Quote:
Originally posted by thomas7g
actually I asked someone about that. Its a left over from bluescreening days. Cockpits like that show up better on film. And they are easier to matte I bet too. 
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Quote:
Originally posted by p.s. Cargile
Wow. Both make sense.
On the other hand, both the X-wing and the Viper had smaller cockpit frames. But I can understand how an all glass canopy wouldn't show up against the background in a scene. Such is the trade off.
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If you watch the little documentary before
The Empire Strikes Back: Special Edition, they go into this issue a bit. Apparently thin cockpit frames were not a problem with fighters like the X-wing and Viper, because they operated in space, and what you'd see through the windows would be black, so matte lines wouldn't be as obvious.
The special effects people on ESB ran into problems with the thin frames while doing the Battle of Hoth, since you'd be seeing white snowscapes through the windows of the snowspeeder, and then the matte lines would look really horrible. So they played with the opacity of the cockpit which helped diminish the matte lines. The before and after comparison shots from when they digitally cleaned up the matte lines are really neat; I'd never actually noticed it before.
