“Kersh sets up, talks to the technical chiefs, confers with each of his players, decides on his angles,” Arnold writes. “At times, the noise of compressed steam escaping is cacophonous, the carbon fumes repellent … At times, it seems like organization by default, that the director’s will alone gets things together. First rehearsals were a miasma of trial and error.”
“The scheduling was done as if it was just another scene,” Kershner says. “However, everything went wrong, including the rubber gaskets beginning to burn up and making everyone sick, with everyone having to be evacuated from the set. The little people started getting ill, maybe because they are only three feet above the steam, so it blew into their nostrils. I was sick the whole time I worked there. The smoke got me, finally.”
“We had great difficulty in shooting that set, because we built it 12 feet up from the stage floor,” Reynolds says. “People had to clamor up to that level amongst all of the steam. But I liked the idea of having the amber color, because I think that gave it a very eerie sort of feel, and the steam jets coming up from the floor helped enormously. For the scene of Han being lowered into the vat, we had a hydraulic platform installed under the floor, sufficiently low enough for Han to disappear out of sight. I think the little pig people gave a slight bit of humorous and weird feeling to the whole proceedings.”
“I think the words freezing chamber are completely wrong because it was like a sweaty jungle,” says Watts. “The whole thing was full of steam and it was not very pleasant to work in.”
“Jets of steam shot into your face and you had to ignore them,” Kershner says. “The heat would really build up, because we had dozens of arc lights, plus the fog machines. We were often working 30 feet in the air, so we were really in the middle of this heat wave. We were up there filming for weeks.”
“Kersh, more than anyone else, decided to use an abstract look to this set,” Lucas says. “To use mostly steam in this hellish place, which is right in the middle of heaven, so to speak. It’s more steam than physical reality.”
“And so, on a day meant for lazing in the summer sun,” Arnold writes, “I followed Kersh onto the Carbon Freezing Chamber set … It is 8 AM. We enter Stage 5, already throbbing with activity, and climb a stairway to the central platform where Kersh joins Suschitzky, who is lighting the set for the long shot of the group’s entrance. They take turns looking through the lens … All this is recorded on tape, because I persuaded Kershner to wear a cordless mike throughout the day, connected remotely to my tape recorder. I may be wrong, but I don’t think that anything quite like this has been done before.”
Much of the following recorded dialogue would discuss the script, which, as of February 20, 1979, read as follows:
VADER
Put him in the carbon freezing chamber.
BOBA
What if he doesn’t survive? He is worth a lot to me.
VADER
The Empire will compensate you for the loss.
LEIA
No.
[C-3PO complains as] Chewie attacks the stormtroopers …
HAN
Chewie, no! Stop it, Chewbacca! … Save your strength for another time, Chewie, when the odds are better.
Chewie barks a doleful farewell.
HAN
Yeah … I know … I feel the same way … Keep well. (turns to guard) You’d better chain him until it’s over.
Han takes Leia in his arms and she gives him a passionate kiss.
LEIA
… I love you. I couldn’t tell you before, but it’s true.
HAN
Just remember that, ’cause I’ll be back.
Irvin Kershner: This set is so peculiar that we’ve got to keep watching little relationships or the thing—like this light, I worry whether it’s too bright back here.
Peter Suschitzky: [laughs] I think you’re just worrying about everything now.
Kershner: [directing stormtroopers] I want the camera back there, which will be out of the way. Once I get them in position, then we’re just going to take two cameras and do all the action, just do the whole bloody thing.
David Tomblin, 1st AD: Alright.
Kershner: [to Harrison Ford] Good morning.
Harrison Ford: How are you?
Kershner: I tried to call you yesterday. I wanted to see you, I wanted to talk with you about the scene and I couldn’t get you. I tried very hard late in the afternoon and early in the evening. I wanted to talk to you about the scene because I’ve been working on it and there are a lot of things that I’ve sort of discovered about it, [laughs] in looking at it. (“Larry Kasdan had written some very good scenes, but there was still the interpretation,” Kershner says. “The interpretation is what kept me awake nights.”)
