“The jump from Star Wars to Empire to Jedi for me was not a great one,” Williams would say. “It felt like one piece, one continual experience.”
In the control booth at Abbey Road Studios, Lucas joined Kazanjian, Ken Wannberg, Lionel Newman, and Herb Spencer. Generally, Williams and the LSO worked from 9:30 to 12:30, 1:30 to 4:30; on their first day they recorded the Main Title as well as cues for “Han Defrosting,” “Yoda,” and the “Admiral Ackbar Speech,” about 17 minutes of music. In between takes, Williams told Newman what he would ask from the orchestra on a certain cue: “Quicker and a little stronger from the cellos.”
“At a scoring session, they run the film up on the screen with added lines and dots and all kinds of markings on the screen, which give the conductor points where the music should hit the climax or be soft or whatever,” says Kazanjian. “Johnny’s music is so visual, it has to match perfectly. At the same time, most composers know that changes can be made, so you hire a music cutter. We have a very good one, Ken Wannberg, who is also a composer, and he is able to take Johnny’s music and literally re-edit it and stretch it out if necessary—and that’s an art. A lot of the music is written with change in mind.”
The common denominator: composer John Williams, who wrote the music for E.T. as well as the first two Star Wars films, at work in the control booth while recording the soundtrack for Return of the Jedi, circa late January/early February 1983.
Lucas’s tribute to his pal Steven Spielberg, published in Variety, when the latter’s E.T. surpassed Star Wars as the all-time #1 film at the box office, by artist Kazuhiko Sano.
Williams was somewhat of a rarity, as he conducted his own music. When asked why he conducts, which some composers don’t, he responds with one word, “Performance,” explaining: “Part of the appeal for the audience is what the orchestra does; if you can make a rush up to a cut and then suddenly suspend a chord in just a wonderful way, the audience gets something in the pit of their stomach that they feel. If that’s not executed really very well, they’re robbed of something.”
While in London, Lucas also met with Marquand and the English actors to record their ADR sessions. Back in Hollywood, at approximately 7:45 PM, ADR dialogue editor Victoria Sampson had her car broken into while in the parking lot of Star Sporting Goods; 35mm black-and-white dupes of reels four, five, and six were stolen, along with her luggage and coat. It was not industrial espionage, however, as the thieves neglected to take three more reels that were also in the car. An investigation began and another dialogue editor, Laurel Ladevich, flew down to LA, hand-carrying replacement reels to be flown to London for the ADR work.
Ian McDiarmid arrived at the Mayflower Recording Studios, at 3 Audley Square, on January 24. Evidently, the actor had won the right to keep his voice as the Emperor’s. “I did that voice all the way through shooting and then when we went into the dubbing studios later on, I repeated it, and everybody seemed happy,” he would say. “So it didn’t become an issue. We dubbed over a four-day period, with lots of breaks in between, and that’s very good because, especially in a film, it allows you to refine your performance.” Later Burtt would add echo and reverb, without touching the actor’s natural timbre.
The next day Guinness performed, followed by Caroline Blakiston, Michael Pennington, Stuart Fox (“Operator”), Sebastian Shaw, and Ken Colley. Barton was on hand to aid Lucas and Marquand during the ADR sessions and would stay in England afterward, his role in editorial having finished. By February 4, Williams had completed seven days with the LSO, the last two at Olympic Studios, and nearly two hours of music. “You might not be aware of it, but it’s almost like a cartoon, because music accompanies the gestures and movements all the time,” he says.
“I was watching John Williams conduct the score at Abbey Road Studios in London, which was always fascinating,” McDiarmid would say. “At one particular point, it was just the music and the actors involved, with no dialogue and I said to George, ‘God, you know, it reminds me of a silent movie.’ And he said, ‘Well, in many ways it is.’ And I knew exactly what he meant, that the dialogue is not of paramount importance.”
For the first time even a lightsaber duel, heretofore only accompanied by sound effects, was scored. “When it comes to this hypercritical moment in the duel between father and son, the music was more important in delivering the emotional satisfaction of the moment than the sound effects,” says Burtt. “John Williams wrote a terrific cue for a choir.”
For the Jabba’s palace number, sound department assistant Annie Arbogast, who had an interest in being a reggae singer, had performed a temp track for Sy Snootles’s performance; she wrote her own lyrics in Huttese and Burtt had recorded her. Despite plans to change it, Lucas and Williams decided to keep the temp track; the former had lived with it for a year and it’d stuck. For the actual soundtrack album, however, Williams substituted his daughter-in-law for Snootles, though all concerned apparently felt at the time that the song hadn’t come out as planned.
“It was hard to do,” Lucas says. “We’d contemplated bringing in rock & roll composers to try their hand; we talked to Toto at one point and a few other groups and writers to see if we could come up with something very bizarre or unique. But we didn’t want something too Top Forty; we wanted something strange but lively. It was a similar situation for the end music. We had endless amounts of overlays, various types of Ewoks singing, various instruments, and it sort of evolved from a gospel/rock-n-roll thing to the much more primitive thing that it is now. In both cases, it was a matter of weighing the ethnic realities with something musically interesting.”
