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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 film 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.


I think I would like to know what he thought of the scenes that were later replaced by pick-up shooting. What did the film look like before: 1/12/77 With additional funding secured from FOX, a week of additional photography and re-shoot footage begins at Death Valley, California. First off is new landspeeder footage (without Mark Hamill on the first few days, who is recovering from car crash injuries. Though he is released from hospital a few days later, the scenes he later shoots at Death Valley are unusable due to his facial injuries being so prominent). Also filmed are sequences with a Bantha, played by Mardji the Elephant, and filmed in Desolation Canyon.

The area named Dante’s View was used for the reshoot view of Mos Eisley spaceport, whilst the scene of Artoo wandering through the rocky hills of the Dune Sea area (and the previous moment where he and Threepio go their separate ways) were filmed at Stovepipe Wells Village, whilst his newly shot capture by the Jawas was taken at Artoo’s Arroyo