Hero trooper helmets...Green vs smoke tinted

[GINO]

There has been a lot of debate on whether or not the hero trooper helmets used green lenses or not. My position is that they indeed did however there are some who disagree.
Let's discuss. Present your theory's, screen caps, photoshop images, etc...here.


I believe that any type of lense that was made by AA for the films were smoke tinted.

However...

It wasn't until the items were in possession of the SW art department that the hero X-Wing visors were re-formed in YELLOW, and the trooper bubble lenses re-formed in GREEN.
The lenses on the hero troopers are different than the ones in the TIE helmets. The TIE helmet lenses are very bulbous and bulging out where as the green hero trooper lenses are much less bubbled. I'm guessing the art department formed them in a much more crude way than AA originally did, but did them in green so that it is easier for the actors to see out of them. The SW art department was also responsible for the flat green lenses used in the background (stunt) helmets.

A side note relating to non-smoke tinted lenses in other helmets:

*IMPORTANT
Most people don't realize that just like troopers, there were hero and background TIE helmets and X-Wing helmets.
The hero TIE helmets were the ones that we saw painted up with grey detailing and numbers on their mohawk used for close up cockpit shots.
The hero X-Wing helmets were any of the ones used by actors with speaking parts with close ups in the X-Wing cockpits. They were detailed up like wedge, gold leader, etc... and given yellow lenses so you could see the actor's faces. I think that the TIE helmet being all black lended itself from an astetic standpoint to keeping the original smoke tinted lenses that were originally supplied by AA.

 

[lonepigeon]

Do we know that the art department even had a vacformer?
That seems to be a big assumption to me that the lenses were changed out.
Did they not just see that the smoked helmet visors weren't working and requested new ones from AA?
What do you have to back up the claims that the art department changed these things themselves?

 

[dcarty]

Interesting question. So far I've only ever seen one clip I thought seriously implied that the Hero lenses in ANH were green and that's the cap of the stunt guys from the vintage "Making of" special. If there are other caps I'd definitely like to see them too. I was reading through the new "Making Of Star Wars" book the other day and recall an excerpt from an interview with Mark Hamill talking about wearing the armor and not being able to see anything because the lenses were so dark (frantically trying to find the page now). If the lenses were green I would think that he might have mentioned that "looking at everything was green" rather than the opposite, but that's very subjective. It's possible they were smoked while Ford and Hamill were filming and then, once they were done, they replaced the lenses because of the difficulty they had with their stars to make it easier for the stunt guys to see.

That's my conjecture at least.

Dave C

 

[Stormtrooper]

RE : The yellow tinted X-Wing visors vs. clear

I read an interview a few years ago (don't recall who it was with unfortunately, but someone who was on-set back in '76) and the reason they changed the X-Wing helmets' visors to have a yellow tint, was because the UK was experiencing a *major* heatwave back in 1976 when the scenes were being filmed.
The actors were sweating like crazy, and this was clearly visible through the clear visors, so they (the Art department / costume department) made a last minute switch to yellow tint to make it less obvious that the actors were sweating so heavily!

If the art department made the green trooper bubble lenses, it's unlikely they'd have used a vac-former...more likely they used a heat-gun and large spoon or something along those lines (may help to explain the shallow bubble of the troopers' lenses)

Cheers,
John

 

[defstartrooper]

I agree that the photo jiggery pokery on the other thread lends itself towards the trooper hero lenses being green but not being any kind of expert on photo manipulation i cant say thats proof.
AA says he made grey lenses but given his previous record i cant take that as gospel either.
Given that the TIE helmets were formed at the same time as the trooper hero's it kind of makes sense that all the lenses would have been formed together and unless specified in an order it makes sense they wouldn't change the material.
I'm not convinced really with the need to change them later to aid vision all the shots with the hero helmets arent exactly frantic action shots and are well lit i think vision would be quite adequete with grey lenses.
Like you say the x-wing visors were only changed to show the actors faces not any other reason.
Also im intrigued with this hero/stunt TIE helmet bit it was my understanding all the TIE helmets were formed at the same time from the same moulds the only differences i can think of is the paintjobs for the cockpit shots and i've been led to understand the paint was added to help filming in low light are there any other differences ?
If the lenses on the hero troopers were green they obviously werent meant to appear green as they cant be shown as green without manipulation and as i say i dont see any advantage vision wise etc to change them from grey if indeed they were formed in grey to start with.
I'm still open ended on the subject though and look forward to seeing something definitive.

 

[lonepigeon]

The actors were sweating like crazy, and this was clearly visible through the clear visors, so they (the Art department / costume department) made a last minute switch to yellow tint to make it less obvious that the actors were sweating so heavily!

Good point here. I remember the same interview. They were tinted yellow to obscure the streaks of makeup running down the actor's faces.
So the on set art guys probably tinted the visors, but they were originally made from clear plastic and most likely by AA.

