'STAR WARS' AT 45: FALCON FLYING!

She may not look like much, but she's got it where it counts. The Millennium Falcon!

Whether it be illegally blasting out of Docking Bay 94 on Tatooine or one of the hangars of the Death Star, combatting four TIE fighter sentry ships or evading a barrage of asteroids, Han Solo's trusty souped-up Corellian smuggling vessel, the now-iconic Millennium Falcon, always manages to get our hero captain and his passengers out of a tight squeeze.

As we all know, the original design of the Falcon was changed due to its being too similar in design to the Eagle Transporter craft being shown in Space: 1999 during late 1975. According to Lorne Peterson at ILM, it was Lucas that suggested Joe Johnston make the new vessel a round hamburger shape, and that it could potentially move in space like a Sunfish. The idea of the rotating cockpit for the vessel sadly never progressed very far, presumably due to model filming practicalities of the time. The new design and model construction at ILM had to be done in mere weeks (with the design and model teams working round the clock) so that the set construction team at Elstree in the UK could construct the partial prop for the studio filming from its reference.

Here's a great selection of behind the scenes images linked to the ILM model filming (as well as other curios) from 1976/77.

Image at ILM, from Joe Johnston.

Adding further paint details.

A close-up look at one of the ship's guns.

The largest Falcon model is used for numerous seventies selfie photos at ILM!

The biggest size Falcon created for Star Wars in 1976, on display circa 2019.

John Dykstra supervises filming on the ILM stage.

Richard Edlund and Gary Kurtz.

Edlund makes adjustments to the incredible model.

Edlund with the Dykstraflex camera.

More underside work.

Steve Gawley and Lorne Peterson make some pole adjustments to the model.

Grant McCune makes an adjustment, with Steve Gawley and Richard Edlund in the background.

Byron Werner with the model in 1976.