Ford: You’ve got one other problem—I tried to tell the art department about it a long time ago. The shirt is not the same shirt. It’s clear there’s no jacket on.
Kershner: They’ll take it off when you go down. We missed a beat, you know why?
Ford: Why?
Kershner: I’ve been to real executions and I wanted this to be like an execution.
Ford: So did I.
Kershner: They strip people halfway down. And it’s always so demeaning. Do you know what they do in the gas chamber? They put black shorts on you, so the people who handle you afterward won’t get the gas on their hands, which burns. So we’ve got to make it look like an execution, like you’re at a gallows, except here it’s a pit, you see.
Ford: Okay, so you’ve got the shirt with no sleeves. Well, do you want to go talk?
Kershner: Yeah. I want to set up the scene, so they can work on just the entrance. It’s only an entrance. Then I thought we’d go and lock ourselves away for a few minutes.
Ford: I’ll be in makeup. Are you going to block it out?
Kershner: Yeah, I’ll block it out. Harrison, there’s one thing I discovered that will affect us here. You [Han Solo] have no way of knowing that you’re the one that they’re going to do anything to. They’re bringing all three of you in, but you don’t know anything; she doesn’t know anything. You’ve never been in this place. We have to add some lines to that. [Harrison departs.]
Kurtz inspects the completed Carbon Freezing Chamber set on Stage 4, based on Reynolds’s design, where they would film scene 379, in which Han is put into carbon freeze (stuntman Colin Skeaping, leaning on a lightsaber prop, stands with Kurtz).
Kershner: [to Suschitzky] It might be nice if the stairway was much dimmer.
Suschitzky: I can’t make it that much dimmer without putting filters on because they’re fluorescent lights. They can’t be dimmed. (“I think the photography is marvelous,” Hirsch says. “It has a very soft, luminous look to it, which is very pleasing.”)
Kershner: Oh, I see.
Suschitzky: Who are you bringing in?
Kershner: The whole group is coming in and I’m just wondering where the strongest shot is. I could bring them from the back. In other words, I can bring them down here and place them and then reverse it for the master when they go back.
Tomblin: You’ve got to reverse on the set anyway. (“Because the set had no back and it was a symmetrical set, all the reverses were also shot in the same direction as if they were the other way, which means that you’re constantly thinking in your head, Let’s see, if I turn the set completely around and they’re standing the other way …,” Kurtz says. “We ran into some difficulties there. In some of those scenes, Kersh had a hard time putting together what he had done before, because we couldn’t shoot in continuity, we had to shoot all in one direction and then turn around.”)
Kershner: Wait a minute. [looking] There’s something nice here—a high angle. This isn’t bad, right through the stuff. Yeah, oh yeah, this works. I never looked up here. That’s the trouble with this set: You can’t move around. If we could just move this bloody thing, thank you. [Crew moves object.] You didn’t see the rushes, did you?
Suschitzky: No, I didn’t, no.
Kershner: Oh shit, well, I want you to run over to the editing room and see it, okay? This morning. Because it will help us to visualize everything. [Suschitzky agrees and Kershner returns to his shot.] Oh boy, I got it, I got it. Boy, I saw something really interesting with the 150 [mm lens].
Suschitzky: I want to see how wide.
Kershner: Let me look at it with the 100 now. You got a finder? (“One of the most difficult things to do with a flat screen is to interpret three-dimensional space,” says Kershner. “Your directions of left to right, right to left, become completely tangled. So I was constantly checking myself. Is my orientation correct? Are they looking in the right direction? Am I changing it unnecessarily? Am I making it too complicated? Am I making it too simple? Am I losing the audience? This had to be done for every single moment.”)
