How did you shoot Star Wars? Special effects, interesting facts

One of the most famous and large-scale projects of "all times and peoples" - the fantastic saga "Star Wars" - began to be created by American director George Lucas in the early 1970s. To implement it, it took a tremendous effort, which ensured the triumph of the first picture, released in May 1977. Moreover, according to the testimony of those who participated in the creation of this film epic, what happened during the work could well become a story for a separate fascinating film. So, where and how did Star Wars shoot?

A few words about George Lucas

Before we begin the story of how the Star Wars films were shot, a little attention should be paid to the personality of the director.

This is today George Lucas is one of the wealthiest representatives of his profession with a capital of 5 million dollars, and at the time when he came up with the idea of the project, he was not even 30 years old, and he had only two full-length films in his asset. In fairness, I must say that he already filmed a movie in the genre of fiction, but it did not have a deafening success. The plot of this picture, known as "THX 1138", is a story about the world of the future, where mankind, forced to live underground, is ruled by computers. The film, of course, is inferior to the spectacle of "Star Wars", but its heroes are still fighting for their right to remain people and make all decisions themselves.

What was the basis for the scenario

At one time, George Lucas was greatly impressed by Akira Kurosawa's film The Hidden Fortress. As a result, he wrote a script on 12 pages with a long title, which referred to the Great Jedi.

In subsequent years, Lucas was busy working on the "Apocalypse Now", but the picture was taken without him. Nevertheless, many scenes he invented were later used to create "Star Wars".

The South Asian theme did not release Lucas, and he rewrote his first script and firmly decided to invite all the actors from Japan. However, at the final stage of the work the director radically changed his mind, and a story appeared that the fans of the saga know by heart in the smallest detail.

Ralph McQuarrie

Having completed a long and painstaking work on the script of the picture, Lucas was going to present a thick folio to potential investors and several film studios. It contained entirely all the events of the Star Wars universe with a trilogy of modern times and a detailed description of hundreds of characters, with names and biographies.

Being a realist, George Lucas realized that in order to present his project to the film bosses with great success, one enthusiastic story is not enough. He began to think about how to better present the "Star Wars". The film, as he conceived it, required a lot of investment, so the director decided to order a few illustrations to the well-known industrial designer Ralph McQuarrie of Boeing. His choice was not accidental, since the artist once drew the famous images of the landing of Americans on the moon. The collaboration between Lucas and McQuarrie turned out to be fruitful, and the director received excellent concept pictures for Star Wars.

Colin Cantwell

Talking about how to shoot "Star Wars", we can not fail to mention the man who created the models of space transport and infrastructure. For the role of co-author in technical matters, Lucas was invited by Colin Cantwell, who was already working on the films "The Strain of Andromeda" and "2010: The Space Odyssey" and kept in his house an extensive collection of models. Threesome with McQuarrie, they came up with the appearance and characteristics of the speeder, ships and the "Death Star" station.

How the Star Wars was filmed: the prehistory

Today it is hard to believe in this, but in the mid-70s it was extremely difficult to find a film that wanted to launch a production, and it took Lukas about six months for this. As a result, XX- ^th Century Fox agreed to start filming, but placed several conditions before the director, including the refusal to receive the fee in advance and the publication of the book on the plot of the fourth episode of the space saga. The latter, in the opinion of the management of the studio, had to be done in order to find out how much the script of the future film is able to interest the audience.

To cooperation in the work on a fantastic novel, Lucas attracted Alan Foster, and soon the whole of America already read about the adventures of Han Solo, Princess Leia and Luke Skywalker.

The creation of the book is the main reason why the Star Wars films were not filmed in sequence. This tradition of throwing from the end to the end of the script was preserved in the future, as it engendered intrigue and heated interest to the subsequent parts of the movie. She also caused confusion in the question of what year the "Star Wars" was shot. After all, the first episode was presented to viewers only at the end of XX century.

Where did Star Wars (the fourth episode)

Directed by George Lucas for so long nurtured the idea of his film, which clearly imagined what this character should look like and how to better implement the necessary special effects.

As a place for the creation of the world, where the saga heroes were supposed to exist, Tunisia, or more precisely, the neighborhood of Tatooine, was chosen. And its name was so much liked by the participants of the filming that it was used to designate the planet, where the droids C-3PO and R2-D2 were sent, sent for help in the fight against the forces of the Empire.

For two months the decorators built the city of Mos Astley in the desert. In addition, Tatooine brought 25 models, including radio-controlled, which were designed by Carlo Rambaldi.

