BTS The Secret History of Star Wars

In my copies of the OOT the Leia and Luke holos definitely have a bluish cast, even though some color is visible (especially in their faces).

 

That's quite possible. I only have the 2006 GOUT DVD transfer to judge the OOT by; my old OOT VHS tapes don't seem to be around anymore.

But, to be honest, the OOT holograms were inconsistent from shot to shot anyway. In the GOUT release of ANH, Leia's hologram is sometimes blue-tinted all over. However, in other shots, it's only the bottom portion of her dress that is tinted blue. In the upper part of her figure, the real colors are much more pronounced, but they fade gradually into blue further down.

Likewise, in certain shots in the GOUT DVD of ROTJ, Luke's hologram is visibly blue-tinted, but in many other shots the tint is much less easy to see. So, it's probably fairer to say that the SEs merely standardized the hologram effects. In that case, it's inevitable that the SE releases had to err on one side or the other of how a hologram should "look."

 

Some thoughts not on the matter of holograms, for a change...

I was looking through my Art of TPM book again, and found an interesting detail that I'd never noticed before.

The third draft of TPM (then titled The Beginning) explicitly describes the Naboo starfighters as yellow:

Likewise, much of Doug Chiang's art shows the Naboo space-fighters with yellow paint on their hulls.

[image=http://home.comcast.net/~ervind/tpmship1.jpg]

[image=http://home.comcast.net/~ervind/tpmship4.jpg]

Note especially the yellow rings on the front section of the twin engines.

Now let's look at this early Chiang painting of Viceroy Nute Gunray entering Naboo City (later renamed Theed) in triumph.

[image=http://home.comcast.net/~ervind/tpmship8.jpg]

You can clearly see Naboo starfighters docked on the walls. However, take a closer look at the fighters, and especially their engines. They don't have any yellow paint on them. Rather, they're entirely silver, much as Lucas originally envisioned the Rebel starfighters in ANH.

This painting also shows the initial design concept for the Nemoidians. Originally they were going to be entirely CGI creatures, like Jar Jar, and they would resemble the battle droids in physical shape. Lucas later decided to use old-fashioned animatronic masks, which required a redesign of the Nemoidians' physical features to support human actors inside the masks. However, the battle droid design was not changed.

 

Be specific, ATM. That's not just yellow, but "piss yellow", the same color as John Milner's car from "American Graffiti". A very interesting personalization throughout the PT, where Anakin constantly flies yellow crafts-- pod-racer, Naboo fighter, Coruscant convertible and Jedi TIE alike. At any rate, it shows just how much TPM, and the PT in general, is intimately connected to Lucas. It really is "One From the Heart" (another underappreciated little movie, that).

 

Perhaps this is reading a bit too much into it, but yellow is the color of fear, and that's the root of Anakin's problems in the PT.

 

Just as an aside, the change of the Neimoidian design went down like this according to the summer 1999 issue of Cinefex magazine:

1) Practical effects guy informs Lucas that the Neimoidians didn't really need to be CGI.
2) Lucas picks up some "Aliens of Star Wars" book and flips through it.
3) Lucas points at a picture of the Duros and says "those are the Neimoidians".

By the way, anyone know why it was decided to scrap the CGI Neimoidians? My guess is that it was because they were humanoids who don't do anything except kind of stand around and talk, as opposed to the kinetic, bizarrely-shaped, and thus necessarily CGI Sebulba et al.

 

Well, they are the color of Sith-eyes as far back as ROTJ, so it's actually a pretty valid idea. It would also fit into the character of Milner from AG, a grown-up kid who's just as afraid of change as Anakin was.

 

Very interesting comments on the yellow "hot-rod" starships being a reflection of Lucas' own personal taste in cars. I'd guess he's vicariously compensating for the racer lifestyle he'd aspired to as a teenager, but was forced to give up after his life-threatening accident.

Oh, and the yellow Sith eyes came about because in ESB, the original Emperor hologram had the yellow eyes of a chimpanzee instead of human eyes. However, a photo in The Making of Empire suggests that ILM also experimented with adding a Siamese cat's eyes instead: in this case, blue with the classic "cat-eye" vertically elongated pupils.

Anyways, excellent insights.

---

I finally found my VHS copies of the OOT and looked at the holograms again.

