Star Wars Begins

Review by west.logan — October 3, 2011 @ 3:09 pm

My wife and I thoroughly enjoyed this. I watched the 1978 “Making of Star Wars” many times as a kid and read up on lots of Star Wars books and this covered many things I’d never even heard of. I still found myself remembering little trivia tidbits about what went into a scene but I don’t think any commentary/documentary could be exhaustive by any means.

The overlays and comparisons of various scenes (Obi-wan at power station with and without painting, for example) were nicely done. One thing my wife and I especially liked was that the commentary was from members of the cast and crew and not just a George Lucas monologue. That in itself was a pleasure.

Review by Neglify — August 8, 2012 @ 8:06 am

Watched this edit tonight (which is available freely on Vimeo). Loved it! Don’t really need to go into why, because duh, it’s the shit.

FANEDIT RATING – 10
Audio/Video Quality – 10
Visual Editing – 10
Audio Editing – 10
Degree of Editing – 10

(NOTE: “Degree of Editing” is a 100% arbitrary rating that I keep in mind when reviewing edits. This is not meant to insinuate that a faneditor is lazy or not. Some fanedits require a lot more work than others and I take this into account.)

MOVIE RATING – 10
Narrative – N/A (documentary)
Enjoyment – 10

OVERALL RATING – 10

Readers of a certain vintage will remember the "Pop-Up Videos" of the late 1990s. They were regular music videos with various facts about the songs and artists that popped up on screen as the video played. It was horribly cheesy and decidedly 1990s. Now imagine that, but without the cheesiness, and it's Star Wars, with added deleted and alternate takes, behind the scenes shots and an absolutely incredible custom commentary track from everyone involved in making the film. How the editor managed to assemble all these sources and blend them in so seamlessly is beyond me. Highly recommended for anyone looking for insight into how Star Wars was made. Looking forward to the other 2 installments.

Finally watched this again and it is hugely entertaining for sure.

This is an exhaustive mix of sources, some which I do have and are better quality, but the mix of styles can sometimes throw your concentration and rhythmn.

That said, its hard to beat this as a fan made doco so full 10 on the enjoyment scale.
I would love to see an update one day as better visuals come to light.

Excellent work!

I finally sat down to watch this, and my Jambe Star Wars Documentary Experience (TM) is finally complete. If you've seen Building Empire and/or Returning to Jedi, there's nothing new here. By which I mean it's the same fantastic, exhaustive mix of audio commentary, text commentary, deleted scenes, alternate takes, storyboards, comics, behind-the-scenes clips, and pretty-much-anything-else-you-can-think-of that we've come to expect from Jambe. Brilliant work!

Ten thumbs up out of ten.