CLASSIFIEDS
Main unit moved on to the speeder bike chase the next day, with Hamill and Fisher on stage, while Marquand, Ford, Reynolds, Daniels, and others returned to Crescent City aboard a Conquest charter. “I went back up and spent two days doing some extra shooting with Threepio and Artoo,” says Marquand. “In fact, I asked Harrison to come up and do another little piece with me that I needed. It was the blowing up of the bunker, which, in fact, was great. He comes running out and it all blows up in one shot.”
“Anybody that could shoot a camera or knew anything about photography, it was just grab and go,” Farrar, who shot one camera, would say. “They were getting it all lined up and that was the fun of it. It was a very big movie, a professional movie, but it was also very much like doing a school film at UCLA—just go and shoot a cool shot.”
Filmed against bluescreen at ILM on the speeder bike, Fisher and Hamill are surrounded by all necessary paraphernalia.
Lucas, a visting Steven Spielberg, Kazanjian (with back toward camera), and Marquand outside the ILM sound stage.
Kenny Baker, with Ewok head off, takes a well-earned breather aboard the speeder bike. Baker was greatly relieved when his Ewok days wrapped.
Cast and crew film the speeder-bike chase at ILM.
That big special effects moment was actually used in two films—the second, shorter film being Return of the Ewok, the brainchild of Tomblin—which was to serve as an introductory short for Jedi in Europe. “It all began when Warwick walked in the door for his audition and smiled,” Tomblin says. “That smile cost me all my lunch hours and most of my days off.”
Tomblin’s short was being shot as a picaresque adventure in which young Warwick finally lands a job as an Ewok extra (it would never be completed, though a rough cut would eventually see the light of day).
For the next few weeks, second unit would continue shooting Ewoks and stormtroopers as they battled it out up north, following carefully planned storyboards, but with the “freedom to improvise on a theme,” says Tomblin. “The camera crews were marvelously cooperative. I’d have a briefing every morning and give each of them their workload. We could stretch our cameras to four units at four different locations, as long as they stayed within commuting distance.”
Back at ILM, despite the director’s absence, shooting continued on the speeder bikes, with Lucas and Muren supervising the camera crew. “What we did, for the two days that I was away, was we recorded me doing this long spiel about what was happening and George could play that back over the loudspeakers,” says Marquand. Standing at the back of the stage was Steven Spielberg, who had flown up to throw a party for the ILM crews who had worked on his two most recent films, E.T. and Poltergeist.
“Steven saw me recording this and he just thought it was the funniest thing he had ever seen in his life,” Marquand adds. “I said, ‘Ah, Mr. Spielberg’s here. You can do this now and we’ll be sure to have a hit movie.’ People thought that was fairly amusing, but he declined.”
Muren had to devise lighting for the speeder bike footage that would match his visual effects work to be shot later. “So we had to guess on what that lighting was going to be like,” he says. “That wasn’t exactly ideal from our point of view, but it was dictated by the economics of the business: We had this extra week at the end of the shooting schedule and to bring the actors back at a later time would have cost a fortune.”
Muren consulted with Hume and they concocted a chaotic look, with lots of flashes fabricated by an elaborate setup of at least 10 separate units, each with a cluster of 6 or 8 lights flashing at certain intervals, which required a crew of 20 or 25 to manage. The footage was slightly undercranked, at 20 to 22 frames per second, which, when played back at 24 fps, would serve to sharpen the actors’ apparent reaction times on the bikes. No sound was recorded; all the dialogue would be looped.
“I’m always learning from George,” Muren says. “From everything he had said up to then, I thought we would go in and shoot to cut. That’s why we’d done the videomatics. But George really prefers to have a lot of material to work with in editorial, so instead of spending only three days shooting, we spent five. George thought it would be too difficult to shoot a four second cut and think that everything would work.”
As the days wore on, at least everyone ate well, snacking on doughnuts, strawberries, quiche, and cinnamon bagels. When Marquand returned from up north, he resumed his directorial duties. “There are these enormous wind fans,” he says. “You cannot hear yourself speak, so I’m yelling at Mark. But he does this very, very well and he’s reacting to what I’m telling him is happening: ‘Now you’re coming around the corner. Now you’re coming near a tree.’ Carrie finds it much harder. They’ve got nothing to relate to, and I’m going on and I feel like a complete moron.”
