The Five Foot Falcon’s Strange Cockpit
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The backstory, and the forgotten first Falcon
The “five foot” special effects miniature of the Millennium Falcon, constructed in 1976-77 for the original Star Wars movie, had a somewhat surprising genesis. In fact, the original Falcon wasn't actually round at all. It looked like this!
The “Pirate Ship,” as it was then known, started out with Colin Cantwell's 1975 sketches and prototype model. The design then evolved in 1976 to the enormous six-foot effects model shown here. Both were long linear ships with an improbably huge cluster of engines at one end and a conical (technically a conical frustum!) cockpit at the other. But, just before the full-sized sets were to be built in England, George Lucas discovered the British TV show Space: 1999. Which featured the Eagle Transporter: a long linear ship with a bunch of engines at one end and a cockpit at the other. So a last-minute scramble to come up with a new design ensued, art director Joe Johnston was assigned the task, and thus was the saucer-shaped Falcon born.
Another view of the original Falcon. Notice the model down on the table to the left there? That's a model of an Eagle Transporter from Space: 1999!
Two pieces of the previous Falcon effects model were recycled into the final spacecraft design – the radar dish and the cockpit cone. Which partly explains why the interior details of the model cockpit don't remotely match the full-sized cockpit set, designed by Harry Lange and built in 1976. The rest of the earlier model was then equipped with a "hammerhead" cockpit and repurposed as the Rebel Blockade Runner (Princess Leia's ship) for the iconic opening sequence.
The original linear "Pirate Ship" being photographed by a casual smokin' Richard Edlund. Note the round radar dish, which was removed and transferred to the saucer-shaped Falcon model.
For more photos of the original Pirate Ship, take a look at my complete page on the subject!
The five footer's cockpit
The five foot Falcon (often called the four foot model by ILMers in reference to the saucer diameter rather than the overall length) cockpit interior differs from the full-size movie set in quite a few ways.
The original miniature has two seats and not four, it has two separate dashboard consoles rather than one crucifix-shaped one, it has boxy CRT-like monitors atop the dashboards, it lacks the narrow padded doorframe, it has two white curved pipes on the backwall, and the arrangement of lights and greeblies on the sides and back is completely different from the set.
It seems to have been based very loosely on Joe Johnston's early production sketches of a possible cockpit interior, shown here. Which in turn was inspired by the round look of World War II era B-29 American bomber cockpits. (not the postwar B-52, as is sometimes erroneously claimed, since the latter doesn't have the characteristic radial front window)
Screen appearances
Brief glimpses of the cockpit are visible in ANH effects sequences, but for the most part you don't get a really good look at the interior. The Falcon doesn't take up much of the screen, and is always moving, resulting in considerable motion blur.The only really noticeable continuity error involves the scene of the Millennium Falcon entering the Death Star docking bay. The model's double CRT-type boxes are clearly visible when the ship enters the Death Star. Then, when the scene cuts to the full-sized set, you can see the single central dash console, since the exterior set's interior detailing replicated the separate full-sized cockpit. Of course, this is a kind of “blink and you'll miss it” continuity error that only true nerds, or people looking out for, would ever spot.
As for the Empire Strikes Back, while the five foot model underwent a few changes between the first two movies, its original cockpit remained intact. The screengrab here is an establishing shot inside the belly of the space slug. Here a strong-willed princess sits and battles with her conflicting thoughts about her budding romance with a dashing yet volatile space pirate. Note how the five foot miniature cockpit is clearly visible, despite not looking anything at all like the full-sized set. The shot here is also one of the few times you see a figure inside the cockpit – possibly a small figurine, as it doesn't look like a matted-in add-on.
It seems odd that the ILM model team never bothered to replace the model interior with a reproduction of the full-sized set. Especially since the miniature cockpit was clearly visible in three different scenes in Empire. But then again, I'm sure 99.9% of movie viewers never noticed the difference, so who cares?
Geeks care!
Indeed. A handful of folks are oddly interested in what the original shooting miniature Falcon had for a cockpit. But I haven't found much information about it; hence this page.
Lighting
This is a very useful photograph, though I'm not sure where it originated. It clearly shows the five foot cockpit under construction, revealing both the internal structure of its design and the lighting that was used.There doesn't appear to be any overall overhead or general purpose lighting. Instead, the lights were intended to simulate actual source lights – dashboards, consoles, screens, etc.
It looks like an incandescent light, perhaps a small halogen bulb, may have been used to backlight the backwall area. And some grain of wheat incandescents were used to illuminate the side control panels via fibre optics. It's clear that the centre console, with its levers and so on, was also lit.
