Desirable brad-bound souvenir fourth draft script of “The Adventures of Luke Starkiller as taken from the ‘Journal of the Whills’ by George Lucas, (Saga I) Star Wars,” 157 pages, 8.5 x 11, signed on the title sheet in various ink types by fourteen cast and crew members, including: Rick Baker (makeup), John Dykstra (visual FX), Richard Edlund (visual FX), Gary Kurtz (producer), Joe Johnston (FX artist), Ben Burtt (sound), Richard Chew (editor), Paul Hirsch (editor), Alan Ladd, Jr. (head of 20th Century Fox), Don MacDougall (sound), Kenny Baker (adding “R2-D2”), Dennis Muren (visual FX), Phil Tippett (stop motion animator), and one other. In fine condition. Consignor notes that the signatures were obtained in person at various events between 1997 and 2013. A magnificent union of behind-the-scenes names that helped bring Star Wars to vivid life. Accompanied by a program for the 1997 George Pal Lecture on Fantasy in Film.
George Lucas wanted his 1977 film Star Wars to include visual effects that had never been seen on film before. After discovering that the in-house effects department at 20th Century Fox was no longer operational, Lucas approached Douglas Trumbull, best known for the effects on Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). Trumbull declined as he was already committed to working on Steven Spielberg’s film Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), but suggested his assistant John Dykstra to Lucas.
Dykstra brought together a small team of college students, artists, and engineers, and set them up in a warehouse in Van Nuys, California. George Lucas named the group Industrial Light and Magic, which became the Special Visual Effects department on Star Wars. Alongside Dykstra, other leading members of the original ILM team were Richard Edlund, Dennis Muren, Joe Johnston, and Phil Tippett (all of whose signatures are contained on this script), plus Ken Ralston, Steve Gawley, Lorne Peterson, and Paul Huston.
This script contains the signatures of five of the nine key founding members of ILM, which after creating the breakthrough and innovative special fx for the first Star Wars film, has since gone on to create special fx for hundreds of films, ushering in the age of modern special fx and digital fx in cinema.
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