In which countries did the creative team of Lucas visit the creation of the movie Star Wars

The picture was shot in different parts of the Earth, for example:

• The Skywalker's needle was also built in Tunisia, but on the dried salt lake of El-Jerid. Interestingly, after filming in 1977, the decoration was dismantled, but then it was rebuilt for shooting the "Attack of the Clones".
• The hotel in the Tunisian city of Matmata, which was rebuilt from an old Berber dwelling, is the site where Star Wars was filmed, when it was necessary to show Skywalker's house.
• In kind for the scenes unfolding on the planet Yavin, were selected ruins in the Guatemalan park Tikal.
• The scene at the Palace Square in Thida was filmed in Spain, in the territory where the Ibero-American exhibition was held in 1929.

In addition, operators, actors and other members of the team directed by Lucas in the course of working on the "Star Wars" visited the Norwegian village of Fins, in Thai Phuket, in Chinese Guilian and in many other interesting places. Thus, they proved that our planet has so diverse a landscape and landscapes that it can become a decoration for the whole Universe.

Where did the shooting of the last episode take place

Each part of George Lucas's space epic was more spectacular and perfect from the point of view of technical solutions and special effects. The countries where people searched for nature also changed, and usually many times over the picture. For example, the places where "Star Wars. The awakening of strength "is:

• The neighborhood of the capital of the Arab Emirates of Abu Dhabi, where they created a market and parking spaceships, which, according to the plot, are on the planet Daku;
• Forest on the border of the English counties of Wales and Gloucestershire, in which the creators of the painting hid from the enemies of grand master Yoda;
• On the island of Schellig-Michael in Ireland, where there is an ancient monastery that is part of UNESCO's world heritage;
• The airfield in Newbury, from which the fighter aircraft of the Rebel Alliance were flying;
• In the pavilion "Pinewood", in the suburbs of London.

By the way, since the epic epic consists of 7 episodes, then before answering the question about what year the "Star Wars" was shot, it is necessary to find out which of them we are talking about. It is also worth noting that the "Awakening Force" was the first film of the saga, which was directed by another director - J. J. Abrams. At the same time, George Lucas, who gave Walt Disney his work for the scenario of the seventh episode, later told reporters that the story presented to the audience has nothing to do with what he wrote for the trilogy sequel.

How long have Star Wars been removed?

Those who saw the first part of the movie saga George Lucas during his childhood, today is far beyond forty or even fifty.

If a question is asked about how many Star Wars films were shot, consider the time span from the first episode (1977) to the end of the last part of the film (November 2014).

What special effects were used

Today, computer graphics and a variety of digital technologies make it possible to create realistic images of any fantastic worlds, and 40 years ago only stuntmen, pyrotechnicians and about a dozen combined shooting techniques were at the disposal of directors and operators.

That is why the special effects of the "Star Wars", to which many are watching today with a smile, at one time amazed the audience. At the same time, many did not guess at what tricks the film crew had to go to capture a particular episode lasting 20-30 seconds. For example, to make a "light sword", they took an ordinary long wooden stick and covered it with a reflective composition, and the space station "Death Star" was a mock-up size of ... a desk. Along it, the workers dragged a miniature camera on the cable, controlled by a homemade computer created specially for this purpose.

Interesting facts about the shooting

Fantasy Lucas was truly inexhaustible, and to create special effects in the course were not even "space" items. So, for shooting a flight through the belt of asteroids as a heavenly rain used ordinary potatoes. The span of each "space object" was shot against the background of the blue screen separately, and after that all the fragments were mounted together with the image of "flying starships". All this required a lot of work, but the result was no less impressive than what is being removed today using computer graphics.

In addition, as a model for the shooting of battle scenes, Lucas used the military chronicle of the Second World War. It's still very long to list interesting facts about the films from the Star Wars saga, since at some point the space epic has so captured the consciousness of its creators that they began to come up with solutions that no one used before.

"Heritage"

After the release of the first episode of the Star Wars saga, the film became truly a cult. The queues at the cinemas were long, like never before. Most of the boys in the US wanted to buy a lightsaber, and instead of toys depicting the heroes of the movie, for Christmas children were given certificates for their purchase. As it turned out, the factory, which acquired the right to produce them, did not have time to satisfy the ever increasing demand for such figures.

In addition, the space epic "Star Wars" marked the beginning of the eponymous subgenre in the cinema. Its popularity turned out to be so great that the US public transferred the name of the saga to the US defense program "SOI - Star Wars." There was also a new kind of fencing - Saberfighting and even the original religious movement "Jedi".

Now you know why Star Wars was not filmed in the order, where it happened and how long it took. It remains only to say that in 2017 and in 2019, two more episodes are expected to appear on the screens, the director of which is likely to be Ryan Johnson.