BEHIND THE SCENES IMAGE: DAGOBAH DAYS!

Yoda operator Dave Barclay holds onto the Yoda puppet whilst Mark Hamill lifts himself up for some more Jedi training filming as Luke Skywalker, on the misty and murky Dagobah set towards the end of the main studio principal photography for THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK at ELSTREE, circa August/September 1979.

BEHIND THE SCENES IMAGE: IMPERIAL LINE-UP!

A posse of Imperial Snowtroopers assemble inside the abandoned Echo Base in this atmospheric behind the scenes image from April 1979, on the ELSTREE STUDIOS set of THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK.

BEHIND THE SCENES IMAGE: AN "EMPIRE" IN DEVELOPMENT!

On one of the deserted sound stages at ELSTREE Studios in London circa late 1978/early 1979, construction work continues for THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK on the Millennium Falcon's cockpit and interiors, whilst a Rebel laser cannon is readied for ultimate shipping to the cold climes of Finse, Norway for its battle against Imperial Walkers.

To check out more on the behind the scenes construction blueprints of the STAR WARS saga's legendary ships, droids, and planets interiors and exteriors, J.W. Rinzler, acclaimed author of THE MAKING OF STAR WARS and EMPIRE books has a lavish, if pricey, new tome out at the end of the year, full of never before revealed info and interviews with some of the top behind the scenes names to have worked on the amazing and influential production design side of the film. Check out the links to STAR WARS: THE BLUEPRINTS here: Star Wars: The Blueprints  and how to get it in Europe here: Star Wars: The Blueprints (Limited Edition Hardcover) @ Forbidden Planet

CLASSIC IMAGE: A WORLD OF ARTOO'S!

Highly regarded UK Special Effects boss Brian Johnson has a little sit down with the wide variety of Artoo Detoo's constructed for studio floor filming use in THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK. Also pictured inside one of the shells is that cheeky droid operator himself, Kenny Baker.

Check out a great interview by Brandon Alinger with Johnson on the making of the film, and other career greats including ALIEN, here: Interview With Brian Johnson, Special Effects Artist (Special to the OPB) : The Original Prop Blog – Jason DeBord's TV and Movie Prop Memorabilia Resource

ILM CLASSIC IMAGE: JOE JOHNSTON'S FALCON

Here's some intriguing Joe Johnson sketches from September 1978 of the Millennium Falcon interior, and showing where everything was in relation to one another, when the vessel was to be re-built in 1979 on the ELSTREE Studios sound stages in London for the upcoming THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK.

A very nice piece of design history...

CLASSIC IMAGE: CARBON CONFLICT!

Within the smoke filled, heat fuelled scenario of the Bespin Carbon Freezing Chamber set at London's ELSTREE Studios, here's a terrific shot from EMPIRE of Mark Hamill showing his exhaustive sword fighting/training skills in action (Note the un-rotoscoped carbon rods attached to the lightsabers) against Darth Vader (presumably played by Bob Anderson, though Dave Prowse did do a small part of the epic action sequence), in what many fans still regard as the ultimate STAR WARS lightsaber duel of choreography and dramatic impetus.

CLASSIC ART: TINY WISDOM!

Here's a fun b/w late 1978 or early 1979 storyboard, possibly by the respected UK artist Ivor Beddoes during the time he worked on storyboarding for THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK at ELSTREE with the late director Irvin Kershner, showing a wide-eyed and innocent, dreaming of adventure and excitement Luke Skywalker conferring with an early version of Yoda within his hut home on Dagobah.

With thanks to Ian Trussler for the image.

REVIEW: THE MAKING OF "THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK"



Mark Hamill poses for the camera at ELSTREE STUDIOS in 1979 - one of the many wonderful rare images in THE MAKING OF THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK book by J.W. Rinzler, from AURUM PRESS


What did we think of J. W. Rinzler's new book? Hit the link to find out.

http://www.starwarsaficionado.com/making_of_esb_book.html

CLASSIC IMAGE: LITTLE FURBALL!