* * *
THE LYRICS
Return of the Jedi features two songs, the first harking back in spirit to the jazzy cantina quintet. The following are the Huttese lyrics to “Fancy Man,” which was sung in English during puppet rehearsals and on set, as well as “Celebration” in Ewokese (spelling inconsistencies are from the original music sheets):
Fancy Man
WEX AB QUECK ZENICK FESI
(My body heat is risin’)
JUP COL IM INNAHIZ JAL
(My soul is sympathisin’)
WAH TOC PEG QUI DOZ GEE PIF
(A lovin’ man is comin’)
BOT GOC JARRAZ BAS DEQ XZOR ZE ZOT
(So I’m shapin’ up an’ workin’ out.)
YEQ JEN WIH TUS TER MO VEY
(I feel my heart a pumpin’)
QUI NEB BE OG EZEN NON
(My whole brain is thumpin’)
RA WOK LAPTI NEC SEB NOT VAN
(Yes, a fancy man is comin’)
BOT JOC JARRAS BAS DEQ XZOR SE VAT
(I’m shapin’ up an’ workin’ out.)
NUK PEMENT ELK
(Well, people sing)
KIV BAH TOH WEP
(You gotta work you mind)
JEX PI VA BEP
(You gotta train to beat)
HEG BUDAS XAT
(You gotta be okay)
PAS COJEC ZES
(You gotta walk the street)
RAT RAW WIM JOCT
(You gotta move your bod)
CO JOPPI QUAF
(You gotta work your feet.)
BOT GOC JARREZ BAS DU XZOR SE VAT
(We’re shapin’ up an’ workin’ out.)
“Celebration”
YUB-NUB EEE CHOP YUB-NUB
(Freedom … We got Freedom)
AH TOE MEET TOE PEE CHEE KEENE G’NOOP DOCK FLING-O-AM
(And now that we can be free, c’mon let’s celebrate)
YAHWA MOE WHIP YAHWA
(Power … we got power)
COATEE-CHA TU YUB-NUB
(Celebrate the Freedom)
COATEE-CHA TU YAHWA
(Celebrate the Power)
COATEE-CHA TU GLOWAH
(Celebrate the Glory)
ALLAYLOO TA NUV
(Celebrate the Love)
GLOWAH EEE CHOP GLOWAH
(Glory, we found glory)
YA WAH PEE CHU KNEE
FOOM
(The power showed us the light)
AH TOOT DEE AWE GOON-DAA
(And now we all live free)
COATEE-CHA TU GOO … YUB-NUB
(Celebrate the Light … Freedom)
COATEE-CHA TU DOO YAHWA
(Celebrate the Might … Power)
COATEE-CHA TU TOO … YA-CHAA
(Celebrate the Fight … Glory)
ALLAYLOO TA NUV … ALLAYLOO TA NUV, ETC.
(Celebrate the Love … Celebrate the Love …)
“There is video content at this location that is not currently supported for your eReading device. The caption for this content is displayed below.”
The final celebration Ewok song—in English—in a near-final cut of the film, early 1983. (1:44)
The first page of sheet music and lyrics for “Fancy Man.”
Williams conducts the London Symphony Orchestra as they record together a musical cue for the film.
* * *
DOING IT LIKE RAY
While Lucas was in London, ILM continued apace. Only six models were still under construction, including the rancor cave wall and a high-altitude Death Star cutout.
“We had a matte painting of the incomplete Death Star and George was saying that he could only move in and out on that,” Peterson would say. “But production said, ‘Don’t emphasize the model because we don’t want another big-budget model.’ But one day in dailies, George asked, ‘Lorne, why don’t you work up some numbers for what a model would cost?’ A week or so later, we were back in dailies and George asked about the numbers and I said, ‘It’ll be about the same amount as the Dino Ferrari you bought.’ George said something like, ‘Is that all? Let’s do it!’ and left the room—and production couldn’t say it was an outrageous amount of money because I hadn’t said an amount. Immediately afterward a bunch of them cornered me and asked, ‘Well, how much does that cost?!’ ”
With Lucas’s override, work began and continued for some time on what was one of the most intricate models the shop had ever tackled. “For a while the second Death Star was like a catchall,” Bill George would say. “If you had a few days between projects, you’d go work on the Death Star. People would work on it for a little while and then just want to get away from it. It was so overwhelming.”
Bill George ended up taking a lead on the filigree part of the Death Star, for which Peterson had an idea to use acid-etched brass. At a key juncture, the model actually ended up having to be flopped photographically when the team encountered a problem filming the shuttle’s entry into the docking bay. When they tried to match the lighting angle of the practical set, the construction details fell into a shaded area and were lost, with the resulting optical composition looking like the original finished Death Star. The solution was to light the second Death Star from the construction side and flop the film—which meant that all shots of the Death Star had to be reversed, as well as the traveling mattes and separate exposures for the interior lighting.
