Since it is May the 4th...

[Douglas Meltzer]

The Ken Films' Star Wars release was such a big deal at the time. Out of all my films, the 400 footer is probably the print I've screened the most.

[Rob Young]

Doug, I was 6 years old when Star Wars came out and just cannot understate the impact it had; it seemed there truly was a galaxy far, far away.

Then came the adverts in newspapers for the super 8 extracts...the rest as they say, is history.

I was so lucky to own both 400ft Ken extracts when I was about 10 years old; so now the big gamble. Do I just enjoy each on their own, or risk my kid skills on editing both together into a half hour version?

My late sister (god bless her!) convinced me to have a go. Therein lies my education into acetate and polyester film base. You see, I'd only ever used a cement splicer on my own home movies and having agonised over actually cutting my prized and expensive Star Wars prints, you can only imagine my horror when they would not cement splice back together.

I was now left with 800ft of Star Wars in an unassembled mess.

Luckily, the guy that owned my favourite shop in the world, "The Movie Cabin", who had sold me the prints, gave me an education on polyester base film and tape splicing.

My 2 x 400ft re-edited version of Star Wars saved and I still have those original prints to this day.

[Osi Osgood]

I remember being overwhelmed with joy when, after seeing Star Wars (at 11 years old, just imagine this little boys joy!), and then, right afterwards, going to the local K-Mart to shop after that Matinee, and seeing in a display, right as we came in the door, STAR WARS, 200ft, color sound! Now, I didn't realize that it wasn't the whole film, but who cares?! Yesterday, however, in celebration of Star Wars, we watched the complete TV series of "The Book of Boba Fett". I decided to give my feature print of Star Wars a rest this year . I know there are people that no doubt, tire on constantly hearing this, but Star Wars was such a ground breaker a changer when it came to going to the Cinema, not just in block buster profits, but marketing and, especially in the very cynical 1970's, a devil may care all balls out action adventure film, the likes of which in many ways, hadn't been seen successfully presented in the Cinema in probably decades. Though Lucas hasn't done half as well with his other adventures, thank goodness for Lucas and his vision! It's such an alien way of thinking today, with streaming or downloading full length features in 4K, but back in 1977, the only way you could see Star Wars, ( or any other number of features or cartoons), was either on TV, rerelease in the theaters ...or on those precious little super 8 reels! Although VHS existed at the time, Star Wars wouldn't be released on VHS for years to come, so, to the absolutely wonder of wonders, to see on your super 8 big screen at home, that Millenium Falcon, Tie Fighter battle in all it's glory, was, well, AWESOME!! ( Yes, I wore out at least three 200ft Digests ).

[Rob Young]

And Ken obviously also wore out some of the negatives for Empire Pt.1 as I have an early release and a later one; the later one has lost the cross fade when Luke is knocked from his Tauntaun and also ends more abruptly as the Falcon enters the "asteroid". The last two shots with, "I hope you know what you're doing" are gone. I'm guessing negative wear made the cuts necessary.

Also, the UK prints of Star Wars Pt.1 were terrible compared to the US originals, or "imports" as we called them here!!! Mountain films here had some printed by a UK lab and boxed them in cardboard. They were soft, bounced and had odd soft black masking top and bottom of frame. Luckily, the first version I owned was the US version which was sharp and steady. They guy I went to at "The Movie Cabin" knew his stuff and wouldn't stock the inferior UK prints.

It would be many years later that I bought the 200ft colour / sound version, but mine suffered from a lot of negative sparkle. Obviously the negative had been through a LOT of print runs...