The Making of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (Enhanced Edition)

by Rinzler, J. W.

  A step in the building of the final snowtrooper costume.

  The snowtrooper costume is discussed by Kershner and John Mollo.

  Mollo’s four-step drawing explaining how the snowtrooper costume should be worn.

  An early snow monster sculpted in England.

  The final snow monster design, based on Johnston’s concepts, built by Freeborn and his staff—ready for shipment to Norway.

  Modeler Jan Stevens, in Freeborn’s shop, sculpts a swamp creature designed by McQuarrie.

  Kershner discusses shots with Reynolds using a maquette of the Rebel med center.

  The snow monster head.

  Kershner and Reynolds discuss the sets via maquettes of same. .

  Wearing matching fabric, chief hairdresser Barbara Ritchie attends to Carrie Fisher.

  A color study for “East Landing Platform” by McQuarrie, September 25–28, 1978 (with early Boba Fett ship, based on designs by Nilo Rodis-Jamero).

  “East Landing Platform” by McQuarrie.

  Early concepts for Fett’s ship by Rodis-Jamero.

  A revised version of Fett’s ship by Rodis-Jamero, December 14, 1978. “I remember seeing a radar dish and stopping to sketch it to see if I could get something out of it,” he says. “The original design I had was round, but when you looked at it from the side, it became elliptical. For some reason, when I drew it, George thought it was elliptical, so that’s what it became.”

  Concept art of Boba Fett by Johnston, March 1979.

  Concept art of Fett and his ship by Rodis-Jamero, early 1979.

  Concept art of Fett and his ship by Rodis-Jamero, early 1979.

  Concept art of Fett and his ship by Rodis-Jamero, early 1979.

  TECHNICAL TRIALS

  Back in San Rafael, California, ILM felt its way forward. On January 26, production notes indicate that parts of the building still needed heat. “I have to say that was a little bit of a problem,” says Steve Gawley. “We actually got sick. The front office was heated, but where we were working, we were pretty cold.”

  The bigger picture was cause for concern as well. The visual effects for Star Wars had, in Lucas’s eyes, limped to the finish line. And now, in its wake, several visual effects films were floundering in postproduction: Budgeted at $40 million, Star Trek: The Motion Picture had experienced a multimillion-dollar effects disaster, while Meteor (1979) was, reportedly, “firing an effects crew a week.” The question therefore on everyone’s mind was: Could Lucas and ILM pull a rabbit out of their hat—again?

  Efforts to do so continued. On February 5, Muren filmed an elephant at Marine World Africa USA (with animal rental and associated costs of $3,467.54). The elephant footage would be a model of locomotion for the walkers. Muren, Ralston, Tippett, and Berg also photographed a horse and rider on Stinson Beach, which would serve as reference for the tauntaun’s gait.

  “I believe it was the same elephant that was used as a bantha in Star Wars,” Ralston says of Mardji. “The trainer made it do all sorts of tricks. We also knew this girl who had a horse. We placed markers in appropriate spots and had her run the horse using different paces, which we filmed from every angle.”

  Model making progressed on Imperial ships and a “half-sized pirate ship,” while Berg and Tippett recommended using “photo cutouts for distant walkers.” Half-sized meant a two-foot Falcon, as the original four-foot model was just “too heavy,” according to Muren, “and the limited space at Kerner was too small to make it look distant, in my opinion.”

  A new animation video system was due at the end of the month and a contract between The Kerner Company and Union Locals 16 and 659 was in the works by February 2.

  “We began our photography here in February of 1979,” says Edlund. “We’d actually begun setting up our operation in September of 1978, so we had that much more time to get all of the work that needed to be done completed for the picture as planned.”

  “We were shooting the asteroid sequence, the Vader ship, and other things,” Muren says. “The only cameras we had running during that period were the Dykstraflex and the Technirama, for months and months.”

