The Making of Star Wars: Return of the Jedi (Enhanced Edition)

by Rinzler, J. W.

  The first step for the more extroverted second version was to obtain a good performance from the miniature logs. “We cut up the set and tried attaching monofilament to some of the logs, so they’d roll down and then you could jerk the line after they’d stop moving,” Huston would say. “We did it a bunch of times, but Phil wasn’t really happy with it.”

  “The logs would come down too fast—like a couple of pencils rolling down—as opposed to massive logs falling and hitting each other, bouncing and twisting,” says Peterson. “The problem was solved through the mysterious combination of a track down the embankment, strings, and jacks (the kind kids play with),” so the logs would bounce back as if hitting an object, filmed at high speeds to give them weight when projected at 24fps.

  Tippett then had to animate the walker so its movements would sync with the chaotic tumbling lumber. Terry Chostner, in the stills department, thus made up large black-and-white transparencies registered with animation-peg punch holes for key positions. These transparencies were then placed on a matte box setup in front of the camera. Looking through the eyepiece, Tippett could see where the AT-ST would make contact with the logs. “There were about 17 major changes of position in about three seconds—an animator’s nightmare!” he says.

  Nevertheless Tippett gamefully plotted out the logs’ movements with the Moviola, transferring their locations to the go-motion computer set to control the walker’s movements. Finally, the optical team composited the miniature walker into the shot. For this sequence and others, the animation department created articulated mattes in the shape of ferns and vegetation to help place the walker’s feet into the vegetation.

  There were still other eleventh-hour shots, one of which, appropriately, came at the end of the film. “One of the last things I worked on was the big victory celebration where we pan up to X-wings flying through the sky at night,” says Muren. “I went out and shot a bunch of fireworks one night near Golden Gate Field, a racetrack up here, with Thaine Morris and Dave Pier. We shot off all kinds of skyrockets and things. It was like the Fourth of July and I’ll bet we had all of Alameda County watching us.” (Muren shot the fireworks in slow motion and used the footage upside down, so the streamers go up into the night sky in an unearthly way.)

  Ralston and his crew filmed final starship elements for the same shot. “I tried something a little bit different for the X-wings,” he says. “They were all supposed to be quite small, so I took a commercially available model kit that has an inch-wide X-wing in it and used one of those. We did them in two passes: one, a basic light pass; and the other, an engine pass. We painted the engines with fluorescent color and lit the model real hot, so it actually looked like the engines were glowing.”

  The intermediate element in the tilt upward from live action to fireworks was another matte painting. “It was raining the night they filmed Luke and the funeral pyre up at the ranch,” says Pangrazio. “The rain created a nice smear of orange light across the field as the camera tilted up—that kind of thing can really help take the edge off artwork that otherwise looks very predictable.”

  A Frank Ordaz matte painting of the Imperial base on Endor.

  A key set image with the stop-motion walker optically composited into the shot.

  * * *

  BLOW UP

  Once Han Solo and Princess Leia succeed in placing explosives in the bunker, the whole facility and its attached radar dish are blown to smithereens, care of ILM.

  Following his penchant for in-camera work, Muren devised an ingenious setup reminiscent of the techniques used by Willis O’Brien (of King Kong effects fame). His crew would shoot the explosion with a high-speed camera at 300fps through a plate of glass on which Chris Evans had painted foreground trees; the next part of the setup was the model radar dish; between the glass painting and the dish, they placed a scrim, lit with blue light, to knock everything back into the distance by simulating atmospheric buildup; the last part of the setup, about seven feet behind the radar dish, was a huge canvas backing of sky—originally used for Empire, but with cutouts made out of Masonite and painted trees to cover up the original painted snow. No optical effects were required.

  “For the dish itself, I didn’t want a prefabricated look, so Lorne Peterson made it the way a real thing would be built, with struts and fabric materials and things,” Muren says. “That way, when it blows up, it would look like it was really made out of different materials.”

