Pictorial: Dan O'Bannon and the tactical displays in Star Wars

Researching a small piece about early CGI last week, I was surprised at the varying opinions of just how much computer animation there is in Star Wars: A New Hope. As Alien creator Dan O'Bannon had been kind enough to let us interview him in 2007, and as I knew he had been involved in the creation of many of the tactical and computer displays in A New Hope, I asked if he would be willing to clear the matter up. Very graciously he had a quick and informal chat with us, and talked about the animation work that he undertook for Star Wars (as it was then uniquely known). I wasn't happy to include these details just as a footnote in a CGI-related piece, so I thought we'd take a look at the visuals in their own right...

Dark Star (1974) - Dan is on the right in the role of 'Pinback'.

Dan produced and supervised an ingenious and respected collection of optical-effects shots for Dark Star, the 1973 short student film he collaborated on with John Carpenter, which was successful enough at festivals to win funding for an extended theatrical version in 1974.

Dark Star (1974)

Dark Star's visual effects were created in conjunction with legendary futurist Ron Cobb (Alien, Aliens, Total Recall, The Last Starfighter), whom O'Bannon had approached earlier as a fan of his political cartoons in the Los Angeles Free Press, only to discover that Cobb was a gifted science-fiction illustrator. Modelmaker Greg Jein would also go on to acclaimed work on films such as 1941 , Star Trek: The Motion Picture, One from the Heart and The Scorpion King, to name a few.

THX-1138 (1971)

For Dark Star, Dan worked with fellow animator Bob Greenberg to create authentic-seeming computer displays by traditional rostrum animation methods, inspired both by Doug Trumbull's simulated computer tacticals in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and by George Lucas's extensive use of television screens in another student-project that evolved to the big screen, THX-1138 (1971).

Visual displays from Alien (1979) and Blade Runner (1982)

Though it's not something I discussed with O'Bannon, the displays that he designed and helped animate for Dark Star, the style of which he reprised in Star Wars, went on to influence the very credible look of other simulated computer systems and displays in the likes of Alien and Blade Runner (That said, O'Bannon was an acting art director on Alien, and so may have had some influence in those displays). The animations involved no reversal work, but were created on transparent cells in full colour using line and the conventional tools of graphic design.

Star Wars (1977)

George Lucas had hired 24 year-old computer scientist Larry Cuba to create the (at the time) challenging wireframe and vector-based CGI work for the tactical briefing before the attack on the Death Star in Star Wars. Cuba worked out of the Electronic Visualization Lab (EVL) at the University of Illinois, and created the blueprints and graphics using the vector graphics scripting language GRASS (GRAphics Symbiosis System, created by Ohio State's Tom DeFanti in 1974). EVL themselves take no particular credit for the sequence, but say "[Larry Cuba] stayed at our facility and used our equipment for many months in order to create the sequence." Cuba created an instructional video about the sequence at the time of Star Wars, and EVL released it in 2008 as a well-viewed 10-minute video on their channel at YouTube.

Cuba used a Vector General CRT, DEC PDP-11 minicomputer to generate the images and recorded the frames by pointing a film camera at the monitor in an automated process which awaited each successive image to be rendered before triggering a frame exposure.


Star Wars (1977)

O'Bannon's first task on Star Wars was to create the final section of the Death Star tactical simulation, wherein torpedoes are seen entering the shaft and descending to the core to cause a reactor explosion. For this O'Bannon made an effort to simulate Cuba's style, with white lines on black, but added his signature 'strobing' at certain points. This end section of Star Wars' one and only CGI sequence would have been an ambitious addition to the schedule, and Lucas decided that concluding it with animation was the quickest route to completing the scene.

Later Lucas returned to chat with O'Bannon about creating the remaining tactical and computer display animations for Star Wars. Lucas was shuttling between San Francisco and ILM's facility in Van Nuys at the period, and would sit with O'Bannon sketching out rough diagrams for the tacticals on scrap paper.


Star Wars (1977)

Feedback from Lucas was minimal throughout the three-month period in which O'Bannon supervised the shots, though he notes that the director was concerned at one stage that some of the visuals were coming out too 'colourful'. This is something O'Bannon says he could easily have remedied in advance if there had been more detailed discussion, but in the end the colour in some of the tactical shots was toned down for release.

Star Wars (1977)

The one shot where O'Bannon's team employed computer technology was on the compositing work for the Death Star's aspect for clearance to destroy the rebel moon Yavin IV. Here O'Bannon praised the great speed at which the Image West facility was able to take the elements that he brought and composite them with motion on an analogue computer. The system was known as Scanimate, and was created by Lee Harrison III, the founder of Chicago's Computer Image. Scanimate would scan core imagery at twice the horizontal rate of NTSC or PAL and output the various elements composited onto a five-inch CRT screen, which was filmed in real-time with a conventional movie camera. If you're interested in more detail on how Scanimate worked, check out this post at Siggraph.

Star Wars (1977)

Of all the visual effects produced for the original Star Wars, the contribution of O'Bannon's team has been the least affected by the two 'enhanced' re-releases in 1997 and 2005, though we must note that Lucas did decide to change the written language on the Death Star's tractor-beam generator (above) from English to...well, something else. O'Bannon joked that he was disappointed George Lucas had not taken the opportunity to revamp the screens for the special editions, and that something more interesting could have been done with newer technologies. On this, of course, we can't fault Lucas; it would not only have removed O'Bannon's work from the film but substituted a great deal of the original feeling and iconography of Star Wars. Good call!

Star Wars (1977)

Many thanks to Dan and Diane O'Bannon for geeking out with us at a busy time for them.

The Den Of Geek interview: Dan O'Bannon
Top 50 movie special effects shots
The Making of Star Wars - book review

19 January 2009