One of Stuart Freeborn's created Ewoks takes part in a late 1981 costume reference film/photo test, videotaped by Producer Howard Kazanjian and Robert Watts, at ELSTREE prior to the commencement of REVENGE (later RETURN) OF THE JEDI's principal photography in January 1982.

CLASSIC IMAGE: DIRTY DAGOBAH!

At ELSTREE Studios during August/September 1979, the UK production technicians and dressers constantly alter/re-dress the misty and atmospheric bog world set of Dagobah to make it look like a new area of swamp land, as well as dirtying up Luke's X-wing further for the scene where Yoda, watched by his incredulous new Padawan, has used the Force to rescue it from the water. Note the empty Artoo Detoo shell far right which will house Kenny Baker in the scene/s to be filmed. Once the ship has safely touched down, a scene was filmed, but ultimately cut, in which the little droid hoses it down with water and begins cleaning it up.

CLASSIC IMAGE: ACTIVATING A BOUNTY!

Here's a rare April 1979 ELSTREE shot - and if anybody has this in its full photo entirety, and in better quality, please get in touch- that I don't remember in the film, with Darth Vader (David Prowse) in the assembled bounty hunter line stopping near Bossk (Alan Harris), whilst an intimidated Admiral Piett (Kenneth Colley) looks up. I'm assuming the pic was taken in final camera rehearsal for the interior Imperial Super Star Destroyer bridge scene, but its great nonetheless.

CLASSIC IMAGE: IMPERIAL ARRIVAL!

As our Rebel heroes within the Millennium Falcon try to blast away from the dying remnants of their once Echo Base, a force of newly arrived Imperial Snowtroopers wades into the deserted hangar, setting up their heavy weaponry in an attempt to stop their targets from escaping. Lord Vader wants them alive!

POSTCARDS FROM THE EDGE (OF HOTH)

On the Hoth set at ELSTREE, Carrie Fisher plays with a more normal type of white powder!

Classic Carrie Fisher talks about being "out there" on the 1979 set of EMPIRE:

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/showbiz/bizarre/3175018/Carrie-Fisher-I-did-cocaine-on-The-Empire-Strikes-Back.html

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1319676/Carrie-Fishers-drug-shame-I-did-cocaine-set-Empire-Strikes-Back.html

CLASSIC IMAGE: A LEGEND IS BORN!

In early 1976, on one of the biggest sound stages available at London's ELSTREE studios, the huge wooden/metal supported prop of the partial Millennium Falcon, and the Mos Eisley Docking Bay 94 interior around it, is under construction by the British carpenters and builders, supervised by Production Designer John Barry and assistant Norman Reynolds for filming in April that year.

CLASSIC IMAGE: DEATH STAR BATTLE STATIONS!

As alarm lights blaze and sirens fill the air within the corridors of the Death Star, elite TIE fighter pilots rush to their ships, ready to engage the attacking Rebel X and Y-wing ships, in this deleted scene from STAR WARS, filmed by Gary Kurtz's second unit at some point in July 1976 at ELSTREE. A partial clip from the deleted footage would later be used in RETURN OF THE JEDI.

I'd have love to have seen a sequence where we see the pilots actually get into their TIE ships and take off. In the film we see Vader and his wing men depart the docking bay, but there's a great moment in the MARVEL comic strip adaptation of the time (above image) where we see Vader actually getting into his ship.

I wonder if that was just writer Roy Thomas/artist Howard Chaykin's visual idea, or whether there was a scripted scene that was possibly filmed? Or perhaps the scene was planned for but unfilmed due to time and money pressures. Perhaps the Blu-ray will solve the many mysteries once and for all...

CLASSIC IMAGE: DROID TESTING

Here's some fun late 1975 (?) screen grabs of behind the scenes footage, presumably shot at ELSTREE, of UK practical special effects co-ordinator John Stears (the Oscar winning technician behind the early James Bond movies, I might add!) and George Lucas testing the droids that will eventually be used for upcoming filming for the STAR WARS Jawa droid sale in Tunisia in March 1976 and then through various scenes at ELSTREE afterwards.