Suschitzky: At the moment, there’s a 40. (“For the last two or three months, we switched over to a normal Panaflex,” Suschitzky says. “We then used the Panaflex-X as a second camera and an Arriflex as a third camera. Because there were many difficult and physically awkward sets, which involved climbing over various forms and up ramps and so on, we needed a lightweight camera.”)
Kay Freeborn adjusts Fisher’s makeup and Barbara Ritchie sees to the actress’s hair.
Mayhew as Chewbacca has his Wookiee hair coiffed by makeup artist Syliva Croft.
Kershner: Try looking at a 100. Take a look, just for the hell of it. [yells to the actors] Alright, action! Walk! [to Suschitzky] Then I’ll cut in to a couple of close shots. I’ll cut in to a closer shot of Vader and Lando when Vader says, “Put him in the Carbon Freezing Chamber.” Bam! Cut to close-up there of reaction and then cut back to the long shot as the Wookiee goes crazy and starts throwing things around.
Tomblin: Don’t you want to shoot it as a master and just pick the points that you want?
Kershner: I’m talking about the cutting. But I do want to bring it in—
Kelvin Pike, camera operator (who had just shot The Shining): I think both cameras want to end up dead center, you know, both shots.
Kershner: On the longer lens it should be over there, yeah. The symmetry doesn’t work with a longer lens. On the wide lens, you’ve got to be symmetrical. The group is nice. It’s a good group now, don’t you think?
Pike: Oh, I do. It’s excellent.
Kershner: It all works. I think the grouping is fine; it all works. We can even put stormtroopers here, you see, out of focus. We can enclose the frame with a couple of stormtroopers in the foreground, which would give you a whole other dimension.
[Norman Reynolds has been waiting in the wings for a chance to talk to the director. He seizes the opportunity provided by the change of setup, and the two go into Kershner’s office to look at a maquette of the gantry set.]
Kershner: As Luke comes to this point, this is the first time that he sees Vader.
Reynolds: Yes.
Kershner: His natural reaction will be either to jump back or to just begin to back up.
Reynolds: Yes, that’s how I see it also.
Kershner: He starts to back up and we suddenly reveal the set on a wide-angle shot and, my God, he’s going out onto this pinnacle. Luke turns his sword on. We don’t even see what he sees and he starts to back up. As he starts backing up in close-up, on his face, we fill up the frame with his head and there is Vader, just taking the last few steps. That works nicely.
Reynolds: Yes.
Kershner: I better make a note of that, because it works so well. See, that’s why the model helps. Without the model, I’d never see it.
Reynolds: Yeah.
Kershner: Thank you for bringing it to my attention, because now I’ve got that—it always worried me. Next? Medical [the last set of the film].
Reynolds: Now, this is just a sketch, but anyway, there is a question of the round window or the square window.
Kershner: Don’t we want a round window?
Reynolds: Gary has said that while he thinks it ought to be a square window, I don’t know. I wanted to bring it to your attention at this point to get your reaction to it.
Kershner: Why should it be a square window?
Reynolds: His thinking, really, was that if there’s part of the square window in the frame, it sells the idea of it being on a ship.
Kershner: Uh-huh. They don’t have round windows on that ship?
Reynolds: It can be whatever window you like. We could make it round or whatever. That was just his feeling. I do want to get—
Kershner: First of all, Luke and Leia end up standing in front of it, you see? Then, we come around so they actually look at the Millennium Falcon in here, at the end. See, this would be lovely to shoot against bluescreen. Then we see the droid working for a moment. Then we pull back and we see the people walking here. Now, that will be done in a reverse.
Reynolds: Yeah.
Kershner: Luke gets off the table in a close-up, you see, and Leia walks past him and we go with her, coming to the window. I don’t know if that window looks so elegant at the end there. We have the window, right?
Reynolds: I’d have to make one.
Kershner: Can’t you use the window from the reactor station?
Reynolds: We won’t have shot it.
Kershner: We won’t have shot it?
Reynolds: We won’t have shot it. They’re anxious to get—I think this is Carrie’s last thing, isn’t it? They’re anxious that she should finish.
