After crafting two dazzling fan films that land Star Wars characters in everyday San Francisco, Mike Horn has proven that he has a gift not only for CGI, but also for sci-fi satire.

His latest short, embedded below, features the Death Star vaporizing Star Trek‘s beloved Enterprise, a subtle jab at the runaway success of J.J. Abrams’ recently released Star Trek reboot.

“I wanted to riff off Star Trek IV, in which the crew has traveled back in time again to San Francisco to collect more whales, this time in their new Enterprise, as opposed to a Klingon Bird of Prey,” Horn explained to Wired.com by e-mail. “With all the Star Trek hype going on, I thought it would be fun to ruffle some Trekkie feathers, and also remind everyone of our other beloved sci-fi franchise.”

Horn, who has spent his days as an editor at Current TV since its launch in 2005 and also directs for San Francisco video shop Rehab, doesn’t have a beef against Trek, although he finds it contains more cheese than his favored Star Wars. He just likes to seamlessly mash up sci-fi legends.

He spent about 50 hours on his recent clip, he says, using Mocha for motion tracking, After Effects for compositing and Final Cut Pro for editing, sound design and mixing. He also raised the stakes by shooting in high definition with a Canon HG20.

Another upgrade: He turned to the storm-trooper actors of the 501st Legion. After he released his first stunning video, “Death Star Over San Francisco,” embedded at bottom, fans of that sweet but somewhat destabilizing short suggested he bring on board the 501st’s Star Wars costume champs for future efforts. In little time, Horn says, he had signed “four very generous volunteers named Edward Karl, David Buckley, Keita Moriwak and Anthony Tse. Booyah!”

Horn’s most-recent fan film dropped right as Star Trek‘s mojo hit warp 9, but it also launched very close to George Lucas’ May 14 birthday. Horn’s still waiting for his first communique from Skywalker Ranch.

“Lucas has not called me yet,” Horn says, “but if he did, I’d certainly express my gratitude toward him for making my childhood so magical. His cultural and technological legacy is enormous. My favorite Star Wars films are the original trilogy, and of the newer trilogy, I’d oddly have to say Phantom Menace was my favorite.”

Horn’s next project won’t involve the Death Star annihilating an army of killer robots, but that’s just because he doesn’t have time to squeeze out another video before Terminator Salvation‘s release. He is mulling a Star Wars and Transformers mashup, though, in honor of the late-June release of Revenge of the Fallen. He’s also thinking bigger, but more intimate, for his next Star Wars standalone.

“I’d like to do a sappy Lifetime/Hallmark story about a storm-trooper on Endor who rescues a baby Ewok and raises him as his son,” Horn says. “That might require more money than I usually spend, which is zero.”

He’s also got a partial script, based on Ray Kurzweil’s The Age of Spiritual Machines, that follows a “dying priest in the future who gets his mind digitized so he can continue living.”

Until then, Horn is pondering updating his personal site, which would be a hot spot of video mash if he ever got around to building it beyond the deranged Popeye photo, (photo at top). It’s on his list of things to do.

“The captain pic was a Mother’s Day gift to my mom,” he says. “I’ll update the site once I lock down a sweet 1994-style design, animated GIFs and all.”

Top Photo: Video editor and indie filmmaker Mike Horn has crafted two of the coolest Star Wars fan flicks.

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