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Buttercup Valley, Arizona 1982 - Pics! it did happen!

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http://www.therpf.com/f45/prop-store-first-look-location-buttercup-valley-1982-a-124726

ON LOCATION: BUTTERCUP VALLEY, 1982

Take a journey with us thirty years into the past. Before the world wide web, before internet forums and blogs. Hell, before Usenet groups and Compuserve. This was when movie spies were more like real spies. Belly-crawling with real cameras loaded with real film. Sharing physical assets. Speaking on the phone. Making meet ups face-to-face

A more romantic, if now largely forgotten, time.

 

It was the Spring of 1982. In the Southern California desert region known as Buttercup Valley, cameras were rolling on a film called BLUE HARVEST: HORROR BEYOND IMAGINATION. A SoCal science-fiction nut named Mike Davis had heard rumors about the production just having gotten under way. He and his pals decided to pack up some camping supplies and go check it out.


via: swcutscenes

sweeeeeet

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I wish they had blown the lifesized barge up instead of the model.

It would have made a much more realistic bang.

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I can just imagine George seeing those photos and then remarking on how all that can be done on computers now.

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DuracellEnergizer said:


I can just imagine George seeing those photos and then remarking on how all that can be done on computers now.


Shhhhh, don't say that loud, he might hear you...

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I envy the fans who were old enough to actually get out there and see this in person!

The shot of the back side is interesting. Did they build an interior barge set on location? There are a couple shots in the movie that look like real sunlight is coming through the shutters where Jabba and his guests are partying.

And what the heck are the speeder bikes are doing there?

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Where were you in '77?

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The next stop was the forest location, maybe they just packed up everything that was making the trip from London to California. Those kind of movies were like a traveling circus.

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SilverWook said:

And what the heck are the speeder bikes are doing there?

This is the answer posted further down in the thread:

micdavis said:

It took me 25 years to find out, but the speeder bikes were there simply because they were on the same trucks with the skiffs, from the manufacturers. So they stored them under the platform until they moved on to Crescent City, CA for the Endor scenes.

Is this the same guy who provided Jambe Davdar with the Super 8 footage in Returning to Jedi?

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 (Edited)

Those pics are great! Thanks for posting that link. 11-year-old me would have just died to have been there watching and taking photos.

I understand that the cast members would wander over to the chain-link fence from time to time and sign autographs.

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I've had these photos in my possession for a number of years now and had to promise that I wouldn't distribute them. Nice to see them in the article.

Actually, didn't I use the speedbike photo in Returning to Jedi? Whoops.

Creator of Star Wars Begins, Building Empire and Returning to Jedi
Follow me on twitter @jamieSWB. Please support me at - http://www.patreon.com/jamiebenning/

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I recall a letter in Starlog(?) mentioning that. The author claimed he almost got Harrison Ford to come over to the fence and sign, when some overeager fangirls loudly declared they wanted to kiss him. Ford did an about face and walked away.

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 (Edited)

This is a bit of a tangeant, but I think it would have been cool if Blue Harvest had been an actual film.

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Can you imagine if someone tried to piece together the plots from the prequels based on pictures like this?

"He's walking in front of a blue screen... He takes his lightsaber out and swings it around, then continues walking..."

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doubleofive said:

Can you imagine if someone tried to piece together the plots from the prequels based on pictures like this?

"He's walking in front of a blue screen... He takes his lightsaber out and swings it around, then continues walking..."

Having been a regular TFN and VirtualEdition reader during the Prequels, I can confirm that it was much like that. Thankfully some info did leak, over time, and so you could start to figure things out.

If any of you are unfamiliar with the Virtual Edition, I strongly recommend you check out http://virtualedition.net/ . They're slowly working on writing and illustrating their own Sequel Trilogy, but the really fascinating stuff is their "Virtual Editions" of the prequels. They were updated over time, so you'll probably find them a little more accurate than you'd expect as dialogue became available through trailers, but it's pretty fascinating to see what spy reports and photos plus photoshop could give you, before each prequel was released. Here's their version of TPM.

By the way, the title of this thread is a little silly. I never thought they didn't film the Barge scenes, you know?

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timdiggerm said:

By the way, the title of this thread is a little silly. I never thought they didn't film the Barge scenes, you know?

I thought it was going to be about the grappling hook.

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Great stuff.  Love seeing the realness of all that.  Funny how different the world was back then.  No super security, aliases, decoy film titles, legal departments to handle leaked photos, etc - just the crew and the actors on the set going about the business of making a movie.  I don't even like the film and yet I saved every picture.  Those were good times.  Innocent times, before the machine started.

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Anchorhead said:

Great stuff.  Love seeing the realness of all that.  Funny how different the world was back then.  No super security, aliases, decoy film titles...

Wasn't Blue Harvest the decoy title for Star Wars?

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timdiggerm said:



doubleofive said:

Can you imagine if someone tried to piece together the plots from the prequels based on pictures like this?

"He's walking in front of a blue screen... He takes his lightsaber out and swings it around, then continues walking..."


Having been a regular TFN and VirtualEdition reader during the Prequels, I can confirm that it was much like that. Thankfully some info did leak, over time, and so you could start to figure things out.
ME TOO!

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TV's Frink wrote: Wasn't Blue Harvest the decoy title for Star Wars?

RotJ.  "Blue Harvest - Horror Beyond Imagination

A promotional patch to throw off onlookers.

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none said:

A promotional patch to throw off onlookers.

Why did my mind turn "onlookers" into "hookers?"

Don't answer that.

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It would have been funnier if it was Blue Velvet considering how Lynch turned the gig down.

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DuracellEnergizer said:

This is a bit of a tangeant, but I think it would have been cool if Blue Harvest had been an actual film.

Well, this qualifies as "Horror beyond imagination!" in my book.

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I also kind of expected this thread to be about The Princess Bride.