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  1. In Memory of LAJ_FETT: Please share your remembrances and condolences HERE

CT The lost pilots and scenes from the Endor space battle in Return of the Jedi

Discussion in 'Classic Trilogy' started by Lt. Hija, Jun 10, 2016.

  1. Lt. Hija

    Lt. Hija Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Dec 8, 2015
    Hernalt wrote

    The simplest explanation is that it is possible Kahn extrapolated from Lucas’ “enemy ships at Sector RT-23 and PB-4” and embellished it with “two behemoth flanking waves”. This simple explanation doesn’t answer why there was a battle outside the Emperor’s window, and other select inconsistencies.

    Alternatively, it could also be that “enemy ships at Sector RT-23 and PB-4” were Kahn's embellishing the "two waves" as these two sectors only showed up in the novelization, but none of the (additional) genuine Ackbar screenplay lines at our disposal.
    Had Kahn merely made up the whole thing, I don't believe he would provided a description of the briefing room aboard Ackbar's ship with the hologram revealing the two waves. He could have skipped that, and that's why I remain confident we are looking at a hologram VFX for the briefing room that just never made it.

    So if Rinzler was accurate, Vader once arrived in an SSD, at least in concept art. That has a resonance with the scene header in the sanitized script where the SSD with Piett on it is called “VADER’S STAR DESTROYER”. If Vader was intended by Lucas to arrive at the DS2 in a SSD, then that conception precedes the scripts given to Kahn, because Kahn has him arriving in an “Imperial Star Destroyer”.

    This would be another time where I'd suggest caution to draw "in-universe" conclusions from a script that had been always first and foremost intended for production purposes (compare to the example I provided in the Star Destroyer Bridge thread: http://boards.theforce.net/threads/...riginal-trilogy.50044307/page-2#post-54162253 )

    "Vader's Star Destroyer" was ILM's description for any scene that involved this particular VFX model and all the script does here is to give the guys at ILM a heads-up that this particular model will be needed in a couple of shots (that the Super Star Destroyer that crashed into the Death Star was the Executor is a conjectural idea that originates with Mr. Zahn - I had a personal discussion with him at an Italian SW convention where he expressed his personal dislike for a ship like that, feeling there should only be one despite Solo's suggestion to the contrary and the explicit script annotation "Emperor's Super Star Destroyer").

    Of course, that does not answer the question why it says in some scene headers "Vader's Star Destroyer" and in others "Super Star Destroyer". Either that's a hint that two Super Star Destroyers were originally considered for the space battle (and mixed up) or Lucas decided to give the VFX model finally another description ("Super Star Destroyer") but ultimately wasn't consistent in doing so. [face_dunno]
     
  2. Hectic_Pictures

    Hectic_Pictures Jedi Knight

    Registered:
    Jan 28, 2013
    Great thread!!!!!
    I've been working on a total re-edit of the ROTJ space battle in my spare time, restoring scenes and creating missing ones.

    Here is my take on the missing female A-Wing pilot dialog. They just changed the line to match up to her lips.





    I'll be scouring this thread for ideas, and if there's interest, I'll post more of what I have.
     
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  3. Lt. Hija

    Lt. Hija Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Dec 8, 2015
    Just the man I've been looking for. :)

    Here is my first suggestion, i.e. I'd love to see all the fragments taken out of the original chronlogy of Chapter Two - http://boards.theforce.net/threads/...-space-battle-in-return-of-the-jedi.50041047/ - to be put back in the original order, shown here:

    The Falcon and other Rebel fighters are engaged in a ferocious combat
    with Imperial TIE fighters, the battle raging around the cruisers of the
    Rebel armada.

    WEDGE They're heading for the Medical Frigate. After them!

    LANDO I’m going in. There’re four marks at .35. Cover me!

    WEDGE Right behind you, Gold Leader. Red Three, Red Two, pull in!

    RED THREE Got it!

