Chewbacca, Han Solo, and Luke Skywalker on their way to the Great Pit of Carkoon Instead of going back to Tunisia, the filmmakers chose to remain closer to their base of operations, opting for the sand dunes near Yuma to shoot scenes for Star Wars: Episode VI Return of the Jedi. The Great Pit of Carkoon sequence, set on the Dune Sea, was filmed at Buttercup Valley, California. Principal photography occurred during April 1982, following a five-month period of set construction. The cast and crew were housed in the nearby town of Yuma, Arizona, accumulating over 5,500 man-days in hotel accommodations for both set building and filming activities.
For the Special Edition release of A New Hope, the production team revisited the Imperial Sand Dunes to capture supplemental footage of stormtroopers in search of any evidence of R2-D2's escape pod landing after its crash.