GubernatorFan wrote:Thanks for the beautiful image of the three helmets, Paul. And ANH is still my favorite of the three (the main difference being the painting of the frown). Considering how these were all produced by the same mold, it is remarkable how different they look due to the slight difference in perspective caused by their respective vertical positioning in the shot. Actually, that is something I meant to mention above. It is somewhat bewildering to me that the hero and stunt helmets were supposedly based on the same mold, yet even some of their molded detail ended being different (like the number of "teeth" and gaps in the frown) -- do you know something about this?
Anyway, like I said, slight differences in angle give these different appearances (and this is in part but not entirely due to the asymmetry) -- the Bandai helmet comes closest to way the ANH helmet looks in your photo (and I don't mean just the painting of the frown).
Yeah these helmets are quite different from each other even though they all derive from the same mould. ANH is my favourite too
As I mentioned before some of the ESB helmets and all the ROTJ ones were actually remoulded from new moulds which were made from parts of ANH helmets, so whilst they are derived from the original mould they actually have different characteristics as they are not made on the original vacuum form mould itself.
Andrew Ainsworth retained the original vac mould at Shepperton Design Studios (it is what he now uses for his "original" line of helmets), but when the studio needed more for ESB they did not go back to Andrew Ainsworth because they now had the ability at the studio to vacuum form parts themselves, and therefore they didn't have access to the original moulds, hence their making of new ones.
The parts from ANH helmets used for making the new mould would have been quite flexible and seem to have flexed during the mould making process, producing new moulds with differences from the original ones. As you noted they also have black frowns instead of the grey found in ANH, because they were finished by the costume dept at Elstree, and not by Shepperton Design Studios, and they just used black paint probably because that is what they had to hand at the time, and to them it kind of looked the same.
The Stunt and Hero helmets do indeed have the same mould.
Because they are vacuum formed from a single sheet of ABS type plastic they come off the mould with no holes in them, the gaps in the frown, and the eye holes are actually cut out by hand afterwards. So the original 50 stunt helmets had 8 vents cut out of the frown and the grey paint (Humbrol modelling enamel I believe) was applied right to the very corners of the frown moulding.
When the six hero helmets were required, after the stunts had already been delivered to the studio for filming, they had 6 vents cut into their frowns instead of the original eight, and the grey paint was ended in a "v" shape after the last vent on each side of the frown leaving it looking shorter.
I don't know if this was by design, or simply that they didn't have a stunt helmet still around at Shepperton Design Studios to reference how the vents were cut and so they did what they remembered they had done on the stunts but got it slightly wrong.
Likewise the lowered brow is to do with how the parts of the hero helmets have been put together. Basically the the heros' have been put together with the face moulding sitting a little higher on the dome moulding which then gives the lowered brow. Interestingly the stunt ear pieces are attached with 3 visible screws on each ear, but the Heros' have only 2 screws per ear. I think this again leads credence to the idea that Shepperton Design Studios finished the hero helmets without having a stunt helmet on hand to reference the details.
The ANH helmets both stunt and hero were all finished by hand. It was a proper cottage industry affair and very different from what we see happening in film prop production today. The holes were cut out and paint was applied all by hand and the parts of the helmets where assembled by hand screwing the parts together. Because the materials used in the production were quite thin, then a screw placed in a slightly different place or pressure applied differently to the parts when they are screwed together would flex the plastic differently and slightly affect the look from helmet to helmet, so no two are the same. For filming in the seventies they didn't need to be identical, just close enough that they would look alike on screen.
Phew!!! I feel like I have rambled there a bit, but I hope it makes some sense and helps.
Paul
its a fantastic cinematic concept.