See Rare Polaroids From the Set of ‘Star Wars’

Polaroid was once one of the most trusted brand names on any film set — in the years before affordable digital cameras Polaroid instant film was a primary tool for prop people, the wardrobe department, and most importantly the script supervisor. That’s often the hardest-working person on set, and the one who is the person most responsible for maintaining continuity from scene to scene, and who creates a rough guide to get editors started on their work. Most of these Polaroids were trashed after a film’s completion, or kept and never made public. But now we have scans of some rare Star Wars polaroids, taken by the film’s script supervisor Ann Skinner.

These images come from the same UK museum exhibition that also provided Ann Skinner’s shoot draft of the script, from which came the early version of the opening crawl. [via LaughingSquid] Images are all credit BFI National Archive/© & TM Lucasfilm Ltd.

We’re seeing more and more candid footage and images from the creation of Star Wars, and it’s fun to see the very recognizable cast and characters in unguarded state. That shot of David Prowse in Vader’s outfit sans helmet is just terrific.

(A quick note here in support of script supervisors who work on films which end up saddled with continuity errors: most often those errors are not due to lax work on the part of the script person. They creep in when takes are chosen to prioritize performance over strict continuity, or when scenes are cut during editing, or when late-stage rewrites affect continuity. So don’t jump to blame the script super just because you see an error in a film.)