Making of A NEW HOPE

by Damon Wellner
page 1 of 5

This movie was produced primarily by Kellfire Bray and myself. I shot the movie and handled the in-camera effects, and Kellfire produced the digital effects. We both performed as puppeteers, with additional puppetry
by Carla Remy Norton.

Making a toy version of A New Hope presented many new challenges for Probot.This time, instead of attempting to recreate just the ambience of a STAR WARS movie, we had to duplicate the EXACT cinematography and special effects from the original film.

When it comes to pleasing Star Wars fans, small details are very important. We know because we are huge fans ourselves. The truth is, I learned more about filmmaking watching The Making of STAR WARS at age 7 than I ever learned in film school.

To duplicate the special effects, we used many of the same techniques as Lucas did when filming the original.

We built several elaborate sets for this project. Whenever possible, we used actual Kenner/Hasbro playsets (both new and vintage). Other sets were made from scratch. Some backdrops were made by taking stills from the original film and digitally removing the characters.

Making your own action-figure movie?
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The Detention Block set was made combining the Old School Death Star Playset with 2 of the Cell Block playsets [circa 1995], and backing it up with a digitally altered still from the film (above).