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Christmas in the Stars: a Radical Holiday Special edit (Released)

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 (Edited)

Happy Life Day! ‘Christmas in the Stars’ is a project that I’ve been wanting to do for a long time and I finally have a version that I feel comfortable sharing.

Essentially, it’s the Holiday Special cut down about as much as possible. All told, I got it down to approximately 25 minutes. That includes the full cartoon segment and a super-condensed version of the live action story which features very few scenes without the main Star Wars cast.

But it’s a little different than just an aggressive edit of the Holiday Special because bookending the two stories (cartoon and live action), are some short wraparound segments with C-3PO and R2-D2. These were made from footage from the 1977 Making Of Doc and dialogue pulled from a variety of sources (mostly that special and the radio drama). I also used some original Star Tours footage toward the end.

Some day, I’d like to do a much more elaborate version of this which would involve replacing all the footage that’s repurposed from the film and putting together an entirely new soundtrack. But, this is a pretty good first version, I think. I hope you enjoy it.

Full Edit: https://youtu.be/AbC5MbFeU88

My YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXnq2soRMB-8vqvL-6NHIOg

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Just watched it! It was a really clever idea to use footage from the making of Doc as a framing device. Besides some audio hiccups I think it works really really well. I think I would cut out 3PO’s line about his arm since it isn’t really relevant to the Boba Fett story.

I think using that as a framing device could make for another interesting edit where you could have three small stories that R2 and 3PO tell. Obviously you have the Boba Fett story and the story about Chewie’s family. But three would be a good number to round the whole thing off I think. I was trying to think of what other story you could fit into there, and I think it would be really interesting if you took all the Star Wars deleted scenes of Luke before his introduction and turned it into that third story. I don’t really know if there would be enough footage or any relevant dialogue from the Making of Doc for it to fit in there, but in retrospect it would have made a lot of sense for them to have included that material into the Holiday Special in some way. I think a lot of fans would have loved to have seen a bit of Luke’s life before he got caught up in the whole adventure.

Anyway, I think giving this a nice Christmas vibe was great, and good timing for some fans to watch before seeing Rise of Skywalker next week!

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That’s a good suggestion about the deleted scenes. I might try that out. I had the same thought about wanting 3 stories instead of 2 but all I could come up with was the Bea Arthur song from the HS.

If I ever get around to doing a more polished and elaborate version of this, I think the deleted scenes idea is a really good one.

My YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXnq2soRMB-8vqvL-6NHIOg

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I’m glad you like that suggestion, I was worried that it would seek irrelevant to your project. I’m glad I’m not the only one who felt like three stories would fit well into this! And like I said, in an alternate universe the ‘78 Holiday Special really could’ve included those scenes (especially since the Life Day story actually reuses deleted footage of Vader). But again, this is really cool and I’ll probably end up watching this with my friends this month!