Couldn't find anything in Rinzler's making of other than a few production notes and pictures with a blurb describing what we already knew. No mention of which effects house.
Rinzler's Making of SW p.257 - "The seeker ball was made in the ILM model shop in two hours, and shot against bluescreen. But because all anamorphic shots had been filmed with the 35mm production camera and not the Vistavision, the “Jedi Lesson scene” had to be sent to an outside effects house to be completed."
TServo2049 said:
I have heard the SE might have been a little rushed because stuff kept getting added to the workload...
The original Star Wars in 1977 was being produced in a rushed state... I think it's more a lack of genuine care. We saw the culmination of it in the DVD and BD versions. The end result is simply unprofessional.
The point I was trying to make on the last page is that the poor rotoscoping is what makes me unsure what the hell the procedure actually was. Using the original elements shouldn't produce those poor results, even if the ones doing the work aren't professionals.
As you can see the blade in Ben's hut doesn't even appear as a three dimensional object in the SE, it's just flat where the original animation was perfectly fine. Something that stood out to me even the first time I saw it. Even if the intent might have been to redo those shots with all original flaws intact, they failed miserably.