    (Red Three is destroyed by the two TIE interceptors which themselves are destroyed by the Y-Wing above the port side wing of a Rebel Star Cruiser)

    WEDGE Good shot, Red Two.

    PILOT Hang on, back there,

    PILOT Close up formations, Blue Group

    LANDO Not bad. I’ll take out the other three

    Lando steers the Falcon through a complete flip (around a Rebel Cruiser, apparently “Medical Frigate” in the final edit), as his crew fires at the TIEs from the belly guns.

    NAVIGATOR Pressure's steady.

    The copilot Nien Nunb chatters an observation.

    LANDO You’re right. Only the fighters are attacking. I wonder what those Star Destroyers are waiting for.

    Nien Nunb chatters another observation

    LANDO I see ‘em. We’re sure in the middle of it, now. Come on, Han, old buddy. Don't let me down.

    ;)
     
  4. Lt. Hija

    Lt. Hija Jedi Master star 4

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    Dec 8, 2015
    I think "seeing is believing" and I noticed that I had a visualization prepared last year for this thread, but somehow hadn't found a suitable opportunity (until now) to post it:

    [​IMG]
     
  5. Iron_lord

    Iron_lord Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Sep 2, 2012
    I would guess that what convinced them to recut it, was remembering that they'd already used a "medical ship" (as in, ship with a medical operation - Luke's hand replacement) taking place on it - so, they might as well portray it as "the medical frigate".

    Makes sense that a ship smaller than a "star cruiser" but bigger than a blockade runner, would be a frigate.
     
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  6. Lt. Hija

    Lt. Hija Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Dec 8, 2015
    You are suggesting they recut the scenes to ensure continuity but we have Ken Ralston's comments that clearly suggest the opposite:

    "When the sequences got changed around, it affected a lot of what we'd already begun shooting. A shot that was 20th in the space battle sequence might now be in the 50th position, so the shot that came before it - maybe a TIE ship flying around and blowing up - is now a cruiser with an X-Wing....It's more than just dropping shots. It's also juggling around the existing continuity. That's thrown me off a bit." (Cinefex # 13)

    Admittedly, Mr. Ralston himself is an inadvertent accomplice in the "Medical Frigate" mixup, IMHO. Trying to describe the spectacular scene with the Falcon fly-around for both Bantha Tracks and Cinefex he used the designation "medical ship" but I'm confident that he rather used that term to convey to average readers that he was talking about the Rebel ship from the end of ESB (which storywise had a medical function for the main protagonist).
    Until I see an original ROJ production document that designates the Rebel 'Nebulon' cruiser as "Medical Frigate" (the original ESB production documents only referred to it as "Rebel (Star) Cruiser") I remain confident that the winged Rebel Star Cruiser was meant to be the original Medical Frigate.
     
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  7. Iron_lord

    Iron_lord Chosen One star 10

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    Sep 2, 2012
    Too late to reverse that kind of decision now, though.
     
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  8. Lt. Hija

    Lt. Hija Jedi Master star 4

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    Dec 8, 2015
    Decisions based on inaccurate or incomplete research do not concern me. As always my main interest is what the original contributors to the OT intended, not what people that were never involved with the original productions turned these things into.
     
  9. Iron_lord

    Iron_lord Chosen One star 10

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    Sep 2, 2012
    The point to be made is that Ralston was thinking of the TESB ship as a "medical ship" when he described things. Thus, it becoming a "medical frigate" makes sense.

    Lucas (and Filoni) when writing The Clone Wars, introduce more "medical frigates".

    And the Wookieepedia entry for that particular ship, suggests that "medical frigate" was its designation from the start:

    http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Redemption/Legends

    The Cloud City Limited and Death Star II Limited expansion sets to the Star Wars Customizable Card Game by Decipher, Inc., along with the 1998 LucasArts interactive CD-ROM Star Wars: Behind the Magic, later revealed that the Redemption was the previously unnamed medical frigate that first appeared in Irvin Kershner's 1980 film Star Wars: Episode V The Empire Strikes Back and that this was the same vessel that later appeared in the 1983 sequel, Star Wars: Episode VI Return of the Jedi, directed by Richard Marquand. Designed by Nilo Rodis-Jamero, the ship was one of the last models to be created for The Empire Strikes Back and was only identified as the "Rebel medical frigate star cruiser."[2] At Star Wars creator George Lucas's suggestion, the ship was designed to resemble an outboard motor.
     
