Is that so? I've heard that the original miniatures are actually much darker than they appear on film, as the predominantly grey coloring looked brighter due to lighting. X-wings painted in a truly 'white' hue will cause too much glare.
But let's hear from an expert:
Scott Alexander aka Captain Cardboard said:
When I first started working in the movie model biz, in 1984, I was determined to do one thing-- get my hands on original castings from an X-wing. That never happened. But in my search, I did come across the people who had worked at ILM. The models were all based out using Krylon Platinum Gray Primer. This primer was very similar to Testors Camouflage Gray, which was just a tad bit darker and slightly pink. At the time I found this out, the Krylon paint was still available. I looked for it years later and found that despite it having the same name, the color was much darker.
I also found out that the technique of gloss white over black primer and then rubbing through the white with steel wood was done as an experiment on a couple of the models. They did use the technique in spots, though, like the nose so they could get that 'almost shiny yet broken down' look.
The question of why white was not used as the base color is simple. When subtle aging or weathering is applied, the camera only sees white in the most subtle areas. You can get close to a very large model that has been painted white, but if you set the camera at a distance, all it sees is white. The shadows go away, most of the other colors go away... and this is why the MF was a light gray. This does not mean areas can not be white, just the model as a whole. I have been on shoots where a model was repainted because of the distance to the camera. As modelers today, one thing to keep in mind is that none of the shots we have seen in these films were done with any element being digital or composited digitally. It was all chemistry and light.
If you have a gray model and shoot it one or two f-stops overexposed, that gray model will look white. If a gray model is composite-printed onto a second piece of film, it will look brighter, not as gray. When that is projected onto a screen, our eye sees the gray as white. Ever shot a gray model with a flash and have it look white? With the subtle nature of professional film and the knowledge and experience FX guys have, all kinds of whacky things have to be done to get the things to look right on film. When I was working on King Kong Lives (yeah, I know...) we had to paint the 1:6 scale operating theater 2-stops gray so when they exposed for the guy in the monkey suit, the operating theater would look white! If the room was left white, the guy in the suit would just look like a black, monkey shaped thing or a great looking monkey suit in a REALLY bright room, depending on which way the exposure was leaned.
I believe this model was built for
Jedi, but it was never seen on screen. And there definitely exist inconsistencies between this and most of the original miniatures - the point at which the halves of the fuselage split was farther back on the latter, for example, and the bottom edges of the intakes were flush with the wings.
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