AN 'EMPIRE' AT 40: WHEN 'WALKERS' WALKED...

Reference size/height shots of the all-new AT-AT Walker.

Though Phil Tippett and Jon Berg were always on the cards to be handling some form of stop-motion duties for Star Wars II prior to April 1978 (with their work on the chess sequence for the original Star Wars having been an element of the film that proved very popular with the film going public and impressed Lucas, it was not always set in stone that the Tauntaun/Walker scenes would be achieved via stop-motion, and that other processes for achieving the sequences were being considered. The prior rumours of the time that Lucas had sought out effects legend Ray Harryhausen for the stop motion work of the Walkers battle, however, would actually prove true. Phil Tippett recalled to CINEFEX in 1980: “Lucas approached him about doing some work on it. They went out to lunch and discussed it. Because of their schedules (Harryhausen being in Pre-Production for his upcoming Clash of the Titans, and was already behind schedule anyway), they couldn’t get it together.” 

Dennis Muren continues to CINEFEX: “I believe that the meeting happened in the early part of 1978. Thing is, I don think they ever expected Ray to actually take the job. George and Gary really wanted to meet Ray, and that was sort of a way to do it.” It was when the Empire story/script was being further developed, that the immense duties eventually undertaken by Berg/Tippett in the old style effects format, recommended by Muren, would be given serious consideration and then green lighted. Muren’s first contract work on the nature of the Walker and Tauntaun effects would begin in April 1978, with the earliest meetings with Lucas and Kurtz, followed with discussions that would now include Irvin Kershner in May/June 1978 (of which Tippett and Berg would now be properly, officially brought into the process).

A fallen Walker with an at-arms soldier atop it.

 

With their animation/ stop-motion/effects work on the then upcoming film The Primevals now ground to a halt due to financial problems, talented effects men Ken Ralston, Dave Carson and Tom St. Amand are hired by the Empire ILM team-all three providing critical contributions to the realization of the Walker/ Tauntaun sequences. With the problems of script re-writing and the much later location filmed Finse background plates proving unstable and photographically uneven, which will prove to be difficult for overlaying the effects sequences onto, a massive period of design and engineering work begins from the autumn of 1978 until the summer of 1979. Whilst Muren is in charge of working out the practicality and logistics of the effects filming, the rest of the team are at the drawing boards. 

No longer inside a Bantha costume, Mardji the elephant returns to help ILM.

To work out the movements of the Walkers and how to bring the sequence to life, Stop Motion Animator Jon Berg recalled an early idea to STAR WARS INSIDER in 2000: “I remember somebody had done a sketch on possibly doing the Walkers through some sort of marionette system. We had to figure out, first, how are we going to make these big machines -- just make them -- and then how are we going to make them move?” Motorized Walkers are also an possibility but this is ruled out early on. Berg continues: "I remember saying, 'This thing looks so much like an elephant, why don't we just go out and shoot some film?' It wound up being this whole expedition that went out -- Dennis Muren, Phil Tippett and I, and a whole camera crew. The elephant we used was a sweet Indian elephant named Mardji (who was at Marineland’s AFRICA USA enclosure in San Francisco), and she had a trainer. We shot quite a bit of footage of her walking back and forth, so we could get an idea of the motions an animal that size and configuration goes through in just walking.” Regardless of the elephant, Joe Johnston always thought the Walkers walked in a very cat-like way, recalling in 1980 to CINEFEX that he thought they moved “stiff legged, head down.” Berg would spend three months working out the design and construction of the Walker and working out its final movements. 

The primary motion of the fearsome beasts was refined further within the story. Dennis Muren recalled on the STAR WARS DEFINITIVE EDITION LASERDISC audio commentary in 1993: “Part of the idea behind their slow movement was that they could be overpowered and they would lose. That was part of George's vision on it. They were big, lumbering, you know, obsolete machines that could be overcome by a clever person in the right spot with the right weapon. I think we might have talked about it being an analogy to Vietnam...” Three primary Walker armatures would be built by Tom St. Amand using Berg’s prototype as a model. Berg recalled some of his intricate work to STAR WARS INSIDER in 2000: “One thing I did when I was designing the Walker was to create little squared off pistons in the upper legs and little doohickeys on the inside. So when you did the leg animation these little mechanisms would actually move along with it, and you'd get secondary animation that you wouldn't have to worry about doing yourself. I thought those little fun things going on with the Walker's movement would make it look like something was actually happening mechanically there.” The Walkers stood eighteen-by-twenty inches when completed by the ILM Model Shop, with St. Amand having to custom build each part from scratch, with meticulous painting by Joe Johnston (with additional help from Nilo Rodis-Jamero) brought to the models which added depth and believability to them. 

Adding further believability to the Walker sequences, having worked on a snow episode of the original Battlestar Galactica (the two-parter Gun on Ice Planet Zero), Lorne Petersen and Steve Gawley’s experiences prove useful in providing the baking powder snow miniatures set covering that will be later used during the stop motion filming.