The Hamill quote about the helmets is on page 195 (photo caption sidebar).
He does describe the inside of the helmet as looking "sickly green". Seems like that could mean the lenses were green tinting everything inside, but the smoked brownish color could do this too depending on the tint and what "sickly" means.

 

[Star Wars Helmets]

Do we know that the art department even had a vacformer?
That seems to be a big assumption to me that the lenses were changed out.
Did they not just see that the smoked helmet visors weren't working and requested new ones from AA?
What do you have to back up the claims that the art department changed these things themselves?

This is my thinking too.

In fact do we KNOW whether "The art department" (which in reality was no more than a few people) made the yellow lenses for the Xwings? - or whether they were done by AA (who had a vac former well before there was one at Elstree, hence his involvement).???

As far as the Stormtrooper Hero's are concerned, I'm leading towards Grey over Green for the following reasons.

I have reason to believe Mark H's "everything looked green" commets can be safely ignored. I place some credence in AA's comments but can understand why others dont (the number of HDPE's a case in point).

Which brings us onto physical evidence. The colour-coded/changed pics I saw on the RPF didnt do anything except confuse me so apart from that one behind the scenes shot - thats the only thing that points to green as all others I've seen seem to look grey.

So at the moment the only reason I think they're grey are;
1) on screen imo they tend to look black/grey, not green
2) The same face moulds (TIEs) used grey and I see some sense in them keeping the same. In addion Ive had pics of the "prototype" stormtroopers (done after ANH by AA) and they too had the grey double bubble lenses.

If I've missed something LMK as I'm open to suggestions here.

BTW As far as the TIE's, IMO the term "Hero and Stunt" is a little misleading. Essentially 12 TIE helmet's were delivered to the set and a small number (4?) had additional detailing painted. I point this out as in the traditional sense, Hero and Stunt Props (such as Stormtrooper Helmets or Lightsabers) are physically quite dissimilar, whereas in the case of the TIE's its just painted detailing

Cheers

Jez

 

[Raffles]

Okay I managed to pull up an old pic I found.
Here are all the TIE helmets fully finished -

Now there are no flat or green lenses on any of the helmets here and as there is no point in the movie where Tie pilots have to react to anyone there is really no reason to refit the lenses.

I haven't seen any pics of a Tie pilot with flat lenses anywhere, ever. The shots with all the pilots running that was canned from ANH and re-used in ROTJ don't show any and that is pretty much all the helmets that were'nt marked up for closeups with silver.

It may have been possible that the helmets were altered by the art dept after this pic was taken, however the only alterations that we know for sure happened were the silver details and I do remember hearing that these and the Vader gunmetal details were done on set to combat lighting issues, so no time to do new lenses.

Also all the TIE helmets that have surfaced in auctions, exhibits, sales etc. have had grey bubbles.

note that there are 14 helmets not 13 as many people believe-
12 for the production
1 for John Mollo
and 1 proof for Andrew Ainsworth (this is the one with the chestbox, you can tell it wasn't used as it has extra greeblies not used on the production helmets)

It'd be great to track all these down but that is a job for another thread...

Ps sorry about the big pic but the devil is in the detail!:angry :lol

 

[GINO]

"So at the moment the only reason I think they're grey are;
1) on screen imo they tend to look black/grey, not green
2) The same face moulds (TIEs) used grey and I see some sense in them keeping the same. In addion Ive had pics of the "prototype" stormtroopers (done after ANH by AA) and they too had the grey double bubble lenses."

Jez,
1) Green bubbled lenses of course look black unless light is passed through them or if light catches them in a specific way. Same with the ESB fett helmet.
2) I believe it is possible that AA probably formed bubble lenses for the hero troopers initially, but was then changed by the Art Dept. later. The hero trooper bubbles lenses are different than the TIE bubble lenses and I don't think that the hero lenses were made via vac form.
I think on screen, the flat lenses look black as well even if we know they are green.


Also, I don't think physically the parts are different between hero and background tie's and xwing helmets. Only the addition of different details or painting is what distinguishes them as hero or background. And the fact that they were specially detailed specifically for close up shots makes them hero pieces.
And can we stop calling non hero items "stunt".
Hero, background, and stunt are actually 3 different things. Hero and background can be modified into a "stunt" piece that is actually meant for real stuntwork.

 

[GINO]

No one is refuting that all the tie helmets had grey lenses.
Also, I don't believe that the vader gunmetal painting was done on set at the very last minute before filming contrary to myth.

I think that the art department had a much bigger role in detailing these things than we think. I believe that the detailed chestbox pictured with AA was detailed by the art department as well. They use the same wooden rocker switches as vader's anh chestbox and we know AA had nothing to do with anything vader related.

