Screen Rant got an opportunity to interview Rick Heinrichs, the production designer of Star Wars: The Last Jedi, about how the earlier Star Wars films influenced his designs and what it was like working with Rian Johnson.
Screen Rant: Following The Force Awakens with this one, how did the production design on Episode VII influence your work on Episode VIII?
Rick Heinrichs: That’s a good question. I think both Rick Carter and Darren Gilford on Episode VII, as well as myself on VIII, we were really trying to look back to the original trilogy for inspiration. I spent several days up at Skywalker Ranch going through all their folders of Ralph McQuarrie’s original drawings and Joe Johnston drawings – all of that. And, it was just so humbling to see the mountain of work that had been done. Now, on 7, Doug Chiang was very much involved with, I think a lot of the development of that as well. And, he’s got the DNA in him. So, really we were kind of drawing from similar sources for a lot of this, and trying to make sure that it felt organic to the series and that people were going to see familiar elements, but also that they’re gonna feel they’re in a new story and that the design was evolving. And that it felt exciting and current for them, too.
The big handoff from number 7 for us was the island of Skellig off the coast of Ireland, which is Ahch-To. Rick had found that. And it was just barely reachable for us. They went there for a couple of days when they were shooting there, and we found it likewise to be a challenge. It’s one of those places where you approach it with a boat and the boat is rising and falling eight feet at the docks and you have to sort of time your drop off – your hop off onto the deck. But I’d already seen a lot of photographs of it, and felt like I’d already been there. So, actually seeing it in person was both familiar and an awesome experience. What we did was essentially develop and evolve the look and feel of Ahch-To, both using Skellig and then a number of locations on the west coast of Ireland to augment and develop what that island was – all of the different environments. There was the Temple, the village, there’s the library tree. There’s a Caretaker village that you never see in the film, but I think you might see it on the DVD.
Screen Rant: Yeah, that’s one of the deleted scenes.
Rick Heinrichs: We had all these environments that we had to show. And they’re a combination of location shooting with effects and shooting on the back lot at Pinewood Studios on sets. In the case of the village, we actually had to build it and shoot it at Pinewood first and then we had to take it apart, take all the huts, drive them all the way to Ireland and there’s a huge body of water in between England and Ireland, and take them to the very edge of Ireland on a 700-foot tall cliff and rebuild them. It all worked perfectly, nobody got hurt. But it was one of the most awe-inspiring jobs I’ve ever done, to visit that set while it was being built there. And really to see the village kind of develop from when we had scouted it at the beginning when we were just imagining what it might look like there is incredibly exciting. Does that answer your question?
Read the full interview at the link here.
