hey everybody adam savage here at prop store and i hope you marked your calendars because it is
wookie appreciation week here at tested hello brandon it's good to see you good to see you
um brandon you guys have an auction coming up june 29th 30th and july 1st coming up quickly it has
some amazing pieces this is maybe i i i exclaimed out loud more times looking at the catalog for
this auction than i have in a long time and one of the pieces i made the most noise over was this
which i think any careful viewer would recognize may i tilt it up yes um this is an original
is it original it is yeah so this is go ahead well i was gonna say we don't know exactly which film
but it's definitely original trilogy genuine from stuart freeborn's archive chewbacca skin
dude so this is what's under the hair this is what chewbacca's face looks like if he decided to shave
that was a cut scene i think the wookie shavings
um when tom spina made my chewbacca mask lucasfilm gave him access to one of these under castings
and so my chewbacca mask has built using this as a framework uh but it is amazing to see one of the
originals up close is this is foam latex yeah it's really thin you know so that it can facilitate the
movements and you can see quite quite worn on the edges and such where it is so thin because it's
decades old i mean this is the thing foam latex is a volatile material in and of itself but with
any exposure to uv it begins to turn to dust after just a few weeks yeah yeah and i guess storage is
always a factor who knows exactly how this was stored but just the fact that it still exists
is pretty neat it is incredible i mean the fact that something so lightweight and so ephemeral
has lasted this long um you pointed this out to me i see a little bit of uh what hair netting
for uh making fake beards on the underside here i think probably to keep it from splitting when
the mouth opens yeah that makes sense i had never noticed that before or read about that i didn't
realize that they backed the foam latex for these masks but i guess they did they definitely i think
some of my silicon masks they have around the eyes and around the edges of the mouth too just because
it's the heavy wear spot yeah i can't believe how light this is i mean it's on a foam casting
of peter mayhew's head which is also cool which is like an added incredible bonus yeah it's kind
of hidden there under the skin but very cool as well but yeah this whole thing maybe weighs like
i don't know five or six ounces super lightweight and i think these biscuit foam uh mayhew face
casts are what they used as the under skull of the mask so they would have carved this up and turned
it into an under skull right yeah well in order for the mechanism to work it had to fit his face
exactly so yeah this would be both the interior and the exterior that is like when i think
iconic pieces of movie history i this is so much at the top of that list like stuart freeborn is uh
the the contributions he made to makeup effects and specifically chewbacca's mechanism there's no
animatronics in chewbacca there's one cable from the lower jaw making that lip curl and
peter mayhew brought everything else and it's a perfect marriage you never question it on screen
especially as a kid you're watching that character never question it so there's a great story from
the set where george apparently early on didn't realize how much peter mayhew was bringing to
the role and they had a scene in which chewie's in the background and george was like we don't need
to bring peter and we could just put the suit on some anybody and they put the suit on anybody and
that person's in the background and george is like oh my god we need to go get peter that's when he
realized how much physical performance peter was bringing to the role i remember the first time
i saw peter mayhew at a convention you went wow he looks like chewbacca he's not wearing a suit
but he looks like chewbacca well it's that thing of like you fall in love with chewbacca he's the
greatest non-human character in film and then if you're lucky enough to if you were lucky enough to
meet peter as you and i both were you realize that everything you love about chewbacca is exemplified
in this giant lovely gentle human yeah great great guy um brandon thank you for letting me
see this piece up close it is totally amazing yeah but brandon that's not the only star wars
thing you have oh my god uh talk to me about these lightsabers well these are really fun obviously
you can never have enough lightsabers right when you talk about props there's always a lightsaber
in the conversation these are from episode three revenge of the sith and what's cool about them is
they were constantly evolving the lightsabers this is the first time they got the carbon fiber blades
these are blades that they're able to smack into each other and they don't shatter and they're
they're also they look like they're super light incredibly lightweight here you want to uh oh
you want to check one out there so that's the anakin oh my god the graflex style lightsaber
