'SOLO': WOOKIEE COIFFURE!

With all the careful work gone into making the Chewbacca masks for the modern Star Wars films, the creature make-up teams have to constantly maintain their hair quality for filming, as seen with these two immaculate heads - one of which is bearing the ultra-cool googles he'd wear for the action sequence on Vandor, for Solo: A Star Wars Story.

THE 'PHANTOM' AT TWENTY: SENATE WATCHERS!

Largely unseen bar in extreme longshots, many aliens delegates had close-up and reaction shots filmed for the Republic Senate meeting debating the Naboo Crisis. All of these characters, part of one hundred and forty separate creations - both new or classics revisited (such as Rodians and Twi'leks) - were brought to life by Nick Dudman and his team of fifty-five craftsmen, filmed by a second unit at Leavesden, mostly headed up by Roger Christian. Some unseen creatures would ultimately appear in new environments, like the Tatooine Pod racing sequence, playing spectators, or appear in future films, once again in extreme background shots. The Twi'lek Bib Fortuna (played by Alan Ruscoe) was to have been seen here but was ultimately deleted and replaced with Matthew Wood in the role for a scene opposite Jabba the Hutt on Tatooone, a move handled in EPISODE I's post production phase.

Bib Fortuna (Alan Ruscoe) listens to the drama.

The many practical creatures were built with little pre-production time-literally six months from January 1997 onwards, due to Lucas ironing out what creatures were to be handled via CGI, and what would be more cost-effective built as puppets and masks.

Nick Dudman and colleague supervise the care of an actor in the creature suit.

The greedy Twi-lek senator Orn Free Ta (Jerome Blake) and one of his aides (possibly actress Daisy Donovan) - his scene never made the final cut.

In honour of Steven Spielberg, E.T. and his friends made a special one-off cameo.

One of the most important returning species cameos would be from the Wookiees. Actor/puppeteer John Coppinger would play Yarua, and his character would be filmed/ superimposed three times in one scene to make it look like there was a trio of them in their senate pod. One of the surviving original Chewbacca costumes was loaned from the Lucasfilm archive and given restoration and re-working to serve as the new character. Three all-new Wookiee masks were seemingly rejected.

John Coppinger as Yarua the wookiee.

Specially made Wookiee masks by for the three senators were ultimately unused. 

Though not an alien creature, another important character cut from the movie's senate related scenes would be rising star Alderaan delegate Bail Antilles, as played by Adrian Dunbar, originally inhabiting the role as Bail Organa, Princess Leia's adopted father.

More info here:
https://starwarsaficionado.blogspot.com/2013/04/classic-blog-2007-adrian-dunbar.html
https://starwarsaficionado.blogspot.com/2012/09/deleted-scene-speaker-for-alderaan.html

BEHIND THE SCENES: MASK MYTH MAKER!

Posing for an of-its-time magazine shoot wearing the mark of a horned devil of the US filmed Cantina insert sequences (later known as a Devaronian, and played in January 1977 by one of the female ILM secretaries), Rick Baker's job on the original Star Wars, despite pretty low pay and little time to do his work in comparison to another project he was then working on, was ultimately a dream come true for the makeup/mask pioneer, on the kind of space adventure he'd always wanted to see come to cinematic life. Recommended to Lucas by ILM staffer Denis Muren, Baker had already started to become an enthused legend in his field, and had recently played King Kong in a 1976 remake.

Classic Rick Baker 1977 interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4CFR6sv3Ak&feature=youtu.be

Modern Baker interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDyq6p7_dQo

With thanks to Chris Baker.

'STAR WARS' AT 40: MASK MADNESS!

As STAR WARS begins some additional insert shooting of Cantina scenes in Los Angeles during January 1977, one of the female members of ILM just can't help herself-enjoying hanging out and wearing one of the many masks created by Rick Baker and his team!

BEHIND THE SCENES: NEW ADVENTURE, NEW WOOKIEE!

At his magical make-up emporium at Elstree Studios in early 1982, the legendary and mush-missed Stuart Freeborn continues his dedicated work for RETURN OF THE JEDI, his production slate ambitious enough with all-new characters like Jabba and the Ewoks, but always making sure he kept his key input into the continued crafting and developing of previously established favourites, as seen here, where he's putting fine detail to the latest wookiee mask for the beloved Chewbacca.

