Even with the endless amount of film footage (including rare screen tests featuring a young Kurt Russell, Cindy Williams, William Katt and others in the principal roles), photographs, scripts and various memos, Burns' team approached researching the project with a keen sense of a story line, rather than presenting the story in an endless display of material.

"We didn't go through everything in the archive and then tell our story," Burns explains. "We begin with the story and then looked through the archive for things that support it. We started out knowing that this would end up being a two-hour documentary, and that would also be on A&E; in a 90-minute format. So we broke down everything into acts. Then you break down each act (running from 8-10 minutes) into its own little story arc, and end each act with a hook that leads the viewer to the next act, almost like a cliffhanger. When a documentary is organized like chapters of a book, it's a great way to keep the story paced, and also giving you a place to go."

In addition to the research materials provided by the Lucasfilm Archives, Burns and his team interviewed over 40 people including well-known cast and crew members such as Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill, Anthony Daniels, Kenny Baker, Peter Mayhew, Irvin Kershner, Ben Burtt and of course George Lucas. The team also sat down with the Star Wars producers, studio heads, screenwriters, set designers, artists, creature shop technicians and the special effects pioneers at Industrial Light & Magic. The gathered footage would also include the last onscreen interview with stunt coordinator Peter Diamond.

"We approached these interviews not merely to get a few sound bites for the documentary, but as archival interviews," Burns says. "We're shooting them in high definition, they're going to be part of the Lucasfilm Archives and so we really wanted to ask questions that hadn't been asked before that sometimes embraced controversy. One of the things that the people we interviewed asked was 'Can we be honest and say some things that might be considered somewhat critical?' And we said yes."

In fact, one of the more critical interviews was with Lucas himself.

"What really struck me was the parallel between George and Luke Skywalker -- the idea of the young farm boy from Modesto who takes on the evil empire of Hollywood bringing with him the merry band of Rebels like ILM. There is a lot to that. But the irony is, and George acknowledges this at the end of our documentary when he said that he started out being against corporations and then found himself the head of a corporation. We deliberately used that shot of Luke at Dagobah fighting Vader in the cave, where the mask is Luke's face when George was talking about himself. We wanted to show that was part of George's life journey. That sometimes the Rebel can become the Emperor by virtue of his own success. It was a very human moment when George acknowledges that he became the very thing he was fighting against," says Burns.

"Perhaps there's a morality tale not just in the Star Wars Trilogy, but also in Empire of Dreams," Burns suggests. "When you see the fact that George's journey echoes that of Luke Skywalker, you appreciate what you see on the screen that much more."

As the deadline approached, Burns and his team busily edited the acts together to create a cohesive history of the Star Wars film productions. However, once the first cut was shown, the documentary still needed an added element to show the true cultural significance of the films.

"When we cut the whole thing together and it was virtually finished and everyone loved it," Burns says. "But George had seen the cut and thought there was something missing. He had said that it was wonderful to see all these people who worked on the films talk about them, but that we also needed to have some people who are more objective. Someone who's like a sociologist or a social historian to evaluate the films. Or else you only had people who knew George talk about what they did. There was no one to talk about the cultural impact or fallout of these films. And so we thought who could we get? And you find that there are not a lot of people who have credibility who can and should talk about this."

Lucas suggested that the team interview journalism icons Walter Cronkite and Bill Moyers. Both Lucas and Moyers were fans of author and philosopher Joseph Campbell who spoke a great deal on the power of the modern myth which heavily resonated in the story line of the Star Wars saga. However, due to time constraints, Moyers was unavailable to shoot new footage, so Burns' asked ABC News for permission to use clips of a Moyers' interview that was previously used for Lucas' Biography special on A&E;, and used that in Empire of Dreams. University of Southern California Professor and Cultural Historian Leo Braudy added to the social commentary lineup.

Once Burns' team edited in the new footage and had a rough cut ready, they realized the documentary had grown over the two-hour limit set by Lucasfilm.

"We had so much material at our disposal that it ended up being a 2 1/2-hour documentary out of 2 hours and 40 minutes of material," Burns says. "We ended up cutting about ten minutes and then I called Jim Ward and said, 'It's way too long.' And he said, 'Don't touch it.'"

The little footage that was cut from the finished documentary included a reference to the infamous "Star Wars Holiday Special," the 1978 television extravanganza featuring the unlikely cast of Bea Arthur, Art Carney, Diahann Carroll, and Harvey Korman, in addition to A New Hope actors Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Anthony Daniels, and Peter Mayhew.

"I wanted it in the documentary to show early on how the studio could easily take control and make poor decisions once a film has proven to be a success," Burns explains. "It showed how Star Wars could have been if mishandled. George didn't want Star Wars to become burlesqued or treated like a kiddie show. And we wanted to make a point in the documentary that this was what George was petrified would happen to Star Wars if he hadn't had taken full control."

But the footage didn't quite fit with the overall premise of the documentary and instead ended up on the cutting room floor, "until I can make a director's cut of Empire of Dreams," Burns jokes.