Barry Minot

The first Stars of Ra were created in resin which was fine until it came to the extreme close ups that Steven Spielberg was demanding and the resin ones were not giving him what he wanted. It was at this point I was offered the job of creating pieces that would look good when projected large onto a huge movie screen. I had just finished making foot high palm trees for "Raiders" that were going to decorate the model of Tanis in the map room. There was to be a scene where a shot of the Tanis model was to look for real, then a giant Indiana Jones booted foot would appear leaving the audience amazed. Wow it wasn't a real town after all. Sadly this sequence was scrapped so my beautifully crafted palm trees remain in obscurity.

The first two photographs show the rarest of all the Stars of Ra, the prototype of which only one was created. Two changes were made to the further stars; specially made resin gems replaced the multi faceted glass stones in the eyes. If memory serves I think this was done to facilitate the special effect of the beam of light generated by the sun. The other change was the twisted braid that ran around the edge of the piece. A plaited section replaced this. The two changes are clearly discernable in the following photos.