BEHIND THE SCENES: SPECTRAL SKYWALKER!

The Skywalker lineage revealed?

Atmospheric, electric and very scary for young viewers, the scene where a revenge-fuelled Luke Skywalker confronts a spectral image of Darth Vader in the mysterious Dagobah Cave, then discovers the true identity of his soon fallen foe, was easily one of the best and most intriguing moments of THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK. Mark Hamill was buried into the ground on a very small Elstree set in Summer 1979, wearing a damaged version of the Vader mask for close-in reveal shots, but a dummy face mould, created by Stuart Freeborn and his team, was also used for the lead-in moment where Vader's head explodes and the "ghost" Luke is briefly seen beneath the emergent smoke.

Freeborn team face mould of Mark Hamill.

The dummy Luke face in the Vader mask.

The dummy face, as briefly scene in Empire.

BEHIND THE SCENES: HALF SHELL VADER!

A specially created test half-shell of the Darth Vader helmet placed over a head and shoulders mould of Hayden Christensen, for the then 2003 upcoming Australian filming of Anakin Skywalker's gruesome final transformation into the "more machine than man" Dark Lord, for EPISODE III. It'll be a genuinely spine-tingling thrill to see what the new Vader mask (presumably built once again by its originator Brian Muir) and costume will look like for the upcoming ROGUE ONE, filmed in the UK.

BEHIND THE SCENES: A FREEBORN MASTERPIECE

Makeup supremo Stuart Freeborn prepares to put the Chewbacca face mask back onto actor Peter Mayhew in this 1976 behind the scenes shot at Elstree Studios from the original STAR WARS.

BEHIND THE SCENES IMAGE: IN STORAGE!

A group of classic creature heads from RETURN OF THE JEDI lay ready to be used for upcoming studio filming at both ELSTREE and for location work in Yuma, Arizona between Jan and April 1982.

CLASSIC CHEWBACCA: ONE MAN AND HIS WOOKIEE!

In his workshop at ELSTREE, legendary British make-up artist Stuart Freeborn brings the Classic Trilogy Chewbacca mask to reality.

With thanks to Chris Baker for the image.

Fans of Stuart's work on the three STAR WARS films, and the rest of his spectacular career, including such notables as 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY and the SUPERMAN films, fans were able to check out AFICIONADO's exclusive interview with him and his wife Kay in an exhaustive MAKING OF "RETURN OF THE JEDI" special issue from 2008, available only in PDF format.

STORMTROOPER WARS: THE CASE CONTINUES...

The seemingly never ending and complex legal/copyright battle between the UK's SHEPPERTON DESIGN STUDIO and LUCASFILM over the Stormtrooper masks rages on...

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3451228/Attack-of-the-clone-helmet-war.html

With thanks to Veronica Weller for the heads up on the article...


UPDATE: 27/7/2011. In the High Court today, SHEPPERTON DESIGN STUDIOS won their ruling against LUCASFILM so as to commercially produce Imperial Stormtrooper costumes in the UK merchandise market. Here is the YAHOO!/SKY NEWS story with video link: Empire Strikes Back In Stormtrooper Row - Yahoo!

CLASSIC IMAGE: UGLIES INC.

Stuart Freeborn certainly proved himself as one of the STAR WARS saga's definitive UK talents in make-up and creature construction, as seen here with this motley group of monster heads that would be used in the original film's 1976 April/May cantina filming at ELSTREE. All of the monsters in there, and in later US re-shoots with additional Rick Baker creatures, would become icons, especially Freeborn's Greedo, whom George Lucas would take a shine to when he first saw the creature in his workshop after it had been previously constructed for use as an alien in a UK BIRDS EYE peas commercial of the early seventies, though subsequently re-dressed (for legal reasons) for his eventual doomed confrontation with Han Solo.

Graham and Kay Freeborn with the UK Elstree creatures created for the Cantina in April 1976.

Due to illness (later declared as a stomach bug), Stuart was unable to complete all the required UK masks for the Cantina sequence, which begs the question, are there any surviving pieces of original 1975/76 artwork or designs, whether they be in the LUCASFILM archives or in a private collection, that show those creatures that ultimately never made it to reality? It would surely be fascinating to see them, eh?

With thanks to Ian Trussler for the group image.