This is what happens (best case) when geeks have too much free time. My friend John Martin and I decided to take part in Star Wars Uncut, an experiment to recreate Star Wars: A New Hope in a series of several hundred 15 second chunks, each created by random people across the internet. I chose a scene with a pleasant blend of dialog and pyrotechnics.
John has an inordinate quantity of Star Wars merchandise, so we went with stop motion animation for the scene, something neither of us was familiar with. We found the actual action figures for almost every part of the 15 seconds, and really only had to improvise on the explosions, as we would rather not blow up collectibles.
With assistance from Peter Martin and Meg Blake, we fabricated Y-wings out of soda bottles, cardboard tubes, cardboard, and spray paint. We filled each with a mixture of half potassium nitrate and half sugar, lit it with a fuse, and dragged it with a string as we took pictures. As you can see by the video above, the results are reasonable for an afternoon of filming and a $0 budget.