  “It was made like a kite, so it had little ribs,” Peterson would say. “They were plastic, with wires in it that kept the thing from leaving the ground during the explosion, like lanyards; we used tissue paper in-between, so the explosion would blow through it.”

  Around the base of the dish, model makers placed industrially made three-inch trees, the kind usually used for architectural models. “But these trees are like $5 apiece,” Peterson would say. “And when it’s a George Lucas film, it’s like how can we do it for less money? So I went to the architectural company and said, ‘What if I bought these from you, but you buy them back at a third of the price?’ They agreed. But the trees were pretty volatile, because all the spray glue was new.”

  Indeed, when the radar dish was blown to kingdom come, “the flames headed right across and caught the whole thing on fire, just flaming. I didn’t get to sell back any of the little trees. They were all toast.”

  “It blew up and did all the things a big model is supposed to do—in one take,” Muren says. “It was real quick. From concept to completed shot took about three or four days, not even working full-time. When it came on in the screening room, everyone applauded. People had thought I was crazy to do it that way. People had wanted to do it in separate elements, the sky, the dish, the trees, and then optically composite them, but I’ve always been against optical composites and use them only when necessary.”

  Stage technician Patrick Fitzsimmons and Muren examine the multiplane setup with miniature satellite dish, foreground painted trees, and background painting by Chris Evans, all of which would be shot in-camera for the explosion of the satellite dish.

  Johnston, Muren, Ted Moehnke, and Thaine Morris discuss the detonation of the satellite model.

  So intense was the special effects explosion that the accompanying mini trees were more or less vaporized.

  Another matte painting of the Imperial landing platform on Endor, by Chris Evans, that would be optically combined with miniature of photography of a departing Imperial shuttle.

  * * *

  A final frame from SB-19, which was finally completed circa February 1983. “Don Dow did most of that amazing shot,” says Ralston. “Technically it was impossible, but with the optical printer built up, it was possible.” The shot also made use of TIE fighter cutouts on two glass sheets that moved away from each other and the camera. In addition to chewing gum and his sneaker, Ralston tried to sneak a yogurt container into the shot, but George thought it looked “odd,” according to the supervisor. In a frame-by-frame analysis, two TIE fighters can be seen to interpenetrate the Falcon, but audiences would not notice.

  DARK AND BRIGHTER SPOTS

  More changes were being made as late as April 2, with the Emperor’s animation elements needing to be reshot and some “bolts” yet to be completed.

  “I’m just following my shots through and Optical is racing to get the composites out,” says Muren. “Originally, everything was supposed to be done by today, but I think now it’s been pushed back. The sooner it’s done, though, the more time George has to work on it; for his final fine-tuning, he needs to be able to see the whole thing put together.”

  Three days later, Lucas approved the Final Cut, at 2 hours 16 minutes 9 seconds, or 13 reels. Work immediately commenced on the first four reels of the 70mm prints, 210 of which would be needed for those special cinemas. The new experimental sound strip, however, was already causing problems.

  Lucas was also color-timing each reel, during which the emotional nature of each scene could still be altered
. “The grading control was what they called ‘laboratory-aimed density,’ or ‘LAD,’ ” Bruce Nicholson would say. “They took the printing exposures and put it right in the middle of the characteristic curve of the film. So when it went to the lab for final timing, we were giving them the greatest latitude to make things brighter, darker, change color, et cetera. If George changed his mind about what he wanted these shots to look like, the lab would have the greatest latitude to print them however desired.”

  “The scene between Luke and Leia, in the forest, was too bright,” Kazanjian says. “Well, in bringing them down, we started getting dark spots. We couldn’t see their eyes. So we had to start fussing with it. But there are a lot of things you can do to speed the color: the temperature of the water, the solutions, plus filters. So we got it to a pretty good state. It wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t the way it should have been, but it was the best we were going to make it.”

