Boxwish exclusive! Interview with Tony Dyson, the man behind Star Wars' R2-D2

B: How did you become involved in building R2-D2 for The Empire Strikes Back?

TD: I didn’t start off building robots as such; I wanted to work in the film industry. So I kept ringing the film studios in the UK until they felt sorry for me and when I rang a smaller studio called Bray Studios, that’s where they used to make Hammer Horror Films, I got lucky and was transferred to a very nice guy in the new department called special effects, he gave me the number of the head of department, Brian Johnson.

When I talked to Brian, he asked me what models I had built, well the truth was that I didn’t build models, but I was building a rocking horse for a new business venture I had planned, he invited me down to the studios and he turned out to be my first customer for my very first rocking horse ‘Mr Pippin’.

He told me that there was a great film coming along called Star Wars, he said I think there will be a lot of work for you on that film. He also recommended that I visit an old friend of his down at Pinewood Studios, Derek Meddings, the head of special effects for the James Bond movies. I showed him photos of my rocking horse and I explained the closed mould technique I had developed in GRP and he loved it and asked me to build 36 Space models for Moonraker and that turned out to be my very first film.

Just as promised, Brian came back to me and I started working on my first Star Wars set with R2-D2, then later on they asked me to re-design and build all the R2 models in my studio from scratch.

B: So the original R2-D2 design needed amending for The Empire Strikes Back?

TD: Yes, the original one was too heavy, the battery was cutting out every five minutes and there were a few other issues… So I actually had to redesign the whole of the robot and built it fiber glass (GRP), aluminum and thermo plastic panels… so many materials. I setup a team of over 40 crew members.

B: 40 people in your team, what were you all working on?

TD: I used to ask myself the very same thing! But R2 is a very complicated build, there are over 250 panels on the outside of R2 and they are all removable, we needed to have 100 per cent flexibility, because we weren’t quite sure where the gadgets and the script were going. We also had to build the master moulds and all the original models to mould from.

B: We understand you had to make eight R2-D2s, why eight?

TD: We had a situation where we had to build eight to do different tasks; for example, we built four units to be thrown out of the monster’s mouth in the bog planet scene where the monster spits out R2-D2 from the bog, so R2 had to be thrown up into the air and land without totally been destroyed by its weight. So that was a much lighter version and stronger unit, it didn’t have all the insides such as motors and gears but it was highly reinforced. Then we built two radio control units with a third leg and two for Kenny Baker.

That’s all for part one of our Boxwish exclusive interview with Tony Dyson. And in part two, we’ll find out more about working with Kenny and what makes a good movie robot. Look out for it on Thursday.