The Galaxy Britain Built: Droids, Darth Vader and Lightsabers

It's obvious, right? It's Star Wars. It's amazing.

I would argue that it was the greatest leap from what was before

to after. It changed, definitely changed popular cinema for, you know,

more than anything else. It was kind of like this amazing thing.

I think as a kid, you picture it in this galaxy far, far away.

And it's a real shock to learn one day that it was actually somewhere

just off the M25.

I'm David Whiteley. And I'm a massive Star Wars fan.

I've grown up with it. Literally!

I was born in 1977 the same year as Star Wars...

On May the 4th.

May the 4th, Star Wars Day.

Well, OK. It wasn't called Star Wars Day back then.

But you get the point. The bottom line is, I'm a big fan.

It's hard to picture a world without Star Wars.

To be honest, I've never tried.

But apparently, there was a time before all of this.

But I grew up thinking that George Lucas's galaxy

was a Hollywood blockbuster.

Every frame shot right here in Los Angeles.

Turns out, of course...

That's just half the story.

I'm going to explore the contribution

of the British talent who brought the galaxy to life.

Is this an early Chewbacca?

Yeah. Yeah. Over here, that's the first...

That's the first one.

That wasn't so good. So, we went on to the second one.

And it was all done with the tightest schedule

and the lowest budget they could imagine.

It's probably now the most iconic prop in the world that I

made for, I don't know, 12 quid, £12, something like that.

But why come to Britain in the first place?

And what keeps them coming back?

The 1970s in Hollywood were all about taking risks.

Studios wanted young directors to make their films, to give them that edge.

In 1973, George Lucas made a name for himself with American Graffiti.

What he wanted to do next was make his science fiction film, Star Wars.

But getting a film made, whatever the scale, can be a long,

painful process.

There are logistical nightmares, scheduling conflicts.

And then, you've got to get it paid for.

Every major Hollywood studio passed on the project except one.

20th Century Fox were the only studio prepared to take a chance on the film.

But they would keep a very close eye on the production.

The script arrived, and I read it, and I was very surprised.

George Lucas had made American Graffiti.

He was the darling of Hollywood.

Universal had financed it.

So, why weren't Universal going to finance this film?

Not only had Universal turned it down,

but Warners and everybody else had.

At that time, Fox was the last studio anybody would ever go to.

We were... Had been nearly bankrupt

and so there wasn't very much money.

And my boss, Alan Ladd said, "Can you make it?"

I said, "I don't know, but let me find out."

Did alarm bells ring for you when you realised that the studio

that had financed George Lucas's previous movie

wasn't interested and no-one else was as well?

Did you think, "Ha! There may be some problems with this one?"

Oh, I realised there must be major problems if the...

The experts of the industry had turned it down.

I thought, well there's... I actually had thought it would

probably be impossible to make.

But nothing's impossible.

American Graffiti producer Gary Kurtz was working with George Lucas once more.

The first decision, where to shoot?

Well, originally when Fox gave us the go-ahead,

I was assuming that we would shoot it at Fox in LA.

It wasn't until I went in there and talked to the production people that

I realised that that was going to be a problem

because they only had two or three stages available.

We needed at least seven.

And they trawled around town and said, well,

we can get you two at Universal and maybe two at MGM.

And I realised that, logistically, that was a nightmare.

They scattered all over Los Angeles and it was not a good idea.

Someone in the production department said, well,

talk to our office in London, the Fox office.

And they may have some suggestions about shooting in Europe.

So, I travelled around Europe.

I went to Paris, I went to...

..Budapest. I went to Berlin.

I went everywhere where there was a film studio.

And the only other one that had enough space was Cinecitta in Rome.

But, that had been downplayed for me

by several other American film-makers

saying, "It's too noisy."

The Italians don't know how to stay quiet for live sounds.

So, I came back to London and talked to Peter Beale.

I spent a month working diligently.

We went through the script line by line and...

..we agreed. He made some suggestions, and I made suggestions.

And we came up with what was the final formula of how we are going to make it.

So, once you'd established that you were going to be filming in the

UK, how did you go about selecting the British people that were going

to work alongside you and George Lucas?

Well, I did a lot of research into the key people.

I looked at a lot of old films and...

We kind of decided on a short list.

And then I went down to...

..to Mexico, to Baja, California where...

Stanley Donen was making Lucky Lady and the writers on that project were

friends of ours. They were some of the writers on American Graffiti.

Lucky Lady played an important part in the story of Star Wars.

A team of British art directors were working on the production.

20th Century Fox said,

"Are you interested in a film we're doing in Mexico?

"Les Dilley is out there and Norman Reynolds with John Barry.

"They need help. This film has got huge..."

Wait, no, no, no!

Gloria and Willard Huyck wrote Lucky Lady.

And they were speaking with George about Star Wars.

And they said, "Well, you know, you should come and meet the crew.

"Because what you are talking about, your sets looking, like,

"old and dusty and Western-like,

"they're building those sets it down in Mexico."

So, I was dressing a salt factory and I was shovelling this salt

when a car arrived and out got George.

In his plaid shirt, jeans and sneakers, and Gary in a cowboy hat.

They walked over to me and introduced themselves.

George said, "What are you doing?

"This is amazing, the look of this."

And I showed him. He hadn't realised it was fake.

We'd built it on the front of an old building.

And George helped me. He got a shovel.

So, we are shovelling salt talking about science fiction.

And I said, you know, "I love science fiction

"and I really despair about the films that have been made so far."

They think you have to have plastic guns that go "beep" and the sets

look completely unreal.

