VHS Rip of what appears to be a fan-made compilation of Star Wars interviews and content.
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Short filmTranscript
00:00:00Somewhere in space, this may all be happening right now.
00:00:1620th Century Fox and George Lucas, the man who brought you American graffiti,
00:00:21now bring you an adventure unlike anything on your planet.
00:00:26Star Wars.
00:00:27Here they come.
00:00:30The story of a boy, a girl, and a universe.
00:00:47It's a big, sprawling space saga of rebellion and romance.
00:00:55It's a spectacle, light years ahead of its time.
00:00:59I am C. Freepian, human-cyborg relations, and this is my counterpart, R2-D2.
00:01:05Hello.
00:01:06No, Dawson, no, Dawson!
00:01:08It's an epic of heroes.
00:01:16Good luck.
00:01:17And villains.
00:01:18And aliens from a thousand worlds.
00:01:26Kid!
00:01:27Kid!
00:01:40Kid!
00:01:46Star Wars.
00:01:48A billion years in the making.
00:01:50And it's coming to your galaxy.
00:01:53This summer.
00:01:54A billion years in the making.
00:01:55A billion years in the making.
00:01:56A billion years in the making.
00:01:57A billion years in the making.
00:01:58A billion years in the making.
00:01:59A billion years in the making.
00:02:00A billion years in the making.
00:02:01A billion years in the making.
00:02:02A billion years in the making.
00:02:03A billion years in the making.
00:02:04A billion years in the making.
00:02:05A billion years in the making.
00:02:06A billion years in the making.
00:02:07A billion years in the making.
00:02:08A billion years in the making.
00:02:09A billion years in the making.
00:02:10A billion years in the making.
00:02:11A billion years in the making.
00:02:12A billion years in the making.
00:02:13A billion years in the making.
00:02:14A billion years in the making.
00:02:15A billion years in the making.
00:02:16A billion years in the making.
00:02:17A billion years in the making.
00:02:1820th Century Fox and George Lucas
00:02:34bring you an adventure unlike anything on your planet.
00:02:46Star Wars.
00:02:48Stop that ship! Faster!
00:03:00Chewie, get us out of here!
00:03:03Oh my, I'd forgotten how much I hate space travel.
00:03:07Here they come.
00:03:09You're coming in too fast!
00:03:13You're coming in too fast!
00:03:17The story of a boy, a girl, and a universe.
00:03:20Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You're my only hope.
00:03:28It's a big, sprawling space saga of rebellion and romance.
00:03:35This station is now the ultimate power in the universe.
00:03:39I'll come with you to Alderaan.
00:03:43There's nothing for me here now.
00:03:45I want to learn the ways of the Force and become a Jedi like my father.
00:03:49It's a spectacle, light years ahead of its time.
00:03:56It's an epic of heroes.
00:04:03Good luck!
00:04:04Hit the accelerator!
00:04:05Yahoo!
00:04:06And villains.
00:04:07No!
00:04:08No!
00:04:09And aliens from a thousand worlds.
00:04:10Go that way!
00:04:11You'll be malfunctioning within a day, you nearsighted scrap pile!
00:04:15Star Wars.
00:04:16Star Wars. A billion years in the making. The Force will be with you. Always.
00:04:40Now, you can experience the Force again. Star Wars.
00:05:03Here they come.
00:05:05How are you too fast?
00:05:06The original, legendary, Star Wars is back.
00:05:11The most popular film of all time. Star Wars.
00:05:16Coming back to your galaxy for two weeks only.
00:05:22Star Wars. The Force will be with you. Starting Friday, April 10th.
00:05:36The Empire has been repulsed. But this one defeat will increase its determination to crush the rebellion once and for all.
00:05:49In the continuation of the Star Wars saga, the Empire strikes back and Luke, Han and Princess Leia must confront its awesome might.
00:06:02In the course of the Odyssey, they travel with their faithful friends, droids and Wookiees, to exotic worlds where they meet new alien creatures and evil machines.
00:06:18Culminating in an awesome confrontation between Luke Skywalker and the master of the dark side of the Force, Darth Vader.
00:06:35Luke Skywalker. Princess Leia. Han Solo. C-3PO. R2-D2. Chewbacca. And introducing Landau Calrissian.
00:06:51In the continuation of the Star Wars saga, the Empire strikes back. Coming next year.
00:07:09Luke Skywalker and Han Solo rescued the princess, destroyed the Death Star, but their story didn't end there.
00:07:16Now, the creators of the biggest smash hit of all time bring you the next episode in the Star Wars saga, The Empire Strikes Back.
00:07:33The continuing story of our band of heroes.
00:07:46Luke Skywalker. Princess Leia. Han Solo. C-3PO. R2-D2. And Chewbacca.
00:07:55And introducing Landau Calrissian. It's an epic of romance.
00:08:03Of heroes and villains.
00:08:10They cross trackless voids to unknown worlds.
00:08:24A galactic odyssey against oppression.
00:08:36A big, new, sprawling space adventure in the Star Wars saga.
00:08:53The Empire Strikes Back.
00:08:55The Empire Strikes Back.
00:09:02Coming to your galaxy next summer.
00:09:05The Empire Strikes Back.
00:09:06The Empire Strikes Back.
00:09:07The Empire Strikes Back.
00:09:08The Empire Strikes Back.
00:09:09The Empire Strikes Back.
00:09:10The Empire Strikes Back.
00:09:11The Empire Strikes Back.
00:09:12The Empire Strikes Back.
00:09:13The Empire Strikes Back.
00:09:14The Empire Strikes Back.
00:09:15The Empire Strikes Back.
00:09:16The Empire Strikes Back.
00:09:17The Empire Strikes Back.
00:09:18The Empire Strikes Back.
00:09:19The Empire Strikes Back.
00:09:20The Empire Strikes Back.
00:09:21The Empire Strikes Back.
00:09:22The Empire Strikes Back.
00:09:23The Empire Strikes Back.
00:09:24The Empire Strikes Back.
00:09:25The Empire Strikes Back.
00:09:26The Empire Strikes Back.
00:09:27The Empire Strikes Back.
00:09:28The Empire Strikes Back.
00:09:29The Empire Strikes Back.
00:09:30The Empire Strikes Back.
00:09:31Come on!
00:10:01Let's go.
00:10:31The new chapter in the continuing Star Wars saga is now in our galaxy.
00:11:01Let's go.
00:11:31Return for the climactic clash between the forces of good and evil.
00:11:36Return to a galaxy far, far away.
00:11:40Return of the Jedi.
00:11:46The next chapter in the continuing Star Wars saga, the battle for freedom rages on.
00:12:01The heart of a hero.
00:12:12The courage of a rebel.
00:12:16The strength of a leader.
00:12:21The loyalty of comrades.
00:12:26The power of the force.
00:12:30The cunning of the enemy.
00:12:37The destiny revealed.
00:12:44This is Darth Vader, my father.
00:12:46A legend fulfilled.
00:12:48An epic of heroes, villains, and aliens from a thousand worlds.
00:12:58The quest continues.
00:13:07The circle closes.
00:13:13The saga lives on.
00:13:15Return of the Jedi begins May 25th at a theater in your galaxy.
00:13:22Return to a galaxy far, far away.
