Welcome to a look inside The Holocron. A collection of articles from the archives of *starwars.com no longer directly available.

(*Archived here with Permission utilising The Internet Archive Wayback Machine)

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.”

The probot, you’ll remember, is the reconnaissance droid sent by the Empire to root out the Rebel’s presence on Hoth.

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)

Ralph McQuarrie (Design Consultant And Conceptual Artist)
“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)

Lorne Peterson (Chief Model Maker)
“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)

Ralph McQuarrie
“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)

Welcome to a look inside The Holocron. A collection of articles from the archives of *starwars.com no longer directly available.

(*Archived here with Permission utilising The Internet Archive Wayback Machine)

Empire Chronicles: Space Slug

“This Is No Cave!”

The space slug, whose exterior we see for all of a few seconds in The Empire Strikes Back, is probably one of the most memorable life forms introduced in the saga’s first sequel, trumped only by the surprise revelation of a little green Jedi Master.

The entire asteroid-crater-turned-space-worm scene actually came together with just a few props and an improvised set, enhanced with some select sound effects, editing, and musical score. When combined, the sequence provides a necessary reprieve from the driving action of the asteroid chase, and a rare opportunity for Han and the Princess to share a romantic moment in the Falcon‘s hold.

We’ve scoured three decade’s worth of interviews and behind-the-scenes discussions to put together a handful of passages about the space slug sequence, which George Lucas once confessed “worked better on the page than how it finally turned out.” It’s likely many fans would respectfully disagree.

George Lucas, Story and Executive Producer
“This scene in the snake’s mouth worked better on the page than how it finally turned out. It’s a very hard concept to pull off. I think it works, but I always expected it would get a laugh when the ship flies out of the creature’s mouth. As it turns out, most people are astonished, and slightly confused, I think. We never really got the reaction we were looking for at the end of this scene. It was based on a mythological motif…”
— The Empire Strikes Back DVD commentary (2004)

Mary Henderson, author of Star Wars: The Magic of Myth
“When Han and Leia leave Hoth, they are chased by Imperial Star Destroyers. Han escapes by piloting the Falcon into an asteroid field and then into a cave on one of these giant rocks. Unknowiningly, he has set the ship down in the stomach of a giant space slug. Once again, Lucas has woven into the story the imagery of consumption and of the journey into the belly of the beast… Han, Leia, Chewie, and See-Threepio have been swallowed whole, just as Jonah was swallowed by the whale.”
— Star Wars: The Magic of Myth (1997)

John Knoll, author of Creating the Worlds of Star Wars: 365 Days
“Undoubtedly the least expensive set built for The Empire Strikes Back, the space slug interior was created by laying black Visqueen plastic on the floor of the Echo Base hangar, draping black curtains around the Millennium Falcon, and clouding the space with a fog of dry ice.”
— Creating the Worlds of Star Wars: 365 Days (2005)

Laurent Bouzereau, author of Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays
“The scene with ‘large leathery creatures with yellow eyes’ attacking the Falcon inside the cave on the asteroid first appeared in the second draft [of the script]. In the fifth draft the yellow eyes became ‘something like a soft suction cup’ that attaches itself to the windscreen of the Falcon; Leia, not Han as in the movie, says that they look like some kind of ‘mynock,’ and Threepio explains that they usually travel in groups of five.”
— Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays (1997)

Irvin Kershner, Director
“The mynocks were just pieces of plastic on fishing poles. You’ll notice that I cut away from them very quickly because they didn’t look great.”
— Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays (1997)

Michael Matessino, author
“In the momentary safety of the cave, the Falcon is suddenly attacked by bat-like creatures, prompting Han and the others to investigate. Emerging into the foggy environnment, [composer John] Williams uses strings, celeste, harp, and synthesizer to generate the appropriate mystery.”
— The Empire Strikes Back: Special Edition Soundtrack liner notes (1997)

Lukas Kendall, author
“There are also a few atmospheric moments in Empire that benefit enormously from silence… Williams scored the entire ‘this is not a cave’ sequence in the asteroid field, not just the second half, but the initial moments have a wonderful creepiness and atmosphere with just the subtle effects of the ship, a brilliant use of sound.”
— Film Score Monthly (Jan Feb 1997)

The Blade Newspaper
“The task of [Foley Editors Scott] Hecker and his stepfather, Bob Rutledge: to create the sounds of [Han] and the others walking about on the monster’s tongue… ‘We wanted to create the sound, the feeling of slime,’ according to Hecker, a native of Akron. ‘We used about 25 pounds of pure beef fat in giant slabs and dozens of raw eggs…I was slipping and sliding all over the place. After eight hours the place smelled horrible, and it was a real mess. But it was a lot of fun, too.’ For [Han’s] footsteps on the monster’s tongue, Hecker wore hard-heeled boots. For Chewbacca’s footsteps, a softer sound was required. Hecker then wore knee-high moccasins.”
— The Blade (newspaper), Toledo, Ohio (Aug 9, 1981)

Irvin Kershner
“Some of the best stuff was simply grabbing a hand-held camera and shouting, ‘Left, right’ and the actors throw themselves to the left and throw themselves to the right and the camera moves in the opposite direction. That’s what we did in the scene where the Millennium Falcon is in the bowels of the giant worm.”
— Lucasfilm Fan Club Magazine #11 (Spring 1990)

Cinefex
“More than fifty takes of the slug [puppet] were done over a period of a week, probably giving it record status for a throw-away scene. Phil Tippett covered the slug armature with an exterior of his own design, and Jon Berg puppeteered the first version for a number of takes.”
— Cinefex #3 (Dec 1980)

Doug Beswick, Stop Motion Technician
“It worked like a hand puppet — a return spring mechanism would close the jaws. You could stick your hand through the neck and grab it like a handgun or pistol grip. It was pretty heavy.”
— Cinefex #3 (Dec 1980)

Lorne Peterson, Chief Model Maker
“As the Falcon desperately tries to race out of the tunnel, the slug’s jaws begin to snap shut, bringing its enormous incisors into view. Its hinged jaws — which I created — were about four-and-a-half feet across. I sculpted the first five teeth in clay, which we then used to create molds in order to produce multiples. We cast them from a plastic urethane with a translucent ivory quality to it, which didn’t require additional painting. As it turns out, these five-inch-tall teeth made great gifts for the celebrities or industry guests who would visit us in the Model Shop. We would cast a tooth for them and write “Star Wars” on the bottom, giving the visitor what was certain to be an odd conversation piece.”
— Sculpting a Galaxy (2006)

Ken Ralston, Effects Cameraman
“On Empire, I shot a lot of gag footage… I built my own space slug out of an old sock and made a terrible stupid-looking puppet. So there’s this shot looking down, it’s in the movie, where you’re looking at the surface of the asteroid and there’s a couple of TIE ships above it…What’s not in there is the very last moment when you get to the last crater, this gigantic stupid sock puppet comes out and attacks one of the ships…we were on the night shift so we spent nine months six nights a week on The Empire Strikes Back.”
— Star Wars: The Definitive Collection laserdisc commentary (1993)