“They called themselves the ‘Optical Dogs,’ ” Duignan would say. “They had such a tough job, day and night. One of their night crew called herself ‘DOA Mary’—‘Dead On Arrival Mary’—because it was such a hard shift. I would sometimes stay and have dinner with them at like 10:00 at night. They felt kind of like the bastards of ILM, the last stop, because they were the ones who had to fix everything.”
(The origin of the department nickname was a leftover element from Poltergeist of the family dog walking into frame and looking up at the ceiling to view actress JoBeth Willams. This dog element would show up on Jedi walking into a star field or on a planet surface or behind the Falcon—“anything that proved hysterically surrealistic,” Barron would say. “It was a welcome laugh at dailies to relieve the pressure.”)
“We were the last ones in the food chain of visual effects, so we had to take whatever was coming downstream,” Nicholson says. “I’m so close to it now that it’s hard for me to judge, but I would say there is an average of 15 elements per shot, and we’ve got one with 60 elements, which Ken Smith composited. We make separation positives for the bluescreen, so that’s three passes for every element. They’re not all bluescreen, but let’s say you have 40 elements, that’s 120 passes on the print. I think George is really trying to find out how far he can take the bluescreen system.”
One of Optical’s printers had been used on Star Wars and originally built for the VistaVision film The Ten Commandments (1956) by the Howard Anderson Company at Paramount. Another printer was built by John Ellis, one of the optical operators and a machinist at ILM; it was set up to do blowups, reductions, and tilts for individual elements. The two other printers were used for final composites, which had to go from VistaVision to a four-perf squeeze, or Panavision. “We have a little joystick which we use for positioning mattes, also for doing moves, designed by Jerry Jeffress,” says Nicholson. “It’s an incredible unit for assisting us, because we move our projectors rather than our lenses, for position, which gives us the advantage of multiple fits, rather than just one, in a multiple element shot. And if you can move in 1.0001-inch increments, you can really fine tune your work.”
“The Ellis printer gave us the luxury of taking a particular stage element and reducing or blowing it up to fit the scale of the shot better without reshooting the stage element,” says operator Kenneth Smith. “The other difference in Jedi is that we did a lot of black-and-whites to preview shots. That way we could see if the synching of the elements was going to work and the sound people were able to start cutting sound a lot earlier because they knew when the lazer was going off and where the ship was in the frame.”
“All in all, it just taxed us to our absolute limit,” Nicholson would say. “Fortunately, I had a crew that was experienced and we’d worked together for three or four years, so that helped tremendously. We could make a more coordinated effort to get the work done. But just managing all the elements was mind-boggling; we put through millions of feet of film to get those composites done. It was a huge undertaking.”
“It’s funny,” says Ralston. “We have the most incredible Optical department in the world and now that we have the sharpest lens ever designed, we’re throwing diffusions and screens in front of it trying to soften it up. If the image is too clear, too sharp, it shows all these unwanted details.”
Optical department supervisor Bruce Nicholson.
The Ellis optical printer, built by optical printer operator and machinist John Ellis.
Electronic systems designer Kris Brown tests electronics for the newly designed and built optical Workhorse Printer.
Tests created by the Computer Division can be seen in “Wedge 5,” which shows variations on the Death Star graphics.
Final frame of the Death Star and shield, as generated by the Computer Division.
BLOWING THINGS UP AND DOWN
Lucas revised a line of dialogue for Han on December 20: “Thanks for coming back for me, kid. I owe you one,” which recalled Solo’s penchant for accounting from the two previous films. The next day Billy Dee Williams went in for more ADR, and on Christmas Eve, Marquand returned to London.
Ken Ralston and crew (equipment support staffer Michael J. Smith; stage technician Bob Finley, with glasses, in background; and stage technicians Merlin Ohm and Peter Stolz, with mustache) film the pyrotechnical disintegration of a model.
Stage technicians deal with the debris of exploded models.
Work in the Computer Division continued on Death Star imagery for the rebel briefing room scene. R. J. Doris sent a memo to Kazanjian noting that they had spent “considerable time” with Dunham discussing changes and that he was to take over direct supervision of the computer elements of the six shots. An outside optical house would be responsible for the filtering and compositing, which would increase costs but save time. “For Jedi we did a CG effect, but there was nothing particularly outstanding about it,” Ed Catmull would say. “The rebels are looking at a computer graphics thing within the film and this force field comes out around it.”
“The effect wasn’t so groundbreaking as the tools used to do it,” Duff would say, referring to refinements made to their animation graphics system.
“The Computer Division was proving that they could do anything traditional effects could do, but without using a camera,” Smith would say. “The problem was that computer hardware had not evolved enough to do it quickly. Early demonstrations were maddeningly slow. We watched one frame being rendered for what seemed like hours as the computer crunched the millions of numbers which made up the image.”
“We ultimately did about six shots involving graphics work in which we use computer-generated elements,” Nicholson would say of Optical’s role. “The Computer Division was doing a lot of R&D during that time, so we could see that stuff on the horizon.”