Leia's hologram in ANH definitely has a strong blue tint in some shots. However, in other shots, the blue tone is hardly visible at all, and the hologram looks more like it's in real color.

The original Emperor hologram in ESB does have scanlines in its OOT version. However, they're not really visible in the GOUT DVD release taken from the old ESB laserdisc.

And, most interestingly, Luke's hologram to Jabba in the OOT VHS of ROTJ is visibly blue-tinted. But, in the laserdisc-based GOUT DVD of ROTJ, Luke's holo-message seems to be in real color, much as it is in the 2004 SE DVD of ROTJ. Weird.

 

Sounds good!

I have read that originally Lucas tried to buy the rights of Flash Gordon, fortunatly for us he wasn't successful.

 

A very interesting personalization throughout the PT, where Anakin constantly flies yellow crafts-- pod-racer, Naboo fighter, Coruscant convertible and Jedi TIE alike.

The book The Cinema of George Lucas makes note of the occurrence of yellow vehicles in Lucas's films. Possibly this goes back to the first car he owned - a yellow Fiat Bianchina - which he was driving when he had the car accident that almost killed him.

It notes Milner's hot-rod in American Graffiti and his dragster in More American Graffiti, Anakin's podracer and starfighter in TPM, the airspeeder in AOTC and the racer from Lucas's student film 1:42.08.



By the way, anyone know why it was decided to scrap the CGI Neimoidians?

I have always heard that it was just budgetary concerns. It would have been too expensive and time-consuming to do more CG characters that had to be convincing up close. As you suggest, the Neimoidians don't do much action so it was more practical to have them as actors in masks and commit the CG resources to bringing the other aliens and creatures to the screen.

 

Earlier I posted:

I thought I'd add a visual aid to this earlier comment.

Here are examples of the yellow eyes of chimpanzees, which were used for the eyes of the original Emperor hologram in ESB. These provided the visual inspiration for the yellow Sith eyes, starting with the Emperor makeup in ROTJ (which tried to be consistent with the ESB hologram).

[image=http://wallpapers.pupazzo.org/animals/slides/All%20Ears_%20Chimpanzee.jpg]

[image=http://www.primates.com/chimps/chimpanzee-picture.jpg]

[image=http://www.treehugger.com/20081023-chimpanzee.jpg]

Now, here are the blue eyes of a Siamese cat, which ILM also experimented with using for the Emperor hologram. Quite a difference! Besides the different color, the vertical pupils would've been interesting.

[image=http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ca/Niobe050905-Siamese_Cat.jpeg]

[image=http://crazy-frankenstein.com/free-wallpapers-files/animals-wallpapers/cats-wallpapers/siamese-cat-wallpaper.jpg]

[image=http://cattressmattress.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/Siamese-Cat2.jpg]

 

Even in those pictures, their eyes look mostly brown to me, like most humans. Their irises look a bit lighter than do human irises, but we also should keep in mind that the sclera of a non-human ape is not generally as visible as in humans, so there will be less contrast. From what I remember, it's thought that the visible sclera in humans came about during the period when our ancestors were living in an environment changing from heavily forested to more patchy, creating more opportunities for relatively long-distance encounters/sightings of other groups. The ability to communicate and read intentions by gaze direction became very useful. Having a darker iris probably was helpful too, for that reason.

Anyway, I agree that the Sith eyes were probably based on that bright 'iris-only' look... not to mention that the hologram effect would have heightened the brightness and contrast of certain parts of the image. Just felt like commenting in detail.

 

Current discussion aside, I love this concept from top to bottom - especially the design of the Neimodians themselves (I always had a problem with the ones we ended up with) and the similarities to their own droids, as well as the whole notion of such a formal, triumphant parade celebrating the capture of the city.

 

Cost. Plus ILM's CG work was already going to be very extensive at that point. And anything to spread the workload was welcome.

Count me in the Neimoidians would have been better as CG characters camp at this point. Then again their dialogue was so camp that campy masks are almost appropriate.

 

[image=http://media.ebaumsworld.com/mediaFiles/picture/10662/80460462.jpg]

We can once again argue about whether the Vader-Father idea was original or not!

Linkity

Clearly, all the stories about Prowse saying the "Obi-Wan killed your father" line and not knowing about the twist must be an LFL conspiracy to glorify Lucas at the expense of the book-promoting bodybuilder. It must have all originated with Prowse, the real genius behind the saga. This is slyly alluded to by Lucas when he emphasizes how the saga is all about Darth Vader.




