Of course Dykstra's process for how the effects were to be done seems to have been optimized for speed and simplicity. It worked beautifully of course on the original Star Wars trilogy and Battlestar Galactica but it is somewhat less elegant and produced a rougher result than the setup Douglas Trumbull developed which was used primarily on Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Star Trek: The Motion Picture and Blade Runner. Of course Dykstra's setup was obviously better suited to rapid motion and was good for producing shots in volume. But I always thought Trumbull had the edge in producing images of genuine beauty and elegance. On the original Star Wars, and to a lesser extent its sequels, the process could not really handle anything but completely matte surfaces - while Trumbull seemed to make all the early headway with shooting glossy and even transparent objects and getting clean composites with them. Everyone cites Star Wars as *the* effects breakthrough of the late 1970's but I personally always thought the effects in Close Encounters of the Third Kind were even more jaw dropping.
Its all very interesting. I'd love to see a standalone documentary about optical/photochemical visual effects.