The Spacing Guild Navigators
Click on each image to bring up a large version of it
Authentic Guild Navigator Costume
Made and hand painted by Bob Ringwood (Costume Designer)
Top of Collar to Bottom: 60 Inches
Sleeve Length, to Tip of Glove: 29 Inches
Material: Black Nylon Exterior with Cotton Padded Interior
Auctioned on eBay September 2003 by Business Liquidators. (Did not sell)
Carlo Rambaldi (rear) and makeup artist Luigi Rocchetti apply a few last-minute brush strokes on the set.
A second-stage navigator makeup, created by Chris Tucker, was ultimately rejected because of insufficient time and funds.
Effects cinematographer James Devis checks the lighting for a closeup insert of the third-stage navigator.
Ken Worringham lines up an eye close-up of Carlo Rambaldi's full-scale navigator. Allan Annand, focus puller, assists.
Image/Caption courtesy of Eric Swenson
© 1983/84
Bruno Landis, assistant to Rambaldi, patches up a small navigator model prior to the filming of a blue screen shot.
Image/Caption courtesy of Eric Swenson
© 1983/84
Carlo Rambaldi, right, and co-worker put the finishing touches on the gigantic third stage Guild Navigator.
Guild Navigator having make-up applied!
Rambaldi's massive third stage Guild Navigator, a mechanized beast with forty seperate points of movements.
Danielle Verse and Christine Overs add intricate ornamentation to a blowup section of the heighliner doorway.
Image/Caption courtesy of Eric Swenson
© 1983/84
Another heighliner doorway - one of two enlarged sections built - was used for the smaller scale background plate over which the Atreides ships are shown approaching the immense craft.
Image/Caption courtesy of Eric Swenson
© 1983/84
Modelmaker Gus Ramsden makes final adjustments to an Atreides wing section incorporated within his heighliner docking bay set. During the scene, as the camera moves up, a pneumatic cylinder concealed behind the protruding ship in the center pulls the craft into its designated docking ports.
Image/Caption courtesy of Eric Swenson
© 1983/84
Ramsden redressed the fiberglass structure for a subsequent shot featuring the third-stage navigator's sealed box as it rises to the heighliner cockpit. Ken Worringham photographs the slow ascent - which was ultimately cut from the film.
Image/Caption courtesy of Eric Swenson
© 1983/84
Used primarily in the preparation of the background plates for the third-stage navigator's space-folding scenes, the final cockpit miniature was constructed from wood, fiberglass, and then filmed in a dense smoke environment for maximum aerial perpective.
Image/Caption courtesy of Eric Swenson
© 1983/84
The modular structure affords Brain Smithies little room as he squeezes in to line up a motion control shot. Photographing the cockpit interior required enormous amounts of light to illuminate the absorbent flat black surfaces.
Image/Caption courtesy of Eric Swenson
© 1983/84
A stagehand makes adjustments on a Guild ship as it hovers over the Emperor's landing field. The fiberglass model - simplified to its relatively featureless form at Lynch's insistence - was mounted on a small camera crane and then lowered into one of the many slots cut into the miniature set.
Barry Nolan makes a lighting check on the cylindrical heighliner model - constructed originally by Apogee, but later refinished by Smithies and his crew.
Image/Caption courtesy of Eric Swenson
© 1983/84
David Lynch examines a heighliner setup through Van de Veer's effect camera, track-mounted on a motion control rig designed and modified by Nolan and his motion control programmer, Eric Swenson.