Star Wars Holiday Special 2: My Homage to the Strange Side of Star Wars

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What I loved about Star Wars as a kid was the vastness of it’s universe. I read the Thrawn trilogy and all of the encyclopedias, concept art and source books I could get my hands on when I was 13, and then proceeded to dive into the dizzying array of Star Wars comics, cartoons, toys and video games thereafter. It felt like such a big place to explore, and what I liked most was the weird stuff: the off kilter design elements on the edges of the frames in the movies, the weird characters and creatures from the cheapo 80’s cartoons and Ewok movies, and all the ditched concept art and strange pixelated video game characters and locations. To this day I still love to try to find new details in old Star Wars Playstation and N64 games, read old drafts of scripts and even books on the designs of such bizarre Star Wars detours as Shadows of the Empire and the much maligned Star wars Holiday Special.

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This short film is my love letter to the strangeness of Star Wars: the most terrible homemade sequel I could possibly conceive to the original Star Wars Holiday Special, a DVD bootleg copy of which I foist on my family every December and end up watching alone after they’ve all managed to escape. Gary Fraptious, a recurring character on my comedy sketch channel Probably Okay played by my friend Scott McElroy, was the best character to star in this film due to his joyfully incoherent madness. We envisioned the sequel that Gary would create to be a chaotic fan fiction mess, filled with ships and characters played by my vintage Star Wars toys and music and visual effects lifted from classic Star Wars video games. We also included a cameo for our friend Rebecca, who plays a recurring character in our other Gary Fraptious shorts.

I shot the entire video on a low-fi digital camera–the Digital Harinezumi–in Scott’s garage to get the homemade VHS look and sound I wanted. We used a a small pop-up green screen and a single light, and the resulting footage was blown out and almost impossible to key–perfect. The footage still looked and sounded too good, so I added some damaged VHS tracking overlay and that distinct VHS hum in post. It’s still not the most convincing looking VHS effect but at least it’s reminiscent of the medium. If I ever do a project like this again I’ll either use this app or shoot with an actual VHS camera and tape.

Here’s the finished product in all it’s lo-fi incoherent glory. Happy Space Christmas everyone!