And I said, "I see it like an old car that's dripping oil in a garage

"that's being repaired." And he said, "That's what I'm making."

The art department was now in place to help bring the story to life.

Producer Gary Kurtz now needed someone he could trust to supervise

the ambitious production.

I had met Robert Watts at MGM.

He had a good background, good reputation.

And I asked him if he would be interested in being the production

supervisor on the picture.

I got a call from...

..Peter Beale who was then the head of 20th Century Fox in London.

And he said, Gary Kurtz is coming to England and he's asked to see you.

Well, I'd met Gary some years earlier in LA.

I was at MGM Studios and he came up to ask me about what it was like

filming in England.

And I thought no more about it.

So, dissolve.

I flew back to England, met Gary Kurtz,

and then I heard I'd got the job.

The behind-the-scenes talent was assembled.

But the deciding factor for Fox giving the green light was shooting

it in Britain because of the cost.

Compared to the 44 million they'd spent on the film Cleopatra a decade before,

it must have felt like a bargain.

Peter Beale in London was promoting the British film industry.

There wasn't much work there at that time.

He came in and said, "We're exactly half the price of America."

And the budget of America they said was eight, to do it there.

They analysed the film would make 12 million.

That's all they could get out of it.

They divided that by three,

and a third went to the director to make a film.

So, they said, "You've got 4 million, if you can make Star Wars for that."

So, I went to Pinewood Studios.

And I said to the head of the studio there at the time, I said,

"I want to rent every single stage you've got."

And he said, "We never rent every single stage to one production!"

So, I said, "All right, then."

So I came here, where we are right now, to Elstree Studios.

And I went to see Andrew Mitchell.

And I said to Andrew, "I'd like to rent the entire studio."

And he said, "Be my guest."

And he gave me a deal of £75,000 for the entire studio.

Everything. All the stages, all the workshops, everything.

Fantastic!

Best deal I've ever made in my life!

A deal was also struck to film at the former World War I airship sheds

at Cardington in Bedfordshire.

The sheds were first used for filming in the 1960s.

Their sheer size made them ideal for what would become the base for the

Rebel Alliance.

20th Century Fox now wanted to make sure their young director had what

he needed to make it happen.

Fox had -

intentionally and quite correctly, I don't knock them on that -

got...

..people in positions around George who had made big films.

I worked with John Mollo on Dr Zhivago.

He was a technical consultant for David Lean for all of the Communist

and Russian aspects of the film.

And he'd become a costume designer.

And so I suggested him and one other person and George chose John,

and it was a great decision.

John Mollo's background as a military historian

was what sold him to George Lucas.

During pre-production, they'd get together every day.

We used to meet every morning and discuss things between us.

And it's a question of who won and who didn't win that particular day,

you know?

The costumes were pretty simple on the whole.

You know? It was very straightforward, in fact.

John Mollo's studio is full of workbooks.

His preliminary sketches for Star Wars were the results of those

production meetings. Much of this initial work has been hidden away.

We used to chat and, you know,

talk about things and decide that this should be like that,

you know?

And that should be like that. And, you know...

So, you know, I had...

the power to sort of alter things according to what he wanted,

you know?

And, I mean, we always got on pretty well.

John's innovative designs would win him an Academy Award.

Some costumes required more work than others.

Is this an early Chewbacca?

Yeah, yeah. Over here, that's...

That's the first one.

That wasn't so good. So, we went on to the second one.

John's sketches show how the designs progressed from the concept art to

what would eventually be seen on screen.

He took inspiration from everyday objects, like this radio,

which would form the basis of Darth Vader's chest plate.

Well, I had never done anything like it before.

So, you know, he's got to have trousers and he's got to have arms.

I mean, it sounds as though I hadn't the slightest idea of what was going

on, which I didn't, really. But no, it was a good surprise.

That's typical English costume there.

Well, it is, isn't it? But that is actually the Jedi robes.

Yes, yes, it is.

Yes, yes.

Yes.

Another part of that original team was art director Les Dilley.

Now based in Los Angeles, he was a labourer on previous movies

and that experience would serve him well on Star Wars.

The movie would be his big break.

When I was in the art department,

one of the things I did find myself doing because of my background,

I was always pushed onto the set, you know?

Because I knew how to handle people, you know?

I knew how to talk the guys that would do the work.

You know what I'm saying?

And I was immediately made an assistant art director and...

And then I ended up, you know, art directing.

I was always on the set

getting the stuff built.

Suddenly, I was in a department where I had all the people that I used to be,

that I would be responsible for in the art department.

I'd call them all in and say, "Come bring these plasterers, guys.

"And do this, do that. And bring the carpenters.

"And do this, and do that." It was one of those jobs, you know?

But there were a lot of challenges, weren't there, with making Star Wars?

-Because you were creating, with your colleagues, a galaxy that didn't exist.

-Didn't exist, no, exactly!

-It's true.

-When you go to do a period film, they'll say, well,

it's set in 1890.

You'll know what the curtains are going to be.

What the painting's going to be, all that.

With science-fiction, there is nothing to go on.

And when we did Star Wars, there was nothing to reference.

George couldn't say, well, I want it like this.

Or he would just say, I want a dusty Western combined with 2001.

Ensuring that look was production designer, head of the art department,

the late John Barry.

We sat in the office with John and Les

going how are we going to make this film?

It's an epic, like, science-fiction for 4 million.

Even then, that wasn't a lot of money.

So, I broke down my script.

It took me ten days.

I had a list of weapons, robots, sets...

Vehicles.

Just stared at it in horror thinking, I can't do this.

But John Barry would come up with an ingenious and cost effective way of

solving the problem.