“I can really be there driving those bikes—I see it in my mind,” Hamill says. “I know how it’s going to look.”
“We shot bluescreen on the speeder bike for what seemed like years with screaming and squibs,” Fisher says. “That was one of the most boring things we had to do. We’d just sit there and they’d put this wind machine on us and we’d grimace. I used to read. I was reading Colette and they filmed me, which ended up on a goodie reel; they showed me reading on the speeder bike as I was zooming through the forest.”
“I was tasked with getting autographs for the crew, for their kids,” Duignan would say. “Mark Hamill, no problem. Carrie, nothing. I asked her two times, three times. She was in her down phase and didn’t want to come to the set, so it was just like pulling teeth to get her out there to do the job.”
“At ILM they were all great—it was like a college fraternity,” Fisher would say. “They were really all very solicitous and sweet and it was just fun, and, yeah, that stuff got really boring, but, you know, ‘boring’—I’ve heard it described as ‘unenthusiastic hostility.’ And the deal is if you’re bored and you’re there, the fault lies with you.”
Although there remained several days of shooting at ILM, principal photography officially wrapped on Friday, May 14, perhaps due to contractual obligations. For, after an affidavit was sent to the studio confirming the conclusion of principal photography, Fox loaned Lucasfilm the final $7 million of their $10 million deal.
Although the total of 88 shooting days for Jedi was 4 days more than Star Wars’ 84, it was more than 50 less than Empire’s 144 days, a testament to Lucas’s drive and that of his director, cast, and crew.
SETUPS: 1,536; SCS. COMP: 83/132; SCREEN TIME: 77:50 [SIC]/120M
Lucas and Muren.
NON-NUMBERED PROGRESS REPORTS: MONDAY–THURSDAY, MAY 17–20; ILM. EXT. ENDOR FOREST, BLUESCREEN, SCS. 67 [SPEEDER BIKE CHASE], 91 [BIKE SCOUTS PURSUE EWOK]; INT./EXT. CHICKEN WALKER CONTROL ROOM; 89 [EWOK ON ROCKET BIKE], 93 [EWOK SWINGS OFF BIKE]; 115 [EWOKS FLYING]; SECOND UNIT, CRESCENT CITY, MAY 17–28; SCS., 75, 115, 77, 66, 67, 119, 93, 124 [SURRENDER]
While Fisher and Hamill remained mainstays on the rocket bikes, Kenny Baker, still referred to as Wicket in the Progress Reports, and his stuntman, were now employed on the Ewok’s wild ride as he was pursued by troopers. “Kenny was terrific and he really tried, but I was worried for safety, so finally I asked a stunt person to wear the Wicket costume,” says Marquand. “There’s a great moment where he takes off so fast that he is just holding on with his hands and his legs are flying behind him, flapping in the wind. To do this, we put the bike up on its rear end and he is hanging and kicking his legs. It looks wonderful. We had to wire him on, though, because he couldn’t hold his own weight.”
Another comical scene was filmed in the AT-ST cockpit, as Chewbacca reaches in and pulls out two Imperial officers, played by Watts and Marquand. “We’re over on the bluescreen stage deciding who is going to be in the walker and Richard wanted me,” says Watts. “It turned out that the character was called ‘Lieutenant,’ which was in fact my rank in the English army.”
“And then there was another thing: Dino De Laurentiis,
in memory of his late son, had given a rotating camera base to ILM because his son had invented it,” says Marquand. “So we used it to show the little Ewok losing complete control of the bike, where he actually spins around.”
The bike chase bluescreen wrapped Thursday and Lucas took all the VistaVision stock, had it reduced to black-and-white four-perf, and began intercutting it with the videomatics. After working till 9 PM, Hamill and his family finally traveled home to LA; suffering from a sore throat, Fisher also returned south. A schedule was immediately issued for postproduction, whose dates were everyone’s best guess, but principal photography was now, really, over.