 

[Raffles]

I probably didn't word that well, I meant that all the lenses were bubble lenses originally and that this was before the art department got their hands on them as they don't have chestboxes and cogs screened on yet.

Just trying to say that as the tie lenses were so few and so little used that it was probable that they were all the same and done at the same time using the same colour of lens.

The sheer quantity of TK helmets probably meant that various tints of clear lens were used so long as they were dark.

I personally think that they were smoky brown, as it was the 70's and that was damn fashionable:lol

 

[GINO]

Here are a couple pics of my v2 hero helmets.
These lenses look as black as can be, unless the light catches them the right way or light passes through them you'd never know they were GREEN. :sick

 

[defstartrooper]

What do you think the reason for changing the lenses would be Gino i cant really see any advantage or need to the background helmets had green flat lenses but they were running around down corridors etc so clear vision was needed although im not completely convinced that was the only reason behind using flat greens as all the sandtroopers had them and they were filmed first and all those scenes barring the inside of the cantina are very well lit.
The close up/foreground/hero stormtrooper helmets had bubble lenses presumably for asthetic reasons these scenes werent big action sequences, vision impaired wouldn't be a huge issue so why change them ?
Is there any other evidence to support either theory other than AA's word who's known to be not be above stretching the truth and one screencap ?

 

[Raffles]

Given the time and budget that they were working with Could be that they were just supplied with "assorted" helmets and left it to GL to say where the ones he liked the look of best went. Lucas' way doesen't have to make much sense.

Also weren't the TD suits rushed out and then when the unit returned from Tunisia the TK parts were manufactured?

 

[GINO]

The only things I could come up with were that the background helmets had green lenses, and they wanted the hero's to match, or more simply is was easier to see out of green lenses vs. grey ones.
Another thing to consider is when they made the jedi helmets, they used green bubble lenses as well.

I imagine that the tie helmets lenses were kept black because it was a better aestetic choice for an all black helmet, or they were never meant to do anything more than sit in a cockpit where the actor's vision wasn't even a factor.

When all said and done, they ALL look black so I'm leaning more towards the "easier for the actors to see" reason.

 

[defstartrooper]

Also weren't the TD suits rushed out and then when the unit returned from Tunisia the TK parts were manufactured?

Yeah thats why i said i wasnt convinced the flat lenses on the background helmets were simply about vision tunisia was bright and sunny vision would have been fine i think the flat lenses were probably more to do with time constraints and numbers involved as much as vision

 

[lonepigeon]

I absolutely agree that the green lenses look black on the background helmets. I went through all the HD screencaps I had and not one of them looked green when I brightened them up.
So even lenses known to be green do look black/grey.
To me this doesn't help convince me that the Hero lenses were green though.
It kind of makes the whole Photoshop color enhancing method suspect IMO.
This is why I wish we could "enhance" TIE screen caps to see if known grey lenses look green at all.

We still only have guesswork on both sides of this debate.

Grey/Smoked - because the Hero faceplates match the TIE and so they were likely made around the same time with the same lens materials, Circumstantial but logical.

Green - because they look green in some pics and they don't bulge out as much as TIE lenses.

I think the amount of bulge on the lenses depends on the heat when forming - right? Same mold/process. So maybe the Hero lenses were done first, by a different guy, before the heat source warmed up completely or whatever other reason to account for the slight difference. Maybe they were done after they noticed the TIE lenses were a little difficult to see out of so they were made less distorted for better vision. Maybe someone said, "These bubble lenses are cool can you make some for the closeup Stormtrooper helmets too?"
Too many things could account for tiny differences.

X-wing visors have no bearing since the Hero helmets originally had clear visors and were dyed/tinted.

Hamill's "sickly green" comment may have some bearing on this but it's hard to say.
The comment was made in an interview on January 5th, 1977 according to the book. The circumstances of filming should have been pretty fresh in his mind. It's not like it was a recent interview where his recollections would be colored over the years (pun intended).

Dcarty said:
"So far I've only ever seen one clip I thought seriously implied that the Hero lenses in ANH were green and that's the cap of the stunt guys from the vintage "Making of" special."
I'd like to see this cap.

 

[Raffles]

Then it makes sense that all th Tie helmets had grey bubbles as they had most time to get those done.

 

[lonepigeon]

Another thing to consider is when they made the jedi helmets, they used green bubble lenses as well.

This doesn't really mean much. They may have used green only because the helmets with lenses left in the archive were background pieces.
All the hand props remade for Jedi were copied from stunt versions.

 

[GINO]

Actually we know of at least 1 hero trooper helmet still in the archives, only it doesn't have lenses for whatever reason.
Also, it sounds like you're saying that they had flat lensed helmets in the archive so they used green bubble ones to match what they saw. That could be part of the rationale used for the anh hero helmets as well, wanting to make them all match.
Although I firmly believe that the bubble lenses in anh and rotj were green for better vision.