I had this idea of getting a lot of junk, like,

we bought £15,000 worth of wrecked aeroplanes and took it to pieces and

then used those pieces which are in themselves very interesting

to build, for instance, the bar...

Where they meet Han Solo.

The whole of the bar back is all built of old jet engines

lacquered gold.

The first thing Les and I got having read the script...

R2-D2 and C-3PO are the storytellers.

They're minor characters, but they tell the story.

We realised if he didn't have those characters, we didn't have a film.

He didn't. It couldn't be made.

C-3PO we kind of knew could be done because of Metropolis.

They got a...

..fairly similar suit on an actor.

And we knew with the right mime actor or dancer, he could be made.

He's really based very much on the robot in Fritz Lang's Metropolis.

-Oh, yeah.

-You know?

-Yes.

But the one in Metropolis only walked forward three paces.

And George tells me that they wanted it to do a lot more,

and it couldn't. And they had to compromise.

It was George's idea that it should be like the robot from Metropolis.

R2-D2, he was three foot eight, three foot nine.

That was the first thing we were given the task of making.

So, I'd worked with a carpenter who'd done sets for me.

He said, I've got some marine ply at home.

He brought the marine ply from the garage because marine ply,

you can steam and bend it, right?

So we made a frame.

Put this round it.

Then he said, "Well, Rog, I can't make the top.

"I haven't got any money."

So I asked Lee Electrics where their scrapheap was.

They were the big film lighting company

and they showed me this pile of junk.

And I found this lamp top from a rifle lamp from the '40s.

And I thought, you know, that's the right size.

So, I didn't say anything because I knew

if I'd gone in as a set decorator,

they'd ask me for quite a few pounds.

So, I said, "Go and buy it."

He got it for ten shillings.

He told Robert recently, he said, you know,

"I've still never got my ten bob back.

"I kept asking them and I didn't have a receipt for it!

"Because I paid in cash and they wouldn't give me

"my ten shillings back!"

You were really trying to save money by just using any bits of scrap you

could find to build these things.

Yeah. We didn't have any money.

I found the aircraft nozzles from an old Dakota, I think it was, that we

stuck those in. And I found some grills and we stuck all that on it.

R2's sort of eye turret is in fact the air-conditioning unit

from a Caravelle. That sort of thing.

So, you know, they are more interesting

than you can imagine or produce in

the time available.

Because they were designed for a function anyway...

A lot of intelligence has gone into their conception

to start with. And it shows,

they look interesting.

John Barry was...

..an amazing human being.

I loved working with John. And very smart.

And John admitted at the time, he said, "My world is Barbarella.

"I love all that fantasy stuff."

But he converted to what George wanted.

Every frame in the movie is very much George's.

I mean, you know, he's a very...

Makes a big contribution to the whole...

every aspect of the movie.

Roger Christian helped John with the sets but was also responsible

for the science-fiction weapons.

But one, the most important of all, was proving elusive.

Yeah, I haven't tackled that,

the lightsaber. And we called it the laser sword,

because we were British.

I knew this lightsaber was the Excalibur of this film.

I knew it would be the iconic image.

It was amazing.

I went to Brunnings in Great Marlborough Street who we rented all

our photography equipment, anything we needed.

And I'd buy equipment there.

I just said to the owner,

"Do you have anything here that's unusual,

"stuff that might be interesting?"

And...

He pointed me over the side of the room.

He said, "There's a load of boxes under there.

"I haven't looked at those for years. Go and have a rummage through."

And it was the first box that was literally covered in dust.

And I pulled it out, opened the lid, and there was tissue paper.

And then when I pulled it open...

Now, it goes into slow motion, you know?

The music rising.

And out came a Graflex handle from a '40s press camera.

And I just took it and went, "There it is.

"This is the Holy Grail."

And there was about five or six in there.

We bought the lot. I raced back to the studios.

Got my t-strips, stuck that round the handle, I stuck seven round it.

From a calculator I'd been breaking down,

there was a bubble strip that illuminated the numbers

and they would magnify. And it just fitted into the clip.

So, I just cut it, stuck that in.

And I said, "I think I've found the lightsaber, George."

He came over, just looked at it and smiled.

I mean, and that's the biggest approval you can get from George.

He just smiled and held it.

One of the most iconic movie props of all time.

That's... Is that the very one?

These are... Yeah, I built a few of them.

So, I loved the unit.

So, I bought a couple for myself.

And...

This is Luke's lightsaber here.

Which Obi-Wan Kenobi takes out of

that trunk and gives to Luke.

And said, "This is your father's weapon."

This is the weapon of a Jedi Knight.

Not as clumsy or random as a blaster.

It's a battery flash tube that stood like that

on a press camera from the '40s.

And this is what I found because I couldn't find anything that was

iconic. And I look at it, it's got this,

it's got to the red button on it.

I didn't add any of this.

This is what there was.

I always imagine it to be quite weighted.

-It's weighted.

-And it is, yes, and that kind of gives it the feel,

so when Luke first takes this from Obi-Wan Kenobi,

he holds it in his hand and he feels the weight before he turns it on, and that is...

that is just as it was in the very first movie?

-Yeah.

-So you made several prototypes?

Yeah. And I always believed, like, with the weapons,

I'd seen so many times with actors,

they're really light and they're made of plastic, and you can see.

I wanted guns, that when they picked them up,

they had to use them like real guns,

and the lightsaber had to have that feel to it.

So, yeah, it's probably now the most iconic prop in the world.

And it's back. You know, The Last Jedi,

this is what the film is all about, this lightsaber, whose is it?

