Battle of Hoth with Lego Snowspeeder

I made a short little edit of the Battle of Hoth sequence, where I replaced the snowspeeder with my custom Lego model for 24 shots.

You can check it out here: https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxoP1ASLbifKKLhZtgwR_bbxvNxZ-YTwqZ

Originally, I planned to replace the speeder for every single shot throughout the sequence, but it resulted in a lot of hurdles. Basically all cockpit shots would’ve had to be completely recreated. And it also would’ve resulted in some awkward composition where giant Lego guys in giant Lego snowspeeders are interacting with real people on the ground and in the walkers. So I opted to replace the speeders only in “3rd person” shots.

Maybe one day when I have a ton of free time I’ll recreate the entire sequence with Lego walkers and minifigures, but who knows.

I hope you’ll enjoy my little edit!

Nicely done!

That looks really good.

I’m guessing that took a while?

Can I make a suggestion?

Instead of replacing the people in the cockpits… add the missing exterior snowspeeder to the cockpit angles.

I am pretty sure the actual cockpit used to film the scenes was just a sort of torpedo shape. There was not any snowspeeder attached to a gimble.

The ones on the hoth set were mounted on forklifts if I recall correctly but they were not used for the cockpit stuff.

So it would seem the front and the guns are missing from a lot of those shots. If it’s something you fancy taking on? It’s the forward facing over shoulder pilot shots that are the ones.

You did a great job by the way.

Could you also give us an exterior shot of them flying out the base on the matte painting? If ylu feel like it?

Thanks Ronster! Yeah it took quite a while to make this, just this handful of shots took me about 3 months to create. I basically went through frame by frame on each shot twice. Once to mask out the speeders, then another time to match and animate my speeder. In total it’s almost 1500 frames, so 3000 going through twice.

I definitely could try to replace the miniature speeders in the cockpit shots, but again, I kinda felt like it was an awkward composition where the inside of the speeder is real, but from the outside it’s Lego. Maybe I’ll try it on an couple of easier shots to see how it looks and decide from there. That would probably take just as much time as the stuff I’ve done already, and currently I don’t have much free time at all, so it might be a while when I get around to it.

Ronster said:

Could you also give us an exterior shot of them flying out the base on the matte painting? If you feel like it?

I’m not sure which shot you’re referring to there. I think the first shot in my edit is this one- where they fly past the turret? Not sure though.

Ok Ady but that is camera pointing into the snowspeeder. that one shot where luke pulls up and away and i am sure if the model was placed under we would see the Speeder outside the cockpit and there is only sky there in the film…

It’s within cockpit overshoulder of pilot shots looking forward i am talking about.

Not camera looking in to snowspeeder front window looking back out towards the gunner.

Ok got the shot I am most suspicious of 7.01 in video below just after Dak get’s killed.

https://youtu.be/BTP-PXeG9Fg

Usernamegeri don’t worry about doing a whole masked in video but that particular shot Luke ovetshoulder pulling up to me feels like we should see the snowspeeder body. Not a torpeedo cockpit.

If you can even do a rough still image I’d like to see it. No probs same boat not much time sorry.

adywan said:

Ronster said:

Ok Ady but that is camera pointing into the snowspeeder. that one shot where luke pulls up and away and i am sure if the model was placed under we would see the Speeder outside the cockpit and there is only sky there in the film…

It’s within cockpit overshoulder of pilot shots looking forward i am talking about.

Not camera looking in to snowspeeder front window looking back out towards the gunner.

Ok got the shot I am most suspicious of 7.01 in video below just after Dak get’s killed.

https://youtu.be/BTP-PXeG9Fg

Usernamegeri don’t worry about doing a whole masked in video but that particular shot Luke ovetshoulder pulling up to me feels like we should see the snowspeeder body. Not a torpeedo cockpit.

If you can even do a rough still image I’d like to see it. No probs same boat not much time sorry.

Like i said, that snowpeeder prop was used for ALL the cockpit shots, both front and rear facing.

I am not doubting you Ady or your knowledge but like I was saying I thought you would be able to atleast see the guns of the Speeder on that angle and that image of the model actually has no guns on it.

So perhaps this model was used but if the guns are chopped off the model then we definitely will not see them in the film.

So this is not anything other than trying to ascertain when we look forward would we see the guns?

I remember the old games where although you saw the cockpit view in the film like POV the guns would stick out either side on the bottom corners.

Now these guns on the snowspeeder do stick out a long way forward. It’s not the biggest deal in the world but it’s a bit of fun.

And if the games are right that we should see them then I think it would be good to see them in the film… But I tried this previously and I could not work out the angles even with a still image plus I did not have a snowspeeder or skills like yourself or usernamegeri.

So I’ll rephrase my question to “if the guns on the model were not chopped off would we see them in the film”

Honestly been a long time question I have had. And UsernameGeri has all the knowledge about the angles.

It is true, you would absolutely see the cannons and the wings in the front facing cockpit views.

This is the 3D model of the snowspeeder ripped from Battlefront 2, that has photo scanned models from the movies, so it is accurate.

https://i.imgur.com/LoIpkpy.png

The life size versions used on set of course had the cannons removed, but also the wings seem to be a lot more steep as well, so it may simply be the case that they’re just out of view below the edge of the cockpit.

Ah that is interesting UsernameGeri so we are now talking about a discrepency between the life size model and the actual miniature.

Thankyou for the image from the 3D model from battlefront 2 laser scan and it’s good to finally put that question to bed. Because I was sure there was some sort of problem going on.

I think you did a fantastic job on matching the models and your model and dare say some lego knobbles aside you did a better job with the technology today than what was posdible at the time.

If you ever fancy adding in the missing guns to those overshoulder shots then please post them here.

I would love to see your efforts.

Well done and thanks for clearing that one up for me.

Two thumbs up