From the (Library) Bookshelf: Sculpting a Galaxy

[krpalmer]

I was in my local branch library when I happened to spot, sitting on a cart, a large book with a picture of the Millennium Falcon on the cover. It was "Sculpting a Galaxy," a book about the models of Star Wars that I'd heard of before. Signing it out, I found it quite interesting. That interest may have first been piqued by in years gone by assembling model kits (including a model A-wing that I tried my best to "dirty down" in the best Star Wars tradition), but the work in the book is pretty much a whole series of levels beyond anything I ever managed.

I suppose many people may connect "models" and "Star Wars" by thinking of "model ships," and some might even take umbrage at how this book shows The Phantom Menace to be pretty much the last hurrah for "physical" models of them, but the environmental models that followed are interesting in their own way to me; they dovetail in a sense with a book like "Creating the Worlds of Star Wars: 365 Days," which winds up as pictures of bits of physical sets surrounded by bluescreen. Lorne Peterson does point out that TPM alone had more models built for it than all three of the old movies combined, which was a little beyond how I had remembered that before. Beyond the pretty pictures, I was also interested by all the "behind-the-scenes" information, including some things that I hadn't heard before to be added to what I did know. For example, I knew that a larger X-wing model was built for Return of the Jedi... but not that the shot it had been intended for had never made it into the movie. At the end of the book, I was also amused for a moment to see a picture of Mythbuster and Star Wars modelmaker Adam Savage among those so honoured. All in all, I'm grateful to the library.

Comments

[lazypadawan.livejournal.com]

I never noticed Adam Savage in that book! *Runs to go look.*

[krpalmer.livejournal.com]

There were so many pictures that I guess I managed to remember Adam Savage had worked in the ILM model shop and think "I wonder if..." Now that I'm taking another look at it myself, I notice that "assistant" Mythbuster Grant Imahara is also there. There are also people who weren't modelmakers, though, such as John Dykstra, Howard Kazanjian, and George Lucas himself.

The "Visual Index" of models also at the back of the book was perhaps a little more ambiguous to me somehow, given the tiny pictures of models included to be remembered but that otherwise weren't described in the book.