If you'd like to catch up on the previous films in the Star Wars universe before The Force Awakens comes out this week, this is about as fast as you can do it:

Though Eclectic Method's video may not seem all that relevant, the concept is directly related to what we're trying to do as filmmakers all the time. Quick cuts can be nauseating, and they did cheat a little by speeding it up in spots, but there is an unbelievable amount of information conveyed here, and it's all put together in a pretty coherent way considering it was cut down from six different movies. In a lot of ways, this is our job as storytellers when we make our films — we're taking tons of raw footage and sculpting it down into the shortest and most entertaining form possible for the audience (Generally speaking, of course, as films can serve all sorts of different purposes than just entertainment).

Apparently Topher Grace (yes, the actor) did some editing in his spare time and came up with a similar idea, but for his experiment he edited the three prequel movies into one 85-minute film:

And just for fun, we've also got a bunch of the trailers and footage for The Force Awakens collected in one. There are some videos that actually take as much footage as possible from different sources and edit them together chronologically, but to me that feels like it's giving a bit too much away. Either way, if you've been trying to avoid any spoilers, skip this video and go into the movie as fresh as possible. For everyone else, prepare to get excited:

Source: Eclectic Method

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