A Word from Peter Roberts
Director of "DESERT DUEL"

Desert Duel is a short film that went into pre-production early in 1997 and has involved the hard work of many talented individuals within StarWalking Inc., the Star Wars appreciation society of Australia.

It tells the simple story of a small band of Jawas who encounter an Imperial Probe Droid on Tattooine. It is modeled on the scenes in A New Hope where R2 D2 is captured by the desert scavengers in that there is no recognizable dialogue and no humans. What it does have is plenty of hunting, chasing, falling, shooting, yelling, shoving, running, hitting, crashing and exploding!

It was filmed entirely within the mostly green state of Victoria and involved the acting talents of 15 children, mostly those of the adult cast and crew. The old showbiz maxim of never working with animals and children was proven correct as the heat combined with dust and hot costumes. Tempers were tested to the limit over 15 days of shooting during late 1998 and early 1999 but finally production was over and we could go indoors to put it together. An unfinished version of the film was shown at Force Three?s fan film festival in June 1999. The finished edit runs for about 18 minutes.

Many thanks to Justin Dix, Tracey Payne and Steve "Moose Man" Kelsall, who dropped everything to help on all the shoots. Thanks also to Cameron Smith and Rob Hamilton who?ve spent many hours in front of their computers putting it all together. Thank you to Sean Donnelly, Adam and Cheryl Gill, Karen Fletcher, H Gibbens, Andrew Thilby, Dave Hankin, Dan Bryan, Paul Noble, and of course, my long-suffering wife Joanne and the wonderful under age cast who freely provided all their time and talent to the project.

May the Force be with you!

Peter Roberts

Director, Desert Duel