“There is certainly an air of sadness on the set about the whole thing finally coming to an end, but there is also a sense of relief over today’s proceedings,” writes Peecher. “Almost six years after Star Wars, on the set of Jedi, Lucas stood in the shadows at the back of the shooting stage and watched his Ewoks being unharnessed from the glider. There are approximately 500 special effects shots, composed of about 2,000 separate elements, and a year of postproduction still to go. He gave a deep, involuntary sigh. ‘The easy part is over.’ ”
“It was a great crew, one of the nicest crews you could ever be on,” Fisher would say. “The stuntmen were hilarious. And it was a luxury because we’d had the same crew for all three films. It was a family.”
“The feeling on this one has been very close to the old days when no one had ever heard of Star Wars,” says Hamill, “because Harrison, Carrie, and I have worked more on the set together and we knew it was the end.” Decades later, Hamill would add: “The thing is my father was in the Navy and I went to nine schools in twelve years, so saying goodbye to people got so hard that I’d find some excuse to not have that moment. So the end of Jedi was a bittersweet feeling. It was the final time that I was playing this character with these people I’d grown to love so much. Part of me never wanted it to end.”
“We had spent a lot of time together and we had experienced something pretty extraordinary together,” Ford would say. “It had brought opportunities to all of our lives.”
“On the day we were due to finish, both units finished bang on time,” says Watts. “Not even an hour over schedule.”
On Saturday, May 28, second unit wrapped, too, having a party that lasted until 2 AM at the Crescent City Cultural Center.
“I said, ‘Never again, never again,’ would they get me in an Ewok costume, no matter how much money they paid me,” says Kenny Baker.
“While many of my fellow Ewok actors were truly grateful that their costume torture had finally come to an end, I moped about miserably,” Warwick Davis would say.
“Suddenly, one day, everybody was gone,” says Miki Herman. “The locals were in shell shock. It really was strange out on location, because what took six weeks to build was disassembled in two hours. We didn’t have to replant the vegetation—just make the area safe. We filled in the main bunker hole, so that nobody would fall in. We were so lucky. It’s hard to believe that from the day the unit arrived, it never rained again for the whole stay. Heavensent.”
Ewoks seize the clapperboard on May 17, 1982, during second unit work near Crescent City.
HARNESSING THE ELEMENTS
JUNE TO NOVEMBER 1982
CHAPTER NINE
As of June the film moved into postproduction and the workload shifted to ILM and Sprockets, where the editorial and sound departments were now located. “When we’d made Empire, we tried to create this esprit de corps, which came from George,” Bloom would say. “On Jedi, we tried to keep that same feeling and quality going, but ILM had become more of an ongoing business at that point.”
“We were just finishing three big pictures—Dennis had E.T., Ken had Star Trek II, and I had shot Poltergeist—but the pictures had backed up on one another and nobody had time for much of a breather between them,” says Edlund. “Though we are short on time, we are long on experience and we have an excellent group of camera people who know what they’re doing. I have a feeling we’re all going to be a lot more burned out at the end of this one—but we’re not all down in the dumps about it and I don’t think it’s going to impact much on the quality of our work.”
“We were all burned out coming into Jedi,” says Muren. “ILM was burnt out having done Empire, Poltergeist, E.T., Star Trek II, Dragonslayer, and Raiders. I remember not being terribly interested in doing it. I was just so burned out.”
“Every film George does has to be bigger than the last,” says Ralston. “We’ve done so much since Star Wars, but I’ve learned to never say something can’t be done. Now I know it can and it will be done. Of course, we may all be dead from exhaustion by the end of it, but it will get finished.”
Despite their collective fatigue, the supervisors, coordinators, their crews, and the whole facility were now at the height of their creative powers and crafts. “We had developed the best talent, built up and tested the most powerful tools of the day, and every Academy Awards season we had won the Oscar for visual effects,” Tom Smith would say. “We were the best in the world when George brought us Jedi.”