which ultimately will tie in with the next movie right yeah and the the balance point
is actually right it's it's almost right here which is you want it to be almost inside the
saber handle interesting right for the because if the blade is weightless wow that is really cool
i think it was at this point all about going fast like you watched some of those dvds special
features you see them talking about just how they wanted to make the duals faster and faster and i
guess this here sort of allows you to spin it much better that is real i love that they add in these
these details to help performance that don't matter aesthetically because you won't notice
them in the middle of the battle yeah definitely look one thing i thought was interesting this
kind of has a gold tone to it almost doesn't it that platinum whereas down here it's more
silver so i don't know if that's just the batch of the plating but interesting it's definitely
this is definitely a different piece so it doesn't look like they were plated at the same time yeah
you know vacuum metallizing is one of those things that like even the people that i have do it it's
color matching across batches is weirdly difficult it's just a hard thing to do yeah and the same
way that anodizing it is it's hard to dial into a perfect color it is gorgeous piece this is also i
can this one i love how this one almost looks like a toy it does now that you say it yeah it's very
simple right that's that's the obi-wan and again i think they were just trying to simplify the handle
so that it would be very easy for the actors to work with um and i of these beautiful helmets i'm
really curious about the the lando because i love that you can see it's just vacu formed styrene
here stick it out there yeah it's very simple ultimately very simple construction right with
leather wrapping on it yeah and it's wow here take a look oh look at how pretty oh it's abs all right
it's got that texture so i think the helmet's abs but the leather work is beautiful linda was never
disguised that well was he like if you really didn't want to be seen lando you could have picked
something with a face a full face it's great to see it up close and personal i guess this is latex
uh it's a good question yeah i think the teeth are cast resin but maybe that that main mouthpiece is
latex and then they've covered the top with real strips of leather and you know the famous story of
the design of this helmet you know that no there's a great story there's actually a picture that goes
along with it which is nilo who designed costumes for jedi you and i talked about in the past he was
on a softball team lucasfilm softball team he saw one of the other ilm guys with a softball glove
on his head and so these are basically born out of the fingers of a brown leather softball glove
sitting on the top of somebody's head nilo is not only a great designer he's a great storyteller
about design origins yes yeah good good story behind that one for sure uh and i i just want to
talk about this last this this maquette here the mustafar so is i'm guessing this is a my cat from
mustafar yes yes so that's ilm episode three which were you involved with that i was not i worked on
episodes one and two uh and i did do a couple of their model maquettes for episode two mostly the
um the arena uh mark siegel and i built an arena out of foam core okay so the first time george got
to see it in the full round and i think it was about this big oh that's cool the real set was
i think like seven feet across oh really it was absolutely gorgeous yeah seven feet across and
about five feet high yeah um so this is they would be using this to figure out blocking do you think
i don't know it's a good question i mean i guess because ilm wound up doing most of the work on the
lava for moose far right it's all green screen and then miniature stuff for all the lava effects
which are super effective they really do they really hold up it really worked and there were
a few extra pieces that are included with this maquette as well so i don't know if it's just
blocking out the look of the rocks texture maybe i mean what what would you think i would think
it's a mixture like you you'd want to do it at the beginning just so that the art director and
the director are really on the same page about what part of the landscape they're talking about
and then later on for blocking it becomes really useful actually whenever my wife and i are talking
about any kind of modification in the house i just built a phone call model of the room so
discuss it from the same vantage point that doesn't happen at our house but i believe that it
does it yours so very cool brandon it's incredible what you've gathered together for this auction uh
it's just beautiful stuff yeah well we're excited it's um you know star wars is always
one of our focuses we love star wars you love star wars everyone loves star wars so we have
some good star wars content in the auction this time uh and it is june 29th 30th and july 1st
yes three days of auction yeah excellent we'll see you there adam savage out see you guys next time