How they shot the opening crawl in Empire Strikes Back

Craft & Design Photography & Video
How they shot the opening crawl in Empire Strikes Back

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With a motion-control camera, a printout under glass, and some gaffer’s tape. It’s one of several completely nerdilicious photos from a new book called The Making of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back by J. W. Rinzler. More pics and anecdotes over at Vanity Fair. I especially like the long shot of the iconic Luke-I-Am-Your-Father scene that shows the big pile of mattresses on the floor in case Mark Hamill falls. [via Core77]

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4 thoughts on “How they shot the opening crawl in Empire Strikes Back

  1. Simon says:

    Maybe it’s because Star Wars was from my era and I grew up with it but any time I see a picture of Harrison Ford in costume he absolutely is Han Solo. Not just some actor playing a role. You can see it in the last picture on that page. He just looks so relaxed and right. One of those things where the character and the actor are made for each other I guess. Like Patrick McNee as John Steed. They tried to get someone else to play that role and it was just a terrible failure!

    If I ever meet Harrison Ford in real life (unlikely I must admit!) I must as him if HE was in that cantina on Tattoine would he have shot first? True Star Wars fans will know what I mean :)

    1. Simon says:

      True Star Wars fans also spell Tatooine correctly sorry!

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I am descended from 5,000 generations of tool-using primates. Also, I went to college and stuff. I am a long-time contributor to MAKE magazine and makezine.com. My work has also appeared in ReadyMade, c't – Magazin für Computertechnik, and The Wall Street Journal.

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