There's so much going on on the internet

about this thing that I made for,

I don't know, 12 quid, £12 or something like that.

Across every department, the limited budget fuelled the resourcefulness,

not least of the British team who also found themselves

against the clock.

We worked from like eight o'clock in the morning

until 11 at night because

we were trying to fill a room full of aliens,

and they only gave us ten weeks to prepare for the movie.

And it wasn't such a big movie at the time.

I was the new kid on the block.

I got all the rotten jobs first of all, which is always the case.

I made the eyes for a lot of the creatures in the canteen.

In the room, there were like five or six of us.

On one side of the room we had all of the mixers where we were foaming

latex, so that filled the room with ammonia.

And on the other side of the room,

we were painting the characters with toluene paint and that filled the

room as well, so we were probably all high at the time.

On that first movie, I was really doing a lot of the groundwork.

It was a great learning curve for me,

because we ended up being all-rounders.

We were doing sculpting and we were making moulds,

and we were building puppets.

It was a time when I was needing to prove myself.

Is that why you worked so many hours, to make sure if you were working on something...?

We just couldn't find anybody else who could do the job.

You know, that was just the way that it was, yes.

Cameras ready to roll, they shipped to Tunisia, their destination,

the place that would become the hostile planet of Tatooine.

But extreme desert conditions and temperamental props were a concern.

To start with, I was dead scared,

because I wasn't sure what was going to happen here.

And I thought, "I'm going to get this through this bit in Tunisia,

"if I can get this done, get out of here and back to the studio,

"I think we should be all right."

One of the challenges I had...

We built all the stuff in the studio and put it all in the boxes and

shipped it all

to the desert, and the homestead had a big disc on the far side that was

probably 25, 30 foot in diameter.

-It's huge, isn't it?

-It was very big,

but it was about...probably that high in the middle and it was like a

big dish.

And all the little lights around the side of it.

It was vertical, then a dome over the top.

Two days before shooting,

and this thing comes out and we plonk it on there and we got all the

electric lights working and it's all checked, and it's beautiful.

Come next morning, seven o'clock,

we turn up and this disc has disappeared.

It was up, and you couldn't see it,

but it had got up on its edge and it went,

I don't know, probably half a mile.

You couldn't see it.

-The wind had picked it up?

-The wind had lifted it up

and it took 20 people to pick it up and put it down,

and it just lifted it up and shot it down the road

like it was a ping-pong ball.

That wasn't all.

Some of the cast were struggling, too.

I think the robots were our biggest challenge,

because almost everything else was just a logistical exercise and just

getting it done, but the robots were a part of the cast.

And their personalities were important.

We went out to Tunisia without

ever having had the time for Tony Daniels, for instance, to wear the entire C-3PO suit.

Is there one thing in particular

that sticks out for you as, "Oh, that was a real challenge,

"but we overcame it?"

With R2-D2 we had a radio control unit,

but it was very primitive radio control at that time

and it didn't work very well.

John Barry called Les and I in the office and he said,

"I don't think the radio control's going to work.

"Build a lightweight R2-D2

"that we can pull on fishing wire.

"Take it with you, don't say anything, just keep it in the truck.

"Take it down." So we did.

With that lightweight backup they had three versions of R2.

One with actor Kenny Baker inside, and that radio-controlled version.

First day with R2-D2...

Bom, bom, bom, bom!

Crashed over, fell off over here.

The robots, well, that was one of

the things that made them so endearing,

was that they started doing things just like real actors will do...

..screwing up occasionally.

Very temperamental.

R2 would stop functioning sometimes, completely.

The radio control wouldn't function on the radio-controlled

version or he would fall over or a couple of times out in the desert he ran into

3PO and knocked him down.

And didn't, in Africa, they were running him on radio control and we started

picking up Arabic pop stations, which freaked him out?

That threw the radio control off

and sometimes he would start up in the middle of a scene

when he wasn't supposed to.

So it was rather bizarre.

So we got out our one and laid down a board,

put sand against the edge of it.

They could only shoot from a certain angle,

and most of R2-D2 in Tunisia is shot with Kenny in it or being pulled on

our fishing wire.

I notice you talk about them as if they were real characters.

Well, they are.

They became real characters to us, always.

When I look at the daily reports and some of the footage,

I'm amazed that we actually finished on time.

But we did.

I mean, the crew was really good.

They worked really hard,

they worked extra long hours and I can't praise them more.

They were the main reason we were actually

were able to finish on time.

Filming in the Tunisian desert had been challenging for everyone,

but when production moved to Elstree Studios, three more problems -

this time with the actors union.

Equity was trying to look after the British actors.

There was no workaround and they didn't want foreign actors coming in

and taking mid-sized roles,

or big roles, that the British actors could do,

because there were some wonderful British actors.

And so to get a permit for a foreign actor

you had to go to the Home Office

and apply, and the Home Office would call up Equity and see how they felt.

So you really had to go to Equity first.

So when we came to Star Wars, and George said he wanted three unknown,

young actors from America to play the lead roles,

it was going to be very, very difficult.

I had to come up with some very,

very legal but creative ways of making that happen.

We fortunately had some wonderful parts for the British actors.

Alec Guinness, Peter Cushing, Dave Prowse etc etc.

And so, what I did, and I'm not ashamed of doing it,

is I created a cast list with

Guinness and everybody else at the top.

And at the bottom, in what looked like minor roles,

Harrison Ford, etc.

The three American people.

And I went to Equity and said, look,

the English have got the best parts in this.

But the director wants three little Americans for the smaller parts.

And I also went to the Home Office and told them the truth.

