While Disney continues work on the latest Star Wars movie, legions of fans have been working hard on producing their own version of Empire Strikes Back, perhaps the best movie of either trilogy. The concept of the project, Empire Strikes Back Uncut, was to allow fans to submit custom 15-second clips that re-imagine scenes from the movie. At the end of it all, the submissions would be stitched together to re-create the classic movie.
The project received over 1,500 submissions, and nearly 1/3 of them were selected to create the movie, available for free on YouTube. The film clocks in at over two hours, but the quality of the overall work is top notch, even if some of the submissions were a little weak.
This isn"t the first Star Wars project that"s been completed this way, either. The same team that did Empire Strikes Back Uncut also did the original Star Wars movie over four years ago. That submission even won an Emmy for Outstanding Achievement in Interactive Media in 2010.
While most people traditionally think of sites like Kickstarter when they think of crowdsourcing, the Empire Strike Backs Uncut film goes to show that you can harness the power of the Internet to do more than just raise money. It also shows that there"s a lot of crazy, passionate fans out there, ready to lend a hand.