There was enough room under there for the 40 ft. ILM trailer so we had both camera departments permanently and centrally located, leaving the crews free to shuttle equipment as needed to the set. A generator would be needed for battery charging at night.
The sand storms had been fierce, delaying somewhat the efforts of the construction personnel. They were building a secondary desert 30 feet above the actual desert floor so a pit could be built to resemble a ravine dropping 30 feet into the mouth of the hideous Sarlacc monster. Jabba's huge barge hovers next to this along with two smaller skiffs, both hovering at the rim of the steep pit.
As we strolled along the edge of the pit, the U.S. Art Director, Jim Schoppe described how a thick foam cover would be put over the plywood and then covered over with real sand. The ravine-pit was 80 feet across, 200 feet long, 30 feet deep, and very steep. I noted that the storyboards call for specific shots to be taken from somewhere down below. The consensus of opinion at that time was to use the Louma Crane with a video camera as a finder to arm out and down into the pit.
I asked if the walls of the pit and slopes of the ravine were strong enough to hold a man's weight. The construction foreman said no, and that the flexing of the sub plywood would crack the foam layer of false sand. I suggested that we reinforce the walls all around:
"Let's treat it like a regular desert ravine"—shoot it with tripods were possible and hand-held—cameras as well. A man on a rope could go anywhere down there and take a shot quickly using—any angle you can imagine. There was concern about hand holding anamorphic lenses—but I had done it before with Owen Roizman and I knew it was not only possible but could be terrific!They agreed to reinforce the pit.
I didn't realize that, in fact, 75% of all our shots from the pit would be hand-held with the operator dangling from a rope in a maelstrom of wind and sand.
There was some concern about seeing dune buggy tracks in the distant dunes, but when focusing a lens on a foreground subject, even with a deep stop, the background detail will seem to disappear. We shot tests later to examine the false horizon of our set and the dune buggy tracks had vanished.
One week before we started shooting in Yuma the key personnel and equipment arrived from England. It truly was—a melting-pot of people, cultures and procedures having the potential of total chaos at anytime. The 400-plus American crew & cast were meeting for the first time the 35 British personnel.
The camera crew were shaking hands and unpacking equipment at the same time, anxious to check out the mixture of U.S. and English gear. It was a good example of the strength of a common goal to cut through any confusion—everybody wanted a good film. It was as if we'd been working together for months.
While Alan Hume and I scouted the Barge location our camera assistants prepared for the sand with white cotton & elastic magazine covers made by the seamstresses. They proved very effective. The sand was so fine it was almost dust. It would hang in the air during any breeze. I suggested that we get two large vacuums, one for the machine bench and one for the truck, which was to be vacuumed out at least twice daily. We also got several hand vacuums for the cameras while on the sand deck.
Plastic and cloth camera covers kept the large sand particles off the cameras, but the vacuums actually kept the cameras running.
It was obvious on the first day that we had a very hard working crew which, aided by excellent pre-planning by the production department, kept up a consistent and efficient pace. It has always been my experience that a good working pace—efficient use of time combined with some enthusiasm—can make hard work a very enjoyable experience, and that's just what happened. It was very hard work. the sand and wind sometimes made it impossible, but everybody seemed very satisfied.
By treating the barge and Sarlacc pit as a practical set, we could range all over it for camera placement. It was the heroes' escape sequence and called for fights on all three boats with many helpless victims falling into the Sarlacc's opened mouth.
Richard Marquand loved the set and was very open to ideas. Armed with the storyboards, he and George Lucas would walk the set of the day's work with arms gesturing. It was obvious that they both enjoyed this work.
They were always the first on the set each morning and the purpose and enthusiasm radiating from these two touched everyone present. They had one command in common: "Give me cuts. Don't think about poignant moments, just good cuts."
And so we did. By the end of the first week, including ILM coverage, we were doing six and seven camera set-ups for each shot. I had called for extra operators. Steve Yaconelli and Jack Green arrived along with three more assistants.
Each major cut in this escape sequence was storyboarded. Some of those boards called for the VistaVision Cameras of ILM. In fact ILM had a separate set of boards specifically for shots with optical effects. As visual effects supervisor, Richard Edlund was in charge of the ILM operation, which was originally designed to operate as a separate unit. However, if his cameras were free to work on a sequence not on his schedule, he agreed to let them shoot regular production material as long as they weren't supposed to be doing something else.
the entire four-perf camera crew (that was us) was fascinated with these marvelous VistaVision (8-perf.) cameras and we'd casually idle over and lean on a case to pick up any salient information. We discovered that the VistaVision crew ere game to try some of the 4-perf shooting. So when their operators, Rick Flicther and Scott Farrar, were available, they made some shots with us. Their background experience was mostly optical work, but for us they had to do some pretty fast operating moves. (Try a full figure shot of an alien warrior falling 40 foot into the mouth of a Sarlacc sometime.)
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