00:13:42Ready, everybody?
00:13:43Ready.
00:13:44Ready, everybody?
00:13:45Chewie.
00:13:46See what this piece of junk can do.
00:13:49Here we go again.
00:13:51You will bring Captain Solo and the Wookiee to me.
00:13:58Return to heroic adventure.
00:14:04You don't know the power of the dark side.
00:14:17Return to the ultimate confrontation.
00:14:20Freeze!
00:14:21Oh, dear.
00:14:22I love you.
00:14:23I know.
00:14:24Return for the climactic chapter of the Star Wars saga.
00:14:27Exciting is hardly the word I would choose, but most of all, return for the fun of it.
00:14:45Return of the Jedi.
00:14:48Return of the Jedi.
00:14:49Return of the Jedi.
00:14:50Return of the Jedi.
00:14:55Return of the Jedi.
00:14:56What a Jedi.
00:14:57颤
00:15:25war saga revenge of the Jedi the battle between good and evil rages on join the
00:15:40further adventures of Luke Skywalker Han Solo princess Leia Lando Calrissian
00:15:52Chewbacca C-3PO and R2-D2 and Darth Vader
00:16:09a journey to alien worlds a rebellion against oppression an epic of heroes
00:16:21and villains an adventure as vast as the universe
00:16:27revenge of the Jedi coming May 25th to a theater in your galaxy
00:16:51hi I'm Don Bees and this is R2-D2 and this is the Lucasfilm archives
00:17:05we have here all the original movie costumes props and models from the Star Wars movies
00:17:20we'd like to take you on a tour
00:17:22this is Darth Vader from the Star Wars films
00:17:29Darth Vader was played by David Prowse an actor from England and his voice was done by James Earl Jones
00:17:35if you look closely on the chest plate you can see that Hebrew lettering underneath the three
00:17:41coin slots that are on the right side of the chest plate
00:17:45this is Han Solo and Carbonite used in Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi
00:17:50the face is a casting of the actor Harrison Ford the rest is someone else's body and hands
00:17:55Chewbacca the Wookie was played by an actor named Peter Mayhew who's seven foot two
00:18:01the gold insect droid from Star Wars and there's a Jawa at his feet
00:18:08R2-D2 C-3PO and a stormtrooper from the Star Wars movies
00:18:12there were many R2-D2s used to make one character from the films
00:18:17these are some of those
00:18:18R2-D2 was sometimes played by a man in a suit named Kenny Baker
00:18:23Luke's Landspeeder from Star Wars
00:18:26this was an actual car that was ridden
00:18:29the miniature Landspeeder was used for long distance shots
00:18:35they gave the impression of the Landspeeder floating by putting mirrors
00:18:39underneath the fuselage of the ship
00:18:41the Imperial Speeder Bike used in Return of the Jedi
00:18:46at times it was doubled by a miniature Speeder Bike
00:18:51with a puppet representing the different characters sitting on it
00:18:55a tie interceptor from Return of the Jedi
00:18:59along with some miniature miniature tie interceptors
00:19:03the tie fighter from Star Wars
00:19:23as you can see
00:19:29Vader's tie fighter from Star Wars
00:19:31this is the Double Chili Tie Bomber
00:19:35it was used in Empire Strikes Back
00:19:37it was called the Double Chili Tie Bomber
00:19:39because it looked like a pair of chili burritos
00:19:40side by side
00:19:42the Rebel X-Wing fighter
00:19:46complete with R2-D2 in the back
00:19:48Boba Fett's Slave I
00:19:52the ship was inspired by a street light post
00:19:56the Y-Wing
00:20:00the Snow Speeder
00:20:06both Rebel crafts
00:20:10a miniature pilot from the Rebel Snow Speeder
00:20:20this is the probe droid
00:20:22that found the Rebels on the ice planet Hoff
00:20:26the Generator on the ice planet
00:20:28the Millennium Falcon
00:20:31this is a large four-foot version of the model that was built for Star Wars
00:20:34you can see the corner of the smaller
00:20:36six-inch model that was built for Empire Strikes Back
00:20:39the ship was also built full-size in England by a shipbuilding firm in Wales
00:20:55that's the thermal detonator that Princess Leia threatens to blow up Jabba the Hutt with
00:21:02the Rebel Blaster
00:21:05the Imperial Stormtrooper Blaster
00:21:09Luke's lightsaber from Return of the Jedi
00:21:14Darth Vader's lightsaber from Return of the Jedi
00:21:18the Tusken Raider and his Gaffey Stick from Star Wars
00:21:24the three helmets here are
00:21:31two Imperial helmets and Luke's X-Wing helmet from Star Wars
00:21:35this is the Imperial Beetle helmet
00:21:37Luke's X-Wing helmet
00:21:40and the Imperial Guard helmet from Return of the Jedi
00:21:47three bad guys helmets from Star Wars movies
00:21:53the Stormtrooper
00:21:54the Snowtrooper from Empire Strikes Back
00:22:00and of course Darth Vader from all three Star Wars films
00:22:06C-3PO's mask from all three Star Wars films
00:22:17an Imperial controller helmet from Star Wars
00:22:22and Luke's Rebel helmet that he used on the Imperial speeder bike seen here in the miniature
00:22:31this is a prototype for the Tauntaun the creature that Luke and Han rode in Empire Strikes Back
00:22:39and this is a stop-motion version of the Tauntaun
00:22:43these are miniature figures used on the sand skiff when the rebels escaped from Jabba the Hutt in Return of the Jedi
00:22:53the Jawa Sandcrawler from Star Wars
00:23:02the Jawa Sandcrawler from Star Wars this is a radio controlled model that was filmed in the deserts of Southern California
00:23:08the different versions of the Millennium Falcon
00:23:16the Imperial shuttle from Return of the Jedi
00:23:19two different versions
00:23:20this is one of the creatures from Jabba's palace
00:23:23this is Bubo
00:23:25and that's Jabba himself that's actually a half-scale Jabba
00:23:30Boba Fett from Empire and Jedi
00:23:33this is the cockpit dashboard of the land speeder
00:23:39Jabba's sail barge from Return of the Jedi
00:23:46this was built full-size in Yuma, Arizona
00:23:49the wampa ice creature from Empire Strikes Back
00:24:05the road creature from Return of the Jedi
00:24:06he was sitting outside of Jabba's palace and snatched up a crawling insect
00:24:10these are some of the various creatures that were in the background of Jabba's palace
00:24:15some of the various characters from the Jabba the Hutt scene were named Starfish
00:24:20Klaatu, Barada, and Niktu
00:24:23the lines that were used from The Day the Earth Stood Still
00:24:26Kwee Kwee from Moby Dick
00:24:29Woof, Hermiotal, E-Fantman, Six Six, Hoover
00:24:34that's Chewbacca's son from the 1978 Star Wars Holiday Special
00:24:43that's Yak Face from Return of the Jedi
00:24:48the Rancor from Return of the Jedi
00:24:53Yoda from Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi
00:24:59these are laser cannons from the Death Star
00:25:02early prototypes for different Star Wars ships
00:25:06the TIE Fighter and the Star Destroyer
00:25:09that's Darth Vader's damaged wing from Star Wars
00:25:13and various other crafts in different scales
00:25:17the ship in the case is the prototype X-wing from Star Wars
00:25:23and the ship on top of the case is the Y-wing prototype from Star Wars
00:25:27another cannon from Star Wars
00:25:31Darth Vader's mask that was used for the scene where his mask was taken off by Luke at the end of Return of the Jedi
00:25:39we hope you've enjoyed this special look at some of the elements that helped create the magic of the Star Wars universe
00:25:46R2, shall we?
