BEHIND THE SCENES: ARRIVAL ON YAVIN IV!

Now landed on the lush jungle world of Yavin IV, Princess Leia and our heroes are collected and escorted by two speeder transports for delivery into a Massassi Temple housing the Rebel Alliance's secret base and hangar bay. Shot on Wednesday 14th July, 1976, this live-action scene was originally filmed by a second unit (with Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher and Peter Mayhew in attendance, with a double (paid £38.15p) for Anthony Daniels as Threepio (presumably in a spare golden suit), who was back at Elstree filming alongside Kenny Baker as Artoo. Having already returned States-side, Harrison Ford, prior completing his filming on June 24th, 1976, would also be replaced here by an unknown stand-in (paid £24.25p) outside one of two immense plane building hangars located at RAF Cardington Air Establishments in Bedfordshire, with a superb matte painting overlaid by Harrison Ellenshaw during ILM's Post Production*. 

A sequence of the two arriving speeder transports (in the original Fourth Draft script to have been a single military vehicle) moving off with their passengers on a stretch of road by the huge hangar (also presumably to have been overlaid with art) was additionally shot that day but ultimately cut from the film (though luckily captured for reference purposes on colour Polaroid by Script Supervisor Ann Skinner).

* For the later SPECIAL EDITIONs of the film, additional background embellishments were added to the distant hangar area.