Star Wars Uncut creators wow SXSW with crowdsourcing tales

AUSTIN, Texas--There's no denying that most of us are "Star Wars" fans, but how many of us ever thought our own work could complement George Lucas' immortal screenplay? For thousands of people, the wonderful Star Wars Uncut project has been the key to pretending, even if for just 15 seconds, that we've got a little Lucas in us.

For those unaware of it, Star Wars Uncut is an ongoing project that tasked fans with recreating 15-second scenes from the original film in any way they can think of. Fans responded by the thousands, and thanks to a savvy system built by its creators, the best takes on each scene are the ones that have made it into the dynamically-constructed new version of the movie.

On Saturday at the South by Southwest (SXSW) conference here, the three lead creators of Star Wars Uncut took the stage before an adoring room and explained, often to raucous laughter, just how they turned to the global community of "Star Wars" fans and created what turned out to be an Emmy-winning and outright terrific new version of the classic 1977 movie.

Watching Star Wars Uncut is about as much fun as one can have at the movies. As part of their presentation, the film's creators showed the first 15 minutes, which are a cacophony of fantastic artistic styles, outrageous takes on the famous "Star Wars" scenes, and side-splitting inside jokes. And all done in a way that's entirely faithful to Lucas' original script. Think R2D2 as a Red Bull can, or the Jawas' transport as a Barbie car. Think beautiful animation, 8bit graphics, babies dressed as Stormtroopers, and much, much more.