Page 44 - Star Wars Insider #188

THE GALACTIC ARCHIVIST

Star Wars in his hands. “And when I look on the 05
back, there’s information telling you how many
days it took McQuarrie to create this piece. That’s
what you’re always looking for—information
about a who, what, where, and when.”

That Other Archaeologist
Not to further draw comparisons with another
famous George Lucas creation, but would it be
fair to call Duncan a cultural archaeologist? “I’ll
take that!” he smiles. “This is basically what
Indiana Jones does between movies. Before he

goes out to actually find the Ark, he has to do all
this research in archives to find the way he has to

go. That’s basically me. Indiana Jones. Obviously,
I’m too old, and balding, and fat…” Duncan adds
with healthy self-deprecation, “but this is what
I dream of!”

There were further Lucasfilm archive areas
that Duncan had the opportunity to explore,
each presenting its own challenges and rewards.
“There’s another place at the Ranch where they
have all the original negatives for the Lucasfi lm
movies,” he says. “They’ve got off-cuts and
b-roll. They have a record of all the original
negatives—when they were taken and what the
reference numbers are for every single shot, every
single take. But it’s in cold storage, so there I
am in California where it’s 80 to 90 degrees in 06
the shade, and I’m walking along in my T-shirt,
then I have to go into this cold storage and I’m
suddenly wearing four layers, a really thick coat,
a hat over my ears to keep to me warm, and
gloves in order to handle all these shelves of
production documents!
“The final area is the Lucas Research Library

in the main house of the Ranch. It’s a beautiful
library, run by Miki Bulos. It’s just to die for—two
stories full of books; I could literally live there,”
Duncan smiles. “Just outside, in the solarium,
there’s an archive of clippings for all the movies.
Through all of this I have to record and digitize
whatever materials I need in order to make the
book, so there’s a lot of processing work to do.”

Experiencing History
“It’s overwhelming when you step into an
archive,” Duncan says, “because you don’t the production documents, but I had no idea 05 Duncan found new
know what you’re going to find. At the Ranch what the jargon all meant. On each fi lm they information while

viewing artist Ralph
there’s a giant wall of folders and archival invented their own logging system with these McQuarrie’s original
boxes with jargon on the front, containing all codes, and I had to decode them. Sometimes it concept art.
feels like trying to decode the Enigma Machine.
06 The development of
But the longer you spend with it, the more you the original trilogy is
“It’s overwhelming when you step understand how people were thinking. exhaustively explored
in The Star Wars
“The initial feeling was just being completely
into an archive,” Duncan says, perplexed,” Duncan describes his early days Archive, covering early
designs such as this
“because you don’t know what installed deep within the Lucasfi lm Archives, tauntaun maquette.
“but I was having a great time, and getting some
you’re going to find.” fabulous stuff. I came across the daily continuity

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