generalfrevious said:

Let's face it, Lucas would be living on the streets if the very people he later threw out did not save ANH in editing.

Absolutely!

'Empire of dreams' is one of the best docs about film making SW or not (Should've been on the Blu-ray in HD ffs!). It clearly shows that Lucas went to Tunisia and London and shot what looked and sounded like a piece of crap. If I was a Fox exec and I'd viewed some of the rushes from ANH in late '76 that we see in EOD I'd have sh*t my pants!

But then world class editors, sound people and special effects wiz-kids took hold of George's disaster and carved it frame by frame into a masterpiece.

"A great film isn't directed, it's edited" - Orson Welles

So many mistakes in SW footage (That Adywan has corrected) that they tried to cover up with sound and SF. You just have to look at the fastforward/rewind Tuskan bit to see what these guys did for the film. The Tusken howling is totally iconic and it was created by the editors and Ben Burtt... not Lucas.

Lucas has a great imagination like no other but he's not a good director (He can frame a nice shot, I'll give him that), or writer or anything else! The only halfway decent film he ever directed (Without a big crew of technicians to bail him out) was 'American Graffiti'.