A Few Years Ago In A Cinema Not Too Far Away - Part The First

I once came within a hair's breadth* of sitting in a private screening room with the chief Force-monger himself, to watch Star Wars Episode III: Revenge Of The Sith about a week before it came out. This may seem like a somewhat extravagant claim but it is very much the truth.

"How is this possible, oh bald narrator of ours?" I hear you etc., etc. Well, I'm glad you did etc., etc. as that's exactly what you're going to get so any other line of questioning would only have lead to disappointment on your part. And I don't like to think that I'm leaving you bloggily unfulfilled.

Our saga begins back in the early days of 2005 as hype for the release of the last ever Star Wars was building. Admittedly, after some measure of disappointment at the first couple of sequels, I was quite as excited as I once would have been but I'm nothing if not George Lucas' little bitch so I was till keen to see it.A fact of which my brother's flatmate of the time was perfectly aware. At that time, he was working as a cameraman on a daily show for MTV UK called TRL. The show was running a competition and he felt that it would tick my boxes in two particular ways. Firstly, the prizes were Star Wars-related. The main winner would be flown out to Skywalker Ranch in California for a private screening of the film hosted by Mr Lucas (with second place getting a pair of tickets to the red carpet in Leicester Square, again with an appearance from Herr Lucas and third place getting a couple of tickets to a marathon screening of all six films on the same day as the premiere).

The second reason it was right up my alley? The method of entry. In order to be eligible for the competition, you had to submit a thirty second Star Wars film what you had made yourself. All well and good but, this being a comp on a satellite channel with no small amount of effort being required to enter, they weren't exactly inundated with entries. If I could whip something up before the deadline for entry expired within the next two days, I was in with a good chance of being considered. Well, i like a good film-based challenge so the game was on...

To Be Furthered

* This is an expression, naturally, and should not taken literally.