00:25:48the Star Wars series started out as a movie that ended up being so big that I took each act and cut it into its own movie
00:25:55but in order to create that movie I had to create a backstory and there's this very elaborate backstory that that was created in order to get to the point of the first part of Star Wars the first film
00:26:02and it's that backstory that hasn't been told yet
00:26:09this story, the one that we've seen pays off in a much larger way because this story the one that we've seen pays off in a much larger way because it's the
00:26:16backstory that that was created in order to get to the point of the first part of Star Wars the
00:26:22first film and it's that backstory that hasn't been told yet this story the one that we've seen
00:26:31pays off in a much larger way because it's it's the you get a sense it's the son vindicating the
00:26:39father but we are doing this in a context that we don't know what where the father came from or what
00:26:45made him be what he is or what needs to be vindicated so we're just seeing the sort of
00:26:51indication without you know the the act being seen and so it's very interesting and we don't
00:26:58really understand I think clearly what the conflict is at this point the original concept really related
00:27:11to a father and a son and twins I mean a son and a daughter and it was that relationship that was
00:27:17the core of the of the story and it went through a lot of machinations before I even got to the first
00:27:27draft screenplay and you know various characters changed shapes and sizes and and there it isn't
00:27:39really until it evolved into what is close to what Star Wars now is and then I begin to go back and deal
00:27:47with the stories that evolved to get us to that point and that you know it's hard to say really
00:27:55where the you know how it evolves into a into a piece because it you know you evolve with various scenes
00:28:04and various moments and and when you're creating something like that it the story itself takes over
00:28:11and the characters take over and they begin to tell a story apart from what you're doing you know and you
00:28:16kind of go with it and you have to go with it and send you down some very funny paths then you have
00:28:21to figure out how to break that apart and put the puzzle back together so it makes sense and it's cohesive
00:28:25but that's the adventure of writing is the fact you're not sure where it's going to go and I think it
00:28:32took a while I mean I worked on Star Wars for a couple of years before it evolved into what it is
00:28:37when I first did Star Wars I did it as a big piece it was like a big script it was way too big to make
00:28:50into a movie so I took the first third of it which was basically the first act and I turned that into
00:28:57what was the original Star Wars in the process of rewriting that script and thinking of it as only a
00:29:06movie and not the whole you know trilogy I decided that Ben Kenobi really didn't serve any useful
00:29:17function after the point he fights with Darth Vader although in that draft he continued on through the air
00:29:26battle at the end and then he continued on through the whole script the other two stories and but
00:29:33when I took one and I looked at I said you know he just stands around for the last 25 percent of the
00:29:38film watching his air battle go on and he really has no real function and it would probably be much
00:29:43more satisfying powerful and interesting if he if Darth Vader were to kill him or he were to go into a
00:29:52different form I made that decision based on just working on Star Wars after Star Wars six was
00:30:00successful and I said well gee I could finish this entire script and I could do the other two parts I
00:30:05came to certain realizations about things that were in the script that were more difficult to now
00:30:14translate another one was the Wookiee in the end of the film it takes place on a Wookiee planet there's
00:30:23a big battle with the Empire and the Wookiees and that sort of thing since I couldn't do that I took one
00:30:28of the Wookiees and made him a co-pilot with Harrison but in the original concept the Wookiees were a
00:30:35primitive tribe that was sort of key to what was going on at the end of the film and then when I put
00:30:40Chewbacca in as a co-pilot I've kind of established them as a as a fairly sophisticated race and so
00:30:47then when I went back I couldn't use the Wookiees so I turned them into Ewoks so in the case of Ben
00:30:52Kenobi I had Luke being trained by Ben only I'd killed Ben off so now I had to come up with another
00:31:01Jedi who was older and wiser and shorter than Ben to train Luke and that's how
00:31:08that was the beginning premise of Yoda fairly early on that the idea of a space dogfight came
00:31:23into play wouldn't it be interesting to take that kind of visual excitement and put it into outer space
00:31:33so it was written I think very early on it's in almost all the drafts of the screenplay and in
00:31:42order to I had no idea at that point how I was going to accomplish it so it really wasn't until I sat down
00:31:48to to figure it out and and got together with some of the people who I brought in to start ILM that we
00:31:57began to to focus on the fact that we would have to create a different technology in order to
00:32:02accomplish that the the approach that I had which is to do it editorially rather than pictorially I
00:32:11think I had from the very beginning because it seemed inconceivable that I could actually do what
00:32:17Kubrick had done in 2001 and you know have it be done for any kind of amount of money that I would have
00:32:24access to so I figured I would you know do it by sleight of hand using a lot of editorial techniques
00:32:32and so I had to create something that was in motion and we did some what we call video Maddox which we
00:32:38take little models and move them around on video and transfer that and we did do some little animated
00:32:45pieces very crude animation and then I took you know footage from actual dogfights so you know we got
00:32:51out of gun cameras in World War one and World War two and you know various documentaries and that sort
00:32:57of thing and out of that created a sequence that is more visual in motion I wanted a sort of a slick
00:33:10used car dealer voice and tried everything I could to get another actor to come up to the performances that
00:33:20Tony had and I just couldn't find anybody to do it and and that was one of the reasons why I ended up
00:33:27with James Earl Jones as Darth Vader because it really takes the top class actor to pull off that
00:33:34kind of a kind of an idea to really be able to get into a part where you're just putting your voice over
00:33:42up an animated character or you know in this case it's not even an animated character it's a character
00:33:47that's already been shot so it's a reverse of what you get to do in animation in animation you get
00:33:52to sort of act it and create it that's when you're sort of working within the confines with somebody
00:33:57else has already created and the movement and the the timing and all that sort of thing has been
00:34:03determined for you and to be able to come up with a really excellent performance given that if you're
00:34:07not the one that's actually doing it it's extremely difficult he started out in an American graffiti
00:34:19and then I used him as a foil to do tests in Star Wars I didn't actually interview him for Star Wars he
00:34:30was brought in to do you know play against the other actors you know I had all these Luke's coming in and
00:34:36so he would play against them and I shot the screen test and you know when you watch the screen tests
00:34:42of him playing the role and the other actors who were up for the role playing the role there was
00:34:47no question about who was the best and you know so I hired him for Star Wars I was looking for a princess
00:34:59who was young uh ideally I wanted somebody about 16 years old 17 years old they both Luke and Leo were
00:35:07supposed to be around the same age and I wanted somebody you know teenager like so I was finding
00:35:13somebody who could hold her own against strong actors uh and you know and still be the the princess
00:35:21that she needed to be and be the authority figure that she needed to be and make it believable and she was
00:35:27able to do that and again you know with these actors all of them you know I tested I'd seen thousands
00:35:34of people tested you know 20 or 30 people and then gone down to a tape I think I'm telling to a very
00:35:43finite group of you know maybe seven or eight actors for each role on film and then studied it and then we
00:35:50did that process again so it was a very complicated procedure that took like nine months to go through so it
