TIE fighter's original color - Not what you think.....

I thought on a very early TIE sketch there's a note that the ship should be BLACK. This would not have worked for obvious reasons. :lol

Might explain those black TIE bodies in that shop photo tho...

k
 
That color feels really close. My money's on your hunch there, Gene. Also if you need an extra set of hands while digging through the garbage, I'm in. One mans trash is anthers treasure. Keep it coming.
 
Gawd, how purely EVIL would an all-black TIE look? Pretty derned evil, son...if you could see it at all...

I did wonder about those hulls, but then we know a lot of stuff got a black base coat.
 
Yeah, it'd be cool as hell. Do the slats in gloss, the rest in matte, with a few dark greys maybe. If we have a prototype to go from I'd be in! More so for the maroon one though.

BTW, on the 'lighting equipment' paint idea - the panels at the 8 and 10 o'clock positions are a lighter shade of a very similar colour, so that might argue against it. Looks to me like a "proper" paint scheme.

Gene, thanks for this amazing bit of research!
 
Gawd, how purely EVIL would an all-black TIE look? Pretty derned evil, son...if you could see it at all....

Well - nope. Quite the contrary.

The Imperial sentry ships (= TIEs) were planned for the prison complex shots (where the princess had been kept at that stage of a still rather rough story draft; no Death Star at that point yet). And since the prison floats in grayish clouds (sounds familiar? Indeed - that is Cloud City, the same design concept revisited for TESB), a gray fighter would be pretty stealthy, huh?

Hence the remark in the concept drawings it should be black. Or maroon...

When they altered the script and dropped the idea of the city / prison in the clouds and increased the screen time of the space battle station, there was the need to change the small ships' colors obviously.

Cheers,
Falk


Ralph_McQuarrie_art_of_captive_Falcon_on_Imperial_capital_planet_of_Alderaan.jpg
 
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What has been seen cannot be unseen.

Save us with more photos Gene.

Yeah, I gotta agree with you. I find that image ....... disturbing.

OK, a few more assorted TIE clips -

I found a clip that was scribed "TIE LED TEST" (or something similar) and just showed various exposures of the back end of the TIE (just the engines). There had been some debate as to what type of light was used for the TIE engines - an incandescent bulb or an LED. Well, it looks like it was a set of LEDs:
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LEDs will work, they just didn't put out a lot of light. That means you have to increase the exposure time and though you can get them to work, it will take more time. What's interesting to me is the fact that the bluescreen is switched on. For a light pass, they were just generally burned in and (usually) just shot against black. It might be a pass that will help the matte as well as a light pass. But the pylon should be on in that case. Weird.

I don't really know what they were testing in this one. Just seems to be an exposure test:
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Quick VFX 101 lesson. You don't have to fill the entire frame with a bluescreen to shoot a model. So long as the TIE ship stays within that little blue box during the course of the camera move, the rest of the frame can be garbage matted out once the matte around the edge has been pulled. And if any of you remember getting the VHS of Star Wars or Empire when it first came out in the 80's, you'll likely remember the boxes around the ships that changed shape as the model moved. These were the garbage mattes. The enhanced contrast of video made the slight exposure difference more visible. Someone will likely be chastised for allowing the shadow of the TIE to fall on the bluescreen. That's a no-no.

This frame was from a front projection test. It was shot on 6/15/76. The screen is 7'4" wide. The camera box is 11' from the screen. The model is 2' from the screen. (All according to the scribing on the film):
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Though they had considered using front projection for the ship shots very early on (ala "Silent Running"), the crazy camera moves they would be doing pushed them in the direction of bluescreen photography. I'm just not sure the exact date they made that decision (I suspect it was before this test was shot.)

One thing that ILM failed at was the fact that they didn't have process plates ready for the stage photography of the actors in the cockpits. (And thus, had to shoot them against bluescreen). This could be a test for that process. based on the date, it's towards the middle-end of the first unit stage photography.

Enjoy.

Gene

PS - The green halo'ing around the really bright areas is an artifact of the scanner that I'm using and it can't entirely be gotten rid of. Least, not that I've been able to ascertain.
 
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