The Making of Star Wars — Pioneering Special Effects, VFX, and Sound Design

Star Wars Behind the Scenes of A New Hope — a look back at how George Lucas and ILM pushed special effects, visual effects, and sound design to create a blockbuster from a galaxy far, far away.

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Chapters:
00:00 - Intro — Star Wars Behind the Scenes
00:54 - Effective Budgeting
01:32 - Chapter 1: Practical Effects
04:05 - Chapter 2: Compositing Effects
08:36 - Chapter 3: Sound Design
11:26 - Takeaways

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Edited by MIKE STEELE

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Special thanks to:

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STAR WARS BEHIND THE SCENES — THE MAKING OF A NEW HOPE

The making of Star Wars A New Hope is stuff of legend. Today, blockbuster movies are a dime-a-dozen and the magic of how they’re actually created has all but disappeared. But in 1977, George Lucas and his team at ILM were still magicians, crafting never-before-seen imagery that changed the industry forever. In this short making of Star Wars documentary, we’ll explain how they evolved practical effects, compositing techniques, and sound design.

STAR WARS MOVIES SPECIAL EFFECTS

Compared to the scope and vision of George Lucas’ galaxy far, far away, Star Wars was a low-budget production. One of the ways they were able to pull this off was to use practical effects. This ranged from making Luke’s landspeeder to be a functional vehicle but appeared to float above the ground, to the extensive use of matte paintings that could extend the sets and add extras.

STAR WARS VISUAL EFFECTS

What the crew couldn’t accomplish on set, the visual effects team handled. For example, some of the most dazzling sequences in the film are the space battles. But up until that time, the compositing techniques for photographing a ship in space was very limited. To capture the WWII dogfight footage Lucas shared as inspiration, the ships needed to have more dynamic mobility. The solution was something called the Dykstraflex, a motion-control camera that could be programmed precisely to execute the same movements multiple times. This allowed them to capture as many elements as they needed while giving the ships the desired movement and energy in the frame.

STAR WARS SFX

The final element in creating a fantastical yet believable world was the sound design. To be fair, the concept of a sound designer didn’t even exist yet. Ben Burtt, responsible for the sound effects coined the term for himself, essentially creating a new filmmaking role in the process. Here, too, revolutionary changes were being made to create the most iconic sounds like R2-D2’s bleeps and bloops, Darth Vader’s ominous breathing, and, of course, the hum of the lightsabers. To do this, Burtt mixed the sounds of a humming projector with a TV set — the swinging sabers were created by playing this sound through a speaker and waving a microphone in front of it.

Without all these innovations, there’s a good chance Star Wars would’ve simply gone unnoticed. Instead, it raised the bar for filmmaking in Hollywood with low-budget techniques to create an unforgettable cultural experience.

#FilmTheory #VideoEssay #Filmmaking

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♬ SONGS USED:

"Main Title" - John Williams
"Dojo Tradition" - In This World
"Princess Leia's Theme" - John Williams
"Imperial Attack" - John Williams
"Ben's Death and TIE Fighter Attack" - John Williams
"Cantina Band" - John Williams
"The Last Battle - John Williams
"Rescue of the Princess" - John Williams
"The Princess Appears" - John Williams
"Glass" - Claudio Laucci
"The Blue Danube (Excerpt) (2001 A Space Odyssey Soundtrack)" - Johann Strauss II
"1986" - Angel Salazar
"Mouse Robot and Blasting Off" - John Williams
"Assembly Line Dreams" - Ostin Drais
"The Little People Work" - John Williams
"The Walls Converge" - John Williams
"The Throne Room and End Title" - John Williams

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— Join us on Social Media! —

[StudioBinder]

Chapters:
00:00 - Intro — Star Wars Behind the Scenes
00:54 - Effective Budgeting
01:32 - Chapter 1: Practical Effects
04:05 - Chapter 2: Compositing Effects
08:36 - Chapter 3: Sound Design
11:26 - Takeaways

[solertia]

We forget how difficult it was to make movies like this. The creativity and technical prowess here is so inspiring.

[amdstersam]

your narrator is seriously dope man, give him a raise or smth

[bluethunder]

And this is why this first Trilogy is a classic masterpiece.

[TheWrathfulSlayer]

Crazy how Star Wars still holds up today!! And ILM deserve a ton of praise because without this film, they wouldn’t have been able to do more Star Wars films and other movies as well!!

[BabyBearRudy]

Dang, George really went through it to make his dream come true. No wonder why Star Wars still holds up today

[DelightLovesMovies]

Hi StudioBinder. I don't think I ever thanked you for sharing your documentaries on youtube. They are always interesting as well as entertaining. Thanks.

[OneDayFilms]

The practical effects in this never fail to shock me

[giuliano]

These days the magic of Star Wars is away, but the first movies are so beautiful to watch, even after almost 40 - 50 years

[TheSuzberry]

Sound design is the single most important element when creating emotion in your audience. IMO.

[filmreviewer]

The skill to do something like this is incredible! Credit due to all of the people Lucas hired to make his crazy ideas a reality.

[davidroldanproductor]

The extra time doing such thorough motion design doesn't go unnoticed, these are great pieces of content.

[dondevice]

VistaVision isn’t a film stock, but a wide-screen format camera that had been more or less forgotten. While it is true that film grain was an important factor, the registration of this format (also the base for IMAX later) moving laterally (rather than vertically)
through the shutter, and the registration system, made for a much more stable frame, avoiding the sort of registration error that could undermine any mattes or rotoscoping. There were ma, y optical probs that had to be overcome for this to work, but you get the gist.

[lanolinlight]

All this stuff was common knowledge for geeks of my generation but you're doing the Lord's work here, teaching the youngins that special effects didn't begin with CGI.

[Uhfgood]

Should have included the amazing music of John Williams. His music was the thing that really punched up the emotion.

[quizwizzash]

Studiobinder + Star Wars = Masterpiece

[christopherthorkon]

Say what you will, but I like these effects so much more than CGI. CGI effects, especially nowadays, always look murky and blurry (because they are trying to add "atmosphere" to place the ships into the scene). I prefer the sharp and solid look we see here.

[baliramchauhangatsby]

The narrator of the channel has the best way to explain a content/topic/subject. Thank you, sir. May you live ages so that we can listen to you all the time. Please tell me the name of the narrator.

[samuelcarvajal]

For the next 'How They Shot It' I recommend: Alien, Blade Runner or Stalker

[yitzledee]

Whoever edited the music in the background, that was amazing!