00:35:55wasn't it just a that's the one kind of thing it was a very arduous and thoughtful process
00:36:09George talked about Star Wars and he didn't have a title yet but the concept for a film that was going
00:36:16to be a big galactic war then when he started to talk to Fox it seemed to him a good idea to have some
00:36:24illustrations to show the the scope of the visuals that he planned which I think in George's mind
00:36:31was a big part of the movie and I told him that I'd love to do it he and Gary came over one day with
00:36:37the script I started on it the same day I think I really got into it right away working on those
00:36:43original paintings that were really done to sell the film George and Gary went off left me doing more
00:36:51paintings Fox wanted me to do more paintings Gary and George went to England and started scouting
00:36:57this whole thing from a budget point of view came back three or four weeks later saying looks like
00:37:05they're gonna do this film I never really thought it would be a film while I was working on those original
00:37:10paintings I it seemed so vast the project to me there was quite a few things set up by George and
00:37:18I felt I was drawing what he wanted things to look like I don't think that either of us thought that's
00:37:25the way the movie was gonna look necessarily these were just sketches that were the best we could do in
00:37:33terms of how we felt it should look but not necessarily the end product in the sense that this was really
00:37:40going to be it but it sort of turned out to be hit in the end for the most part and some of those
00:37:45paintings were virtually rendered intact on onto the screen in Star Wars for certain scenes
00:37:51in the production of a film there's really three jobs that relate to what you hear in the final
00:38:04soundtrack three creative jobs which ultimately result in what you hear one of them is a production
00:38:11recordist which is the person who is recording during the actual filming of a movie they'll have a
00:38:15microphone on the set and they will gather dialogue and some sound effects if they're available during
00:38:20the actual shooting secondly you'll have a sound editor and this is a person back in a studio who
00:38:26generally has a collection of sound or is able to go out and make new recordings with a portable
00:38:32tape recorder or something like that and bring them back and edit them and fit them into and add
00:38:37them on to the soundtrack of the film itself and the third person is a sound mixer this is a person whose
00:38:44job is to blend together all the different sounds that come in to make up a soundtrack
00:38:50such as music dialogue and sound effects those types of positions have really existed since
00:38:57sound films first came into being in one form or another the term sound designer has gotten usage in
00:39:05the last decade really since the Star Wars films began a new interest in creative soundtracks and motion
00:39:13pictures a sound designer I called myself a sound designer because I really wasn't functioning just as a
00:39:18production recordist or just a sound editor or just a sound mixer I did some of the job that all three of
00:39:25those people might do and but I was able to follow through from the point of production of a film that
00:39:32is I can go out and advise and make suggestions about things that could be recorded once I'd seen the
00:39:38script of the film I was on hand during some of the filming of the motion picture to gather sounds or at least see what
00:39:44was going on so I could run off myself and begin to manufacture and make sounds I know we need later on I was also on hand during the
00:39:53editing of the film to function as a sound editor and that job would be to pick sounds out of a library of our own making and edit them and
00:40:02synchronize them with the action on the screen and also I'd be involved in the sound mixing and it's not often that one person gets to move through all those different jobs on a film usually they're pretty strictly categorized and one person doesn't
00:40:13you know one sound recordist may not do any sound editing and the sound editor may not do any sound mixing that's the tradition of the division of labor and feature film
00:40:23but since I was an exception to that traditional division of labor I needed to describe myself in some new terms so I began to use the term sound designer which essentially meant that I although I emphasize my creative work in sound effects my job was to coordinate all the
00:40:43that you heard in the final soundtrack
00:40:50a film such as Star Wars the soundtrack is completely fabricated in the studio probably on the average 15 or 20 percent of the dialogue which is in the final film was originally recorded on the set during the performance by the actors the remaining 85 percent of that dialogue was added later
00:41:13the actors coming back and replacing their lines of dialogue with different actors coming in to give voices to characters or monsters or puppets or something that might be in the show all of the sound effects you hear in the film are added later everything from footsteps to cloth rustle to the handling of props to the sound of vehicles weapons aliens and exploding death
00:41:36death stars those are all things which didn't exist at the time of shooting they had to be manufactured after the fact
00:41:43and of course the music wasn't there during the original shooting so all all the elements which go into the final soundtrack are there's thousands of them really and to keep track of it all one has to come up with a system of identifying each sound of giving it a name
00:41:58giving it a description and so as a sound designer one of the things you do is to collect a lot of sound categorize it and you keep tapes on your shelf for nowadays sound stored on a computer disk and it's very much like an encyclopedia you have hundreds and hundreds of sounds I think I have six thousand tapes and say accumulated over twelve years of just sound design work and that is a result of going out and recording lots of material and
00:42:28animals aircraft carriers jets appliance motors whatever it might be bringing the back and you need to actually select from those tapes the things you find the most interesting and categorize them and put it down on a list so you can read it and find things later because your memory can't often hang on to every little detail and so you need to somehow make a catalog of sound which you can refer to when you're on the hunt for something specifically
00:42:58so part of being a sound designer is being a librarian really in collecting a lot of data and having it arranged in an organized way such that you or the people you're working with the other editors or sound people can find things in this encyclopedia of sound
00:43:17when I did Star Wars it was the very beginning of my career and I had a lot to learn like I knew very little and so everything I did at that time was going down a new road to some extent and just completing the film was a major goal and a source of a great deal of energy and stress and so on when it came time to work on Empire I felt based on the experience that I had had on Star Wars
00:43:47the experience I had gotten the feedback I had gotten the I learned from you know you make mistakes and you look at the things that are wrong with one film and you say well now next time I'm going to learn better we had very high expectations for Empire and so stylistically I wasn't attempting to do something really different but I was attempting to do the same thing on a much grander scale
00:44:17I had a lot more new things it wasn't I wasn't going to take a lot more new things it wasn't I wasn't going to just take a library of material made from the first film and just copy it over and use it again I had all the same characters and they did different things the Wookie said new things R2 got a large part to play
00:44:31um we had all kinds of new vehicles and machine reading and different wheeling and the first film had one kind of TIE fire and Empire had three different kinds and we had quite a range of spaceships to deal with so they all needed different and new sounds
00:44:46so Empire was just doing the same job on a grander scale with perhaps even higher expectations a lot of what was done on Star Wars was done in a kind of innocence those of us that worked on it were interested in fantasy or science fiction movies we had no
00:44:53uh did not anticipate the film would be genuinely popular we thought maybe we'd please the science fiction fans that we knew and friends and this sort of thing we didn't know it would become a sort of worldwide phenomenon so when it came to doing Empire we did feel and I know I do