ILM would have over 140 people working in its various departments: camera, matte, model shop, optical, animation, rotoscope, and so on. Richard Edlund, Ken Ralston, and Dennis Muren divided the film into three basic effects units: Edlund’s team would handle the desert skiff, the tunnels, and the big reactor chamber of the Death Star; Ralston’s would create all of the space battle choreography, including the rebel fleet’s jump to hyperspace; and Muren’s would concentrate on the remaining ground-based shots, including the rancor sequence, the chicken walkers, and the bike chase. Some effects work would be sent out of house: For example, Van der Veer would do lazer sword animation and blasterfire.
“ILM did start about three months later than expected,” says Kazanjian. “Why? Two reasons: One, George was in London for the shooting and didn’t get back to finish designing the special effects; two, ILM took on many projects, even a little bit of Dark Crystal and a little of The Winds of War mini-series [1983]. That’s why they didn’t have time for Conan the Barbarian [1982].”
During Empire, Richard Edlund “had everyone working for him,” according to Tom Smith. Now the administration would be handled by Rose Duignan and three coordinators—Laurie Vermont, Warren Franklin, and Patty Blau—each of whom would have a supervisor of visual effects working with him or her, and each supervisor would run two camera teams for a total of six outfits shooting.
Richard Edlund and Lucas at ILM.
“The coordinators mother us and nag us,” says Edlund. “We couldn’t manage without them.”
“After the split, once we were all back on Jedi, the same spirit reemerged,” Duignan would say. “A lot of great feelings and parties, and still we were young. Not too many people had kids or had to get home, so there was a lot of hanging out after your job and going out as a group.”
“George keeps insisting that there won’t be any more special effects in Jedi than there were in Empire,” Smith adds. “But I can already see that the new ones are going to be more complicated. What will probably happen, as the effects start rolling in, is George’s appetite will increase.”
Fortunately, ILM now had double the capacity in its optical department thanks to two printers and two processors, and the facility had developed the go-motion system to a point where it could do remarkable things. Testing had already begun on the Death Star surface model using the VistaCruiser camera, with Steve Gawley overseeing the models. (The VistaCruiser was a motion-control tracking camera designed to replace the original Dykstraflex camera. It had been largely designed by Bill Neil, under the direction of Edlund, and had debuted on E.T.)
“The building was always being constructed around us,” model maker Dave Carson would say. “They were constantly adding a floor, adding a room, adding a stairway, expanding the facility, bringing in new equipment. So there was always that sense of, ‘We’re on the move, we’re expanding, we’re maki
ng it up as we go along.’ And that was a fun environment to be part of. Obviously we were a group of amazingly young people; I was one of the oldest at 28. It was just full of these kids, really.”
“Everybody was really young,” Huston would say. “And nobody wanted to mess with success, so there were no boundaries put on anyone. The work was the most important thing and there weren’t any adults. The structure was definitely there, the hierarchy, the role models and leaders: Richard and Dennis and Joe and, to some extent, Phil Tippett. It was like, ‘These are the big guys and you don’t mess with them because they know what they’re doing.’ And everybody fit into that. It was fun if you fit in, it was great; but if you didn’t, it would be brutal and people were just ignored or gotten rid of.”
“We just got to do whatever we wanted,” model maker Bill George would say. “There was very little supervision. It was just like, ‘Okay, we need you to make this model. When do you think you can have it done?’ ”
One of the rare “adults” was Tom Smith, who continued to calculate costs. Responding to Lucas’s request for a single average price for a special effects shot, he sent a letter to Kazanjian detailing the facility’s most recent work. The breakdown meant an average of about $22K per shot, “a fair market price for the work to be done” on Jedi. In March, Smith had prepared a detailed estimate of ILM’s Jedi budget, comparing it to Empire’s 407 to 422 shots, which cost $7,601,357; with added inflation and hidden costs, Smith figured that in 1982–83 dollars it was more like $10,462,537. Their work had been done over a period of 19 months; Jedi would have only 13 months and Smith projected that its final cost would be around $9,475,230. One department total was already added up: the Monster Shop bill had come to $1,188,969.63, which included about 4,300 work hours.
The Making of Star Wars: Return of the Jedi (Enhanced Edition) Page 41