I said, "This is what I'm trying to do,"

and they supported it because they wanted the work

and they recognised it.

And Equity, I don't know if they knew or not, but they finally agreed.

And so the first cast list that is somewhere knocking around

has the major actors at the bottom of it.

So what did Equity say once they saw the film go out and realised?

I think that they recognised at that point that the film had been

successful. And I had to go back to them on other films and they were

always very, very friendly.

So, by the

time they realised, I think they had forgiven me.

Finally, during the sweltering heat wave in the summer of '76,

production got underway in north London at Elstree Studios,

and the impressive sets began to take shape.

This is Studio Eight at Elstree.

Being here now, it's really hard to picture it,

Star Wars was being shot right here.

I went onto the set and it was...

..weird. It was amazing.

You know, Darth Vader, Stormtroopers, all of that.

Golly, Moses!

No, I don't think we really understood it.

I remember a couple of people on the crew said, "Well, what is it?

"A load of rubbish. What does all this mean?"

You know? Really said things like that.

Initially, there was a certain scepticism

that it was a bit of a comic book.

I mean, remember, that special effects movies,

space movies had not been successful, except 2001.

And 2001, which of course was made in England,

was sort of a kind of an intellectual end.

So, really, space and special effects

were considered sort of B-movies,

and this was a comic book, expensive B-movie,

I think a lot of people thought.

I think most of the crew thought it was a silly film.

They didn't get to read the whole script,

and so there were some humorous scenes in it,

and several of the crew said that they thought

it was more like a Carry On film

rather than a serious science fiction film.

And it wasn't either, actually.

How did you manage to get it going and also to keep the filming

schedule on track?

Well, that was really Gary Kurtz's job,

George Lucas's job, the assistant director's job.

Always filming is difficult, and it's always is a...

..as we would say, a kick-bollock-and-scramble

to get things done.

George was initially concerned,

because in those days we worked very rigid hours.

The trade unions demanded that we didn't start

until 8:30 and we finished

at 5:30 and there was no flexibility,

except if you had started shooting before the lunch break

you could take an extra 15 minutes to finish a shot.

And if you had started shooting a shot before 5:30,

you were allowed 15 minutes to finish it.

We were warned in advance that British crews

were very sticky about the time of day they worked

and whether the shop stewards would allow you to work overtime

at the end of the day or not. On location, they were fantastic,

but in the studio it was more difficult.

In Hollywood, my experience had been

you can work overtime, you just pay for it.

Within limits, of course.

You have a certain amount of available overtime if you need it.

But here, it was down to a system where, when 5:30 came,

if you wanted to work over,

you stopped and you had a meeting of the shop stewards and they decided

whether it was OK to work over.

And I could never quite figure out...

..what that process was, cos I was never part of those meetings.

Because some days everybody said, fine.

And other days, no.

So, yes, it was frustrating, especially for George.

Cos if we were halfway through the scene

and it would only take half an hour more, then we felt,

why would this be a problem?

George and Gary came to me and complained,

and I explained that's the way it is.

And many fine directors, Fred Zinnemann, David Lean, etc,

had managed to do it, and I'm sure he could manage.

If Star Wars was a hit, there would be sequels.

George Lucas had promised the crew that,

but hardly anyone believed in it,

especially the film studio financing the picture.

The main thing was to try to get through this film,

which 20th Century Fox didn't believe in,

where we had the tightest schedule you could possibly imagine and the

lowest budget you could possibly imagine.

And it was a constant battle, day, by day, by day.

We'd gone a couple of weeks over

and people were getting a bit tired and tense.

And my boss, Alan Ladd, was told by the financiers of the company,

"You're two weeks over.

"Close the film down in two weeks."

And we had four weeks of work to do.

I said, "It's not possible, we've got four weeks' work."

And his answer was, "Solve it."

-No more.

-That was it, that was your instruction?

And I knew him well enough

that he meant it.

So I went to them, and I said, "We've got a problem."

And George was obviously very upset.

And I said, "Well, let's pause a moment. Let's look at what we've got to do.

"I think we could actually do it with two or three units.

"We can bring a couple of other directors on."

So what happened was that Gary directed

and Robert Watts directed and we

had three units working together and we got the work done.

The production had been gruelling,

but things were beginning to come together for George Lucas.

Was there a moment when you actually thought, hang on,

this movie could be a hit?

There was a moment, and it was quite interesting.

I got to the set late one day and noticed there were some children on

the set and I thought, "What's happening here?

"We don't normally have children on the set."

And I asked, "Whose are they?"

And I think they were one of the grip's children.

And I watched them, and they were looking at R2-D2

absolutely fascinated.

They were scared of the Wookiee.

They kept a bit back.

But C-3PO they were looking at and I thought, "This is interesting."

And a couple of days later, there were more children.

And the crew started bringing two or three children at a time and I

started to think, "Well, if the children are relating at this level,

"maybe we have something."

We had had a preview in early May of '77 in San Francisco, with a general

audience of a mixed bag of people that my office just pulled in,

basically.

Everybody from three and four-year-olds

to 70 and 80-year-olds,

just so we'd have a cross-section of demographics.

The studio wanted preview cards and I still have one of those preview

cards on my wall,

written by a young 20-something guy, a film buff who said,

"This is the worst film I've ever seen since Godzilla vs The Smog Monster."

Despite that review at the preview screening,

the movie was ready.

Everyone held their breath.

This is where Star Wars premiered back in May 1977, and the reaction?

It was absolutely thrilling,

to have seen all that come together and come together so well.

I mean, it was beyond.

It was fantastic.