00:45:23I did great pressure now that you had to succeed and do something much great much higher level in order to get the same effect and so it's a great deal of creative pressure to just outdo ourselves and so on Empire we did a lot more field recording we're not recorded tried to record something new and original for practically everything and a lot more time was spent mixing and stereo
00:45:53the concept for the sound of Darth Vader came about from the first film and the script described him as some kind of a strange dark being who was in some kind of life support system that he was breathing strange that maybe you heard sounds of mechanics or motors he might be part robot he might be part human we really didn't know
00:46:21and so the original concept I had of Darth Vader was a very noise producing individual he came into a scene he was breathing like some squeezing windmill you could hear his heart beating he moved his head you heard motors turning he was almost like some kind of a robot in some sense and he made so much noise that we had to sort of cut back on that concept in the first experimental mixes we did in Star Wars he sounded like an operating room like a you know emergency room you know moving around
00:46:50all right
00:46:57Chewie was actually the first voice that I was hired to work on back when Star Wars was just in the script stage they knew they had this character named Chewbacca who was going to have to act and
00:47:20appear in the appearance scenes with the other actors and the question was what would he sound like he's not going to speak English he's going to speak some sort of alien animal type of voice supposed to be an intelligent language but not English and not German not French not something we really recognize it had to be something made out of animal
00:47:27one of the first meetings I had with George Lucas he we talked this over and said something about maybe bears would sound good he had heard some recording maybe somewhere bears growling and making vocalizations he
00:47:34didn't say where that was but he said that'd be one of the things you might look into and we had a list of different animals to go out and record and record
00:47:41so in this sort of year I spent recording preliminary sounds for star wars I collected lots of bear samples andy andy andy andy andy andy andy
00:48:03so in this sort of year I spent recording preliminary sounds for Star Wars I collected
00:48:10lots of bear sounds as well as walruses and lions and badgers and sick animals and you know domestic
00:48:19and all sorts of things and out of all these recordings you could extract little bits of
00:48:24sound little grunts and moans and hugs and args purring sounds whatever it might be and I made
00:48:32I collected put all in one tape essentially all these sounds which I thought had emotional feelings
00:48:38associated with you play this sound it sounded affectionate you played this other sound it
00:48:43sounded angry and in that manner I kind of had these categories of little sounds that each had
00:48:50an emotional tone associated with it so I began cutting those together to try to get a sense of
00:48:55speech out of chewy and to also get something that would work well with the way his mouth move he didn't
00:49:01have articulated lips he could basically open and close his mouth so you also need to create a sound
00:49:07which would be believable as coming from a mouth which was operating like his did through a great
00:49:15deal of trial and error came up with the voice for Chewbacca in that fashion so it's a voice which is
00:49:21manufactured completely out of animal sounds principally bears and synchronized with the performance that
00:49:30shot during film R2D2 was probably the most difficult voice to work on because it was the most abstract here we had
00:49:50supposedly a machine that was going to talk it was going to act it was going to draw on our emotions it
00:49:56was going to be in scenes with Alec Guinness and work as another actor yet it was a machine it didn't
00:50:04have a face with a smile or a mouth or eyes or ears and it couldn't speak English and it couldn't even
00:50:09mouth words at least Chewbacca could make kind of animal sounds which you could attribute a personality to
00:50:17the initial experiments and coming up with our team voice were all directed toward making a machine
00:50:23type of language something that would come out of a computer out of a robot and although the voices were
00:50:28very interesting I think which I made they all seem to lack a sort of human quality they seem to
00:50:34machine-like and R2 was not really just a machine he was also this lovable little assistant robot and it
00:50:43came about after trial and error and trying different sounds that one day I just started making the
00:50:49sounds I said well maybe R2 should kind of sound like this and you'd imitate a little baby sound you
00:50:55know something like that sound you might have heard a little infant making when they were learning to
00:51:00talk communicating some kind of emotion but not using well-formed English word so the idea came up to
00:51:08really combine this sort of human sound with the electronic sound that way we'd still might be able
00:51:14to have the character of a machine but get the personality and the emotion of a living organism so
00:51:20I learned to combine my voice with electronic sounds which I would play on the keyboard of a synthesizer
00:51:27and in combining the two I was able to get sense of performance out of the character and to get some
00:51:35motion a motion into the sounds that R2 made because you can put an inflection and intonation on the
00:51:42voice and yet you were using non word sound to communicate so it is just a process of trial and
00:51:50error getting that and it eventually just clicked in
00:52:05the lightsabers are one of my favorite sounds and in fact it was the very first sound I made for the
00:52:12whole series for some reason after I read the script even though my assignment was first to find a voice
00:52:18for Chewbacca and then a voice for R2 and then well maybe come up with some sounds for laser guns and
00:52:24other things the lightsaber fascinated me at that time when the script had first come out they had some
00:52:31paintings that Ralph McQuarrie had done so that there were some concepts visually of what some of these things would look like
00:52:36and those pictures were very inspiring
00:52:38because they gave an idea of the direction
00:52:40we were trying to go
00:52:42in the look of the film and it was inspiring to me to
00:52:46therefore think of sounds that might fit that kind of
00:52:50visual style and
00:52:52I could kind of hear the sound in my head of the lightsabers even though it's just a painting of a lightsaber
00:52:58I could really just sort of hear this sound I think maybe somewhere in my subconscious I had seen a lightsaber before
00:53:05and I went to that time I was still a graduate student at USC
00:53:10and I was a projectionist and we had a projection booth with some very very old
00:53:15simplex projectors in them and they had an interlock motor which connected them to the system
00:53:21which when they just sat there and idled made a wonderful humming sound and it would slowly change in pitch
00:53:27and it would beat against another motor there were two motors and they would harmonize with each other
00:53:32and it was kind of that inspiration
00:53:34that sound was the inspiration for the lightsaber and I went and recorded that sound
00:53:39but it wasn't quite enough it was just a humming sound
00:53:42what was missing was kind of a buzzy sparkling sound
00:53:46the scintillating element which I was looking for
00:53:48and that I found one day by accident I was carrying a microphone across the room between recording
00:53:57I was recording something over here and I walked over here with the microphone
00:54:00passed by a television set which was on the floor which was on at the time
00:54:04without the sound turned up but the microphone passed right behind the picture tube
00:54:08and as it did this particular microphone produced an unusual hum
00:54:13it picked up transmission from the television set
00:54:16and a signal was induced into its sound reproducing mechanism
00:54:23and that was a great buzz actually
00:54:26so I took that buzz recorded it and combined it with the projector motor sound
00:54:29and that 50-50 kind of combination of those two sounds became the basic lightsaber tone
00:54:36which was then once we had established this tone of the lightsaber
00:54:40first you had to get the sense of the lightsaber moving
00:54:43because characters would carry it around
00:54:45they'd whip it through the air
00:54:46they would of course thrust and slash at each other in fights
00:54:50and to achieve this additional sense of movement
00:54:54I played the sound over a speaker in a room
00:54:59just the humming sound the humming and buzzing combined as an endless sound
00:55:04and then took another microphone and waved it around in the air
