Video: Introduction to Boba Fett

Video footage from 1978 of the orig­i­nal Boba Fett cos­tume design has been posted over at starwars.com.

Accord­ing to the video, once the cos­tume design by Joe John­son was approved by George Lucas, the pro­to­type was built in George’s house. For the tap­ing, Ben Burtt (Sound Designer for “The Empire Strikes Back”) inter­views Fett who was por­trayed by Duwayne Dun­ham (Assis­tant Film Edi­tor on “The Empire Strikes Back”).

Burtt, along with Nor­man Reynolds (Pro­duc­tion Designer for “The Empire Strikes Back”), give a full run down of the costume’s parts and all of it’s arma­ments and var­i­ous weapons. They dis­cuss the costume’s planned color scheme, some the character’s back­story and role in the galaxy, and even his pur­pose in the franchise.

Accord­ing to Burtt:

“They wanted a char­ac­ter that could make pub­lic appear­ances and I think Boba was kind of designed as a char­ac­ter, between ‘Star Wars’ and ‘Empire’, that they could, you know, get the pub­lic excited about some­thing new.”

The con­cept suit itself is impres­sively func­tional. All of the elec­tron­ics on it work and flicker just as they do in the movie. The left gaunt­let has a work­ing flame thrower and Fett’s trade­mark “rocket launcher”. The right gaunt­let came equipped with darts, a wrist laser, a work­ing flash­light, and even a spe­cial effects tog­gle that would ignite the smoke ‘thrusters’ in the jet­pack worn on the actor’s back. Although the suit is com­pletely white and sans the wookie scalps we are all so famil­iar with, it is very nearly iden­ti­cal to the one used on screen (minus the “Star Wars’ beach towel-cape).

Check out the full video at starwars.com/video/view/000743.html.