  “One of us went down to L.A. for the color timing, just to make sure they didn’t print the effects shots in some weird way,” says Ralston. “There are always shots that come up where the timers have absolutely no idea what they’re looking at, they don’t know the colors, they don’t know the time of day, they don’t know anything.”

  “George wanted the bike chase sequence to be brighter,” Nicholson adds. “He wanted to print it up a stop, but the danger with that is that when you print stuff brighter, particularly for us, garbage mattes and stuff like that start showing up. I told him I thought it would be okay and I think by and large it held up all right. He just felt that the chase would read better to the audience.”

  THE 75 PERCENT SOLUTION

  A scant six weeks before the film’s release, Lucas was still finalizing shots, including SB-19, to which lazer animation had recently been added. “Two tiny TIEs seem to pop on as Falcon races overhead, but otherwise a great shot,” the ILM Shot Report critiqued. “Nobody wants to think about that shot anymore,” Edlund says. “If you look at it closely, you see all kinds of matte errors; you see one TIE ship going through another one—but it’s like this swarm of bees that comes at you all of a sudden, a three-second shot.”

  The shot’s zany choreography was the responsibility of visual effects editor Bill Kimberlin. “I would tell Bill who was crossing in front of whom,” Ralston explains. “Sometimes it got pretty confusing as to what was occurring and I would be the only one who knew—and then I would get mixed up. That was one of the last shots assembled; there was a big rush to get it into the film.”

  In fact the shot did not make it into the preview that took place on April 9 at the Northpoint movie theater in San Francisco. “This is a working sneak preview,” Kazanjian says. “We invite 250 employees from Farmers Group Insurance, maybe 12 librarians, 150 fifth graders, 150 ninth or eleventh graders, some from the Lawyers Club, a women’s sewing circle, and a lot of our friends who worked on the movie. George is there, the director, the producer, Ben Burtt, some of the editors, many of ILM’s key people. We’re there to listen to the audience’s reactions. Are they laughing at the right place? Did they not hear something? Does something not work? But I know we have a good film. I don’t even think we have butterflies.”

  “George faced this angst over, How are people going to react to Darth Vader being the hero, that he gets redeemed at the end?” Roffman would say. “You just never know until it’s done. They had the test screening at the Northpoint …”

  That Saturday morning, the lucky handpicked capacity crowd was in for a surprise. The audience thought they were actually sitting down to see a new animated film, Twice Upon a Time, which Lucasfilm was also producing. Kazanjian would recall: “I went up to introduce it and I said, ‘Unfortunately, we’re not able to run Twice Upon a Time tonight,’ with a pause, and the audience was very sad about that … Then I said, ‘Instead we’re going to run Return of the Jedi!’—and that’s when they went crazy.”

  “That theater went nuts, just nuts!” Roffman says. “It was one of those great moments. Then the movie starts to play and I’m sitting right in the middle of the theater. It was exciting. You could see that there were slow points in it, but the crowd was going with it, and when we finally got to that point where Vader picks up the Emperor and throws him down the well—the audience went crazy. They were cheering like mad. It worked so well. It was just one of those things where you knew that it was a great, historic moment in the film. There was euphoria after that screening.”

  On the survey cards, of the 422 males and 298 women, 626 of them rated the film “excellent.” No one rated it “poor.” The Ewoks rated highest as favorite new characters, with 354 votes. Luke Skywalker was the favorite character overall; Vader came in third. The least favorite was C-3PO. Their favorite scene was Luke’s duel with Vader.

  Asked if there was anything they didn’t like, males under 10 years old thought that Jabba was “gross”; they weren’t fond of the Ewoks singing at the end; and they felt that Leia should’ve seen Vader’s face. Females under 10 also found Jabba “too disgusting.” Many people of all ages criticized the acting and the celebration fireworks. At least one person complained that Vader says, “You underestimate the dark side” too many times. Other male comments were: “Didn’t like Vader and Yoda dying … Stunned by speeder bike chase … Where can I get an Ewok? … Please make a sequel … Don’t stop, George, you’re doing a fantastic job …” Female comments included: “Didn’t have enough women … Series is beginning to degenerate into battle scenes … Awesome, totally awesome.”