00:55:07next to that speaker so that it would come close to the speaker and go away
00:55:11you could whip it by
00:55:13and what happens when you do that by recording with a moving microphone
00:55:15is you get a doppler shift
00:55:17you get a pitch shift in the sound
00:55:20and therefore you can produce a very authentic facsimile of a moving sound
00:55:27and therefore it gave the lightsaber a sense of movement
00:55:29and it worked well on screen at that point
00:55:32the walkers were a lot of fun to work on because they were big mechanical beasts
00:55:53and it was a pleasure sometimes to work on just big machinery rather than just voices
00:55:58and we knew the walkers were big and they were heavy and they were lumbering about
00:56:02and because they were animated they had a certain rhythmic walk to them
00:56:06and so the objective was to come up with a sound for the walkers
00:56:10to give them a real sense of mass and weight
00:56:13after all they were miniatures and they were being animated
00:56:16and one of the things about one of the drawbacks of animation
00:56:20is that it's hard to produce a sense of mass in an object
00:56:25you know if you want something to seem like it's many tons or the size of a building
00:56:29it's it takes particularly good animation in order to create that sense of weight
00:56:35but we can help that along a great deal with the proper sound
00:56:39so the walker was made up of different elements
00:56:42it had motors and it had metal clunks and it had a weapon sound
00:56:46the principal sound of a foot stomping along this very big metallic clang
00:56:53kind of a rattling or a wrinkle drill was the sound of a metal shearing machine
00:56:57which is a big stamping machine in a factory which rolls of metal come out of a conveyor belt
00:57:04it just cuts them off into pieces cuts it it's like a big chopping block for iron and steel
00:57:10and Randy Tom one of the fellows working with me at that time
00:57:15he went out and recorded some of these metal shearing machines for me
00:57:18he brought the recordings in
00:57:20I picked parts of the recordings that I liked and made them into a rhythmic walk cycle
00:57:25but in addition to just the metal shearing machine clanging along
00:57:29I needed some big metallic squeaking sounds
00:57:32kind of like the knee joint squeaking all the time
00:57:35every time it would lift its leg there'd be a big sort of a moaning sound
00:57:38and that I achieved by playing with the dumpster door
00:57:43a dumpster that was dropped off at my house one day filled in the street
00:57:47to be filled with trash
00:57:48I'd go out and throw the trash in it and I'd open the lid
00:57:51it made this wonderful sound because it hadn't been oiled in its entire life
00:57:54and so that dumpster became a major part of the walker as well
00:58:08the sound of explosions has always been a great passion for me
00:58:16and so when it came to battle scenes or the destruction of the Death Star or anything of that sort
00:58:22I always got into it quite seriously and spent a lot of time recording explosions and weapons
00:58:31and trying to figure out ways to record them to get the maximum visceral effect out of the event
00:58:40real explosions are very difficult to record because they're so loud
00:58:44and quite often they're so sudden
00:58:46short duration sound that normal recording system doesn't get something that's very interesting
00:58:53that's a big clap or a big pop or something of that sort
00:58:57if you listen to explosions often on the news things recorded in actual warfare
00:59:03sometimes it doesn't seem to have quite the body and the tone range that you are used to hearing in motion pictures
00:59:09I went out and did a lot of recording of explosions
00:59:13I went to White Sands Missile Range to record missiles and rockets taking off and impacting in air-to-air interceptions
00:59:20I went to many military bases and recorded tanks shooting and artillery
00:59:27I had I got myself in a situation once where I was being bombarded by howitzers
00:59:32from about five miles away and I was in a trench and they were dropping shells
00:59:37500 feet out in front of me where my microphones were
00:59:40blew up one pair of microphones cut cables put some more out
00:59:44ducked shrapnel but got some great recordings and repeated that experience over and over again
00:59:49over the years always in a quest which I call the search for the ultimate explosion
00:59:55and I've gone a great distance in this but I don't know if I've gotten it yet
01:00:00at one time there was like no decisions how to do any of this stuff
01:00:13and all there were were these wonderful color artworks that Ralph had done of big walking machines
01:00:18so we had to figure out how we're gonna do this and one of the thoughts was to make a robot
01:00:22we're gonna make a complete robotic one that would actually kind of move by itself
01:00:26a walking machine maybe five feet tall or something like that
01:00:29and and that seemed like it could be very complicated and very expensive to do
01:00:34but my background is in before Star Wars was really in stop motion animation
01:00:38and I'd seen King Kong when I was a kid now and so I pushed to do it in stop motion
01:00:42because they're machines anyway and if they move sort of like a little staccato like it would just make them look more like machines
01:00:48so we decided we did it in stop motion and we did it with models that were as big as a person can animate
01:00:53which is about the size that a person can get their hands in to move it frame at a time
01:00:57and we did it in front of big paintings that were instead of blue screen compositing paintings that were done to look like the sky
01:01:03but painted so realistically you thought they were actually outdoors
01:01:06the sets that were built were baking soda
01:01:09and with trap doors in them so the animators could pop up animate the figure and go back down and you could shoot a frame of film
01:01:15and at 24 frames a second we sort of sometimes we'd get a shot a day if we were doing real good
01:01:21which is like a five second shot
01:01:23so we had scales that were like five foot or four foot tall one
01:01:26for the for scenes when it sort of blew up some part of it blew up and it had to fall over
01:01:30those were done with high-speed photography
01:01:32and we had some photo cutouts that were in the backgrounds or sometimes when you see about six or seven of them
01:01:37and the ones in the background are just Polaroid photo cutouts that are sort of animated
01:01:41and then we have little tiny ones that we used for the very opening shot
01:01:45I think when you see them or some of the speeder shots when you see them off in the distance
01:01:48real tiny ones off in the distance there
01:01:50and we just made them as small as we could possibly make them to do it
01:01:53so we had lots of different scales that we mixed and matched depending on the shot
01:01:58that was no laser blast something hit us
01:02:12Han get up here
01:02:13come on Joey
01:02:16Joey
01:02:18Asteroids
01:02:19I don't know
01:02:20Joey set 271
01:02:23What are you doing?
01:02:25You're not actually going into an asteroid field
01:02:28They'd be crazy to follow us, wouldn't they?
01:02:30You shouldn't have to do this to impress me
01:02:35Sir, the possibility of successfully navigating an asteroid field is approximately 3,720 to 1
01:02:41Never tell me the odds
01:03:02Out!
01:03:05No!
01:03:06Out!
01:03:07Out!
01:03:09Out!
01:03:10You said you wanted to be around and I made a mistake
01:03:12Well this could be it, sweetheart
01:03:13I take it back
01:03:14We're going to get pulverized if we stay out here much longer
01:03:18You can argue with that
01:03:19Pulverized?
01:03:20I'm going in closer to one of the big ones
01:03:22Closer?
01:03:23Closer!
01:03:24Closer!
01:03:25And then we have the other saber
01:03:43What if a bird was lost?
01:03:46Oh, this is suicide.
01:03:54There, that looks pretty good.
01:03:55Oh, that looks pretty good.
01:03:58Yeah, that'll do nicely.
01:04:00Excuse me, man, but where are we going?
01:04:13I hope you know what you're doing.
01:04:15Yeah, me too.
01:04:37The third one, I think, it seemed to me that I had a lot shorter time frame to do it in.
01:04:43The second one was, you know, by far the most difficult of all of them to work on.
01:04:48But the third one had a very, sort of a tighter production schedule with a lot more shots.
01:04:55And I suppose they were a lot more action oriented also.
01:04:58But it wasn't, I didn't have any sort of sense that here's the third film and it's going to be, you know, everything's going to have to be faster than anything we've done before.
01:05:06Although it sort of came out that way in doing it and, you know, it was just, it was just a big, huge, massive, you know, project like the other two.
