STAR WARS SPECIAL EDITION - DESERT SEARCH

# Picture from the Shot Description

1. Desert Search In this scene the Imperials are trying to find the droids, as R2D2 contains very important information of the Empire's ultimate weapon, the Death Star. Lucas obviously wanted to show the importance of finding these two droids. This image shows the new CG animated dewback.

2. Desert Search In the original Tatooine desert scene, stormtroopers (also referred to as sandtroopers) search for traces of the missing droids. On the horizon, a stormtrooper is astride a dewback, a large dinosaur-like creature. This original dewback is little more than a motionless background element. For the Star Wars Trilogy Special Edition the role of the dewback was expanded to include several of the creatures with fully animated movement and lifelike detail.

3. Desert Search In order to add animated dewbacks to this scene, new background shots or "plates" were filmed in the desert. In re-shooting this scene, every effort was made to match the original background plates, including using the same lens and camera settings as documented 20 years ago. The new background plates were then scanned. Industrial Light & Magic modeled CG wireframes of the stormtroopers riding on the dewbacks in Alias/Wavefront's Alias Studio software.

4. Desert Search The final shot composites the fully rendered dewbacks (with moving shadows and trail of footprints) with the scanned CG plate. The final composite is then transferred to 35mm film negative.

5. While the stormtroopers looking about are part of the new live-action footage, the stormtrooper riding the dewback and the new spacecraft -- an Imperial landing craft modeled after the Imperial shuttles in Return of the Jedi -- were all computer generated by a team at Industrial Light & Magic.

#	Picture from the Shot	Description
1.		In this scene the Imperials are trying to find the droids, as R2D2 contains very important information of the Empire's ultimate weapon, the Death Star. Lucas obviously wanted to show the importance of finding these two droids. This image shows the new CG animated dewback.
2.		In the original Tatooine desert scene, stormtroopers (also referred to as sandtroopers) search for traces of the missing droids. On the horizon, a stormtrooper is astride a dewback, a large dinosaur-like creature. This original dewback is little more than a motionless background element. For the Star Wars Trilogy Special Edition the role of the dewback was expanded to include several of the creatures with fully animated movement and lifelike detail.
3.		In order to add animated dewbacks to this scene, new background shots or "plates" were filmed in the desert. In re-shooting this scene, every effort was made to match the original background plates, including using the same lens and camera settings as documented 20 years ago. The new background plates were then scanned. Industrial Light & Magic modeled CG wireframes of the stormtroopers riding on the dewbacks in Alias/Wavefront's Alias Studio software.
4.		The final shot composites the fully rendered dewbacks (with moving shadows and trail of footprints) with the scanned CG plate. The final composite is then transferred to 35mm film negative.
5.		While the stormtroopers looking about are part of the new live-action footage, the stormtrooper riding the dewback and the new spacecraft -- an Imperial landing craft modeled after the Imperial shuttles in Return of the Jedi -- were all computer generated by a team at Industrial Light & Magic.