<P> Taylor said that Lucas, who was consumed by the details of the complicated production, "avoided all meetings and contact with me from day one, so I read the extra-long script many times and made my own decisions as to how I would shoot the picture ." He also "took it upon myself to experiment with photographing the lightsabers and other things onstage before we moved on to our two weeks of location work in Tunisia". Taylor was aware of the "enormous amount of process work" to follow principal photography and believed "a crisp result would help". </P> <P> During production, Lucas and Taylor--whom Kurtz called "old - school" and "crotchety"--had disputes over filming . With a background in independent filmmaking, Lucas was accustomed to creating most of the elements of the film himself . His lighting suggestions were rejected by Taylor, who felt that Lucas was overstepping his boundaries by giving specific instructions, sometimes even moving lights and cameras himself . Taylor refused to use the soft - focus lenses and gauze Lucas wanted after Fox executives complained about the look . Kurtz stated that "In a couple of scenes (...) rather than saying,' It looks a bit over lit, can you fix that?', (Lucas would) say,' turn off this light, and turn off that light .' And Gil would say,' No, I won't do that, I've lit it the way I think it should be--tell me what's the effect that you want, and I'll make a judgment about what to do with my lights ."' </P> <P> Originally, Lucas envisioned the planet of Tatooine, where much of the film would take place, as a jungle planet . Gary Kurtz traveled to the Philippines to scout locations; however, because of the idea of spending months filming in the jungle would make Lucas "itchy", the director refined his vision and made Tatooine a desert planet instead . Kurtz then researched all American, North African, and Middle Eastern deserts, and found Tunisia, near the Sahara desert, as the ideal location . In the director's commentary of the 2004 DVD edition of A New Hope, Lucas said he wanted to also make it look more "spacy" or outer space - like in style . </P> <P> When principal photography began on March 22, 1976, in the Tunisian desert for the scenes on Tatooine, the project faced several problems . Lucas fell behind schedule in the first week of shooting due to malfunctioning props and electronic breakdowns . Moreover, a rare Tunisian rainstorm struck the country, which further disrupted filming . Taylor said, "you couldn't really see where the land ended and the sky began . It was all a gray mess, and the robots were just a blur ." Given this situation, Lucas requested for heavy filtration, which Taylor rejected, who said: "I thought the look of the film should be absolutely clean...But George saw it differently, so we tried using nets and other diffusion . He asked to set up one shot on the robots with a 300mm, and the sand and sky just mushed together . I told him it wouldn't work, but he said that was the way he wanted to do the entire film, all diffused ." This difference was later settled by 20th Century Fox executives, who backed Taylor's suggestion . </P>

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