Don Bies, Droid Unit Supervisor for
Attack of the Clones and
Revenge of the Sith, began a career at ILM back in the 1980s overseeing the many R2-D2 character appearances and heading up the Lucasfilm Archives. Now working at Kerner Optical, the model shop that recently made a friendly departure from ILM, Bies comes as a veteran of the very first
Star Wars Visual Dictionary, which covered the classic trilogy. Bies and fellow modeler Nelson Hall were asked to tackle several special requests by the author and publisher, including a cutaway lightsaber, the interior of a stormtrooper helmet, and the cantina band members with instruments.
While Hall focused on the stormtrooper helmet, Bies devised the innards of Luke's
A New Hope lightsaber. "The parts were laser-cut and found objects," explains Bies, "like the crystal for the cutaway lightsaber was just something we found at a gemology store. The lightsaber itself is made up of a Graflex flash handle, and the little pins inside are Molex pin connectors for electronic devices. For the battery part, I wanted something textured rather than painted, so that's actually laser-cut sandpaper, which has a nice black oxide texture to it. And the copper is just copper tape burnished onto a laser-cut piece."
The stormtrooper helmet interior, constructed by Hall, included tubing, piping, wiring, and laser-cut parts. "Nelson did the stormtrooper helmet which is actually based on an existing licensing product that had some of those components, which we just embellished further," explains Bies. "We looked inside and got the general shapes of those and then Nelson did most of the work while I did some laser cutting, like the eye mechanism."
One costume and props set that Bies and Nelson worked on together was the Cantina Band members. "I made the three woodwind instruments [Fanfar, Kloo Horn, and Fizz], and Nelson made the Ommni Box and Bandfill." While Bies says he used laser-cut parts for the long, straight woodwinds, the Bandfill, at least, was made primarily of found objects. "A couple garden hose sprayers and a table lamp reflector with a dome on the inside," admits Bies.
The mask used for the photo spread is an original prop from the collection of the sculptor Doug Beswick, who sculpted the Bith aliens for
A New Hope, while the costume was cobbled together by Bies' wife Anna. "The pants were just gray polyester pants that we found at a Goodwill store," says Don, "and the jacket was a rented chauffeur's jacket with the collar turned up, which we believe was used for the original costume. The boots were actually [author] David West Reynold's personal boots." Since there was only one mask and costume, it was decided five different people should be photographed in it for a composite image depicting five separate personalities. Donning the cantina duds are in fact Don Bies, Nelson Hall, David West Reynolds, and fellow model makers Mark Buck and Fon Davis.