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  10. Hernalt

    Hernalt Force Ghost star 4

    Registered:
    Jun 29, 2000
    Iron Lord, you offer invaluable push back / braking friction on wild theories. I just have to mention that.

    The following is evidence in support of an hypothesis that the Nebulon B cruiser was not necessarily a "Medical Frigate" as of end of 1980.

    Art of ESB, publishing date 1980, page 163 - 171 is the "Rebel Cruiser" section. Not a single expression "Medical Frigate".

    This script at imdb really should have been scrubbed and sanitized by now. Replacing "Star Cruiser" with "Medical Frigate" and then disseminating that as what really happened, and George Lucas' true vision, would be a good project for a LFL intern.

    http://www.imsdb.com/scripts/Star-Wars-The-Empire-Strikes-Back.html

     
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  11. Hernalt

    Hernalt Force Ghost star 4

    Registered:
    Jun 29, 2000
    @Lt. Hija

    https://james-kahn.myshopify.com/products/return-of-the-jedi
    Production stills would start to be possible prior to start of filming. I recall the Rebel briefing room set started construction in November 1981. Sets would be ready for first week of January 1982. So Kahn could receive his first batch of material in late 1981. We know he cannot have received all his material that early because we know Lucas wrote the script with Gerald Home on the fly on or by February 15, 1982. The script for ‘intensify forward firepower’ does not appear in Kahn. It is so peculiarly spectacular that it should be impossible for Kahn to have received it but not included it.

    Since one spatial sector coordinate exists in the Lucas script, it is unlikely that there was some kind of back-contamination from Kahn to Lucas wrt coordinates in general. It’s possible that the Lucas script Kahn was given had a single coordinate / single fleet, and Kahn amplified it to two and then elaborated it again to a specific pincer movement.

    It doesn’t take long in the novel for echoes of a pincer movement to stop. This is in the novel right after the equivalent of the Gerald Home Scene 101A. “It was far too late for Lando and his attack squadrons to heed that order, though. They were already way ahead of the pack, heading straight for the oncoming Imperial fleet.” “Way ahead” is a long linear distance, because “straight” is linear, and the end point is a point, not a range or spread of locations.

    Then Scene 102 in the novel has “the blanket of ships” and “the Imperial fleet”. “the flagship Super Star Destroyer” could be read to mean ‘the particular one of more than one Super Star Destroyer that happened to be the flagship’, or, it could be read to mean ‘the one Super Star Destroyer that was a flagship’. So it by itself does not fix one SSD but rather expands the possibility of two SSDs. “Some distance from the main area of battle, coasting safely in the center of the blanket of ships that constituted the Imperial fleet, was the flagship Super Star Destroyer. On the bridge, Admiral Piett watched the war through the enormous observation window—curious, as if viewing an elaborate demonstration, or an entertainment.”

    The next line would be promising in a search for echoes of two fleets. “Two fleet captains stood behind him, respectfully silent; also learning the elegant designs of their Emperor.” Signature Imperial confidence might allow a high-ranking captain from a/the subordinate fleet to be detached from his post for this special occasion and present with the Admiral of the entire fleet, Piett. At one time you had things to say about an Imperial officer who was filmed, I think, and didn't make it in.

    The next line would belay an idea of two fleets. “Have the fleet hold here,” Admiral Piett ordered.

    But then the three dimensional thinker will take exception with the following line, for, it is not obvious in any remote way, using the film of 1983, how a single group of ships can prevent the rebel cruisers from retreating, which the principal representatives of the Rebel attack represent as a physical option that they possess the capability to take. Piett smirked. “I have my orders from the Emperor himself. He has something special planned for this Rebel scum.” He accented the specialness with a long pause, for the inquisitive captain to savor. “We are only to keep them from escaping.”

