Now witness the bounciness of this fully celluloid and operational ping pong ball. A forum user named tatumaru5963 made this amazing model of the Death Star. If you can read Japanese, please tell us anything else noteworthy about its creation because Google Translate isn't helping much.
Link (Google Translate) -via Geekologie
The actual model of the Death Star was about four feet in diameter. It was only half a shpere since only one side was photographed. Before building it the model makers went to a hobby shop and bought a few dozen battleship model kits. A closer examination than the camera allows reveals quite a bit of whimsey. For example, there are ordinary battleship gun turrets, actual LIFEBOATS, and one tiny window with a figure waving out of it.
For the high speed close-up "flyover" Death Star shots they built a long flat surface of styrofoam with shapes and blocks featuring very little detail, since the pan was too fast to see anything but general shapes. Then the camera was tracked over it and the film sped up.
The tracking shots for the high speed "land speeder" chase were made by a cameraman with a SteadyCam walking through a redwood forest, and the film sped up.