The original Lego Star Wars

I attempted to make a Super-8 animated-Lego version of Star Wars when I was 14 – in 1982 or so. I had made several other animated movies, Lego-powered and otherwise, but this was my most ambitious project. Over several weeks of painstaking stop-motion animation, I got as far as the escape-from-the-Death-Star scene. In real time this was about four minutes of footage (yes, it was a multi-reel production), but as anyone who has done traditional animation can tell you, that’s a lot of work.

Anyway, one night, our Golden Retriever named Sugar had puppies. This event was not a total surprise, naturally, but it hadn’t really been on my mind. Somebody grabbed the camera out of my room to document the miracle of birth and, well, I never made it back to my magnum opus.

I recently came across this tiny animated GIF I made many years ago – I had scanned a few feet of the film and sliced the individual frames in Photoshop. In case the 0.0034-megapixel resolution makes it hard to pick out the details, what I believe is happening here is Han and Chewie are blasting their way through some hapless stomtroopers. The pyrotechnics are actual burning match-heads. Blaster bolts were to be added in a post-production phase that never came.

I still have the original film. Can anybody recommend a trusted vendor for doing a digital transfer?

David Reynolds commented :

How much of the film td you manage to do?

Paul commented :

David – In about 4-5 minutes of breakneck footage I think I got from the opening credits to the climactic Obi-Wan/Vader lightsaber battle aboard the Death Star. I also think that my scene-list was quite selective and completely from memory. I haven’t watched it in many years. I located my old transfer box, so the digital conversion may actually happen as a summer project!