Maintenance of Droid Costumes.
As we have already discussed at various points throughout this article, the extreme difficulty the two actors playing our main droid characters had with their costumes is certainly considerable. They were hot, constraining, and obscured the vision of those wearing them.
Not only that, but because of the large composition of metal in the costume’s exterior design, they were prone to rusting and breaking after continuous strain. Because of the need for the metal to be lightweight and flexible, it was also prone to getting bent out of shape.
Thanks to this slew of problems, the need was present for maintenance and repairs to be performed on the outfits at regular intervals. Anthony Daniels’ C-3PO costume in particular needed to have entire parts and plates swapped out several times throughout the entirety of filming. This image was specifically taken to demonstrate this fact as minor repairs are being performed in between shots.
If you look closely, you can see that the C-3PO costume is missing the entire foot. At the same time, the dome of the R2-D2 costume had been removed and set aside as the crew was fixing some of the inner workings of that suit. It was also necessary to remove the head pieces for both of the actors so that they could get some fresh air in between shots.
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