  “We do have cards, but those are not that important to us,” Kazanjian says. “It’s the audience reaction that matters. Are they enjoying it?”

  “George was looking at that screening and seeing a lot of little things that needed changing,” Roffman says. “So it was like, ‘All right, we’ve got our work to do now.’ ”

  Apart from myriad small changes, Lucas deleted one major scene. “I liked the scene where Luke is building his lightsaber and his father contacts him with telepathy, ‘Luke, join me …,’ ” says Burtt. “Too bad it was cut. It was filmed, scored, done, and mixed, and it was in the Northpoint sneak preview.”

  “It was such a better entrance, such a big entrance, much more dramatic,” Hamill would say, “but I can see how if they’re trying to cut down the time that they might not need it. I loved the framing and the lighting of it; it’s just so artistically done. But I think they really wanted the beginning to be more organic to the plot.”

  The following day there was a “family” screening for Lucasfilm and ILM employees who weren’t at the Northpoint. For most, this showing was the first time they were able to see the nearly complete 511 visual effects shots cut into the film on a big screen. “In Star Wars, the visual effects don’t exceed 14 minutes of the entire screen time,” says Edlund. “In Empire they’re not much more than 20 minutes of the whole film. But George has a way of putting them in at the right points so that the impression is that they’re always there. They’re not; they’re in the right places for just the right amount of time.”

  “All the Star Wars movies looked very small, very contained in that first cut,” Dunham would say. “And then when you start putting the big space shots in, they give the films size and scope.”

  “I literally had a headache, because it was such an assault on my sensory system seeing all our shots put together for the first time,” Farrar would say. “It was overwhelming. It was more than I could take.”

  “Special effects don’t make the movie,” Lucas says. “They are only important to tell the story and to give the characters credibility. If the characters are not there or the acting isn’t good, the movie will fall apart. It can’t sustain itself. People think these are special effects movies. I would say the effects contribute maybe 15 or 20 percent to the enjoyability, effectiveness, and popularity of the movies—at the most. No matter how brilliant a director you are, how fantastic the special effects, how beautifully it is photographed, how wonderful the music is,
it will not work as a popular movie running on 25 percent.”

  “Ten years from now, new audiences may look back on Jedi and think it looks dated,” Edlund adds. “But like the original King Kong or War of the Worlds, it will still be a classic. The same viewers will get caught up in the story and accept whatever flaws there are as part of the period in which the film was made.”

  “The final space battle—I had no idea ILM could outdo Star Wars,” says Marquand. “They’ve done 50 times better!”

  “I think Richard was proud that he had done as much as he could do,” Carol Marquand would say.

  “Richard loved it,” Lucas would say. “I was relieved that we finally got the thing done. When you’re working on something like that for 10 years, just reaching the finish line is a huge relief. And I thought it worked well. You know, there were issues. I was never quite happy with the music at the end of the movie. It fell short in a few places where I had wanted more—but, all in all, I was happy.”

  As postproduction wound down to a near stop, Duignan hosted an ILM wrap party at her house in Oakland. “There was another party in a Moroccan-type restaurant where you sit on the floor and eat food with your hands,” Nicholson would say. “They had music and everybody got up and danced, and it was really fun. We just all had a great time and everybody was so relieved. It was such a relief to get it done.”

  Artwork by Kazuhiko Sano that would be used for the Jedi “Style B” poster.

  CERTAIN DOOM

  The audience at the Northpoint did not see three shots that were still being worked on, even at this tardy date: “ILM did three 4-perf insert shots this week of Artoo-Detoo and See-Threepio stuck in the sand,” a late production report read—the result of Kazanjian questioning in dailies where the droids were as the heroes flew away from the Sarlacc pit. The model shop would have to create “some quick prop magnets” and modify R2’s periscope for the pickups.