    Considering that in TPM Lucas knew that a blockade required an appearance of actually encircling something, so as to actually present an actual threat of containing something, I wonder if Lucas' brain vision before anything was committed to paper was more amorphous than what showed up on film. Some kind of Imperial fleet surrounding the Rebel fleet as if it was like the Trade Federation blockade, in a two dimensional plane, and then that did not translate well into story boards. So he went with the poetic priority, which was to monolithic-ize the foe in the form of a single overwhelming / numerically superior enemy fleet. In this complexion, Lucas scripting two sector positions would still make sense (kind of?) as higher fleet densities. (And that could be strained with tongue in cheek to say, higher fleet density correlates with an SSD.) One thing that would be useful would be as early as possible of concept art or storyboards of the rebel briefing room that show that hologram.

    I started studying mirrors to gain context around the SSD port vs starboard lighting, and that has already generated a spin-off discovery regarding a Lost Rebel, Erroll Shaker. I’ll keep chipping away at this mirror study in confidence it will generate more unintended information.

    Hectic_Pictures That's good. I'd appreciate if you shared more of your intentions.
     
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  12. Lt. Hija

    Lt. Hija Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Dec 8, 2015
    Iron_lord quoted

    Designed by Nilo Rodis-Jamero, the ship was one of the last models to be created for The Empire Strikes Back and was only identified as the "Rebel medical frigate star cruiser."[2]

    The only identification ever provided in the original ESB materials was "Rebel (Star) Cruiser" (The Art of ESB, ESB sketchbook, script). Nor do the original ROJ materials identify which ship is the "Medical Frigate".

    Hernalt wrote

    This script at imdb really should have been scrubbed and sanitized by now. Replacing "Star Cruiser" with "Medical Frigate" and then disseminating that as what really happened, and George Lucas' true vision, would be a good project for a LFL intern.

    [face_laugh]

    And while such an intern is at it, have the corresponding sections from the ROJ script pimped and sanitized, too:

    Lando steers the Falcon through a complete flip (add: around the Medical Frigate), as his crew fires at
    the TIEs from the belly guns.

    The Rebel cruisers medical frigates move very close to the Imperial Star Destroyers and
    begin to blast away at point-blank range. Tiny fighters race across the
    giant surfaces, against a backdrop of laser fire.

    :p

     
  13. Hernalt

    Hernalt Force Ghost star 4

    Registered:
    Jun 29, 2000
    Headquarters Frigate mentioned in Kahn, James Version Chapter 4 verse 22, 23:
    Headquarters Frigate mentioned in Lucas sanitized script:
    After this, there is no more mention of Headquarters Frigate in Lucas, only “REBEL STAR CRUISER - BRIDGE”, in Scene 110, 124, 127, 129, 133.

    Originally the War Room and Bridge were to be separate sets. If one goes by the use of Frigate and Cruiser to represent the same ship, it’s possible there were originally two different conceptions of how to put the Rebel Alliance flagship into a context with Imperial _Destroyers_. One thing I’m pretty sure is old news (maybe West End Games) is that the Mon Cal capital ships were literally ‘cruisers’ in the sense that we today call a luxury liner a cruise ship. So when Ackbar says, ‘our cruisers can’t stand up to their destroyers’, he might as well be literally saying, ‘our armored and refitted recreational luxury liners can’t stand up to that ship class that Lucas calibrated to be equivalent to Earth-based naval destroyers.”

    As to size differences between Home One / The Rebel Headquarters Frigate and the Mon Cal "cruisers" of a Liberty class and Freedom class <grit teeth wingless Liberty spit>, the ROTJ Sketchbook page 88 puts 'a' Rebel Cruiser at parity with a SD. It's actually slightly longer than the SD. Page 89 also gives a length scale of "1 MI." to a "cruiser" that answers slightly more to the Freedom class than the Home One class. And, I believe there is fact-finding by Saxton et al that puts Home One at longer than a SD.