01:05:15But I think we got a lot better.
01:05:17And I think that shows up in the show.
01:05:18I think there's, there's a sense of roughness on the, in the first one and even to a certain extent in the second one that I think is pretty much gone in the third one.
01:05:26You know, we've figured this stuff out and all the energy could go into the, the creation of the images, not fighting the technology to make those images.
01:05:38Programming the spaceships in the Star Wars films, I thought sort of really about what the attitude of the pilot might be.
01:05:43And some of them, you know, you don't spend a lot of time thinking about this, but you can add like a skid to the motion of a spaceship when it's going around a turn that you see and you sense it.
01:05:53And it looks better because you've seen, you know, race cars in Indianapolis skid around a turn and it just looks really nice.
01:06:00So you put stuff like that into it and you can relate to it and it just, you know, it adds another level of, of connection to it so that the audience can relate.
01:06:10Oh yeah, you know, I, that's, that's right.
01:06:12That's not only right, that's really neat.
01:06:13But by the time we got to the third one, you had, you know, you had, there was a lot more of each of those.
01:06:22You know, we had the Redwoods and the outer space and the desert and those were each a completely different geography that we had to deal with.
01:06:29And there was more that took place within each of those geographies and took place in the first one.
01:06:35I think one of the, the biggest things of the Star Wars films that, that's distinguished it from, from the other films we were doing at the same time.
01:06:43Was that you'd have this one film that had all these different locations in them that you had to work in and you had to solve all these sets of problems.
01:06:51So for Dragon Slayer, once we kind of solved the go motion problem, we could do it for all the shots and it was pretty much, you know, we could figure it out.
01:06:59For E.T., once we figured out how to fly the bicycles, we're fine, you know, we can do it for all the shots we need.
01:07:04But, you know, once you figured out, you know, how the walkers are going to walk, then you've got to figure out still how the Tauntaun is going to be moving around because it's a completely different type of character and then how you're going to have, you know, the speeder bikes working.
01:07:15Each show had all these different, you know, just a much bigger selection of problems in them that, that, you know, that needed solving.
01:07:28There was quite an effort to keep the cost down on this show.
01:07:31No matter how big it looks, you know, it's like, you know, it's always too expensive.
01:07:35And Dragon Slayer had been pretty expensive to do the go motion stuff and that.
01:07:39And we were looking for another way to do this sort of creatures that were cheaper.
01:07:43And we thought about, I think we thought about rod puppets.
01:07:46But we wanted to try, George wanted to try, and we thought, okay, we'll give it a try, this guy in a suit, if we could make the suit interesting enough.
01:07:52So Phil Tippett came up with an interesting idea where you've got, I think there's a person in the middle of the suit, but you've got another guy on the, on the left and another, whose right arm is in the, and the guy on the right whose left arm is in it.
01:08:05And if you can mat all those people out, you get a, you get a shape, a moving shape that is nothing that a person could ever do in a suit.
01:08:12So it would look a lot more unique and interesting, but it didn't quite make it.
01:08:16You know, when it was all said and done, it still looked like it didn't move right.
01:08:20It's got all the problems with sort of, you know, big soup things that have to react to gravity and things that are just like tip-offs to, you know, they're like Muppets.
01:08:31They're like just big Muppets and people are so used to what those type of puppets look like that, you know, because you were playing with them by the time you were a year old, that you just can't fool people and that stuff.
01:08:41So instead we went with the rod puppets and we made a figure probably about this tall, about 18 inches, and it was all worked from below.
01:08:47The head and all was cable actuator from below. The arms were controlled from around the elbows going out below.
01:08:53It was in a miniature set with probably about four or five puppeteers and, you know, and the camera guys, we were just like jammed right up against it, shooting it.
01:09:02And we did it sort of as a live action shoot. We shot high speed though. Sometimes we shot backwards.
01:09:08Anything that we could do to get it away from that, again, that sort of Muppet rod puppet look.
01:09:13And, you know, we'd go, so I think there were maybe a couple of scenes that were shot under cranked also, whatever we could do.
01:09:19And then Mark was pretty much split screened in to it from the set done over in England where he was blue screened into the foreground on that.
01:09:27So there's a lot of cheats in that shot, I mean, in that sequence. And if you, you know, you don't ever quite see the whole character and you don't see it quite walking.
01:09:34But for the film and for that point in it, you know, it was just, you know, it was fine for it.
01:09:38And it didn't really need to show any more than what it did.
01:09:46Dealing with the real Redwoods, which we were, because we had all the actors shooting all the plates, in a lot of ways made it,
01:09:52it's always easier to do it because we could visualize 99% of the shot.
01:09:56All you had to do was like just visualize where the walker was going to be and what its behavior was going to be in the shot.
01:10:01That was a lot of fun shooting that stuff up in Northern California.
01:10:04And with all the pyrochargers in the trees and everything going off,
01:10:08and we had multiple cameras shooting the big moments when everything would happen.
01:10:12It was just, you know, it was really spectacular.
01:10:14And then going through all the footage and finding the bits and pieces, you know,
01:10:17that George was going to use for the stuff was really, you know, really pretty neat.
01:10:22The bike chase sequence was a whole different set of problems in that that was like racing through it at 100 miles an hour.
01:10:30And there's no way to do that. You know, we could go along a road, but how do you get rid of the road?
01:10:34And, you know, you can run, but you can't run 100 miles an hour on a motorcycle and you'd crash.
01:10:39You know, that was a whole different, a different thing.
01:10:41I really, in my mind, treated that as a completely different thing than any of the other, than the walker sequence.
01:10:47At the beginning of the sequence, the original conception of it, George asked Joe and I to figure out sort of, you know,
01:10:55he said, well, here's the beginning of the sequence and here's the end.
01:10:57And you guys kind of, you know, do what you want for the middle and let me know what you got.
01:11:01So we started thinking about it. We did some storyboards on it and came up with quite a bit of it.
01:11:08And then George looked at that and said, no, no, no, no, no. That's a good start, but.
01:11:11And then he went and refined it and made it, you know, this big elaborate sequence that it is right now.
01:11:17That was so big that it was hard to even figure out where to begin orchestrating how you're going to make the sequence.
01:11:24Because again, it's like 105 shots in three minutes.
01:11:27And you've got side views and forward and backwards and explosions and, you know, tracking shots and locked off shots.
01:11:33And it's just a huge thing. But the setting is kind of basically sort of the same.
01:11:37So what we did was we did an animatic on it, which was a little version of it with a brand new camera that had just come out.
01:11:44A little video camera. It was like only about this big with a little lens on it.
01:11:48Now they're all over the place. But at this point, there wasn't anything really that small.
01:11:52And we did the whole thing on videotape with little model dolls.
01:11:56We had dolls about this big and made little plastic bikes like this and had rods coming out of the back of them.
01:12:00And set up on a table, a four by eight sheet of plywood.
01:12:04A fur rug that we got from a local fabric store.
01:12:09And some cardboard tubes for the redwood trees.
01:12:13And a couple of lights to light them and then sort of held these as like little toys.
01:12:16And you could hold a camera then in the other hand.
01:12:19The camera wasn't this big, you know, camera for shooting video.
01:12:22It was a small, likely one.