It was exciting, that's one way of putting it.

Nerve-racking is another way of putting it.

I remember going in there...

..and I felt the entire cinema almost left their seats.

Everyone just exploded.

And you knew then this was going to be a massive hit, and

everyone came out buzzing.

That was great fun, actually, seeing it.

We were pleased with what we'd done and, you know,

we thought it was a good film and good entertainment

and all the rest of it, you know?

It was a very satisfactory job to do, you know?

It was, you know...

Successful.

It was...

..something I'd never seen before.

It was something that was new, it was exciting, it was different.

I think it's primarily because it's a kind of rousing story, it's fun.

It's the kind of film that you can see twice in the same day,

which many people did.

I'm so proud that our country was able to deliver that.

Over in the US, they delivered a new form of special effects,

so it was an Anglo-American co-production,

and both sides contributed equally

to this wonderful thing

that became the Star Wars saga.

Star Wars was, of course, a massive success.

For those who worked on it, life-changing.

Do you have a particular fond memory of working on Star Wars?

Is there one thing that sticks out for you?

One thing.

Yeah, winning the Academy Award.

No, that's boasting. I don't want to sound conceited,

but when I say things like that, I don't mean it to be conceited,

it's just phenomenal for me, that's all.

That it could ever come to me.

That's why I say it.

The British design team were all awarded Oscars,

as were their American colleagues, for the special effects.

Star Wars also won at the box office, owning the summer of '77 in America.

The buzz spread across the Atlantic,

but audiences in the UK would have to wait an agonising seven months

before the film landed here.

So begins the most lucrative film ever made

in the history of the cinema.

Today it topped £100 million in takings at the box office,

and it hasn't even opened in Britain yet.

The film, of course, is Star Wars.

The attendance at Star Wars has been almost astronomic.

Queues are still forming.

In America, more money was taken at box offices in one week than for the

prestigious Jaws. In London, after a month,

almost 600,000 flocked to see the film, an all-time record.

What is the attraction of Star Wars?

Who can say? There have been lavish spectaculars before.

Perhaps it's because this one takes the best of all the rest - colour,

breathless excitement, fantasy,

and because we on this planet are

already touching space with a tentative finger,

more reality than we care to admit.

The fact is, Star Wars is out of this world.

I must say I find all that talk about letting go

of your conscious self

and stretching out with your feelings a bit depressing,

especially in a society that depends on technology.

The Force is just a muscular version of flower power,

that can excuse anything so long as you believe you're in the right.

And who doesn't? The fact that the adult population of America is still

queueing devotedly for this amusing children's film

with its easy answers to real problems

is not the best news of the year.

The first of what the makers of Star Wars hope will be thousands of queues

started forming at 7am outside London's Dominion Cinema.

We wanted to get in and see it on the only unreserved show.

It's booked through on the bookable shows

right until March and I couldn't afford to wait that

long. And the prestige of being able to say you've seen Star Wars is

something akin to royalty, really.

What's good for the cinema box office is joy for the toy shops.

Whatever profits the film-makers Lucasfilms have made,

the spin-off industry in Star Wars toys has doubled it,

and British firms, too, have felt the benefit.

The unlikely centre of every little boy's space-age universe

is the Palitoy factory at Coalville in Leicestershire.

In a year, the ladies of Coalville turn out hundreds of thousands of

plastic bestsellers.

The boom in merchandising the mark of the film's success,

and that success meant a sequel, The Empire Strikes Back.

BBC cameras were invited behind the scenes at Elstree.

In the studios at Elstree just north of London,

we've been watching Chewbacca, Princess Leia,

Han Solo and the others making the film

whose launch the cinema world is now awaiting at fever pitch.

It's very doubtful that it will equal the intensity of the impact.

I think it's sort of all blown out in that one big one,

and all the others that come along,

whether it's in our series or anything to do with fantasy or science fiction

will never be that big, but

I think this is the one,

this is the one that people are going to look at

and say either, "Terrific, when's the next one?"

Or, "Nice try, too bad, you didn't make it."

The worst risk would be spraining my ankle.

And we've been learning what differences there are when you shoot

a major film with a British rather than a Hollywood technician.

-Han Solo?

-You drink some more tea.

-C-3PO?

-Well, you get marvellous results here

and it's surprising that more isn't done here.

-Luke Skywalker?

-Other than that, it's almost the same

except with British accents.

During shooting on Empire Strikes Back,

the tradition of British crews is that you...

..finish the day, you go to the pub, there was always one in the studio.

I'm not the most social person in the world, but I realised that,

from a work point of view, this was an important part of the day,

the way the British system works.

So you are ironing out problems over a pint because that was the way that

things are done in Britain?

We did discuss potential problems for the next

day's shoot and sometimes solve them there in the pub.

-Action.

-But whatever the stars Harrison Ford,

Anthony Daniels and Mark Hamill think,

the men who turn their adventures into film are in no doubt that

making a big budget movie on a British film stage

with a British crew can make very good sense.

Director, Irvin Kershner.

The technicians I'm working with now are extraordinary.

They are willing, they're able

and they're highly motivated.

They, I think,

like the picture they're working on and I find it very easy to

communicate. Fortunately they speak English,

or what passes for English in my country,

and it's been a good experience.

For more than 40 years, Star Wars has dominated popular culture,

and it would also inspire the next generation of British film-makers.

Star Wars got me really into sci-fi even more than I had been.

I watched Star Wars and I thought, OK,

my Plan A in life is to join the Rebel Alliance and help blow up the

Death Star, and then eventually people tell you it's not real

and it doesn't really exist, it's this thing called a film.