More pickups were needed, too. A small crew traveled to Northridge, California, for a morning shoot in the desert with stuntmen Bob and Mark Yerkes. With Ian Bryce as assistant director, Mark operated the catapult that projected a flaming Boba Fett (Bob) into frame. Bob Yerkes landed on an air bag and the flames were extinguished.
Edlund still had a major sequence to do, the reactor chamber, which would tie up one of the cameras for three or four weeks. His crew also had a lot of high-speed shots left. Muren had quite a few chicken walker setups, though the stage work on the bike chase was just about done.
“Toward the end, when things were going crazy, I was shooting stuff for Richard and he was shooting stuff for me, and I was doing stuff for Dennis, so I got kind of mixed up,” says Ralston. “We had to make deals to get different cameras to get our shots done: ‘Look, if your crew shoots this for me, I’ll shoot that for you!’ Today Dennis shot a tree falling on top of one walker, crushing its head and blowing it up. We saw an RAR on that and it looks really good.”
Muren also had about 14 more rancor shots left, of the original 50. The idea had been to complete two shots a day for the difficult sequence, and they were on schedule. “Phil was a worthy opponent,” Duignan would say, “and he just said at the beginning, ‘I don’t want you in here—I don’t want you putting pressure on us—we will deliver on our date and you just stress me out.’ ”
“We shot it like live action, with the effects done in camera,” says Muren. “We shot backward and at different speeds, anything to get it away from the Muppet look. The drool helped make it creepy.”
Tom St. Amand had built a completely functional armature, onto which the 18-inch creature puppet was fit. Eben Stromquist had manufactured a set of hinged mechanical hands controlled by pulling wires, so that the rancor claws closed just like human fingers. Dave Carson built the miniature set. Tippett operated the rancor mouth and head, while Tom St. Amand had Stromquist’s two grips that manipulated its elbows, arms, and fingers; Dave Sosalla controlled its feet.
“It literally was a hand puppet, where I put my hand up the back of this thing,” Tippett would say. “But just before we started working on that scene, I put my hand on one of these big 5K lights, which had been run up 15 feet—but somebody hadn’t cinched it down and the whole thing just came, crash!, down, really fast, and completely smashed part of my hand. I got this huge blood blister and my hand swelled up—but we had to start shooting this stupid thing and I had to put my hand through this tiny orifice in the puppet. I put Vaseline on my hand so I could get into the rancor’s mouth. But then I had to wear this stupid puppet all day long like an idiot ’cause my hand’s too swollen up to take it off!”
“Since most of my other sequences are nearly finished, I’m doing the rancor shooting myself, with Kim Marks assisting,” says Muren. “The footage we’re getting is just amazing. You’re looking for matte lines and there are none. You’re looking for stop-motion shake and there is none. You’re looking for go-motion glitches and there are none. You’re looking for a man inside and you think maybe there could be, but not really. The camera’s panning and tilting all the time. A lot of times we’re doing 20 or 30 takes, sometimes 60 or 70, until we get something—but when we do, you can look at it and say, ‘I’ve never seen anything like this before.’ ”
To create the proper illusion of weight and bulk for the rancor, a fast frame rate of either 72 or 96 per second was required. Because the camera was turning at such high speeds, a one-second take would last three or four seconds on screen. The opening shot, in which the rancor comes charging out, required 70 takes to obtain just the right 30 or so frames. Because the takes were so short, however, the crew needed only 90 minutes to do it all.
“It was a crazy way of working because the monster has to walk into a room, turn around and roar, so it’s like a four-second shot, but you’ve only got a second to shoot it,” says Tippett. “You couldn’t just stop and start a move. You had to fade gently in and out of moves, which can be very difficult when the scene you’re doing is 48 frames long. But it was real interesting to think on your feet as opposed to thinking like a stop-motion animator usually thinks—like a snail.”
“The rancor stuff that didn’t go through optical was all 4-perf,” Muren says. “I did as much 4-perf on that as I could. I shot it the way an operator would, as though he were shooting some sort of unleashed animal and he didn’t know what was going to happen. I was responding to the moves instead of anticipating them, so the thing would go quickly across the frame, or rear up, and we’d follow it up not even knowing what it was going to do. It then cut in neatly with the live action stuff, which is panning and tilting around much the same way.”
“Dennis really understands lighting and scale, and contributes a great deal to a shot’s character,” Tippett says. “We also used a number of Ray Harryhausen’s classic movements. ‘What are we going to do now?’ we would ask. ‘Lets move it like the Cyclops,’ someone would suggest. And everyone would instantly know
what to do.”
“So the rancor set was really fun because I left them alone,” Duignan adds. “And they delivered. I was so honored when they invited me to their sacred circle at the very end.”
“That was a scene that had 50 shots in it, something that you could sink your teeth into, develop something, and go someplace,” Tippett would say. “That’s the kind of stuff that is more enjoyable, because you’re a lot more engaged in the filmmaking process. As a consequence of having Ben Burtt around, you could be thinking about how to build the whole thing up. And George was extremely supportive, so you really didn’t feel like you were being beaten up. It was a great deal of fun.”
The Making of Star Wars: Return of the Jedi (Enhanced Edition) Page 51