Outstanding Effect Shots, part 1 of 24

Welcome to the Single-Minded Movie Blog advent calendar. Between the 1st and the 24th of December every day will bring you a short post about a classic or not so classic shot from the golden era of visual effects.

The opening shot

- from Star Wars (1977)

It's the shot that changed the film industry. The shot every geek has his own story about watching the first time. The shot that created an empire. Everything was riding on this, if people didn't buy this shot, they wouldn't buy the film.

The shot was created by Industrial Light & Magic, with Richard Edlund supervising sequence, closely watched by George Lucas himself.

Everything about the first Star Wars film was a test, an endless process of trial and error. This shot, for example, was redone several times, and until the very end everyone was unsure if it was going to work. The Star Destroyer model is only three feet long, and it had to fill the entire frame. The shot is much longer that most effect shots as well, so any tiny flaw would be picked up on the big screen, consequently artists spend six weeks detailing the model, especially the docking bay.

The final version was approved in April 1977, and the rest - as they say - is history. Movie magic history.