Creating realistic simulations of neighborhoods using miniatures and computer-controlled cameras was the goal of an ambitious experiment designed by two NSF-funded researchers. What they didn't know was that their lab's research would influence how special effects are made in some of the most memorable movies and TV shows in history, from the first "Star Wars" movie to "The Mandalorian."
With mouths agape, movie audiences for more than 40 years have watched a certain outgunned rebel spaceship's futile attempt to flee a ginormous imperial star destroyer. That iconic opening shot of 1977's "Star Wars" is seared into the collective memory of millions, if not billions, of people. It was, of course, an elaborate fake — constructed and photographed by skilled artists in a humble warehouse outside Los Angeles. Far, far away from the Galactic Empire.
That scene and many others were created for the first "Star Wars" movie by Industrial Light & Magic, George Lucas' then-fledgling special effects company. The staff of ILM ignited a revolution in filmmaking aesthetics. They combined technology and artistry with a keen understanding of the fundamentals of human perception. That innovative fusion was based on experimental techniques first tested in a research project at the University of California, Berkeley and supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation.
"The focus of the project required that I figure out, in a scientific way, the things that made the image believable," says John Dykstra, who worked on the experiment in Berkeley's Environmental Simulation Laboratory in the 1970s along with Jerry Jeffress and Alvah Miller. A few years later, all three would become founding members of ILM, where they would expand on the work at Berkeley to create a computer-controlled camera system capable of movie-quality special effects — the eponymous "Dykstraflex" system which was first used for "Star Wars."
Credit: Courtesy of Lucasfilm Ltd. Copyright Industrial Light & Magic © & ™ Lucasfilm Ltd. All rights reserved. The Dykstraflex system, including the crane and dolly track, with a model TIE fighter and bluescreen background.
The research and technological innovations achieved in the Berkeley lab provided a new understanding of how people respond to what they see — be it real or on celluloid — and how that understanding could be applied. In the process, Dykstra and others in the lab prototyped some of the techniques and equipment that the inventive team at ILM would later use to draw audiences into a perceptually believable fantasy with dogfighting TIE fighters and trench-running X-wings.
"The one that blew everyone away was that very first shot in Star Wars with this ship that looks like it's a mile long, flying overhead," remembers ILM Executive Creative Director John Knoll of his reaction when he first saw "Star Wars" as a boy.
"And to discover that it's a 3-foot-long model? It's just, how did they do it?"
A new hope... for public planning
Donald Appleyard was a professor of urban design at UC Berkeley with a passion for how streets, neighborhoods and entire cities can be designed to maximize the quality of life and safety of their residents. In the early 1970s he partnered with his friend, Berkeley psychologist Kenneth Craik, and together they helped establish the new field of environmental psychology, which investigates how people are affected by their surrounding environment, from busy streets to peaceful parks.
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