Blue Harvest
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Blue Harvest was the title of a fictitious film utilized to ensure secrecy and disguise the actual 1981-1983 production of the third installment of the Star Wars film series, Return of the Jedi. The supposed film was alleged to be an upcoming horror film with the tag line "Horror Beyond Imagination".
The title was used in all areas where it seemed necessary. The Blue Harvest ruse, credited to producer Howard Kazanjian, was very thorough, emblazoning the fictitious film's logo on a wide range of film production items including shirts, caps, coats, buttons, signs, invoices and stationery. The Blue Harvest facade did give a bit of a wink and nod to its true purpose however, as the supposed film's logo (intentionally or unintentionally) utilized the distinctive Star Wars logo lettering style.
In particular the ruse was employed during location filming in Yuma, Arizona. The filming took place in the dunes over the Thanksgiving holiday, where there was a reported crowd of 35,000 dune buggy enthusiasts. After erecting a chain link fence, employing a huge security force, and dodging a myriad of press inquiries, in the end approximately sixty fans saw through the ruse and refused to leave till they obtained a few autographs and photos.
The Blue Harvest front was not only used during the principal photography for Return of the Jedi, but was also adopted in other areas such as a retro T-shirt that was made by ILM in the 1990s, a cardboard mailer tube to disguise the shipments of Revenge of the Jedi (the original title for the film) posters, an episode of the Ewoks cartoon series, and even a popular Star Wars fanzine. The name Blue Harvest is widely known by Star Wars fans today.
- "When shooting [Jedi] in the United States we called the film Blue Harvest. Camera slates, invoices, hotel reservations, call sheets, production reports, and crew hats and T-shirts all read Blue Harvest. So when a visitor would ask, 'what are you shooting' and we said Blue Harvest, they went on their way. Can you imagine what would have happened if we had said, 'We're shooting the next film in the Star Wars trilogy'?" - Howard Kazanjian, producer [1] (http://www.starwars.com/episode-vi/classic/2000/07/classic20000703.html)
Whilst filming The Empire Strikes Back, Lucas found that services would increase their charges based on the speculated high budget. The false title prevented this for Jedi.
Blue Harvest is also mentioned in the computer game: Deus Ex. On Paul's computer in New York there is an email about video rentals, Blue Harvest is one of the films.