Star Wars: The Digital Movie Collection was released last week, on probably the last format on which the films had yet to exist. That is, until direct mnemonic downloads will inject movies right into our brains. Services from iTunes to Amazon to Google Play now have digital versions of the six Star Wars films, and they include new content as well as pre-existing bonus features. (Special thanks to Google Play for providing the films and bonus content for review.)
Now, there’s probably nothing about the first six Star Wars movies that isn’t already known. The landmark blockbuster films were very well covered in reporting in the ‘70s and ‘80s, let alone internet age journalism for the prequels. Then there were the DVD releases, and the Blu-ray release, all of which included bonus features about the production. Still, each film in Star Wars: The Digital Movie Collection has two new items: a “Conversations” piece with key Star Wars artists talking amongst themselves for about 10 minutes, and a “Discoveries from the Inside,” which brings cameras into the archives to see some authentic materials for about five minutes each.
Related: See an Exclusive ‘Star Wars: The Digital Collection’ Clip!
So while I’m not going to try to guarantee that Star Wars: The Digital Collection unearthed some breakthrough information, I can say that having reviewed both previous editions, covered the prequels myself and read up on the originals in their day, I still heard things that struck me as new and interesting. So here are ten things I learned from the Star Wars digital releases. At the very least, they made it worth sitting through the set again.
10 Things We Learned from ‘Star Wars: The Digital Movie Collection’:
Fred Topel is a staff writer at CraveOnline. Follow him on Twitter at @FredTopel.
10 Things We Learned from Star Wars: The Digital Movie Collection
-
The Millennium Falcon Was Built On The Fly
Arguably the most iconic ship in the Star Wars fleet was a last minute construction. The original Millennium Falcon was sketched and modeled, but then Space: 1999 came out and the Falcon looked just like one of their ships. So they made that ship Princess Leia’s Rebel Blockade Runner (pictured) instead. You can see they did keep the same conical shaped cockpit. The Millennium Falcon we know and love was built straight as a model, with few preliminary sketches. It was so rushed that a glue blotch on the model was reproduced on the full scale ship. This was where the meeting of Christian and Johnston paid off, since Christian inherited the results of the glue blotch writ large.
-
Roger Christian and Joe Johnston Never Met
I sort of think of everyone associated with Star Wars as a family but I really shouldn’t. Plenty of departments are completely separate, such as visual effects and set design. By nature, VFX happen away from the on set activities. Though they both launched thriving directorial careers since (well, more thriving in Johnston’s case), visual effects crew member Joe Johnston (Captain America: The First Avenger) and set decorator Roger Christian (Battlefield Earth) met for the very first time in a conversation for these digital bonus features.
-
The Storm Troopers’ Guns Are Left Handed
The guns the Storm Troopers shoot are for left handed marksmen, because Roger Christian was left handed and he designed the props. They ejected live shells to make the smoke bursts you see before the laser blasts were added in post-production.
-
Carrie Fisher Learned Her Lines By Screaming Them
The Empire Strikes Back includes a bonus feature called “The Lost Interviews,” audio recordings of the actors from the late ‘70s just unearthed now. Amazingly, most of the cast have repeated all of those lost soundbites in subsequent interviews for decades, but one that stood out was Fisher learning to scream her lines. Her first day was an action scene with a lot of explosions and she couldn’t get her lines out loud enough (the “This is some rescue!” scene). After that, she practiced all her lines by screaming, just in case she’d be in a scene full of stuff blowing up.
-
Anthony Daniels Only Fell Once In All Six Films
This is actually pretty impressive. You’d expect wearing a stiff gold suit would result in several pratfalls per film, especially the early ones before he got his balance. But Daniels said he only fell over once. It was the early scene in A New Hope where C-3PO walks by the Krayt Dragon bones in the desert. Off camera, he fell sideways and got his arm stuck straight down in the sand.
-
Phil Tippett Invented The Hologram Chess Set
Well, not the idea of the chess set. That was always in the script, but Tippett inspired George Lucas to make the chess pieces all alien creatures. The were going to be people in masks, but Lucas saw a creature puppet Tippett had designed for his own stop motion animation. That and other new creatures became the chess pieces when R2-D2 is advised to “Let the Wookie win.” Tippett went on to do legendary visual effects for Robocop, Willow and DragonHeart, founding his own Tippett Studio.
-
The First Million Dollar Visual Effect
I have to be careful about this attribution, because it is Phil Tippett’s recollection of an anecdotal announcement made on the set of A New Hope. But it’s not surprising to imagine Star Wars created the first million dollar effect. Tippett recalls hearing an announcement on the loudspeaker, the production manager congratulating the crew on spending $1 million on a visual effect. (Too bad he doesn’t say which sequence that was.)
-
The Five Principals of Star Wars Design
Doug Chiang came to Star Wars on the prequels with Episode I. Creating all new creatures and spacecrafts for the Star Wars universe, Chiang said there were five principals which he outlines now:
1. Silhouette: Meaning you design it for the most striking angle where you see the whole shape.
2. Three Seconds or Less: i.e. You can obviously understand what it is and how it works, without explanation.
3. Personality: So you can tell if it’s evil, powerful, menacing, etc. just from the design.
4. Believability: Meaning it doesn’t take you out of the movie, even when it’s the unlimited rules of Star Wars.
5. Geek Factor: Literally making something that kids will want to play with.
-
Han Solo’s Hoth Coat Is Brown, Dammit
This was a controversy I never knew about. Forget about Han shooting first, apparently there was debate on the color of his cold weather jacket on Hoth. It looks brown to me, but, apparently Hasbro made an Empire Strikes Back toy with a blue jacket. Skywalker Ranch costume archivist Laela French puts this to rest by showing there is no blue jacket in the costume archives.
-
The World’s Smallest Matte Painting
Matte paintings are a lost art of old school effects, where an epic set is painted on glass and hung in front of the camera, so that the perspective looks like the actors are standing before a grand scene. This was before green screen. It was used for Star Wars scenes like the hundreds of troops Darth Vader walks past or the landing pad in Cloud City. One matte was used for a very tiny scene though. In the Tattooine scenes in A New Hope, a small Sandcrawler in the background was just painted on a matte glass. The actual painting is smaller than a thumbprint as it only appears in the background.
