From Script to Concept Art
January 31, 1975: “Artoo and Threepio leave the pod in the desert”.
February 14–15, 1975: “Laser duel”: Jedi Deak Starkiller fights Darth Vader on the rebel ship as described in the second draft.
An early color study and a detailed preparatory pencil study for the “Laser Duel” between Deak Starkiller and Darth Vader.
Ralph McQuarrie created about twenty-one production paintings, working mostly in gouache, opaque or semi-opaque watercolor, or a combination of gouache and acrylic. Following his meetings with George Lucas, he finished five key illustrations very quickly, taking a day or two for each, between the end of January and the first few days of March 1975. As model maker Colin Cantwell would finish approved concept vehicles, such as the Y-wing, McQuarrie would implement them into his paintings. (Note: All tides in quotes are from McQuarrie’s notes.)
“The first one I did was Artoo-Detoo and See-Threepio walking across the sand. George had a picture of the little robot from Silent Running [1971],” McQuarrie says. “They were like square boxes with legs. So I thought, Well, if they’re square, I’ll make mine round, which was like a garbage can with a dome on top. Instead of two legs, I gave Artoo three legs, figuring he’d throw himself forward like a person on crutches. That would be the way he would walk. I picked up some landscape from a photograph [of the Oregon coast] because I liked the cliff, and I just put the sand dunes in.”
“I showed Ralph the Metropolis robot and the Silent Running robot, and I said I want something like this,” Lucas adds. “And we’re still putzing with it. I knew I wanted one via Metropolis; it’s in the script, I wrote it that way. I wanted one to be a stubby little robot and I wanted one to be a kind of human robot. One is a public relations guy and one is just a standard robot robot.”
Audio element not supported.
Ralph McQuarrie on working with Lucas on the first illustrations. (Interview by Arnold, 1979)
(2:47)
February 22, 1975: “Battle for Death Star (fighters dive on sphere).”
In this early painting, based on Lucas’s description (which was inspired by a John Berkey illustration), the Death Star is illustrated for the first time. Its size was still small enough for individual windows to be seen, as at that time it was just a floating weapon/space station—the big hole on the bottom being where the cannon would emerge, as shown in McQuarries sketches (above). “George wanted the Y-wing to be like a World War II TBF Torpedo Bomber,” Cantwell says, “which had a gunner in the belly, facing back to cover the tail, and on top behind the pilot, and then the pilot facing forward. So the Y-wing could have that kind of interaction between three people on it.”
February 20, 1975: “Imperial City, Alderaan—city floats in gray clouds.”
This painting is usually not counted among McQuarrie’s first for The Star Wars, for reasons that will become clear later.
A series of McQuarrie thumbnail sketches for his cantina painting—and for a painting hitherto unknown to this period: that of Annikin Starkiller, who, in Lucas’s 1974 rough draft, is attacked after crash-landing on the jungle planet of Yavin by a ravenous insect-like creature (third image above). Consequently, that McQuarrie painting is the only completed illustration known to exist for the rough draft. Why Lucas might have requested that McQuarrie illustrate that moment from the rough draft is open to speculation; it’s possible he was toying with the idea of reinserting the scene in a subsequent draft.
March 6, 1975: “Cantina.”
As per the second draft, Han Solo tries to outdraw an alien with Luke and the robots watching. “The fifth painting represents the inside of the cantina,” McQuarrie says. “I had thought of it as being a central gallery over which would be a skylight; the bar was in that gallery, with daylight coming down. I thought of it first as a much more primitive place, with torn banners and regular archways. There wasn’t much in it that would indicate that this was part of a society that had a lot of technical expertise. George looked at it and liked the feeling of it (above left), but he had me put in a mechanical-looking thing.” The technological device is similar to the “chrome ping-pong sized balls” that the Aquillian ranger uses to wreak havoc on the stormtroopers in the second draft (above right). “So I put in these little seekers. George envisioned them as seeking out a certain person—and when they would come to that person, they would kill him. It was like an automatic police force that could carry out a death sentence.”
* * *
CALLING ALL CREW
April 1975 marked the beginning of what can only be described as a mind-boggling overlapping of activity for Lucas and company. If the first two years were marked by the horror of the blank page and the agony of writing, the next two years very likely left little time to feel anything. On or a few days after April 5, 1975, Kurtz traveled to London, taking all of McQuarrie’s paintings with him to use as reference when interviewing potential department heads, because the next step was getting things going in England. Moreover, the more The Star Wars operated as a working production, the more likely Fox would begin to back them financially.
“Why England?” Kurtz asks rhetorically. “Because it was the solution to a multifaceted problem. There was the cost factor. Certain things are cheaper in certain parts of the world. We had investigated Spain, Yugoslavia, and several other countries, and we’d come up with what we thought was the best compromise. We also wanted locations for the desert planet to be in North Africa, and it’s much closer to North Africa from England than from the United States. We could find deserts elsewhere—New Mexico, Arizona, or Old Mexico, Central America, either very good or spectacular—but we wanted slightly bizarre architecture that still looked real. Also we wanted an English cameraman, with a certain level of technological sophistication.”
