Roger Christian is still as busy as he was when he started working on Star Wars in the mid-70s. He is about to start filming a feature length version of Black Angel, the short film he made that was shown in some cinemas in the UK before The Empire Strikes Back, which was recently rediscovered and restored digitally, and it was only last year that he penned the book Cinema Alchemist about his work in the film industry.

But Christian took a moment out from his hectic schedule to talk exclusively to Factor’s Berenice Baker about his time working on the Star Wars and Alien films, why filmmakers are moving away from CGI and why even he can’t get his hands on a lightsaber.

Berenice Baker: The recycled materials you used on Star Wars: A New Hope were a necessity resulting from a very limited budget. Do you think that inspired the look and feel in a way an unlimited budget couldn’t?

Roger Christian: I had no choice, but me and George [Lucas]’s first conversation when we met in Mexico was how unreal science fiction movies looked and how I wanted an old and used look; George’s vision exactly. When we were told by 20th Century Fox the entire budget was $4 million, reality struck home and I had to invent new ways to create the weapons and sets using modified real guns and airplane scrap for the sets.

You’ve said one of the reasons the Millennium Falcon set was so realistic is because you used an engineering approach to how the scrap aircraft parts were stuck together. How important is that kind of attention to detail?

Extremely important. The dressing had to look like a functioning ship, and looking at submarine interiors and plane interiors, they are very functional – everything duplicated in case of failure – and I made sure every piece of scrap and pipe looked functional. Encrusting the sets with a mass of pipes and tubes is how I envisaged it would be.

My father was a frustrated engineer. I hated it at the time, but when I wanted a motorbike he got a hand-change Royal Enfield from the 20s and made me work on it.

How did working on the Star Wars sequels compare with the limited budget of A New Hope?

We were able to use scrap on the next two. We found out that the graveyards of planes were next to major airports in Britain, so they put me on a little prop plane to them from Denham Airfield. Scrap was sold by weight in those days, and airplanes were really light; l could buy half an airplane for £50. I bought up 20 jet engines, undercarriages, cockpit pieces; anything I saw that I thought was great and could be stripped down. Jet engines in particular are full of beautiful little pipes and pieces and odd machine shapes.

I hadn’t figured out when I started doing the Millennium Falcon how much scrap would go into it! We kept layering it, and ordering truckloads more scrap and PVC drain pipes. We used the same on Alien, and in certain places on Empire [Strikes Back] and [Return of the] Jedi.

By the time I was director of second unit on Phantom Menace 20 years later, Star Wars had started an industry. Scrap was really expensive; you could only rent it, you couldn’t buy it. It was cheaper to get scrap from the Texas aircraft graveyards and fly it in by freighter plane than rent what was needed in London.

A lot of new technology was created by inventors inspired by science fiction to build things that didn’t exist at the time and seemed impossibly futuristic. Have you seen any of your creations brought to life?

In a way yes, as space stations. The craft used to build them and take the astronauts into space are pretty crammed and functional.

Is there anything you’ve invented for films or TV that hasn’t been made yet that you’d like to see?

The lightsaber; everyone wants one! I knew this would be the icon of Star Wars. Being heavily engrossed in King Arthur in my youth, this was Excalibur for the cinema age. I made them from 1940s Graflex flash handles I found in a vintage camera hire shop, Grunnings in Great Marlborough Street. I was trying to get a couple more not so long ago, but there are people bidding against you, driving the price up to $1,300 when I could previously get them for a hundred bucks.

For some reason previous directors felt the future had to be all plasticky and shiny. We never did that; George and Ridley filmed it like documentaries

You’re known for giving future and space-age settings a gritty feel, such as spaceships with dripping oil. Do you think that’s why your work has stood the test of time where other contemporary films haven’t?

For sure; on Star Wars and Alien I wanted a look that was absolutely real, never looking like a designed sci-fi creation. I think the audience accepted for the first time in movies that these were real, and never questioned the environments. For some reason previous directors felt the future had to be all plasticky and shiny. We never did that; George [Lucas] and Ridley [Scott] filmed it like documentaries.

After a huge upsurge in CGI for special effects, what do you make of the return to using real models?

I got a call one day from Duncan Jones who was making Moon in Britain asking for some advice as he had a just a million dollars and wanted to use real models enhanced with CGI. I put him on to Bill Pearson, one of the best model-makers in the world, who works from a little workshop in Shepperton. I think that swing back started around then. [Star Wars sequel trilogy director] JJ Abrams has been very vocal about building as much as he could in the way we did for the first Star Wars to give it that look.

I’m doing Black Angel the way I made Star Wars and Alien and the other first films. You can make a model and there’ll be an accident; there’ll be smoke and a piece of light and it gives you something organic. JJ Abrams had a year lopped off his post-production time, so he probably had to rely a lot more on what he could shoot; CGI at this level takes a lot of time.

Tell us about the book you released last year.

I took a couple of years off and wrote Cinema Alchemist, the true and real behind the scenes story of making Star Wars, Alien and Black Angel. I was pressured to tell all as I was right at the heart of making both films with George and Ridley, and had so many questions from fans over the years, it was really a requirement to put it down truthfully.