    Based on this, I think there's more than a decent chance that "Medical Frigate" did not at all times mean exactly the Rebel Star Cruiser from ESB, or, a ship that is visually smaller than what is being openly called a Frigate in the script. Caution about scripts and their intent is welcome, of course. The viewer never hears the word "frigate" with respect to that ship about which they hear "cruiser". It would have a very different effect if Ackbar had said literally, "Our frigates won't last long..." That could lose the viewer, because, what is a frigate? "Cruiser" is a word that a broader spectrum of a given population will have had a chance to hear.
     
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  14. Hernalt

    Hernalt Force Ghost star 4

    Registered:
    Jun 29, 2000
    Cinefex 22 November 1982 - Ken Ralston
    So Ralston does say "one of the hospital ships", as if there are more than one, and Ralston does not necessarily say the words, "Medical Frigate". There is more than one of such "hospital ships" immediately recognizable in the same frame when the fleet starts evasive action, to the immediate foreground left.
     
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  15. Hernalt

    Hernalt Force Ghost star 4

    Registered:
    Jun 29, 2000
    Lt. Hija
    What do you make of this?

    [​IMG]
    From: https://theasc.com/magazine/starwars/gallery/jedi/efxp/img14.htm

    I know what I can make of it...
     
  16. Hectic_Pictures

    Hectic_Pictures Jedi Knight

    Registered:
    Jan 28, 2013
    Cool stuff!
    My intentions were to create a more accurate battle based on the Lost Pilot videos, but I'm no Adywan. I was initially trying to make small fixes like ships that were the wrong size (Nebulon B and corvette compositing error) and add some things to make the battle more dynamic. The video link below is a very rough layout with some ideas for fixes.


     
  17. Hernalt

    Hernalt Force Ghost star 4

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    Jun 29, 2000
    Looks like someone's beginning to take an interest in your handiwork.

    What would you do (in words) to address the "Nebulon B and corvette compositing error"?
     
  18. Lt. Hija

    Lt. Hija Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Dec 8, 2015
    Hernalt

    Thanks, yes, even the ROJ Sketchbook is just referring to the big capital ships as "Rebel Cruisers" with the annotation saying that George Lucas wanted the Alliance ships to be organic to be in noticable contrast to the hard geometry of the Imperial Star Destroyers.

    They way I see it "Rebel Star Cruiser" was originally the designation for the top of the line Alliance ship, but the new and bigger ROJ ships took the reins from the 'Nebulon' cruiser (top of the line in ESB) and become the new Rebel Star Cruisers, while simultaneuosly being "frigates" but also just "rebel cruisers".

    The way I still see it Ken Ralston got tangled in the lack of distinction, i.e. referred to the 'old' kind of "Rebel cruiser" as "hospital ships" to ensure that nobody misunderstood he might be talking about the 'new' (ROJ) Rebel cruisers.

    [​IMG]

    While we got plenty of storyboards from the Endor space battle we unfortunately do mostly lack the bottom storyboard annotations. IIRC "Rebel Cruiser" was the standard storyboard description for all the three different Alliance ships, including the 'Nebulon' (and assuming the above scene would have utilized the extra large VFX model section of Ackbar's star cruiser there'd be the same name for four different VFX models).

    What do you make of this?

    [​IMG]

    Ah, yes! That's the rare image from American Cinematographer featuring the large VFX conning tower model with the large (Avenger) command bridge module (it's mirror-inverted in Saxton's image), great find!

    And it's probably the reason why many believe it has to belong to the main communications ship, just because the same shooting stages apparently has a B-Wing in the background (which is inconclusive, because the B-Wing would have been shot separately and added during compositing the VFX elements!)

