This is my effort to basically bring 20th Century Fox's "SAVAGE HARVEST" to the digital relhm, and to home video in NTSC land, for the first time ever, but a quick story of how this all came into development...
First, I am a big fan of Scream! Factory's releases, i have the entire collection on Blu-Ray/DVD, and while perusing the Scream! Factory thread at blu-ray.com, and while looking at all the wish lists there, saw someone posted a poster of a movie SAVAGE HARVEST. i was thinking "wow, that poster actually looks really freakin' cool." I went to see if i could find a DVD of it on ebay or amazon. No luck, other than some bootlegs. Went to see if i could find a VHS of it, again, no luck. looked for a beta-max? again, no luck. from what it appeared to me, this movie was just never released in the US to any home video format. now i saw the bootegs, and they were all going for like 20-50 bucks, and all had already been sold (i was viewing completed listings), so i went to torrent to see if could find it. no luck. i went to youtube to see if i could find, now i did find something on youtube. I found a 4x3 framed VHS copy, that appeared to be probably 8 generations removed from the source material, the colors were almost completely washed out, it was awful.
It was in English dialogue, with some form of Asian subs to boot.
There was another vesion, with much better color fidelity, but it was a 16x9 crop, of the 4x3 crop, of the original 1.86:1 AR,
a side by side comparison of the 2 versions i found
but it was in spanish dialogue dubs. So i could not even watch that. So i had to go back to the washed out version, and it was just a horrible, horrible experience. BUt i watched it, and fell in love with the story and characters. I told myself "there has to be a better way to enjoy this film!"
i contacted Scream! Factory on facebook and stated "give us Savage Harvest!" to which they replied: "Sorry, we can't. Music rights - in particular, a beatles song that plays in a prominent scene - will likely prevent this one from ever coming out." BUMMER! so that is why it has never been released... because of paul, george, yoko and ringo's greed! so there really is no clear way to get this out to the masses. of course there is that bootleg that is floating around on ebay, but thats pretty pricey for what could or could not be the extremely washed out version that i already saw on youtube, and why would i pay some schmuck for something i can just make myself, and share with everyone else on the internet? so then it occured to me "i edit video, i know what i am doing... i'll just make my own, and NOT sell it on ebay for inflated prices." so the project was born.
to do this what i needed was a good quality video and as much i would like to purchase one of the bootlegs on ebay, 1) i am not sure of what the quality would be 2) there were none available to bid for. so i decided to go with a less conventional method for now, until i can confirm the DVD Bootleg version for later (this will be an ongoing process, but this is the baseline for this project) so i downloaded the english dialogue crapovision version, and the spanish dialogue better-vision version, and dropped them both into Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2014 and started to compare the streams, i noticed that since the spanish version was dubbed, the spanish dialogue was going faster than the scenes, so the entire video was sped up by 4-5%, so basically i had to go pretty much through the timeline about 30 seconds at a time, cut the footage, and streth it out to match the english version, sometimes doing it as precice as camera angle to camer angle, but in the end it came out to be almost 98% in sync. some parts its goes slightly out of sync in dialogue heavy moments, but its not any worse than say Hell Of The Living Dead or The New York Ripper. below is the finished product that i have posted to YouTube.
Now, after i completed the initial editing phase, i decided i want this on disk format, so i exported it out as mepg2 dvd at a 1.86:1 AR and imported that in Adobe Encore CS6, the menu came out to be all kinds of fun, i used lion paws and scratches for the highlight layers :D its really cool. and since i really really wanted this out on Scream Factory, i added an opening Shout! Factory logo at the begining as a humble homage to what could have been, but never will.
After i completed production, i thought "i can't just out this in an envelope, i need to put this in a case" so i rendered out a fancy cover insert with all the appropriate Scream! Factory logos, as the ultimate fan homage. so here is the outside insert
and with no further ado, you can also download the .iso of the dvd as well to burn yourself, burn the disc, primt the inserts, and add to your shelf :)