Practically, of course, Jedi was almost completely analog. Indeed most elements that ILM could physically shoot had been completed by the end of December, “but we’re waiting on certain sets that aren’t ready yet,” says Edlund. “Steve Gawley is still working on a really spectacular one for us. It’s very large and very elaborate, and will only be in four or five shots: the Death Star reactor chamber.”
In the interim, Edlund and his crew worked on the destruction of Vader’s ship and Jabba’s barge. The latter high-speed explosion was filmed outdoors, atop the ILM stage, using a miniature set comprising a couple of tons of sand transported from Arizona and a painted backdrop of the Yuma location courtesy of Chris Evans.
“There were huge discussions about how we were going to blow things up,” Huston would say. “Would we use gunpowder, would we use compressed air? The models had to be built specially to be blown up.”
After waiting out the weather, the barge explosion was completed without any significant problems. “There were two different aspects in blowing up the barge,” says model maker Charlie Bailey. “In one all the windows blow out and the fire starts, but the barge doesn’t blow up; then we took the first barge out, carefully, and set the other one in (made of a brittle aggregate material). That one was blown to smithereens, with shrapnel and all.”
“One day I was having lunch in our little courtyard next to the stage,” Bill George would say. “And I heard, ‘Ready … and … action!’—and then this big explosion. Pyro guys have this unspoken rule that if you’re going to err, err on the side of putting in too much powder. So as I’m biting into my sandwich, barge pieces are raining down around me.”
“We had one incident when we were shooting some pyro stuff on the big stage,” says Ralston. “It was a TIE ship that flies past the camera on fire and blows up. We got the thing going, started the camera up, and the TIE ship ball—which was where all the pyro was—blew off. It fell behind us and landed on one of Dennis’s forest miniatures and it burst into flames, so everyone was looking at that. What we didn’t realize was that the TIE ship was still flying with two wings and a heavy metal rod—it was pitch black in there�
�and one of the still photographers, Roberto McGrath, had grabbed a fire extinguisher and started to run across the stage to the forest without realizing the TIE ship was coming right at him. It smacked him on the chin, knocked him down, and he had to have stitches.”
“There was this big conning tower that was built for the Star Destroyers, maybe four and a half feet across,” Bill George adds. “It was a pyro one. In the bottom piece were these mortars with charges, and then on top of that we would pile debris. Wesley Seeds was loading it up and he was very nervous because he wanted to make sure everything was right—and at the last minute I saw him grab a model ‘tree’ from a model kit, this grid pattern. Well, the next day in dailies, there’s this high-speed, spectacular explosion, a bright orange fireball—and right out of the middle, coming right at the camera, is this model tree. So we had to do that one again.”
THE RETURN OF “RETURN”
Work on the film, and now its promotion, progressed in multiple areas. A short (around a minute and a half) Jedi teaser trailer played in theaters throughout America that December. On the licensing front, Lucasfilm signed up M&M Mars, Hi-C, and Procter & Gamble. Ganis went out on the road again, doing presentations for Toys “R” Us and Sears. And at HQ, sometime around December 17, Lucas changed the title of his film from Revenge back to his second draft version: Return of the Jedi.
Word leaked out unofficially—Marilyn Beck may have been the first to break the news in her syndicated column—and a journalist asked Marquand about it. “The title is going to change,” he said. “But the longer we can delay announcing that, the happier we’re going to be. We had always wanted to call it ‘Return.’ Philosophically, it’s correct. ‘Revenge’ has a ring about it that I think isn’t right for this movie. It’s negative and Jedi don’t seek revenge. A Jedi Knight can’t understand that as a concept of behavior.”
“I said, ‘But, George …,’ and he said, ‘No. This is what it’s going to be,’ ” Ganis would say. “I said, ‘But, George, Revenge of the Jedi is such a better title.’ And he said, ‘Jedi don’t take revenge.’ He said that to my face.”
“It was crisis time, from a licensing point of view,” Roffman would say. “We had all these licensees that were in the midst of producing product that said ‘Revenge’ on them. Nobody wanted to deal with that because it was such a huge headache. The biggest licensee by far was Kenner and they had to destroy somewhere around $250,000 worth of packaging.”
On the roof of ILM, the pyrotechnic crew, supervised by Edlund, prepares to blow Jabba’s barge to smithereens. Bits and pieces would rain down upon those eating lunch in the courtyard below. (On the far left with 16mm camera is still photographer and documentarian Terry Chostner; next to the model barge are supervising stage technician Ted Moehnke, Michael J. Smith, key grip Dick Dova Spah, model maker Charlie Bailey, Edlund, and model maker Barbara Gallucci.)
“Thaine Morris—our resident pyrotechnician, master chemist, inventor, etc.—has come up with some new secret formulas,” Edlund explains. “The main trick with miniature pyrotechnics is making them as slow as possible so you don’t have to shoot at monstrously high speeds just to see anything. Otherwise, your miniature is here in one frame and gone the next. By sequencing a series of smaller explosions, the effect can be drawn out; and with the new 16-channel board, we can time them right to the frame.”
