THE MAKING OF STAR WARS: THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK

This fall Del Rey will publish The Making of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back by New York Times best selling author J. W. Rinzler. Throughout the summer Suvudu and starwars.com will offer a series of sneak peeks at pages from the book along with Mr. Rinzler’s insider’s notes on what you’re looking at. This is information that might not have made it into the book.
This week the celebration begins for the thirtieth anniversary of the release of this blockbuster film. After the incredible success of the first movie the pressure was on everyone to deliver something even better, and that included the movie posters and title logo design. Mr. Rinzler gives us a brief look into the archives and what he found.
“One of the great parts of doing these Making of books is spending time in the Lucasfilm Archives. Days if not weeks. There you can see and study the complete concept artwork collection for all six Star Wars films (and the art for Indiana Jones, too). Laela French, the head of the archives, will also assign one of her assistants to help pull the matte paintings on glass, models, and so on.
Also stored in flat-bed drawers is much of the marketing material generated for the films. You never know what you’re going to find. In one of them, I found a whole bunch of early logo concepts for Empire. Unfortunately we couldn’t identify the artists–though of course the artwork by Ralph McQuarrie is well known.”
Here are some of the rare items found in the archive:


Did you miss the first sneak peek? Check out the first completed effects shot by Industrial Light and Magic and how Mr. Rinzler discovered it!