The friendship between Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas goes back decades, to when they were both relatively unknown filmmakers in Northern California. Coppola served as executive producer on THX 1138, Lucas’ first film, and the year after it was finished, Lucas worked as an assistant on The Godfather. Lucas shot the footage of newspaper inserts that show major events during the scenes where the families go to the mattresses as well as the one above, which reveals to Michael the shooting of his father. But perhaps his biggest contribution to the film was a small suggestion he made to Coppola. After filming the scene in which Michael fends off would-be assassins while the don is in the hospital, Coppola realized he didn’t have extra shots to feature the sound of footsteps in the hallways. So Lucas suggested that he use the leftover shots of empty hallways just after the actors had left the frame. Lucas helped Coppola scour his original footage for those precious few seconds, which Coppola used in the film, greatly adding to the tension of an already white-knuckle scene.

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