The Crowdsource Be With You
A long time ago in a galaxy not too far from here a movie called Star Wars first hit the cinema screens and changed Hollywood forever.
Since those heady days of the late 1970s there have been countless versions, digital updates and special editions of all six Star Wars movies that have kept the franchise alive.
But the Empire has seen nothing like the latest incarnation, a recently released crowdsourced version that has taken the Internet by storm.
Called Star Wars: A New Hope the crowdsourced film spent nearly three years in production. It is a shot-to-shot copy of the first ever Stars Wars film, and has been put together from hundreds of 15 second segments sent in from all over the world.
The mastermind behind the initiative is web developer Casey Pugh who was inspired by a number of crowdsourced video projects that he had seen on the net. He wondered if he could do something similar, but on a much grander scale than had been seen before.
He had a particular soft spot for Star Wars and so in 2009 he put out the call for filmmakers to recreate scenes in any way they saw fit. To keep on top of the process he devised a few simple rules.
Participants previewed the 473 scenes available and could choose a maximum of three to work on. If a scene was not completed within 30 days it went back into the general pool. When there were multiple versions of scenes visitors to the Star Wars Uncut website voted for their favourite.
In 2010 a shorter preview of the project won a Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Creative Achievement in Interactive media.
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