Star Wars: Visions Memories 12

The existence of Screecher’s Reach, and indeed the whole of Visions Volume 2, would be announced in London at Star Wars Celebration 2023. I'll admit it, I’m a bit of a nerd so I’ve been to conventions before but I had never been to a Celebration event so I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. 

My first thought was, oh I’ve been here! A few years before, my daughter and I were in London to see BTS (those angels) and happened upon the Celebrations venue while on a walk. So I already knew the layout and the area, which was handy. 

My next thought was, wow, the vibe is so welcoming, positive and inclusive. 

Real people all coming together for a shared love of hopeful stories. People from all over the world, from all types of backgrounds, dealing with all sorts of challenges, getting to know each other and spreading enthusiasm and warmth. 

Everyone is welcome. It is beautiful. And fun. 

Paul was on a panel announcing Volume 2 of Visions. At one point I’m pretty sure he was looking down for me to check if it was okay to talk about the voice cast. It was, Paul. That was fine. Good job. Paul’s charisma is wonderful and he represented the short and team brilliantly at the event. 

And the excitement built from there. Fans really wanted to see this new Volume of Visions. 

On May 4th (when else?), the episodes were released. Very quickly, YouTube was full of reaction videos. That was nerve wracking. I've made a lot of stuff over the years but not really stuff aimed at people who make reaction videos, so this was new to me. I watched one with two American guys, and I was almost afraid to look. They started making fun of the Irish accents and my face dropped. We’ve lost them! We got it all wrong. Then Daal and the kids got to the cave and those two guys shut up pretty fast. They leaned in. They were gripped. They gasped at the ghost. They were shocked by the ending. And they were left with this haunted look, like, we don’t know quite what to do with that. 

We got them. 

We got exactly what we wanted. And we saw that reaction time and time again. We grabbed people and we took them on a journey that left them shocked and then unsettled. Screecher’s Reach was the highest rated Volume 2 episode on Letterboxd. It was consistently referred to as the highlight in review articles.

We had a success on our hands. 

This journey had all started back in March 2021, at around 3am. I woke up with a story swirling around my head and I sent it to Paul and Will saying I didn’t even know if I’d like it in the morning. More than two years later, it was real. It was a genuine Star Wars story, forever locked to the history of that franchise. 

And people loved it. 

I will always be grateful for that experience. For director Paul and co-writer Will most of all. For James, Josh, Jacqui and our amazing Lucasfilm team. For the incredible talent on our Cartoon Saloon team, each one superstars in their own right. For Leo, the composer. Skywalker Sound and ILM. Everyone who touched that story. And for all the Star Wars fans who watched it and reached out. 

I got some images from the short tattooed on my arm. It is a marker of gratitude. Of achievement. It will stay with me for the rest of my life.

The story, well, the story will live on beyond that.

Thanks for following along with this little Star Wars: Visions journey. That's it for this series of posts. I hope you enjoyed our episode and liked hearing about its creation. I'm sure it will be referenced again as I continue to post about producing, writing, crafting stories and the business of it all.