And so you think, OK, Plan B is I'll become a film-maker.

For my 30th birthday,

I stayed the night in Luke Skywalker's house in Tunisia

and I watched the sun set by the igloo on

the salt flats and all that.

Film director Gareth Edwards and editor Colin Goudie

met while working on a drama documentary.

They shared a love of Star Wars.

Gareth won a competition with his short film Factory Farmed.

This got him and Colin a deal to make the critically acclaimed

science fiction film, Monsters,

and it wasn't long before they were noticed by Lucasfilm.

The thing I spent the most time

thinking about as a kid was Star Wars.

You grew up fantasising about that world.

So when someone says to you, how about making a Star Wars movie,

you half go, "Whoa, I don't know if I want to do that,

"that's a lot of pressure", and the other part of you goes, "Wait a minute,

"if you were going to do anything ever, surely,

"if you want to be a film-maker and you love Star Wars,

"you should make a Star Wars film, right?"

You never forget the day you get the Star Wars phone call.

I'd had surgery, I was upstairs in my house

and I could hear the phone ringing.

And I'm trying to get down the stairs without ending up back in

hospital for more surgery.

It's Pippa Anderson, head of post-production at Lucasfilm,

and she wanted to talk to me about coming on board Rogue One.

She'd been told by Gareth that I was recovering from surgery and I

couldn't go to Pinewood straightaway,

and they waited for me, which was incredible.

So four weeks later,

I was able to drive again and I drove down to Pinewood and they wanted to

talk to me about the process that Gareth and I had on Monsters.

They explained it was going to be basically other editors,

effectively an editor that they want, sort of a studio editor,

which is somebody who'd worked on a 200 million movie before,

which I certainly hadn't.

You didn't just work on the movie though, did you, Colin?

You ended up getting the credit for being the actual editor

of Rogue One.

Yes, that's right. So, a shared credit with Jabez Olssen

and with John Gilroy,

and I was on it for 27 months in total.

And what was interesting, of course,

was it was not only multiple editors,

but multi-nationalities because Jabez is a New Zealander

and John Gilroy is an American, and I was the Brit.

So even now, Lucasfilm looked to Britain for its mixture of talent,

enthusiasm and attention to detail.

When Gareth made Rogue One,

essentially another prequel to the first Star Wars movie,

he wanted to make sure it had a feel of the 1970s.

Gareth wanted Rogue One to be filmed traditionally,

the way it had been back in 1976

when they'd shot Star Wars at Elstree.

He wanted practical sets.

He didn't want massive amounts of green screen,

so you're actually walking onto a set with real X-Wings.

You could go over and touch the X-Wing.

Don't break it.

And the droids were all actually really moving around,

they're radio controlled droids.

And the aliens are all people in costumes,

and I remember when the costume tests came in,

and I got to edit all the costume tests together

for lighting and things.

It was mind-boggling.

We were as keen to make it look like the '70s as possible.

And we degraded it. Like, we put grain in and things.

Even a little undulation like you get with projected footage.

Little things we did

for certain shots just to make it fit.

We didn't want it to feel like digital,

we wanted it to look like the ideal version,

is that it felt like some of this was footage that we'd found.

Original locations were very important to Gareth, too.

Cardington Studios in Bedfordshire would welcome Star Wars once again,

just as it had done in the 1970s.

I mean, I became a sucker for anything

that was the original movie,

and so, whenever we looked round locations,

and we knew we had to build Yavin

and the hanger for the Rebels,

and we looked at different locations.

And there were all of these different ones

and finally we went to this place in Cardington.

And when we were stood there, someone said,

"By the way, did you know this is the exact spot that C-3PO and R2-D2

"and Princess Leia and Han Solo were stood for that shot, that exterior shot

"that punctuation moment before the briefing

"of the attack on The Death Star?"

And it was like, well, we're definitely filming it here, right?!

Like, why wouldn't you film it here?

So, we actually in the very same space, created that hanger for real,

and we could go in, and it was probably the biggest set we'd built

and I'm sure it cost a lot of money.

-That's not your problem.

-No.

It made a lot of money, as well.

It made more than 1.5 billion off the back of a 200 million budget,

equalling the success of the original,

which was made for a fraction of the price.

Much of Rogue One's success has been attributed to the style of its

British director.

Gareth, as a film-maker,

he likes to have actors run with the flow and do improv and change things.

So Gareth will do a take,

and he will run that camera sometimes for up to an hour.

He will say, "And reset!"

And they will maybe run back to first positions,

but sometimes they'll just carry on.

Because what he wants from that is a moment of truth, he calls it.

He's always looking for the moment of truth.

And I think Kubrick would do it by doing 106 takes,

the kind of legendary Kubrick method.

Gareth's is that you do one take but it lasts 106 minutes.

And you have to go through it all and find that moment of truth.

And they were long days,

20 hours, some of them 24 hour long days,

but every single day was like,

"Pinch me, I'm working on a Star Wars film."

There's something about the British personality,

and it shouldn't count for anything, but it really does.

Everyone is really nice and very modest and friendly and humble,

and nothing's a problem and they never say no.

Like, and we used to joke, like, you can say no, right?

Just say, "No, you can't... Just say, Gareth, we can't do that.

"No. It's impossible."

And they wouldn't do it. They would be like, "Let me look into it.

"I'll come back to you." And they would always come back with this solution,

it was, it was like they pride themselves

on never letting you down.

And they are all such,

all the characters are so sweet that, like...

I don't know, it was just a great experience,

in terms of the crew and everybody who worked on it, I was...

