This one’s going to be short, as I’m on little sleep these days. Mornings and weekends, I continue to do the book map of The Making of Return of the Jedi, and am up to the ILM chapters. I’m really trying to use photos as large as I can. I feel that The Making of The Empire Strikes Back had too many photos on a page and the result was, often, a lot of clutter. Some of these photos for Return of the Jedi are so great, I want readers to be able to dive into them: George Lucas and Dennis Muren at ILM; Harrison Ford and Lucas together for the Ewok location shoot; Carrie Fisher on Jabba’s throne room set, etc. And as they say, a picture is worth…
But above is an image that won’t make it into the book. I’m not sure who wrote the message, but it seems to be addressed to Howard (Howie) Stein, visual effects editor. The note refers to RA96, or Rebel Attack (on the second Death Star), shot #96 in the sequence, and to several enhancements needed on the Millennium Falcon. This would’ve come toward the end of postproduction, probably circa December 1982. But what’s great about the note is the window you get into the night crew’s life and the rhythm at ILM at that time: “Though we stuffed ourselves at dinner, we were able to stay awake long enough to…” There was a sense of humor about the work, even though, as you can imagine, the pressure was on. And ILM was doing arguably the best work yet of its short existence.
When I was talking to Selwyn Eddy III about his time on the night crew camera team, he mentioned that they started a tradition of midnight barbecues, which caught on with the other departments working late nights: Optical et al. Don’t know if this refers to a midnight meal or not, but these little pieces of arcane info help an author to imagine what it was like back then…
Next blog: Sleep.
Lucasfilm executive editor J. W. Rinzler is the author of The Making of Star Wars and The Complete Making of Indiana Jones. He is now writing The Making of Return of the Jedi (and really looking forward to finishing it) for a fall 2013 release. You can visit jwrinzler.com for more info.
Get some sleep bro, you deserve it.
Sleep well mate,
Can’t wait for it to come out! Greetings and thanks from UK
Awesome J. W. Rinzler. Looking forward to getting and picking up a copy of The Making Of Return Of The Jedi in October 2013. I own the 1st 3 making of books on the making of Revenge Of The Sith , Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back as well as The Sounds Of Star Wars and The Complete Making Of Indiana Jones also Star Wars Art Visions and Star Wars Art Comics. You always write great star wars books.
This amusing chapter was kindly forwarded my way – yes, the note to me, just 30 years ago, is quite amusing to see. Might be from Mike McAister. Definitely was some pressure going down to get elements and shots done.
[...] blogside. Over at the StarWars.com blog, J.W. Rinzler talks about laying out The Making of Return of the Jedi, Tim Zahn shares some of his memorable experiences with books, and Daniel Wallace shares endnotes [...]