Sharpen your lightsabers and punch it to hyperspace. Leia has the stolen pans and Vader has the world’s worst construction project underway for the first time. The greater Northampton community is going to remake the classic 1977 space samurai western Star Wars Episode IV A New Hope as the public art project Crowdsourced Cinema returns for its 8th year.
The bad news is there’s no budget. No budget for crew or music. No budget for special effects. The good news is we have The Force. Gather your friends and family. Call up your coworkers and round up your pod(racer). Or your class. Or your neighbors. Pick your lightsaber color and sign your team up. I have a good feeling about this one.
MUSICIAN/COMPOSER SIGN UP HERE
Each team (which is one or more people) signs up to participate in the project and are randomly assigned a one-to-three minute scene from the film. They have all summer to remake that scene. That remake can approach the scene in any format and teams are encouraged to be creative – they could be filmed with live action, animation, remix, puppetry, or other visual styles. The scenes are stitched together at the end of the summer, color corrected, audio normalized, and we’ll all get together at the end to celebrate the premier.
The Crowdsourced Cinema project now runs in parallel in three geographic regions, here in Western Mass, in Boston led by Brookline Interactive Group as Crowdsourced Boston and in Vermont led by the Media Factory as Crowdsourced VT. We’ll all be making our own remakes of Star Wars A New Hope
GALACTIC STANDARD CALENDAR DATES
April 11 Signups Open
May 4 Scene and Soundtrack Assignments Begin
August 1 Scenes Due
August 15 Soundtrack Due
October 14 Film Premiere
“Creation is an act of bravery,” said Northampton Open Media Executive Director Albert Williams. “The act of making something is an act that exposes your voice. It opens you to judgment. It is intimate. While many people feel the desire to make art, the concept of being an artist is culturally reserved for a privileged group. Part of our role with the project, and with our work at large, is to help people give themselves permission to be brave with us, to identify as an artist, to make something. Crowdsourced Cinema is a playful project, because play is safe. We believe that becoming fluent in arts-like media making makes us more fluent in describing ourselves. We are more thoughtful. We are a stronger community.”
