Elstree. Pinewood. Shepperton. Add now to the list of famous British film production studios the name of Leavesden, the site where most of the filming for Star Wars: Episode I has taken place. Star Wars has a history of shooting in Britain, the sets of the first Star Wars Trilogy having come to life at Elstree studios, beyond the outskirts of London. For the new film, a new site was selected, with history and scale to match the breadth of the new production.

An abandoned British aerodrome with a runway still mostly intact, Leavesden was used for years by Rolls-Royce as an aircraft engine factory. Millennium Group Ltd. then bought the 286-acre site for conversion to film production use. Millennium Group's parent company has plans to eventually develop the site into a complete studio tour and entertainment center. Before any of that comes to pass here, though, there is Star Wars: Episode I.

Leavesden Studios had its baptism in fire with the James Bond film Goldeneye. Like Episode I, Goldeneye made full use of the site's main building, which boasts half a million square feet of space and several independent soundstages where different sets can be built and filming can take place simultaneously. Leavesden also has one of the largest backlots in the world, with more than 100 acres of open space for outdoor filming. The place is so big that people like Production Designer Gavin Bocquet took to using bicycles to get around indoors. Episode I sets occupy Leavesden's runway outside, making for a rather surreal image-from the right angle, it looks as if another world just touched down on the centerline. Elsewhere, hangars and former machine rooms house filming sets of...well, hangars and machine rooms, oddly enough...in addition to parts of Tatooine, spacecraft cockpits, a Jedi Council Chamber and all the other environments that populate the storyline of Episode I. Amongst them all are prop department offices and other fabrication rooms of every kind, including the animatronics workshop and the creature shop.

Star Wars producer Rick McCallum has an arrangement to maintain the Episode I lease at Leavesden to accommodate the planned shooting of additional sequences during the movie's extended, non-linear creation process. A small crew returned to Leavesden recently to conduct the first of these brief additional shoots, with another to follow sometime in the summer. Our next update will offer a report from the new shoot activity, which included the work of Ewan MacGregor and a Yoda performance by Frank Oz. As production continues, Star Wars: Episode I remains scheduled for release in May 1999, with episodes two and three following every three years after that.