I think you would be very easy to argue

that you worked with the best in the world.

Walking onto a Star Wars set,

just surrounded by all this British talent,

and you do feel incredibly proud when you are on that set,

I have to say.

And these are the movies that the whole world is going to watch,

you know. And it's made in Britain.

When you get to do Star Wars, everyone expects it to be like, "Oh, my God, was it crazy?"

And you go, "No, it was really kind of normal."

Yeah, it is like, when you grow up and you realise Star Wars isn't real,

and then you kind of go into the real world,

and then you've been transported back there.

-Yeah.

-And it feels like...

Only joking, the world's not really boring.

-Yeah. It's actually really exciting.

-Yeah, yeah. And you go, "Yay, I was right!"

And then it is like, oh, and then it ends.

And you go, "Oh, no, actually, it is boring again, isn't it?"

But when it ends, when that music...

That score, the Star Wars music,

and it says "Directed by Gareth Edwards..."

That must make you feel, well...

Yeah, I... It is weird.

Like, that iris wipe.

Like, I watched those credits probably more than any other film as a kid.

And that's how it felt like the ultimate film ends, just goes...

HE HUMS STAR WARS THEME

So I guess when that happened on the premiere, it was like...

It did feel like, OK, I can die now.

Do you know what I mean? Whatever happens in the rest of my life now,

I've done that. I can, I can die.

Star Wars wouldn't have been the hit it was without the combination of

American and British talent.

And George Lucas wouldn't forget it.

After Star Wars, production supervisor Robert Watts

continued working with him on the Indiana Jones trilogy.

Most of the films he worked on were shot here at Elstree.

What is it like for you, being back in here?

It looks so different, with all these black drapes around.

Yeah. Good memories in here, though?

Oh, God.

I can feel it.

You know? I can actually feel it.

-Can you?

-Yeah, I can feel, like, the energy.

It's great.

After Star Wars, art director Les Dilley worked on Alien,

Raiders Of The Lost Ark, and The Abyss, to name just a few.

And he's still working in LA.

Obviously, here we are, and I am not going to say your exact age, Les,

but you are still working in the industry, 60 years later.

-Yeah.

-What is it about it that you obviously still love?

The excitement of it all.

It's never been boring.

I've never had a boring job.

Roger Christian lives in Canada,

but is back in London promoting his book about his life and work.

And that work includes trying to get a new film off the ground,

the feature length version of his acclaimed short film Black Angel

he made in 1979 with help from George Lucas.

I was talking to George last time I went to the ranch,

about Black Angel, because it is part of his history.

And he said, "I'm to give you a piece of advice."

And I said, "What?"

And he said, "Don't do what I did - go huge and big -

"keep it, like, very simple, few characters, and you connect to them,

"like the first Star Wars."

I said, "That's exactly what I've written."

Creature-maker Nick Mayley also worked on the sequel

and was fundamental in building Yoda, the Jedi Master.

He has rebuilt him using original designs and techniques,

and now takes him to fan conventions around the world.

It was his hard work on The Empire Strikes Back

that really made the difference to his career.

When the...when the main puppet was having a few hiccups,

and every time they had to pull it out, the crew was standing around,

producer Robert Watts asked me if I could build a backup.

It's hard for me to tell that story without getting emotional,

because it was the turning point in my career.

You know, it was the culmination of 13 years' work.

And so, you know, I don't want to cry on camera.

It's just a hard thing for me.

But, yes, there was a moment when myself and Bob Keane,

who was one of the trainees, 18 years old,

the first day after we had worked 60 hours in three days,

slept on the floor, after we'd finished,

we slept in the store room because we were too tired to drive home.

And finally we got to see, you know, the work that we had done

and it was Yoda with his head in the box,

throwing all the stuff over his shoulder.

-No! Ugh!

-Hey, you could have broken this!

Don't do that.

Oh!

I knew at that moment that we had done something that, you know,

no-one would ever forget.

It's so hard to get to where you want to go, it's just so hard.

And you've got so much emotion, so much faith in yourself, you have to,

to get through ten or 13 years.

When that moment comes, it's very hard.

-Do you want to take a minute?

-Yeah. Just give me a minute.

Yoda was very special to me.

He changed my life,

and so I really couldn't possibly say there was another creature

that I was involved with that I have the same fondness for.

That I have for you, right?

The Brits definitely have that sort of sense of eccentricity,

and I think the British thing is nothing ever seems too weird to us.

You would just like, go, "Oh, yeah, guv, I can do that."

The success of Star Wars is not measured by the box office,

I don't think, or what critics say when it comes out.

I think the success of Star Wars is measured 30 years from now,

when you are walking along the street,

and if you see a kid or an old guy wearing a T-shirt and he has got

something from your movie on it, then you know you did OK.

Do you think it is a bit of a lucky charm now,

to shoot Star Wars in the UK?

Lucky charm, yes.

But talent, yes.

That's the most important thing.

Here in Britain, we have extraordinary talent,

both in the acting profession,

but also very importantly in the production department of it.

We have this combination of creativity, hard work and skills,

sort of almost a military skill.

And I still think the first Star Wars is the best one.

It's got this magic about it.

To this very day,

I still have to pinch myself, because people say to me sometimes,

"You worked on Star Wars?"

"Oh, you're legends!"

I say, "Oh, what are you talking about?!"

You know, we did our job.

And yet you get viewed like that.

But you don't feel like that.

It's not, you know...

I don't feel like a legend.

I'm extremely proud to have been involved in it.

I look at myself now as I get older and the rest of it, and I think,

"Bloody hell, Robert, how did that happen?"

It was...something else.