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The legendary effects films of the STAR WARS trilogy was re-released in 1997, and George Lucas and Lucas Digital's Industrial Light & Magic have spent most of their efforts giving the original STAR WARS: A NEW HOPE an enormous face-lift. Fox invested $15 million into the restoration project, and ILM has been working on the Special Editions since the middle of 1994. Many original sequences, especially from Episode Four, have been reconstructed and produced with the latest in digital tools. Their goal was to give the STAR WARS trilogy a new life, consistent with the visual effects to which a new generation of film audiences are accustomed.
The Special Edition: A Once In A Lifetime Opportunity
by Todd Vaziri
Many current visual effects artists were inspired by the jaw-dropping visuals of the original STAR WARS. The film revitalized the effects industry, and revitalized a sagging Hollywood box office.
I can't think of a more special opportunity than to work with the original elements of a science-fiction classic and adding new digital magic.
The effects challenge of the Special Edition was a unique one: to integrate new computer generated imagery into background plates shot twenty years earlier.
Lucas has claimed that he always wanted to replace the human Jabba The Hutt shot in 1977 with a puppet in post-production, but ran out of time and money to complete his vision. This is an enormous opportunity--to work with twenty year old footage, erasing a human character and inserting a new CG character.
Today, when background plates are shot that will eventually contain CG imagery, dozens of detailed notes are taken. This means records of the practical lighting setup, exact measurements of the camera in relation to the principles, lenses, camera movements, etc. The accuracy of the CG image looking like it truly belongs into the scene depends on the match-moving. The more data given to the match-mover (the virtual cameraman) and the CG lighting crew, the more real the scene appears. Nearly none of this data was accessible to the CG artists on the Special Edition. Experimentation, trial and error, and creative juices helped the match-movers and CG lighting crew do a splendid job recreating those 1977 shots, especially with the Jabba sequence.
The expansion of Mos Eisley, the Coruscant celebration sequence, and the streamlining of the Death Star battle must have been an absolutely exciting project on which to work. The joy of enhancing a classic film so that contemporary audiences can clearly follow the action is what fueled ILM artists.
Although the Special Edition wasn't completely necessary to produce, the opportunity to work on twenty year old footage and enhance a sci-fi classic was too great an opportunity to pass up.