  While Muren wasn’t pleased with the slow start out the gate, he also viewed the facility’s distance from England as an ongoing difficulty. “It’s been complicated by the fact that we are working here in Marin County and had to set up this facility while the live-action shooting will be going on in Europe over a period of many, many months. We began by having a number of meetings with Peter Suschitzky and discussing what he was going to be doing on his end and what we would be needing from him in order to make our material work.”

  “I made a visit to California before I started the picture because I happened to be there on another job,” Suschitzky says. “I don’t pretend to be an expert on miniature photography and so on, but we discussed the general problems which would be arising.”

  “In some cases, we dictated what the lighting situation was to Peter,” Muren says. “In the asteroid sequence, we started shooting our part of it long before he started shooting his. So I said to him, ‘In that sequence, it will look best if the key lights, as you are approaching the asteroids, are lighting them from the left.’ Fine—no problem with him. He just needed that information.”

  Electricity was installed for ILM’s single stage, and the building passed inspection on February 22. A telex machine arrived, but it could only send out telexes, not receive them, due to a mechanical glitch. The next day, Tippett cast the tauntaun model in a very flexible rubber material.

  “Since we were allowed some R-and-D time, we had a real sophisticated armature that Doug Beswick built with Tom St. Amand,” says Tippett. “Both those guys were responsible for the internal mechanism that made the thing work with very complex ball-and-socket and hinged skeletons. Tom and Doug were very involved in making the things work properly, which is half the battle in stop-motion stuff.”

  A “blur test,” to simulate real-life movement on the stop-motion tauntaun, resulted in too much blur. “We did build, very quickly, a test armature as a preliminary model,” says Tom St. Amand. “I guess Jon Berg and I whipped it up in a week or two. Phil cast it in rubber, covered it with fur, and used it to do tests for a month or so. We were building the walkers at that time.”

  As St. Amand duplicated all the walker parts, machining the joints, swivel hinges, and so on, the upper portions were cast separately in urethane and painted by Nilo Rodis. That same week, the new VistaVision reflex camera, which Edlund and his team were still working on, was christened the “ILM Empire” and rapidly prepared for testing in order to be ready for principal photography in Norway.

  “Jerry Jeffress, Kris Brown, and Lhary Meyer were the three guys trying to get this control system for the Empire camera finished in time for the VistaVision plates,” says electronics technician Mike MacKenzie, who started at this time. “They had a lot of cables that had to be made, but it was all spec’d out. It was drudge work, but it was a foot in the door and I jumped right in.”

  On March 8, 1979, Muren (behind camera), Tippett, and others filmed Suzanne Pasteur (a friend of Lorne Peterson’s) on her horse for tauntaun movement reference.

  Mardji the elephant, who was also in Star Wars as a bantha, is filmed by Muren for walker movement reference, early 1979 (Mardji’s trainer stands near her).

  Visual effects supervisor Brian Johnson, stop-motion animator Phil Tippett, Jon Berg, and Ken Ralston greet Mardji the elephant.

  Revised storyboards of the opening, now “Chapter V,” by Johnston, early 1979.

  Johnston at his drawing board.

  FEROCIOUS FINSE

  The day after the disastrous fire, Thursday, January 25, the recce crew had left London for Finse, Norway. Kurtz, Reynolds, Watts, Kershner, Welch, art director Les Dilley, first assistant director David Tomblin, and a few others joined the Norwegian crew, which then took two days to tow tents to the mountain site.

  “By this time, we had snow vehicles that had arrived from Akt
iv in Sweden,” says Watts, “and we used those for traveling around.”

  “Getting equipment meant transporting 10 containers by sea from Felixstowe, on England’s east coast, to Oslo and then by train to Finse,” Arnold writes. “Three more containers were flown in from London to Bergen. These consignments included two VistaVision cameras (one of them the computer-controlled Empire flex for special-effects work), two Panavision cameras, an Arriflex camera, wind machines, and props.”

