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A quote from my very defunct Star Wars Rough Cut web site:
The First Rough Cut (7/1976)
As the film was being completed in '76, George Lucas and Gary Kurtz hired John Jympson to edit the film. Jympson assembled a rough cut of the film from all the footage available. Called "The Star Wars", this footage was a 35mm black and white print made from the original color negatives. This print was assembled together to follow the shooting script (the revised 4th draft) to show how the film was progressing.
The original rough cut took up 13 reels of film and contained 30 to 40 percent different footage from the Academy Award winning final edit. It contained different angles of shots, additional scenes, and longer sequences. The rough cut didn't have any of the footage of the rebels aboard the blockade runner, as this footage was still being filmed. Special effects were not part of the flm either, so the laserblasts weren't there and the lightsabers didn't glow. The exterior space shots were also absent as ILM was just beginning to produce their models and filming techniques. This rough cut was also a silent film. This version was recently explored by Dr. David West Reynolds for the Star Wars Insider (issue #41). Most of the information and many of the pictures used on this site come from there.
The Second Rough Cut (1/1977)
A second rough cut was assembled by Lucas as a 'work in progress' to show to his close friends as well as executives from Twentieth Century Fox. Attending this screening in San Anselmo, California were Steven Spielberg, Brian DePalma, Hal Barwood, Jay Cocks, Gloria Katz, Bill Huyck, Matt Robbins Charlie Lippencott, Alan Ladd, Ray Gosnell, Johnny Friedkin, Ashley Boone and Marvel Comic's Roy Thomas.
This version was already very different from the first rough cut. Aside from being in color and having sound, this version had some of the effects in as well. It also had its fair share of cut scenes. Many of the unscripted gags had been cut out as well as other scenes, like the scenes where Luke met his friends at Anchorhead were left on the cutting room floor. This version still retained the earlier opening crawl as well as the montage of WWII fighter planes that stood in place of the final dogfight. This version still had the on-set sounds, instead of the re-worked foley sounds. It also didn't have John William's masterful score. Instead, it has the classical music that Lucas put to it to serve as a temp track to guide Williams when writing the score.
