Welcome to a look inside The Holocron. A collection of articles from the archives of *starwars.com no longer directly available.
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Empire Chronicles: Probot
We return to our Empire Chronicles series today with an entry for one of the most sinister-looking droids designed for the Star Wars galaxy, the Imperial probe droid, or “probot.”
Newer fans of the prequels and even The Clone Wars will recognize several familiar visual cues found on Empire‘s probe droid, such as the black metallic finish and large globe-like eyes found on Revenge of the Sith‘s buzz droids and Clone Wars‘ recon droid and spider-like assassin droid. Even Darth Maul’s Sith probe droids from The Phantom Menace and the dwarf spider droids from Attack of the Clones seem to have been informed by Empire‘s distinctive probe droid aesthetic.
Designed primarily by concept artist Ralph McQuarrie, the tarantula/jellyfish-like probe droid was built in both miniature for special effects shooting at Industrial Light & Magic and in full scale for on-location shooting with the actors in Norway. We’ve gathered passages from several sources documenting the design and filming of Empire‘s probot, which amazingly changed very little from concept to screen:
Mark Cotta Vaz and Shinji Hata
“The floating probot, built by model maker Paul Huston and duplicated in England as a full-scale replica, was inspired by an image created by visionary graphic artist Jean ‘Moebius’ Giraud (who gave permission to develop the strange contraption for Empire). The eighteen-to-twenty-inch-tall probot model was designed with all the hammered steel and rivets of the model shop’s ‘boiler plate’ approach to model making.”
— From Star Wars to Indiana Jones — The Best of the Lucasfilm Archives (1994)
“This one was developed because George said he wanted a machine, a robot, designed for the purpose of exploring on and under the very surface of a planet to seek out enemy activity…I envisioned the pod as floating along like some kind of anti-gravity unit. I thought it might touch down every once in a while and push itself along on its legs like an astronaut does on the moon.”
— Mediascene Prevue (July-Aug 1980)
Ralph McQuarrie
“The color in my painting came from some exceptionally good ice landsape reference that I had in my art files. I found a photo of the ice bowl in Alaska with the surface all frozen over and huge chunks of ice jutting upward. There was a powdered mist of ice almost glowing in the light, sometime close to sundown. I liked that look because it gave the picture and the probot a weird appearance. The actual footage in the film, of course, looks quite different from the art — it was never intended to be matched color-wise.”
— Mediascene Prevue (July-Aug 1980)
Tom St. Amand (Stop Motion Technician)
“It was actually the first miniature to be completed by the model shop. The probot was shot bluescreen. It was difficult to keep track of all the legs of the spider-like contraption. Some of them had to move forward, some backward. I believe the armature for that was built by Lorne Peterson, Charlie Bailey and Paul Huston. They also built the final puppet with Steve Gawley, Tom Ruddock and Ease Ouyeung.”
— Cinefex #3 (Dec 1980)
“The miniature probot appeared in two shots, one as a live-action puppet and the other as a stop-motion puppet. In the first, a close-up reveals the droid emerging from its smoking meteor crater. Dennis Muren had shot it ‘live,’ capturing its movement as it hovered into view. Mounted on a teeterboard, it slowly raised up by pushing the board down. The second shot, animated by Tom St. Amand, used stop-motion animation against bluescreen to show the probe droid as it flew away from the impact site.”
— Sculpting a Galaxy (2006)
Joe Johnston (Art Director-Visual Effects)
“There were about ten people doing that shot…One guy was stationed in front of a fan and threw handfuls of baking soda at the right moment. Phil [Tippett] was down there, Dennis [Muren] was behind camera, Mike Pangrazio was doing the smoke, and Tom [St. Amand] was in there, too. So you had an animator, a cameraman, a machinist, a model builder or two, a matte painter, one of the girls from the front office — in fact, anyone who wasn’t doing something in the building was called in for that shot.”
— Cinefex #3 (Dec 1980)
“The actual size of the probe droid [prop used on location in Norway] is about seven feet high. Its size is not immediately apparent in the film because the device isn’t seen next to any humans for a while, though its appearance comes fairly early in the story. The probot in the movie is very close to the one in the painting; it’s remarkable how accurate the techninicans can be.
— Mediascene Prevue (July-Aug 1980)
J.W. Rinzler (Author of The Sounds of Star Wars)
“…[F]or the moment when the probe droid levitates from its pod that has smashed into the surface of the ice planet Hoth, [Sound Designer Ben] Burtt recycled the same source material created on the ARP keyboard he’d used for the torture droid in Episode IV.”
— The Sounds of Star Wars (2010)
Ben Burtt (Sound Designer)
“The unintelligible alarm signal from the probot in Empire was the voice of a well-known Shakespearean actor totally changed electronically. I generally don’t use sounds from other sources, but on occasion I like to throw fun things in. I don’t think anybody could figure out who they were originally.”
— Bantha Tracks #17 (Aug 1982)
J.W. Rinzler
“The voice of the probot droid came from the shortwave recordings from the ham radio set of Burtt’s grandfather. ‘I mixed it with some outtakes of weird transmission noises I’d created for a warning signal that beckons the spaceship Nostromo to a ghostly planet in Alien,’ explains Burtt.”
— The Sounds of Star Wars (2010)