The footage also shows an early test for a silver Artoo Detoo (there's someone in it who looks like hes wearing some kind of protective nappy?!) - we're not sure if its Kenny Baker in Artoo or not during this screen test filming (credited to Gilbert Taylor, about to finish his director of photography work on Richard Donner's horror film THE OMEN). Not all of the droids that Stears and his team constructed for filming, many of which would be re-painted and re-dressed over five months, actually made it into the finished movie-it would be intriguing to see the stills or deleted footage of those lost droids...

A selection of John Stears droid creations on the Death Star hangar set during early Summer 1976 (note the left middle Treadwell used for the deleted Tunisia scene with Mark Hamill).

CLASSIC IMAGE: GOODBYE, HAN SOLO!

Here's another great image from EMPIRE-this one showing the terrible time Chewbacca and Princess Leia have whilst watching Han Solo become carbonised. Its an evocative image-and one not always seen in its entirety (often cropped to focus just on Leia and Chewie when used in magazines during the period of EMPIRE's 1980 theatrical release)- and shows what an incredible set the Carbon Freezing chamber was during the filming in the summer of 1979-full of atmosphere, heat and steam, brilliantly lit by the UK lighting team and filmed with strong, but beautifully haunting cinematography by Peter Suschitzky.

CLASSIC IMAGE: UGLIES INC.

Stuart Freeborn certainly proved himself as one of the STAR WARS sagas definitive UK talents in make-up and creature construction with this motley group of monster heads that would be used in the original films 1976 April/May cantina filming at ELSTREE. All of the monsters in there, and in later US re-shoots with additional Rick Baker creatures, would become icons, especially Freeborn's Greedo, whom George Lucas would take a shine to when he first saw the creature in his workshop after it had been previously constructed for use as an alien in a UK BIRDS EYE peas commercial of the early seventies, and was subsequently re-dressed for his doomed confrontation with Han Solo.

Due to illness (possibly a stomach bug earlier contracted in Tunisia?), Stuart was unable to complete all the required UK masks for the cantina sequence, which begs the question, are there any surviving pieces of original 1975/76 artwork or designs, whether they be in the LUCASFILM archives or in a private collection, that show those creatures that ultimately never made it to reality? It would surely be fascinating to see them, eh?

CLASSIC IMAGE: EWOK DINNER!

Bad enough to be frozen in carbonite and suffer humiliation from Jabba the Hutt, but now Han Solo is about to have a fate worse than death, being cooked by those cuddly Ewoks as part of a banquet/feast honouring Threepio!! "I have a bad feeling about this!"

Will Han have enough breath in his lungs to put the fires out!

CLASSIC IMAGE: "THE STAR WARS STAGE"

Built for filming in the Summer of 1979, THE STAR WARS STAGE at ELSTREE would then be the biggest studio soundstage in the UK, and, bar some inconvenient shooting linked to Stanley Kubrick's THE SHINING (due to an unfortunate fire which had previously raged on another stage and burnt it down), was primarily first built for use by George Lucas and his teams on THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK and, three years later, RETURN OF THE JEDI. Supervised by Production Designer Norman Reynolds and his skilled team of craftsmen, the completed stage would first house the enormous Rebel base ice hanger, comprising a full size X-wing fighter prop, numerous prop snowspeeders and the biggest and best creation, the Millennium Falcon, previously built in Wales and sent to ELSTREE in sections for full re-construction. This great establishing shot, seen near the beginning of EMPIRE, shows not just the scale of the set and the incredible props, droids, costumed extras and backgrounds for the film but also evokes the feeling of awe and wonder of spirit in watching a STAR WARS adventure-the likes of which you won't see anywhere else, that there's nothing else out there capable of matching its emotional grandeur. Not in the whole wide world of cinematic entertainment!