Kershner: I see, I see. Oh boy. Have we worked out this business of Luke’s hand?
Reynolds: That’s the other thing I just wanted to talk to you about, just to get your reactions.
Kershner: Well, we have to come up with something.
Reynolds: I’ll come up with something—is it a stainless-steel thing?
Kershner: Wait a minute. I’ve got to turn this tape recorder off now because it’s sort of secret material. [Reynolds laughs. Recording recommences in Kershner’s trailer as the director and Ford go over the upcoming scene; it is 11 AM.]
Kershner: The thing that I realized was that you have no idea what you’re doing there. (“The Carbon Freezing Chamber is complex technically and dramatically,” says Kershner. “It’s truly one of the few drama scenes in the picture. It has to do with love, hate, extreme fear; it has to do with anger. It has many emotions, plus the complexity of steam, sparks, lasers, of all kinds of effects.”)
Ford: The last time you saw us was in the cell when Lando walks out and I say, “You’re a real hero,” right?
Kershner: Yeah.
Ford: And Chewie and Leia lift me up.
Kershner: Yeah, and Lando was trying to help you.
Ford: When he walked out?
Kershner: Yeah. So, okay. That’s where we left it.
Ford: So I know that I’m doomed, more or less.
Kershner: Yeah.
Ford: I mean, what does a bounty hunter mean? The script never says what a bounty hunter means, but if a bounty hunter doesn’t mean that he’s deadlier than shit, [laughs] then we’ve lost the dramatic value of the bounty hunter.
Kershner: Right, he looks deadly, yeah, right.
Ford: I’m dead. I’ve got a debt to Jabba the Hutt. I never paid my debt; this guy is coming after me.
Kershner: Yeah, except what we’ve learned is that Jabba doesn’t want you hurt. He wants you delivered intact. But you don’t know that.
Ford: I don’t know that. All I know is that since I haven’t paid my debt, I’m going to be bumped off. This guy is going to bump me off unless I can talk him out of it. I have never had the opportunity. There’s no scene where I try and talk anybody out of this.
Kershner: No.
Ford: I never say a word. They’ve got us in the jail and that’s it. Now, this is no time for a grave-side speech, but um …
Kershner: Yeah, the situation looks helpless because they’ve got troops, they’ve got Boba Fett.
Ford: But still, Han would think there was a way of getting out.
/> Kershner: Let me tell you what the rationale is. Why do you think that Leia and Chewie were brought in here?
Ford: In there?
Kershner: Yeah. I know why they were brought to the Carbon Freezing Chamber. It came to me. They’re brought in so that you would not make any problems. Because if you tried to make a break, if you tried to jump them, if you try to do anything, if you try not to go into that pit, they’ll say, “Okay, we’re going to kill them.”
Ford: Right, okay. I mean, Chewie tries to—
Kershner: And you stop him, so he wouldn’t get himself killed.
Ford: For a character that was built around George’s line, “Give me a good fight any day over all this hiding and freezing …”
Kershner: Right.
Ford: Well, I mean he had this line in the first script. That is the definition of Han’s character. Otherwise, I’d decide to join Chewbacca in the fight, push as many of them as I could over the edge, ’cause we’re all dead anyway.
Kershner: Okay, so we need a scene—
Ford: So it could be a few words between me and Billy Dee.
Kershner: You can see it in his face; you realize that this is not the way he intended this thing to work, that this thing got out of hand. And as you’re stepping into that place and you see him standing there, he looks miserable. He looked miserable in the jail, too.
Ford: Billy is not in this scene.
Kershner: Yes he is. He’s standing right there.
Ford: That’s what I’m saying. He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t contribute anything. What if, when I come down and see the others, I look at him and say, “What’s going on?” You know, I assume it’s something that he is still in charge of.
Kershner: “What are you doing? What are you up to now?” [Kershner writes down dialogue.] Alright.
The Making of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (Enhanced Edition) Page 32
