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Paul Huston
Senior Matte Artist on Star Wars Special Edition
Paul Huston’s most memorable experience with Star Wars was meeting George Lucas, Ralph McQuarrie, and Joe Johnston in a warehouse in Van Nuys in 1975. Twenty years and millions of Star Wars fans later, Huston is working on Star Wars yet again, and as he says, “I am always trying to meet the standards set by those three guys.”
The Star Wars movie that has had the most influence on Huston is, “The first one . . . here it is twenty years later and I’m still working on it! . . . The opening shot with the roll-up and the rebel blockade runner followed by the Star Destroyer always knocks me out.”
Huston has been working on the Star Wars Trilogy Special Edition since January of 1994, creating new shots for scenes in Mos Eisley and Obi-Wan Kenobi’s house on the Dune Sea. Huston has painstakingly matched his Special Edition artwork with the original print of Star Wars to allow new CG creatures, characters, and vehicles to populate scenes in the way George Lucas originally intended. Huston’s biggest challenge is, as he describes: “Doing million dollar work on a shoestring budget.”
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