  By early February, the containers had arrived, along with a Red Cross–certified nurse, so wardrobes, pyrotechnics, and other materials were unpacked under the supervision of art director Alan Tomkins and Brian Johnson, who arrived on or about February 12.

  “I was in the unfortunate position of having nothing to do with a Norwegian location until I had a phone call on a Sunday to ask me to fly out the next morning because Les Dilley, the other art director, had fallen sick,” says Tomkins. “So one day you’re in the studio and the next day you’re out in Finse, surrounded by all that snow—it suddenly hits you in the face and you think, Crikey, I never realized this amount of snow existed!”

  “In Norway, we’re using laser guns,” says Johnson. “We’re going to animate the lasers later on, but to give the artists a guide and to produce the initial effect, we’re making gas-gun cylinders. They’re about a cubic foot in capacity—which is perforated, has lots of holes, and a very high-voltage spark plug in the middle—so we flood the chamber with a mixture of acetylene and oxygen to get a tremendously bright flash that squirts out through all the holes in the gun.”

  “We had workshops for special effects,” says Tomkins. “We had a paint shop; we had a large construction shed and a carpenter’s shed. The biggest tent was the one where we housed the snowspeeder and assembled it, which came from England in a container. The problem, of course, was that the temperature inside was very, very low. I mean, a problem. We had very little heating in the huts for a long time and the paint would just freeze before you could actually get it out of the pots. Out there, it became a nightmare to try and get the things to work.”

  On Tuesday, February 20, written permission was received to shoot with a helicopter. “We will always feel indebted to Ole Jacobsen, flight director of Helitourist, for sitting in offices for a number of days negotiating delicately with Norwegian military officialdom in order to obtain the first aerial filming permission granted by Norway to a foreign registered aircraft,” says Ronald C. Goodman, cameraman for the Aerospatiale Lama 315B crew. The Lama was needed to obtain important aerial footage for the Battle of Hoth, and would use a Wesscam to get it. “When properly set up, this remotely controlled gyrostabilized system is capable of stabilizing an entire camera, magazine, lens, and all, to within .5 millimeter (about .045 degree) in both elevation and azimuth (pan and tilt) under just about all helicopter maneuvers encountered in aerial filming and still provide precise control.”

  Goodman and his crew—camera assistant Margaret Herron, pilot Marc Wolff, and helicopter engineer Michael Vantief—had worked on several films, most recently the flying scenes in Superman. Their preparation for Empire would take four weeks, as they built a suitable shelter for the helicopter with separate generators, heaters, and so forth.

  The film’s construction crew arrived on Sunday, February 25, and three days later started digging trenches in the freezing snow.

  Bounty hunter concepts for “Boba Fett’s Gang” by McQuarrie, December 1978–February 1979.

  Bounty hunter concepts for “Boba Fett’s Gang” by McQuarrie, December 1978–February 1979.

  Swamp creature concept by McQuarrie, November 1978.

  Swamp creature concept (which would be operated by a diver swimming underneath the latex creature) by McQuarrie, November 1978.

  Concept drawing of the dark-side cave by Reynolds.

  Concept drawings for Dagobah by McQuarrie.

  Dark side tree concept by McQuarrie, December 1978; Luke’s test in the dark side tree went through many iterations, some of which included a guardian, or “Tree creature, bog planet” by McQuarrie, January 1979.

  “Tree creature, bog planet” by McQuarrie, January 1979.

  Luke and Yoda among the giant trees on Dagobah, production illustration by McQuarrie, 1979.

  Inside the tree, Luke’s encounter with dream Vader was conceptualized by McQuarrie in early 1979.

  LUKE OF THE TUNDRA

  FEBRUARY TO MARCH 1979

  CHAPTER FOUR

  With just days before filming was to begin, Lucas, Kershner, and Kasdan were still making script changes. Back on December 5, 1978, they had already revised a few scenes—for instance, the Falcon, upon leaving Cloud City, no longer blasted its way out through hangar doors—and a fifth draft (see the sidebar on this page), which introduced the “hogmen,” was dated February 20.