Really though, this does illustrate how... obvious... a twist it is/was. Once you've set up the story found in SW77, the mind sort of makes a connection between Annikin and Darth.

 

That's a real weird one, particularly given that Prowse himself is quoted revealing the twist, but IIRC, there were a couple of other news stories around that time that 'broke' the story, when, in fact, they were making educated guesses. Quite possible that Prowse got his info from them. Hmm...

 

Well, according to that article Luke wouldn't find out til the 3rd film, not the 2nd.

That said, I'm not convinced of the article's authenticity

 

I'm not convinced it's legit either.

 

Just finished MAKING OF EMPIRE and found out that George Lucas made changes to the ending only a few weeks after it was released theatrically. WOW! He really can't let anything just exist, he has to always make changes.

 

Yeah but that was to clarify the location of the rebels at the end with the shot of the fleet. They thought it was too jarring to go from the escape from Bespin right to the interior of the rebel medical ship. It helped clarify a story point.

 

Regarding the Prowse article, which the blogger claims was from late 1978, in TSHOSW zombie refers to an April 1978 Future Magazine article:

Given that this appeared months earlier, I'm not so sure the Prowse article's a fake. The only information regarding its origin is the credit under the photo - Examiner/Nicole Bengiveno - I checked, & photographer Nicole Bengiveno was, indeed, working for the San Francisco Examiner around that time (I was expecting to find that she was too young in 1978), but that doesn't actually prove anything.

Even pre-internet, if the information in the Future Magazine was actually from a leak, rather than speculation, I'm surprised it didn't spread. Or perhaps it did, hence Prowse's alleged comments.

 

We will have to check and see when the Vader revelation was actually written into the ESB script. Because I'm not sure that early Spring '78 date for the article matches up with the script timeline. So it would have had to be one of the top guys like Lucas, Kasdan, or Kersh to spill it at that time.

I think it was likely someone being accurate in their guess. Or maybe there was a "Vader is Luke's Dad" minority or club among fandom back then?

I don't know. I was five and liked SW for the gunfights and space battles.

 

Well, the second draft of ESB (the one where Vader first becomes Luke's father) was completed by April 1, 1978, according to The Making of Empire. The earliest article to mention Father Vader is also from April 1978. Now it's possible the magazine could've been guessing wildly, but perhaps it was actually a leak--in which case, it seems that Lucasfilm's leak-protection squad was falling down on the job!

 

How secret did Lucas want these types of things to be, at this point? Obviously SW was a huge success by this point, but as I've heard others mention because I don't have a copy of TMOTESB yet, they weren't sure it was going to turn into an Empire, as it were. Perhaps the whole idea of a need for secret-conspiracy-level secrecy hadn't been thought of yet?

 

To change the topic for a moment...

I just purchased the book Star Wars: Year by Year, and I've noticed that it includes a reproduction of the entire first page of the 1973 Journal of the Whills story fragment.

Here's a transcript:

Journal of the Whills

I

This is the story of Mace Windy, a revered Jedi-bendu of Ophuchi, as related to us by C.J. Thorpe, padawaan learner to the famed Jedi.

I am Chuiee Two Thorpe of Kissel. My father is Han Dardell Thorpe, chief pilot of the renown galactic cruiser Tarnack. As a family we were not rich, except in honor, and valuing this above all mundane possessions, I chose the profession of my father, rather than a more profitable career. I was 16, I believe, and pilot of the trawler Balmung, when my ambitions demanded that I enter the exalted Intersystems Academy to train as a potential Jedi-Templer. It is here that I became padawaan learner to the great Mace Windy, highest of all the Jedi-bendu masters, and at that time, Warlord to the Chairman of the Alliance of Independent Systems.

Never shall I forget the occasion upon which I first set eyes upon Mace Windy. It was at the great feast of the Pleabs. There were gathered under one roof, the most powerful warriors in the Galaxy, and although I realize my adoration of the Master might easily influence my memory, when he entered the hall, these great and noble warlords fell silent. It was said he was the most gifted and powerful man in the Independent Systems. Some felt he was even more powerful than the Imperial leader of the Galactic Empire.

Very interesting to see this portion in full; there's lots of details not mentioned in Rinzler's excerpts of the JOTW from The Making of Star Wars.