I’ve been looking at this picture for 10 minutes. It’s being presented to me on facebook as a behind the scenes picture from Star Wars 1977. I suspect this is AI…. maybe…. Here’s why:

1st – I’ve never seen this picture. I’ve seen just about every image behind the scenes or otherwise from the original Star Wars. Every once in awhile a new one does pop up though.

2nd – The Death Star doesn’t look round. It looks egg shaped to me.

3rd – What are they doing? There’s no reason to hold a bounce card that close to a model let alone curve it. It could be some sort of ad hoc preliminary light test though.

4th – Where’s the light coming from? If the guy on the left is holding a piece of diffusion the light should be coming from behind him. The light seems to be coming from the sheet he’s holding. Flexible flat panel lighting didn’t exist in 1977.

The one thing that makes me think it might be real:

The Mole Richardson wheeled light stand (with the painted brown parts) is mostly obscured by the Death Star yet the legs and wheels appear to be in the proper position. This is something that AI will almost always screw up.

This is where we are. Is it real or fake? How much of the rest of our lives will be spent trying to figure out things like this?