that you wouldn’t want to get close to. The image was so bright it was flaring the lens out. Perhaps if they had more time to work on it they could have gotten the desired effect right away, but the entire show was pretty much compromised because of the time factor.
There were 360 composite effects shots made from 1,000 separate elements, something on that order. Most of these 1,000 elements we photographed in five months.
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The final day of shooting of Star Wars took place on July 16, 1976. Needing to decompress before tackling postproduction, Lucas flew to New York to visit with Brian De Palma and then to Mobile, Alabama, to see Steven Spielberg, who was filming Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Anxious and nervous about the shape of Star Wars, he was reassured by his friend. When he finally did return to California—as has been discussed—and discovered that the special effects team had literally completed only 3 out of 365 effects shots and had already spent over half their budget, Lucas responded by experiencing chest pains and was rushed to the hospital the next day suffering from exhaustion and hypertension. The problems, of course, remained.
JOHN DYKSTRA
Directors and special effects directors always disagree incredibly because he conceptualizes one thing, but I know what is capable of production. The major problem we encountered on Star Wars was being able to apply what George started out with conceptually. From the day we met, we talked about World War II dogfights, footage which involved lots of action, continuous motion, moving camera streak, loops, and rolls. All of the things aerial photography allows you to do in live-action. This is difficult to do in special effects with multiple ships, background planets, and stars, because of the problems with angular displacement, matching shots, depth of field, wiring, etc. It’s hard to explain that a concept won’t work because of some technological thing, and this becomes a bone of contention. When a director shoots an exterior, he can see the lighting and the setup and the action and hear the dialogue. But when he comes in here all there is to see is a camera running down a track at about three inches a second. You have to be able to determine a spatial relationship without seeing it in front of you or compressing it in your mind’s eye. It’s more like an animation than anything else.
WILLIAM SHOURT
(camera and mechanical design: min
iature and optical effects unit, Star Wars)
We thought that the way we were going about the process was the right way, but it did take a long time before we could really start pumping out scenes.
LORNE PETERSON
(model builder: miniature and optical effects unit, Star Wars)
The pressure became really high. When George came back from England, we’d hoped that there [would be] more of those special effects done than there were. The reason that a lot of it wasn’t done yet was, we were still building the equipment, the cameras and the rudimentary computers that were used at the time. So they were actually built on the premises and so there were two shots that we did right at the beginning to show George that they were possible to do without going through a lot of optical processes, and that was the detail of the gun firings—the large gun, like this firing on the Death Star. And then the other one was the drop of the escape pod with R2-D2 and C-3PO. They showed me a sketch of it and they said I needed to make the model quick, so I made it in a week.
