The first scene in front of the cameras was Scene 44 (The Sandstorm on Tattoine) shot on Stage 2 and would be the very last time that the full size Millenium Falcon prop would be used before dismantling.
The scene was subsequently deleted from the movie but can be seen on the extras of the new Saga Blu-Ray boxset.
There was 17 Camera sets-ups for the scene which shot for 9 hours and amounted to one and a half minutes of screentime.
Here's the day's shooting progress report :-
Mark Hamill was the only actor to perform all the way through the first shooting day of the Trilogy. On Star Wars' day one in Tozeur on Monday 22 March 1976 he shot for 12 Hours and 50 minutes resulting in 2 minutes and 43 Seconds of finished film and on Empire day one in Finse on Monday 9th March 1979 Mark worked for 10 hours 50 minutes for nine shots and approximately one and half minutes of finished footage. *
Whatever the result, Return of the Jedi was off the starting blocks and into Production
*figures and information taken from 'The Making of Return of the Jedi' by John Phillip Peecher
The scene itself can be found HERE
Very cool, Mark. I'm a geek and loving reading tidbits like how many feet of film were ordered for production.
ReplyDeleteI see Colin Skeaping the stunts column. Does that mean he worked on that first day?