Lucas and his producer had done the math that showed the United States would cost almost twice as much as England in some below-the-line areas: that is, crew costs. With Fox already panicked about the budget, these savings were essential.
Before joining Kurtz in London, Lucas made a significant alteration to the second draft during the last couple of days in March 1975: He changed Luke into a girl. “The original treatment was about a princess and an old man,” Lucas explains, “and then I wrote her out for a while, and the second draft didn’t really have any girls in it at all. I was very disturbed about that. I didn’t want to make a movie without any women in it. So I struggled with that, and at one point Luke was a girl. I just changed the main character from a guy to a girl.”
Lucas then flew to England for a one-week stay. “We started interviewing cameramen and art directors first,” he says. “Because those are the two key people you have to line up early. They are booked way in advance. First, I made a list of all the people in England whose work I admired and all the films I thought were well shot. I had certain ideas of a few guys that I was really high on. Then we interviewed lots and lots of people, practically everybody.”
Among the cinematographer candidates were David Watkin, Gil Taylor, Anthony Richmond, Dick Bush, and Peter Suschitzky; among the art directors, Michael Stringer and Brian Eatwell. At the time, Lucas was trying to decide between going with younger, less experienced people, who would perhaps have more enthusiasm, or choosing more experienced but perhaps less flexible veterans.
A McQuarrie sketch shows costume concepts for the Luke-as-girl character.
“I talked with them to find out what their personality was like and about their philosophy of film,” says Lucas, who had dinner with at least one. “Then we narrowed it down to two or three people of each. Some of them couldn’t do it because they already had other commitments.”
Separately, Kurtz saw production supervisor candidates and surveyed all the London studios during a “whirlwind” trip, compiling a list of sound stage sizes and investigating postproduction facilities. To help with budget estimates and hiring, Fox hired a local consultant for two weeks: production designer Elliot
Scott, who began by reading the revised second draft. One of his first recommendations was special mechanical effects supervisor John Stears.
“Scott called me,” Stears says, “and said he had a picture with a certain amount of problems effects-wise in it, and would I like to go and talk to him, which I did. I read the script as it was then, and I started a feasibility study for Fox. It was a question of talking to the director: long talks about the feel of the movie, and what’s physically, technically, and financially possible within the budget.”
A former matte painter who also had a license to work with explosives—essential to his work on several James Bond films of the 1960s—Stears began by talking with electronics and engineer specialists, along with camera mechanics.
“Stears had actually gotten on the movie before I even got to England,” Lucas says. “He had been brought in by Fox to do some preliminary estimates, so when I got over there to look at it, they had done a preliminary budget; he and Elliot Scott had worked on it, and Stears stayed on because he had such a good reputation. Everybody said he was one of the best and there weren’t a lot of other guys of the same caliber available.”
But even with the aid of concept art and consultants, Kurtz found it difficult to pin down a realistic budget. “I came up with a $15 million and a $6 million and $10 million budget,” he says. “And it was totally arbitrary. You have to design the sets before you know how much things are going to cost.”
The Girl Without a Name
Ralph McQuarrie completed a second group of production paintings in late March and early April. Key interpretations, they are also notable in that some of them contain the only visual remnants of Lucas’s transformation of Luke into a girl, when he revised his second draft script.
McQuarrie did several Chewbacca sketches, one of which features an early Han Solo, before getting approval from Lucas to start his painting. “Han Solo is in the blue cape,” McQuarrie says. “It was simply an atmosphere sketch, a symbol for the film, a logo, which would capture the feeling of the film. It was almost like a one-sheet artwork, depicting the five main characters. And that was when Luke was a girl. George liked this Chewbacca, but I suppose he thought it could be a little more weird, and he decided to take off the flak jacket.”
April 1, 1975: “The fantastic five painting (Luke is a girl at this time)”.
Circa April 1, 1975: Han Solo and Luke-as-girl character.
Another logo-poster concept also featured a bearded Han Solo with lightsaber, the Death Star, and the girl-with-no-name.
* * *
Circa April 1, 1975: Luke as girl overlooking Mos Eisley
“The landspeeder was based on a lot of ideas and drawings I had seen,” Lucas says. “I described what it was and I showed Ralph a lot of pictures of things that were close to what I wanted, from comic books and science-fiction novels, and strange things out of National Geographic or some industrial magazines of an interesting design—say, a door handle that looks like a spaceship.”
The landspeeder went through several iterations before coalescing in the painting; McQuarrie did sketches, and Cantwell built a concept model. “This is a shot that George wanted,” McQuarrie says. “He wanted them on this cliff where they first view Mos Eisley. We knew it was going to be a matte painting, that it was to have two suns. George also wanted the car floating, so I took this point of view and thought it would be kind of interesting if you didn’t actually see the ground. Luke was a girl here, and she’s carrying that big long rifle which George wanted. It was one of the things he liked.”