  “I made up those little people,” Kershner says. “We had a big argument about it, because George said, ‘Gee, maybe it’s wrong to have them.’ And I said, ‘Why?’ ‘Well, because we’re saying that the little people are slaves.’ I said, ‘They’re hogmen. They’re not slaves, they’re workers.’ When Chewbacca finds Threepio in the junk room, I made that scene up, just to have fun with it.”

  “Basically, I just work here, you know what I mean?” says Harrison Ford. “In fact, I didn’t get the script until three weeks before we started shooting.”

  Ford was now in London, though he would not be traveling to Norway. He’d arrived, along with Hamill and Fisher, on or around February 17. “I actually found the physical training for the role kind of fun,” says Hamill. “Before I came over, I spent four months learning karate, fencing, kendo, and bodybuilding, because I do a lot of strenuous stunts on the bog planet.”

  “Mark has to progressively become a fantastic acrobat and gymnast,” says stunt coordinator Peter Diamond. “His character has to be a really superhuman athlete, so we have to teach Mark basic gymnastic moves and how to look good. He has a rather intensive course in all of these things. From a stunt coordinator’s point of view, you couldn’t have asked for a better actor in his cooperation, in wanting to do everything, in wanting to learn. I have nothing but admiration for him, that’s what I would say, and he enjoys it. This is the main thing: He does enjoy it, yes.”

  After hosting Saturday Night Live, Fisher had made plans with some of the crew: writer Michael O’Donoghue for Mr. Mike’s Mondo Video (1979) and with John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd for The Blues Brothers (1980). “I love Michael O’Donoghue,” Fisher says. “He calls me the Hollywood Devil Baby.”

  Unit publicist Alan Arnold first met Hamill and his wife, Marilou, at the London Airport in the departure lounge on their way to Norway. Hamill had met Marilou York in a dentist’s chair while she was cleaning his teeth, according to the Orange County Register, in late 1977. They were married in December 1978 and were expecting their first child in June. Marilou spoke to Arnold about her pregnancy’s “attendant anxieties. Would there be adequate medical facilities on location?”

  “The repercussions [of an out-of-wedlock pregnancy] were so strong when we decided to have the child that we married when she was three months’ pregnant,” says Hamill of fame’s downside. “So now it looks like we had to get married and the whole thing is so distasteful to me. I thought, Fine—if it brings that many people that much unhappiness, I will get married. I was stupid to think that this wouldn’t happen anyway.”

  On Wednesday, February 28, Kurtz, Hamill, Fisher, and Arnold arrived in Oslo and lodged at the Scandinavia Hotel. “That evening we dined at a restaurant high above the city,” Arnold writes, “where the food was as special as the view, but the conversation, I thought, was somewhat strained. I had no doubt I was to blame. I am cast against type as a publicist; I have no special talent for putting new acquaintances at ease and I think that my presence may have inhibited the conversation of these friends of long standing.”

  At the press conference the next day at the hotel, Kurtz announced that principal pho
tography would start the following Monday. “Carrie explained that she had come to Norway out of curiosity, not to take part in the filming, because the scenes at Finse do not require her—she just could not bear to miss the location atmosphere.”

  The press conference at Oslo, Norway, March 1, 1979.

  Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker) and Carrie Fisher (Princess Leia) pose for photographers.

  Reporter: What is the budget for the film?

  Kurtz: It should be approximately $16 million [sic]. Part of that is just inflation in the three years since the first one was made.

  Reporter: A question for the actors: Do you read any science fiction novels?

  Hamill: I never thought of Star Wars as science fiction, I thought of it more as fantasy-fairytale and I’ve always been interested in fantasy. How about you, Carrie?

  Fisher: I’m the same way. I’d only read 1984 and Dune—just a couple of the more popular science fiction books. But then Star Wars is very myth-oriented, with the main characters including a Princess and a wise old man, you know.