Design skills go into third ‘Star Wars’ epic

Press, 21 November 1981, Page 16

Design skills go into third ‘Star Wars’ epic

By

ROBIN STRINGER,

arts

correspondent, “Daily Telegraph,” London

The peeling blue paint on the outside. of the film studios at Elstree, not far from London, is misleading. For despite the undoubted decline in British film output, some of today’s most successful films have emerged, butterfly-like, from the studios’ unprepossessing exterior, notably the “Star Wars” epics. What is true of E.M.I. at Elstree is also true of those other major British film studios/ Pinewood, home of the James Bond films.

In both instances the production money has been from the United States but the production skills are British. Of course, it would be quite wrong to isolate one man from the freelance pool of production talent and expertise that these films tap, but for convenience’s sake the career of one man can serve as a measure of the extent and depth of that pool. That man is Norman Reynolds.

His name has most recently been seen high on the list of screen credits for Steven Spielberg’s “Raiders of the Lost Ark” as production designer.

Art director for both "Superman” films, which were based at Pinewood, and

for “Star Wars” itself, he is now working as production designer on the third “Star Wars” film — “Revenge of the Jedi” — having also designed the second, “The Empire Strikes Back.” One wall of his E.M.I. Elstree office is already covered with photographs of possible forest locations for “Jedi.” The opposite wall is hung with shelves stacked with reference books, such as a history of shipping, and laden with models, such as the extraordinary flying wing used in “Raiders.” The door opens constantly to admit “Jedi” modelmakers bringing lumps of carved polystyrene, that will one day be castles or camps, to check the shape of colour of a proposed set. Reynolds agrees that a major factor in inducing the American producer of “Star Wars,” Gary Kurtz, and the company, Twentieth Century Fox, to. go to Elstree in the first place, was the comparative cheapness of production in Britain. Although that advantage probably still applies, the financial gap is

now much narrower. Other reasons have augmented the overriding one of cost. The director, George Lucas, has plainly been, well satisfied with the work done there. Some might even argue that the design content of the “Star Wars” films — and, indeed, all those films with which Norman Reynolds has recently been involved — is the most superior element in them. Reynolds himself has no doubt that British technicians and craftsmen are the equal of any in the world. “They are very rounded guys, very level-headed with lots of common sense and savvy,” he says. For “Jedi,” he is deploying dozens of designers, carpenters, plasterers, technicians, and craftsmen to ensure that the 20 or 30 models of the film sets, designs for which were finalised ? in August, are completed in time for filming to begin in the spring of 1982. The pressures are enormous. Once again money is the dominant factor. “In ‘Superman’.” explains Reynolds,

‘‘we had Brando for 12 days at a cost of $6 million. So the tiniest delay on our part as far as he was concerned, let alone anyone else, was hugely expensive. “Another pressure is simply the cost of stage time. The less we use the stages the less it costs the company.” To guard against delays, Reynolds is in the habit of drawing up a big pull-out schedule the size of the wall, to count himself down in the accelerating run-up to the actual filming. “It enables me to see the wood for the trees,” he says. He entered the film industry 20 years ago almost by accident. Now 47, he was brought up in London, although his parents were Welsh and he went to a tiny art college in Wales before going into advertising. Taken along to Shepperton Studios, also near London, when the last of the HopeCrosby “Road” films was being" made, he wandered

round and was hooked. It took him a year to get into the business as a junior draghtsman for M.G.M.’s “Come Fly With Me” - “that well-known epic,” he says with . a laugh, “that went straight down the tubes.” Now he is at the top of the industry, life is hectic. Besides regular transatlantic trips, he travels the world in search of locations.

Searching primarily for a Chinese palace required by the original “Raiders” script, he set off from New York to the jungles of Mexico’s Yucatan. From there he flew to Hawaii, where the Peruvian sequences were being filmed, and then on to Singapore and Hong Kong — only to find all suitable palaces surrounded by high-rise buildings.

So on he went to Macao and finally Penang, where he found exactly what he wanted. “But when I got back to New York having been away 10 days,” he says, “I found that the Chinese palace had been erased from ttie script.”

The extraordinary flying wing in “Raiders” had to be constructed .piecemeal at Elstree, shipped out and reassembled in Tunisia, where the Egyptian scenes were being filmed. The demands on the production designer’s time are enormous. “When I worked on ‘Empire,’ I was at Elstree for a year without a break. It is hard on the family,” says Reynolds, who lives with his wife and three children in nearby St Albans.

“But there, is too much at stake to play at it. You are either totally committed or you should not be doing it.” Reynolds has few regrets. One of them,, as it is bound to be in the film business, is for a picture he never made. “After ‘Empire,’ Franco Zeffirelli approached me to do ‘Aida,’ but he could not find the money,” recalls Reynolds sadly. “The set budget alone was $6 million."