One amusing thing about the model as it exists today is that one of the CRT monitor housing-type thingies on the dashboard has broken off and been lost, thanks to the ravages of time. This has exposed three 5mm LEDs which were used to illuminate the model interior, providing us with useful information about how the lighting worked. A red LED was positioned at the base, giving that crimson glow around the bottom of the "screen". Amber and green LEDs were positioned slightly higher, and were used to produce the display output. Note that LEDs in the 1970s, especially non red LEDs, were considerably dimmer than LEDs of today.
The LS Morgan
Falcon aficionado and 3D modelmaker extraordinaire Joshua Maruska was the first person I know of to point out that two key elements in the five foot cockpit came from a large model car kit. Specifically, the seats and possibly the floor pan of an LS Models 1/16 scale Morgan Plus 8 were used.
The seats and floor piece can be seen here in this photo of an unbuilt kit. And if you'd like to see more of this large and impressive car kit, here's a YouTube review of it. Joshua has also constructed some absolutely amazing 3D models of those parts, and he's published renderings of them on his website.
The pieces
A number of key parts make up the interior, but it's not clear which were kitbashed and which were scratchbuilt. This is the section I hope to fill in with time – so please contribute if you have some answers!
The seats
As above: identified by Joshua Maruska as being the twin seats from an LS Models “Auto Salon Series No. 1” 1/16 scale Morgan Plus 8 Roadstar model kit.
The console base
Identified by Joshua Maruska as being the front floor pan from an LS Models “Auto Salon Series No. 1” 1/16 scale Morgan Plus 8 Roadstar model kit. However, it doesn't quite match up, so perhaps it was cut down in the front centre and sides, and additional components or styrene sheet panels added. Closeup views do suggest that extra styrene pieces, now cracked, were installed in places. It also appears to be resting on a flat piece with a notch in the front.
The CRTs
Two pale grey boxes, presumably intended to resemble CRT displays, sit atop each side of the console. The photo below is not in focus, but the only one I've found that shows the pilot side of the surviving box. Originally both sides of the dashboard were so equipped, but the Chewbacca-side one has been lost, revealing the LEDs. Origin unknown.
White pipes
Two white plastic pipes, slightly curved, sit on either side of the backwall. Unknown if they're just stock styrene tubes or something kitbashed, such as a vehicle exhaust pipe.
White discs
Two small white plastic discs, with T-shaped detailing, appear to either side of the door opening. RPF users "eagle1" and "Rats" have suggested that they could be made from Bandai 1/15 StuG (Sturmgeschütz) IV tank parts. Specifically, the back section are the small freewheels at the top of the tank tread area, and the T-shaped pieces were originally cross-shaped pieces, with one arm sliced off.
Top backwall
A wedge shaped flat panel, painted black with exposed areas for light to shine through, is mounted above the door opening. It has squares and circles and a crude looking letter E. In fact, it generally looks hand-drawn and kind of wonky. Shadows in some shots suggest it might be a thin piece of photo-etched brass sheet, over a piece of milky white acrylic plastic. This backwall is angled inwards slightly, versus the full sized set version which is vertical and perpendicular to the floor.
Here's my first stab at a copy of the black part of the backwall, for laser printing or what have you.
At the bottom of black section is a raised wide rectangular piece with beveled edges and a series of holes of varying sizes, coloured at the back, perhaps with yellow gel.
It appears that a piece is now missing below this area. The ESB screengrabs show that there's an inverted trapezoid of white plastic between the two T-shaped circular pieces. This trapezoid was equipped with black circles and so on, representing instruments. (ie: the negative of the section above) The white plastic is still present on the surviving model, albeit yellowed as seen above, but the markings are now missing.
On either side of the backwall are small angled rectangular blocks with grooves, resembling ventilation panels. Origin unknown.
Console
A pale grey central console fits the gap between the seats quite neatly. Expert model maker Jason Eaton believes it was scratchbuilt. It has very fine wires, representing control levers, on a half cylinder component that resembles a railroad switch lever frame. I've only ever seen one decent photo of it, and here's that photo. The lighting photo above suggests that this was lit from below.
Side panels
Wedge-shaped or triangular panels sit to either side of the seat. They look like they were probably scratchbuilt from styrene sheet, with cutouts on the top for fibre optic lighting. On the left side an analogue clock symbol is clearly visible.
Contact
Well. That's my research on this topic to date. If you have any info you'd like to add, please drop me a line! I'd like to see this page be a good resource for anyone interested in the original Millennium Falcon miniature, and of course I always credit anyone who contributes anything.
I've also opened a new thread on the RPF (Replica Prop Forum) on the subject, for similarly obsessed folks to discuss discoveries and theories!
Note that these photos are not credited. And they really should be. But like most of this stuff - fan photos of exhibition models - there were no watermarks or identifying features, so I actually don't know who took them and where they came from. Sorry about that. Please let me know if there's something here you did.
millenniumfalconnotes@gmail.com