McQuarrie matte painting of Luke as a girl and Mos Eisley.
Cantwell landspeeder concept model.
March 28, 1975: “Imperial troopers in Death Star corridor.”
By this time Colin Cantwell had finished his prototype for the pirate ship, which can be seen in the background. As described in the second draft, Chewbacca is carrying the wounded Deak on his shoulder. A bearded Han Solo wears a blue cape and holds a lightsaber, with Luke standing behind him; at this point in the creative process, stormtroopers could also use lightsabers.
Cantwell pirate ship model.
Circa March 31, 1975: Pirate ship in Alderaan docking bay.
A McQuarrie painting also features the Cantwell pirate ship parked in the cloud city/prison.
The Colin Cantwell model for the rebel Y-wing starfighter, which McQuarrie then placed in his painting.
April 3, 1975: Temple on Yavin and “Rebel space base (fighters on fourth moon, outside temple hideout).”
“George wished to have the fighter squad come running out of this Aztec-like ruin,” McQuarrie says, “which was their headquarters, and the fighters were parked out on the field. We had quite a thorough idea of what it was like. To me it was really one of these seven wonders of the galaxy, a pile of giant disks that were so dense that you almost had the feeling that there was less gravity inside this thing. It wasn’t a fully real place.”
* * *
AN OLD MAN ON THE SIDE OF THE ROAD
Between the second and third drafts, Lucas wrote a six-page story synopsis. Dated May 1, 1975, it served as a primer for Fox executives short of time who needed to understand what the movie was about. Not long afterward Lucas, uncharacteristically, typed out a new outline in four single-spaced pages as he continued to fight his way toward a story. The combined efforts contain key developments. About a month after changing the main character into a girl, Lucas changed her back into Luke, while at the same time resuscitating the princess.
“It was at that moment,” says the writer, “that I came up with the idea that Luke and the princess are twins. I simply divided the character in two.”
The concept had already been germinating in his mind: Biggs and Windy began as twin-like princes in the rough draft, becoming actual twins in the second draft. The desert planet also has twin suns. No doubt in his readings Lucas had come to appreciate the mythological significance of twins, which have been regarded as sacred by many cultures since the beginning of recorded history. Their use as a literary device for defining characters in relation to each other was also helpful: “The princess is everything Luke wants to be,” Lucas says. “She is socially conscious, whereas he is thrown into things; intellectually, she is a strong leader, and he is just a kid.”
Indeed, her character is so strong, even in the abbreviated synopses, that she eclipses Deak, who nearly disappears from these notes, surviving only as an unnamed “Captain.” On the other hand, an unnamed older Jedi appears for the first time. This elderly man is, quite literally, the wizard on the side of the road, whom the hero meets on his journey. In exchange for his teachings, the old man requests payment in the form of food, which recalls Kurosawa’s seven samurai who are paid with rice by farmers to protect their village.
In the outline Lucas refers to the old man’s mystical powers as being like those of “Don Juan”—a reference to The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge by Carlos Castaneda, which was first published in 1968, with sequels in 1971 and 1972, followed by Tales of Power in 1975. Castaneda’s fictional Don Juan Matus is like a shaman, with the ability to shape-shift, who teaches the mastery of awareness—to the point where one may keep it beyond death. His mystical influence seems to have been key in transforming Lucas’s concept of the Jedi from a samurai warrior into a more mystical warrior.
A sketch by Alex Tavoularis is one of the first to show Princess Leia.
A sketch by perhaps Colin Cantwell shows her rebel ship, with notes indicating which action takes place where.
An early character-costume sketch reveals how closely linked visually Luke and Leia were; though not explicitly stated as being twins, the idea was present in Lucas’s mind and may have been communicated as such to McQuarrie.
“I spent about a year reading lots of fairy tales—and that’s when it starts to move away from Kurosawa and toward Joe Campbell,” Lucas says. “About the time I was doing the third draft I read The Hero with a Thousand Faces, and
I started to realize I was following those rules unconsciously. So I said, I’ll make it fit more into that classic mold.”
More scholarly and perhaps as mystical as Castaneda, Joseph Campbell wrote that all mythical stories of the hero—cross-culturally and across history—contain the same elements, which can be classified as a monomyth. Although there are variations, essentially the hero receives a “call to adventure,” undergoes adventures and trials, and eventually surpasses his mentor and achieves an apotheosis.
The influence of these two writers, and others, can be felt not only in the philosophy but also in the developing structure of Lucas’s story, to which he made several changes: The Kiber Crystal moves from the moisture farm to Alderaan, where the old man has to search for it; instead of Deak it is the princess, a character more integral to Luke’s heroic journey, who is rescued; and the attack on the Death Star is supplemented, perhaps because Lucas was searching for a more physical confrontation, with a duel between Luke and Darth Vader, who fight on its surface.
The Making of Star Wars (Enhanced Edition) Page 10