The force is strong with potatoes.
As Richard Edlund, former head of Star Wars visual effects at ILM (Industrial Light & Magic) puts it, “Being a successful visual effects person oftentimes is someone who knows how to cheat, and also spend the least amount of money.”
Edlund’s philosophy was put to many tests while he oversaw effects work on Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back — one of which involved Ken Ralston, who was working in the camera department at the time.
In the third episode of the overlooked 2022 Disney Plus gem of a series, Light & Magic — from whence came the above Edlund quote — Ralston explains the humorous problem-solving.
“On Empire Strikes Back, my version of ‘see what you can get away with’ were potatoes,” Ralston confesses.
You may remember a sequence in the film in which the Millenium Falcon flies through an asteroid field. In the beginning of the scene, soon after the Falcon’s passengers spot the asteroid field, it becomes clear that Han Solo is going to fly into it in an attempt to get away from the Darth Vader-led Star Destroyer pursuing them.
Princess Leia asks incredulously, “You’re not actually going into an asteroid field?”
To which Solo replies, “They’d be crazy to follow us, wouldn’t they?”
Obviously, for the sequence to work, ILM had to create a lot of asteroid models, which they began making from Styrofoam. Shortly thereafter, Ralston innocently commented that the foam stand-ins looked like potatoes. This observation sparked a eureka moment; Ralston realized that they could be potatoes — and even should be potatoes, to save time and money.
“My assistant Sel Eddy and I bought some asteroid-looking potatoes,” Raslton relates, while trying very hard not to laugh.
“They actually had a pronged pipe for the Styrofoam asteroids we were using,” Ralston says, and then explains that he took one of the asteroid models off its perch, and put one of the potatoes on, then shot the potato against a blue screen. It passed perfectly as an asteroid. So, potatoes it was!
While some of the asteroid models made of Styrofoam remained, others were potatoes. Ralston says the potato-enhanced shots indeed made it into the film. Based on what they show next in the episode, it can be presumed that many of the potatoes are merely background talent but, as Ralston explains, not all of them. He adds that some of the close-up shots are also potatoes. Specifically, he says about the scene where Han Solo and crew are initially gliding in the asteroid field, “They’re flying through, there’s shots looking out the window and stuff, and some of them are potatoes, but you’d never know in a million years.”
Next thing you know, they’ll tell us that the iconic opening shot of Star Wars is really one very, very long potato chip.
I don’t know about you, but personally I will never watch this scene in Empire the same again, because my mind will slightly reword Leia’s question to, “You’re not actually going into a potato field?”
Such realizations, however, make the creation of the special effects easy to further appreciate.
Ralston’s asteroid idea is almost literally food for thought — or is it thought for food? Anyway, he concluded, “Not only is it funny, but it keeps you thinking about what’s the best, fastest, cheapest way to do this.”
