In Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope (1977), the production team had to make Luke Skywalker’s landspeeder look like it was hovering over the desert terrain of Tatooine. To achieve this illusion on a limited budget and without modern CGI, they mounted mirrors at an angle on the sides of the landspeeder to reflect the surrounding desert ground, which hid the vehicle’s wheels. And the reflection made it appear as if the speeder was floating. A great example of clever practical effects.
Designed by noted special effects artist John Stears and manufactured by Ogle Design, the landspeeder prop was built on a real vehicle chassis. Specifically, it was a three-wheeled car called a Bond Bug. This allowed it to be driven and controlled in the desert, but it also presented the main challenge: how to hide the wheels.
To conceal the wheels, the special effects team mounted angled mirrors on the sides of the car. These mirrors reflected the desert ground, creating the illusion that the vehicle was hovering. When a person or object was in the reflection, it would appear to be underneath the vehicle.
For some shots, the crew used specific camera angles to hide the wheels. For long-distance shots, they even smeared a small amount of Vaseline or gelatin on the camera lens to create a subtle blur or heat haze near the ground. This helped to mask any imperfections in the mirror effect and enhanced the sense of a futuristic, levitating vehicle. George Lucas, the creator of Star Wars, reportedly called this blur “The Force Spot.”
“We tried several ideas during filming, and none of them seemed to work,” said Lucas (regarding the landspeeder’s hovering effect). “We finally tried using a mirror, and that came close, but it didn’t work, either. So when we went out to Death Valley, we redid the mirror and made it sturdier and made it longer, raised the car a little bit higher, and found a lake bed that had topography that was easier to work with. Then we shot it again, but that didn’t work because not enough care was taken to make the mirror and to get the speeder going fast enough. Finally, Bob Dalva came back with a crew and made it work. But he only got one shot, and we needed three. So then we sent another cameraman to get the final two shots using the same method.”
“The Model Shop helped out with the full-sized (Land)speeder when it came to the U.S. for late pickup shots in early 1977. We constructed a mirrored plex skirt that blocked the view of the landspeeder’s three tires, the true source of its propulsion. The mirror reflected the deset landscape underneath, creating the illusion of anti-gravity. We shot these scenes near Lake Mirage, the locale close to where our sandcrawler explored.”
In the later "Special Edition" releases of the film, released in 1997, Lucas and his team at Industrial Light and Magic (ILM) used early digital effects to further clean up and refine the landspeeder effect, making it look even more seamless for a modern audience.
The landspeeder effect is a testament to the ingenuity of the original Star Wars special effects team, which had to rely on physical props and in-camera tricks to bring George Lucas's vision to life. This low-tech approach to a high-tech concept is a big part of what makes the original film's practical effects so iconic and beloved.
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