Harmy's Despecialized Edition: Difference between revisions

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Revision as of 13:53, 8 December 2019

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[[File:Harmy's Despecialized Edition.jpg|thumb|uright|Blu-ray cover]]

'''''Harmy's Despecialized Edition''''' is a series of [[Film preservation|fan restorations]] of the [[Star Wars Trilogy|Original ''Star Wars'' Trilogy]], which consists of ''[[Star Wars (film)|Star Wars]]'' (1977), ''[[The Empire Strikes Back]]'' (1980) and ''[[Return of the Jedi]]'' (1983). The edits are intended to reproduce their appearance as originally shown in cinemas. They were created by a team of ''Star Wars'' fans led by Petr "Harmy" Harmáček, an English teacher from [[Plzeň]], Czech RepublicCzechia. The original ''Star Wars'' trilogy was released theatrically by [[20th Century Fox]] for [[Lucasfilm]] between 1977 and 1983. Subsequent releases on [[home video|home media]], such as the 1997 "Special Edition" releases, introduced significant [[Changes in Star Wars re-releases|changes]] to the films, including additional scenes, altered sound-effects, and new computer-generated imagery – these changes were met with a generally poor response from critics and fans. {{As of|2019}}, the films are no longer commercially available in their original theatrical releases.

Harmáček felt that altering the films in this way constituted "an act of cultural vandalism", and in 2010 was inspired to create his own series of [[fan edit]]s that restored the theatrical releases in [[high-definition video|high definition]]. With no experience in professional film editing, he taught himself as he went, using programs such as [[Avisynth]] and [[Adobe After Effects]]. Taking the 1993 [[LaserDisc]] releases as a guide and a majority of source material from the 2011 [[Blu-ray]] releases, Harmáček and a team of eight other fans constructed the edits over many thousands of hours of work. In 2011, one year after the project had begun, the first version of ''Harmy's Despecialized Edition'' was published online. Updated versions have been created in the years that followed.

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|source=— Petr "Harmy" Harmáček explaining his motivation for creating the ''Despecialized Edition''<ref name=Eveleth/>

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Harmáček began creating his new cuts in 2010.<ref name=Brew/> At the time, he was working as an English teacher in Plzeň, Czech RepublicCzechia, and had no professional experience with film editing.<ref name=Jun/> Instead, he taught himself as the project progressed, beginning with [[Photoshop]] skills that he had developed in college.<ref name=Miller/><ref name=Eveleth/> To remove the post-1977 changes, Harmáček was required to go through the film frame-by-frame, correcting colors and [[rotoscoping]].<ref name=Goldberg/><ref name=Wired/> Undoing some shots took only an hour, while others took hundreds. Lightsabers were color-corrected, shots of the ''[[Millennium Falcon]]'' cockpit were cropped, [[Boba Fett]]'s voice was changed, and CGI characters and backgrounds were removed.<ref name=Miller/> Most of the source material used for ''Harmy's Despecialized Edition'' was taken from the 2011 Blu-ray release, while other sequences were upscaled from the 2006 GOUT DVDs.<ref name=GeekDad/> To create the cuts, source material was taken from the 2011 Blu-ray releases, [[HDTV]] broadcasts of the 2004 DVDs, GOUT, digital broadcasts of the 1997 Special Edition, the 1993 LaserDiscs, digital transfers of a Spanish 35&nbsp;mm Kodak LPP and 70&nbsp;mm film cels, a 16&nbsp;mm print, and still images of the original matte paintings. Harmáček edited these sources together using programs such as Avisynth and Adobe After Effects.<ref name=Hosie/>

To help, Harmáček was assisted by a group of similarly-minded fans from the website OriginalTrilogy.com,<ref name=Smith/> whom he knew by their online aliases Dark Jedi, YouToo, Puggo, Team Negative 1, Belbucus, Hairy_Hen, CatBus and Laserschwert.<ref name=Miller/> In total, the project took thousands of hours of work between them.<ref name=Hosie/> In 2011, one year after the project had begun, the first version of ''Harmy's Despecialized Edition'' was published online;<ref name=Gizmodo/> new and updated versions have been created regularly in the five years that followed.<ref name=Hutchinson/> {{As of|2017|2}}, the most recent "despecialized" versions of ''Star Wars'', ''The Empire Strikes Back'' and ''Return of the Jedi'' are v2.7, v2.0 and v2.5 respectively.<ref name=Eveleth/> As a result of the project, Harmáček was able to quit his teaching job and in 2015 was hired by [[UltraFlix]] to prepare and restore a library of 4K-encoded films for sale and rent. He has since joined UPP, a Prague-based VFX house, as a 2D digital compositor and worked on such projects as ''[[Blade Runner 2049]]'', ''[[Wonder Woman (2017 film)|Wonder Woman]]'', and AMC's ''[[The Terror (TV series)|The Terror]]''.<ref name=Miller/><ref name=Brew/>