In Return of the Jedi, the deserts around Yuma Arizona, filled in for the baking twin-sunned landscape, but in Star Wars it was the inhospitable vastness of Tunisia in Northern Africa that was chosen as the location. Tunisia had been favoured over other contenders such as Morocco, because the vernacular architecture most closely matched George Lucas' vision of Mos Eisley and the farmsteads around Anchorhead

Early drafts of the script depicted Luke's home as a jungle planet, and the Philippines became a strong contender for the location of the shoot. However, extensive location work in a jungle environment was considered potentially problematic so Tatooine became a desert world. The filming in Tunisia nevertheless proved to be miserable, difficult and uncomfortable..."eight weeks of sheer hell" as it has been memorably described.

Tunisia stands at the junction of Africa and Asia and it is there the expanse of the Sahara Desert begins, an environment every bit as bleak and arid as Tatooine itself. Cast and crew were based at the city of Tozeur in Southern Tunisia; they totalled a 130-strong army of personnel backed by a massive shipment of equipment, props and construction materials carried overland and by air freight. It seemed less like a film unit and more like the embarkation of a major desert exploration.

Principal photography commenced on 25 March 1976; some eight weeks previously, construction teams had laboured to realise the scenery of Tatooine in the small towns and open landscape nearby. The Hotel Sidi Driss, in the extraordinary semi-subterranean town of Matmata, became the Lars homestead, and the township on the island Jerba was transformed into downtown Mos Eisley. The first Star Wars scenes in the can, however, were those shot at the Chotte el Jerid, close to Tozeur.

'Chotte' translates from the Arabic as 'salt lake'; this region - apparently notorious for inducing mirages - is a smooth, dried-up desert wasteland with only an occasional palm tree in sight. Canyons and gorges on the fringe of is salt-pan doubled up as the Jundland wastes, Tatooine's true wilderness. These became the places haunted by the fierce krayt dragon, the Sand People ("...or worse!"); environs that are, according to Ben Kenobi, "...not to be travelled tightly."

This might have been good advice to the film-makers as well as prospective Jedi. Sand, abrasive and perpetual, fouled equipment, props and humours. Flash flooding mired vehicles on the unforgiving salt-pan. The sunlight blinded and baked and broiled. A sandstorm lasted the first week of filming, ensuring that goggles were standard issue for the entire unit and all cameras had to be stripped and cleaned between each day of filming.

Sand dunes outside Nefta became the place where R2-D2 and C-3P0 trudged past the skeleton of a fearsome creature. The actors portraying Artoo and Threepio, Kenny Baker and Anthony Daniels respectively, were chief amongst the sufferers. Placing a human being in a metal drum or a tight-fitting suit of steel and aluminium and then exposing them the intense heat of a desert sun may well be a contravention of human rights in these more enlightened days. Strangely Daniels recalls that more often than not it was cold rather than heat that most seriously affected him. The weather was erratic at best, and even in the sun, the burnished exterior of the Threepio suit reflected the heat and made the actor so cold he had to be insulated with Sand People costumes between takes.

Worse still, both actors had limited fields of vision inside their suits, so often collided and entangled. And a fall into the fine, abrasive sand was simply asking for trouble. Meanwhile, remotely operated versions of Artoo. which allowed Baker some respite from his ordeal, plagued the controllers by failing to respond to radio instructions. Haywire R2-D2s ran amok under the desert sun.

Two of the movie's most notable vehicles first kicked up dust in Tunisia, too. As well as being represented by miniatures, Luke's landspeeder was a precision combination of two life-size mock ups - a vehicle supported by an off-camera brace, and a three-wheeled, motorised version.

By altering the position of the long scaffolding brace and keeping it off camera or concealed behind scenery, the first model could be used to create the hovering effect in either stationary positions, or in short sweeps as the brace arm was revolved on its mount. The natural give in the length of the arm also helped to suggest the anti-grav bounce of the vehicle.

For extensive moving shots, the wheeled version was used. This vehicle relied on post-production matte work to remove the tell-tale wheels and create the floating effect - complete with moving shadow. It is said that this version was test-driven on the roads around Van Nuys, California, near the ILM studio, to much rubbernecking by local motorists.

The huge Jawa sandcrawler also existed in several forms: a full size set of the entry and lower tread section for the actors to work against, allowing the upper bulk to be matted in - like the speeder's shadow - later on. For the moving shots, a fully motorised, remote control model was fabricated - a three foot long monster that contained engines so powerful it could allegedly pull wheelies... though ponderous trundling was all the script called for.

After the gruelling Tunisian shoot, the cast and crew decamped to the comparative luxury of Elstree Studios in Hertfordshire for the next stage of the filming. Elstree was chosen because it then had the only sound stages in Europe or America that could accommodate the demands of the mammoth production (all nine of the studio's stages were used). As with the Tunisian expedition, the sheer scale of the movie's demands were beginning to become apparent.

Extract taken without permission from Star Wars The Official Magazine issue #6 (1997), pgs 25-28.