01:12:23So they could be as flexible as the scene needed to be.
01:12:26Because the scene had to be really flexible.
01:12:28And we did, over a period of like two or three days, we did an animatic, which is essentially the film.
01:12:33And you can compare it to what's in the film.
01:12:35And they looked, you know, almost exactly the same.
01:12:37Now that we were out of the storyboard stage and we had visuals to look at.
01:12:41And everybody agreed, yeah, the visual of it, the running footage of this looks really good.
01:12:46Then we could break it down into how many shots we had looking to the front.
01:12:49How many shots looking to the back, to the left, to the right.
01:12:52How many were like one off shots.
01:12:54And then we could schedule it.
01:12:55We thought at the beginning about building a miniature forest that we could race through.
01:13:00Motion control.
01:13:02But in order to be able to just get the speed.
01:13:05Because the idea behind it was an incredible sense of speed.
01:13:07Plus there was a huge number of shots.
01:13:08It was like 105 shots in three minutes.
01:13:11So incredible amount of work in that little self-contained sequence.
01:13:16But I decided to try a test.
01:13:18And we shot it right at Samuel Taylor Park here in Marin County.
01:13:22Of a Steadicam, which is a device that Garrett Brown made years ago.
01:13:26And I actually had Garrett fly out.
01:13:28And we did the test of just walking through, shooting at a very slow frame rate.
01:13:31At one frame a second.
01:13:32And the Steadicam sort of stabilizes the camera as he's walking through.
01:13:36And then he has to kind of think very slowly about what a pan to the right.
01:13:41Or like racing around a corner would be.
01:13:43And very slowly navigate the Steadicam around like this corner.
01:13:48So you don't move quickly like you're driving a car.
01:13:50You kind of look ahead 300 feet.
01:13:52And now you begin this slow embankment as you're walking toward that very slow.
01:13:57And when you project it at normal speed, it's got this incredible sense of speed.
01:14:00So we started, you know, so once we had the technology worked out as to how to do the backgrounds,
01:14:05then the whole sequence got a lot simpler.
01:14:07And we didn't have to focus our attention to building these big models.
01:14:12We built small models about this, probably about this long, for the sort of medium shots
01:14:18and longer shots of the guys on the bikes.
01:14:20And we shot those on motion control but at a very slow camera speed with, like, our first sort of experiments we got into in rod puppets
01:14:29that we later, literally later in the show, used a lot more in the Rancor sequence.
01:14:33And which means you can sort of grab a rod coming out of Luke's back and out of his helmet
01:14:37and moving again very slowly as the camera's shooting in one frame a second.
01:14:41You can get some good choreography of the characters making them look like they're on the bikes.
01:14:46Because their hands are sort of attached, their rear ends are attached, their legs are attached,
01:14:50but all these joints, if they're free and flexible, can move around.
01:14:54They look like they're sort of moving around there.
01:15:04Originally, to get things choreographed and designed correctly, what we did for the first space battle,
01:15:09the first big space battle, is we shot on tape using models, very simplistic models on sticks,
01:15:18shot against ultimate blue screen.
01:15:21We shot our own version of the space battle,
01:15:23matting in ships against little drawings of backgrounds we would do
01:15:26and really funky cardboard cutouts of things.
01:15:30And we would do, mat in like the Millennium Falcon on top of some other ships we would put in.
01:15:34You can see the sticks and the shots and all that.
01:15:37George took all that material and cut it together.
01:15:40Actually, I think we took the first space battle and did our own cut.
01:15:44And then we sat down, every one of us that was involved, and did our own sound effects for it.
01:15:49So as the ships are going around, we'd be just using our mouths and just faking it.
01:15:55And apparently it went over real well.
01:15:57I was hoping it would be in the movie, but I guess not.
01:15:59It was fun doing that because it didn't have to be as precise and as time-consuming as the real shots had to be.
01:16:05So George took that, he cut the sequences, and cut that around the live-action footage that he already had.
01:16:11And based on that, we would set up the real models and start shooting away.
01:16:18The End
01:16:23THE END
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01:18:23THE END
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01:19:23THE END
01:19:53THE END
01:20:23THE END
01:20:53THE END
01:21:23THE END
01:21:25THE END
01:21:29THE END
01:21:31THE END
01:21:33THE END
01:21:35THE END
01:21:37THE END
01:21:39THE END
01:21:41THE END
01:21:43THE END
01:21:45THE END
01:21:47THE END
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01:21:55THE END
01:21:57THE END
01:21:59THE END
01:22:01THE END
01:22:11THE END
01:22:13THE AND
01:22:17and Darth Maeder.
01:22:29A journey to alien worlds.
01:22:35A rebellion against oppression.
01:22:39An epic of heroes and villains.
01:22:43An adventure as vast as the universe.
01:22:52Revenge of the Jedi.
01:22:55Coming May 25th to a theater in your galaxy.
01:23:13Return for the climactic clash between the forces of good and evil.
01:23:22Return to a galaxy far, far away.
01:23:31Return of the Jedi.
01:23:32The next chapter in the continuing Star Wars saga.
01:23:44The battle for freedom rages on.
01:23:47The heart of a hero.
01:23:58The courage of a rebel.
01:24:05The strength of a leader.
01:24:07The loyalty of comrades.
01:24:14The power of the force.
01:24:20The cunning of the enemy.
01:24:27A destiny revealed.
01:24:29Is Darth Vader my father?
01:24:33A legend fulfilled.
01:24:38An epic of heroes, villains and aliens from a thousand worlds.
01:24:44Hit your crap!
01:24:48The quest continues.
01:24:49The circle closes.
01:24:51The saga lives on.
01:24:53Return of the Jedi.
01:24:55Begins May 25th at a theater in your galaxy.
01:24:57The saga lives on.
01:24:59Return of the Jedi.
01:25:01Begins May 25th at a theater in your galaxy.
01:25:03Return.
01:25:04To a galaxy far, far away.
01:25:05Ready, everybody.
01:25:06Chewie.
01:25:07Let's see what this piece of junk can do.
01:25:08Here we go again.
01:25:09Let's see what this piece of junk can do.
01:25:10Here we go again.
01:25:11True answer.
01:25:12True.
01:25:14Stories May 25th at a theater in your galaxy.
01:25:18In the movie, the sea.
01:25:18If, let's wait.
01:25:19The sea.
01:25:20In the movie, the身.
01:25:24Oh look.
01:25:25The courage of the dragon and the naked sea.
01:25:26Of course, oh.
01:25:27Oh.
01:25:28The new humans are eating.
01:25:29It's all theleb inhibitors.
01:25:30The Deadpool on the planet.
01:25:31From theeen.
01:25:32In the 80s.
01:25:33Here we go again.
01:25:41You will bring Captain Solo and the Wookiee to me.
01:25:49Return to heroic adventure.
01:25:51You don't know the power of the dark side.
01:26:03Return to the ultimate confrontation.
01:26:08Freeze!
01:26:09Oh dear.
01:26:11I love you.
01:26:13I know.
01:26:14Return for the climactic chapter of the Star Wars saga.
01:26:26Exciting is hardly the word I would choose.
01:26:28But most of all, return for the fun of it.
01:26:33Return of the Jedi.