Model makers Sean Casey and Charlie Bailey (with glasses) at work on the Jabba’s barge model; Bailey is making adjustments to steering rudders.
Chris Evans at work on a background painting for the barge sequence.
Model makers Sean Casey and Charlie Bailey (with glasses) at work on the Jabba’s barge model; Bailey is making adjustments to steering rudders.
Bailey, Moehnke, and others inspect the wreckage after blowing up Jabba’s barge.
COLD SWEAT
Each ILM department prepared for the final stretch as the New Year began. Unfortunately, Steve Gawley was out with pneumonia for at least two or three weeks, which compromised completion of the reactor chamber model. The matte department was in full swing, however, having finished several Endor paintings. But even this late in the cycle, Lucas was still adding mattes.
“It was near the end of production,” says Pangrazio. “The pressure had really gotten to us by that point and we just wanted more than anything else for the project to be over so we could go home. But no—more and more shots were being heaped on us!”
The animation department was also inundated and had upped its head count to 12 people, who were occupied creating lazer blasts, shadows, and many rotoscoped mattes. Pete Kuran, a Star Wars veteran, had started his own company, Visual Concept Engineering, and it was doing mainly lazer sword effects.
The optical department calculated that it needed six final composites per day, which meant ongoing day and night crews, six days a week. In the camera department, supervisors had about six weeks left to mop up the dozens of stage elements that would, hopefully, give Optical and Animation the time to finish. “We’re just not far enough along to make anybody feel real comfortable,” Edlund says.
“Maybe two-thirds of the way through, we ran out of some of the film stocks because they were all special ordered,” Nicholson would say. “We were desperate to find these film types and there was only one other facility that had some—so we begged them for some while we special ordered more.”
“This place is a nuthouse,” says Ralston. “It never stops. The pressure is constant and it’s getting worse every day. We didn’t make our Christmas deadline for getting black-and-white temporary composites of everything. We didn’t even come close. Right now, I have three left to do. But we are hitting our deadlines for when they really need them.”
Real need corresponded to completion dates for each reel that needed to be hit in order to have a locked-down cut for John Williams, whose dates with the London Symphony Orchestra were imminent and could not budge. “In two days, George leaves for London so they can start scoring the film,” adds Ralston. “Once the scoring’s done, the picture can’t be changed anymore, at least to any significant degree, which is actually a blessing for us. We’ll have exact frame lengths on everything.”
As minds and bodies began to fail, Lucas laid down the law, according to Tom Smith, declaring that there must be a temporary color version of every effects shot in the work print by April 1—or else he would insert a black slug in the finished film to indicate an effects shot that ILM did not complete on time.
In the panoramic painting by Chris Evans of the Ewok celebration (Evans at work), the master shot included four plates of live-action photography.
Because the Ewok costumes were highly flammable, four groups of little people and pilots had been shot against bluescreen.
These were matted by Optical into separate elements of bonfires filmed at night. The background elements were reduced to appear a long way off and supplied to Optical, which added the backgrounds to the dancers and the bonfires (ABOVE, LAST TWO IMAGES: Before and after: with vacant areas and with fires composited into the painting).
“We then took that piece of film and had a low contrast print made—we make low cons because contrast increases once we rephotograph them—and then we scraped out that area of the big matte painting and, by rear projection, we placed the four groups and their backgrounds in the painting,” Barron would say. “This way the actors are able to walk in front of an area of the painting whereas otherwise they would have had to be behind some set elements. As far as I know, it’s the first time that a shot was done quite in this way. We did the matte painting first; we did everything backward” (BOTTOM FAR RIGHT: Final frame).
Chris Evans at work on several Endor matte paintings.
“Things got so tight at the end that black-and-whites were being sent over to edit of only the main elements, but also with a lot of paraphernalia used to make the shots still in the image, such as C-stands (for lighting),” says Ralston. “I guess Duwayne Dunham went over to the sound guys one
day and they were using the same black-and-whites to start cutting the sound—but they were adding sound effects for the C-stands! They thought the stands were ships.”
“The challenge was, could we get all the effects done in time?” Kazanjian would say. “That was one of my big problems. I had to keep going to ILM and sitting everybody down in the projection room and saying, ‘Look, at the rate we’re going, we’re not going to be able to deliver this film on time and our reputation and ILM’s reputation is riding on this …”
Supervised by Steve Gawley, crew at work on the Death Star reactor chamber.
MAKING MUSIC
E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial accomplished in 31 weeks what it had taken Star Wars five and a half years to accomplish: $194 million in domestic film rentals, catapulting it to the number one box-office spot. Lucas’s space fantasy had topped Spielberg’s Jaws, and the latter director (with a little help from ILM) had returned the favor. Of course the two of them were at work on their second collaboration: Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Moreover, on January 19, Lucas flew to London to meet someone whom Spielberg had originally introduced to him and who was perhaps the key collaborator in both of their successes, the common denominator of their emotional punch: John Williams.
The Making of Star Wars: Return of the Jedi (Enhanced Edition) Page 50
