“The Beginning”: An Original Star Wars Episode I Call Sheet From Leavesden Studios, September 8, 1997

This is an original call sheet, No. 51, from the filming of Star Wars: Episode I: The Phantom Menace, dated Monday, September 8, 1997, and issued by JAK Productions Ltd from Leavesden Studios, under the film’s secret working title, The Beginning. The day’s work covered three parts of the 134-minute film. Outside the FS1 stage, the crew shot the Naboo swamp scene where Qui-Gon first runs into Jar Jar, about 15 minutes in. On D stage, they did greenscreen work for Anakin’s pod in the Mos Espa podrace, the centerpiece of the middle of the film. And in the Republic Cruiser cockpit, they shot the ambassadors’ arrival and the captain and pilot watching a gun turret swing around, which are the film’s first moments. The sheet lists George Lucas as director and Rick McCallum as producer, with a reminder to bring Wellington boots for the swamp.

The back page gives the advance schedule for the next two days, the Theed Central Hangar interior on A stage and twilight swamp scenes at Whippendell Woods, along with that morning’s transport plan to pick up the cast and Lucas. Principal photography ran from June 26 to September 30, 1997, mostly at Leavesden, so this sheet comes from the last few weeks of the shoot, and it was Lucas’s first time directing a film in 22 years. Call sheets were working documents used to coordinate scenes, locations, and logistics on set, and they were rarely saved. This one is a production-wide document, not issued to any one person, which makes it a clean look at what a day on the set actually involved, from the secret title to the Wellington boots.