Tauranga fans of the Star Wars franchise have been remaking their own full length versions of Star Wars movies.

Rosalie Liddle Crawford caught up with the group in the weekend to see why they do what they do.

The group, calling themselves "The Knights of Renesmee", and led by Andrew Duncanson, have spent hours over the summer faithfully filming each scene of the classic "Star Wars: Episode II: Attack of the Clones".

"Whilst Attack of the Clones is undoubtedly a masterpiece," says the group's editor Tim Hoekstra, "and almost universally regarded as the greatest instalment in the Star Wars saga, some of the special effects have aged and the acting could be improved - despite the script being flawless."

"Our previous effort 'Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith' is currently sitting on 182,000 views and even made it to US cable TV," says Tim. He'd emailed me about the near completion of their latest Tauranga-based production and invited me to come around and interview them.

"I think we have a story worth telling despite our extremely amateur production quality and obvious immaturity."

I watched the trailer and was hooked! I decided to go interview them 'on the couch' at Andrew's parent's home in Matua.

Recreating movies from scratch with whatever you can get your hands on is called sweding. Born out of the mispronunciation of 'sueding” (as in fake leather) by French director Michael Gondry, sweding's roots lie firmly in the movie industry. Gondry coined the term for his film 'Be Kind Rewind', which had two friends sweding movies from a video rental shop after one of them accidentally wiped them all, because he was magnetized. Soon after the release of 'Be Kind Rewind', sweding took the world by storm, with geeks everywhere recreating their favourite movies.

Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith had a budget of about $113 million, but the The Knights of Renesmee put together their full movie remake for a fraction of that cost and posted it to Tim's YouTube channel. The crew took five days to film, in bathrooms, in cars, and on the beach.

After the 'global success' of their first movie remake, they decided to remake "Star Wars: Episode II: Attack of the Clones".

"With sweding, a lot of people try really hard, they try to get the costumes and settings right," says Andrew. "But the really distinctive thing about our work is that we really don't try that hard. We just have fun."

"We were massive fans of Star Wars to start with," says Daniel Nicholson who plays Obi Wan Kenobi. "Andrew and Tim started talking about making a Star Wars movie.

"When a new film gets released, we always have a Star Wars marathon, watching all the previous movies, leading up to the new one. I think it started with Tim, our editor who said instead of watching all these Star Wars movies why don't we make one."

They watch the movies in the double garage under the house. This is where they also store their costumes and props.

Aidan Smith who plays Captain Typho wasn't involved in the group's first movie remake.

"I saw the first movie," says Aidan," and I thought this was the funniest thing I'd ever seen in my life. I loved it. Because it was so .....bad! It was so bad, that it was so good. It was so far from the real movie that I thought - this is actually really funny."

"We filmed one scene at the premiere of the last Star Wars movie, and that was hilarious," says Andrew. "We were sitting there eating popcorn. It was the club scene."

The words in the script are supposed to be exactly the same as the real movie, although Andrew thinks it ended up being about 90 per cent faithful to the original script. And the group included a deleted scene. "So ours is actually MORE than the original movie," says Andrew. "It's the scene where Obi gets slapped. And sometimes we added in extra gags."

Locations included at home, and a scene filmed at the nearby marina.

"It's sometimes the beach, and a random park up the road. Heaps of cars went past and I was dressed in next to nothing," says Liam Duncanson who stars as Padme. "Mainly it was filmed in Matua. Mostly here in this house."

"The first movie, the whole thing was in this house," says Daniel.

They roped in about 30 friends and family to act in the latest movie which was filmed on a Samsung Galaxy A5.

"We had a couple of real girls join in, amazingly."

The friends mostly attended Matua Primary School, moving on to Otumoetai and Bethlehem Colleges.

"Our parents all mostly know each other," says Andrew.

As to future projects?

"We will not touch the original trilogy," says Daniel. "For it is too sacred.”

"Our next project will be either 'Episode I: The Phantom Menace' or Episode IX which is yet to be released in 2019," says Andrew. "We're planning to remember as much of the script as we possibly can and then film it the next day. But if we do another one it will be definitely be The Phantom Menace."

The Knights of Renesmee are also keen to remake films from the 'High School Musical' and 'Twilight' franchises.

The film can be viewed on YouTube https://youtu.be/qeyXpsEAfB0 and is a full 2 hours 17 minute remake.

Downstairs in the garage which serves as the set of many of the scenes as well as the costume and props area.