    Hectic_Pictures

    Unfortunately, I can't watch your YouTube video, where I live. I get static with this text: This video contains content of Disney Enterprises. This partner has blocked the video because of copyright reasons. :(

    My intentions were to create a more accurate battle based on the Lost Pilot videos, but I'm no Adywan. I was initially trying to make small fixes like ships that were the wrong size (Nebulon B and corvette compositing error) and add some things to make the battle more dynamic. The video link below is a very rough layout with some ideas for fixes.

    I'm not sure it really is a compositing error:

    [​IMG]

    However, the other scene with the Falcon flying past a Blockade Runner's starboard side probably is.
     
  19. Hernalt

    Hernalt Force Ghost star 4

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    Jun 29, 2000
    Lt. Hija
    I'm satisfied that the resolution of that image is too poor for use. Is that image I posted a mirror inversion of what is in American Cinematographer? Do you have a link to where Saxton uses this image?
     
  20. Hernalt

    Hernalt Force Ghost star 4

    Registered:
    Jun 29, 2000
    Annotated Screenplays doesn’t offer much for Lost Rebels research. The most I see is the following quote.
    I was tempted to think that this quote was really from ESB, since that is where the visual marriage of Vader and >his very own, named< SSD takes place. But then Johnston mentions TIE “interceptors”. (I love the lower case, as that opens up new lines of analysis.) So that should mean that >the< SSD in ROTJ is still attempting to communicate Vader, and not necessarily so much, Emperor. It could still use some backstory why it is that Vader came in on a SD but Vader’s “own” SSD was reserved to chauffeur the Emperor. Did Vader’s SSD have the best security? Did Vader arrive on a lowly SD so as to be incognito, so that the arrival of the “Vader’s Star Destroyer” would be perceived as the arrival, not of the Emperor, but of Vader? Mon Mothma knew that the Emperor was acting secretly. Secrets cost lives, etc. There could be some fertile ground of micro narratives and retcons. As far as I am aware this has never been hammered out. Not in a way that homogenizes script (contradictory scene headers), novel (some slight contradictions), film ("the command ship", "lots of command ships").

    What do you read in new canon, Iron_lord?
     
  21. Iron_lord

    Iron_lord Chosen One star 10

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    Sep 2, 2012
    I've tried to read all the newcanon I can find. I could see the Emperor using Vader's SSD because Vader tends to "take the best stuff for himself" - communicating the message to Vader that all his toys, are the Emperor's as well.
     
  22. Lt. Hija

    Lt. Hija Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Dec 8, 2015
    Hernalt asked

    I'm satisfied that the resolution of that image is too poor for use. Is that image I posted a mirror inversion of what is in American Cinematographer? Do you have a link to where Saxton uses this image?

    It's the other way round, i.e, Saxton's b & w image is a segment from the American Cinematographer image and the one that's mirror-inverted (i.e. the color version you posted is not in any way flopped or mirrored). AFAIK he posted it somewhere in his technical commentaries. Problem remains that a lot of light is hitting the front of the large VFX conning tower model, washing out a lot of details. To get a really good image of the conning tower VFX model with the large bridge module has been my personal Holy Grail for decades now.
     
  23. Hernalt

    Hernalt Force Ghost star 4

    Registered:
    Jun 29, 2000
    I think I figured out the native bias of the 5-bridge studio scale model. The lynch pin of the argument is that Ease Owyeung wears a watch on his left wrist.

    The American Cinematographer image above represents the true horizontal configuration, with the outlier bridge on the port side.

    The film's 5-bridge superstructure, with outlier bridge on the starboard side, is a mirrored version of the studio scale model.

    Saxton saw that film release footage and delved no deeper than its appearance on screen. When he got hold of a black and white copy of the color photograph from American Cinematographer, he had it flipped to match the general facing direction of the superstructure as seen in the film, as well as match the arrangement of individual bridges.

    Complicating this event is that the mirrored 5-bridge footage (where they flip the negative) was composited against footage of a Mon Cal Freedom class cruiser whose negative was un-flipped, or native bias. The Mon Cal's ventral port is on the starboard side. What we see in the ROTJ scene is a ventral port on starboard side. That footage of the underside of the Mon Cal Freedom should probably date to when they shot the footage for the scene where Wedge does a sharp turn and an Interceptor crashes into that ventral hangar. They added Liberty wings as soon as they had canned footage of that first version. Both of these sets of footage are calibrated against a BTS picture that shows a ventral starboard hangar and someone working on it with a T-shirt with un-mirrored writing. No mirroring.

    The American Cinematographer image could be capturing events during the filming of the superstructure footage in the scene where the rebels attack a SD dome and the one says, "She's gonna blow." If you compare that sequence to the American Cinematographer image, and do some mental rotations, you'll see that the shadows from the primary light source match up, and that the dome does have some otherwise unexplained illumination where it really ought to have a terminus and some stark shadow like the linear antenna array does. That unexplained illumination could be the result of someone holding up big cards like that.
     
  24. Lt. Hija

    Lt. Hija Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Dec 8, 2015
    Hernalt wrote

    The American Cinematographer image could be capturing events during the filming of the superstructure footage in the scene where the rebels attack a SD dome and the one says, "She's gonna blow." If you compare that sequence to the American Cinematographer image, and do some mental rotations, you'll see that the shadows from the primary light source match up, and that the dome does have some otherwise unexplained illumination where it really ought to have a terminus and some stark shadow like the linear antenna array does. That unexplained illumination could be the result of someone holding up big cards like that.

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    I concur, good observation. The large conning tower model in the BTS image above is obviously illuminated from the front and above, but would leave the stern rather dark during filming, hence the white sheet held by the production assistant to provide light reflections / illumation for the stern part of the model. The explosion of the starboard deflector shield power generator has most likely been shot separately and added during VFX composition.

    Quite in contrast we do have this:

    [​IMG]

    This BTS shot obviously reveals that one of the power generator domes of the large conning tower model actually was incinerated, we do have several model images that show the scorched remains of the dome on top of the model (as does the VFX scene of the Emperor's SSD going down).

    Can't shake the impression that that was their first try to blow up the dome, but it somehow lacked punch and the shot was discarded. That may have been the reason why they built a larger dome and top section, blew it up and kept the new VFX shot for the film:

    [​IMG]

    And to make the confusion perfect we do have this:

    [​IMG]

    The storyboard description suggested that there'd be "outward" Bridge bursts first, followed (!) by a "huge explosion" of the dome.

    Ultimately, it was shot the other way around. ;)
     
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  25. Hernalt

    Hernalt Force Ghost star 4

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    Jun 29, 2000
    I.
    The image with the starboard dome ‘on fire’ makes me think it was test VFX photography. Not promotional VFX photography (no stars), and not an individual cell from a 35mm film sequence.

    It’s interesting you use the word ‘incinerated’. That does look like a low-energy event. Or, the release of the bound energy contained in that volume originally was not enough to say all that much about how the ship itself was affected. And maybe Lucas needed more. He needed to make Manhattan do a nose dive. How do you get a crew to want to get off a nuclear submarine. And so, whatever role that dome played at any time, that role became subject to reinterpretation due to Lucas needing a bigger emotional tone shift for the symbolism of the SSD losing its position of ‘elevation’, ‘status’, encoded in spatial altitude. And so the power of that explosion, combined with Lucas’ choice of adjacency of certain plot events, gives liberty to enthusiastic certainty of causation. Correlation is dismissed.

    The story board you supply also puts a question mark on the fait accompli fiat on what those domes “are”. Or “were”. A “half-dome” signals that the original dome, prior to receiving a supersized explosion, was not a monolithic powder keg.

    II.
    Here’s Ken Ralston on 22 November 1982.
    Can you think of any best candidates for what Ackbar was saying, that was deemed ‘pointless’? So as to have an idea where this A-Wing footage may have been in sequence. May have been from Home scripts, may have been from videomatics.