Fan Cinema Today

Since the loooooong awaited Iron Man feature film is coming out in a few days, here’s something related: A lovely looking Iron Man fan film done as the intro credits to an imaginary TV show. I interviewed its creator, David Guivant, about it a while back for the fan film book and it didn’t make it in (sorry, David!), but rather than let it go to waste, I’ll be running the interview over a few days. In the meantime, give this thing a gander by clicking this link to io9.com–easily the best fan film ever made by an art teacher from the tiny South Pacific nation of New Caldonia.

So you’re a kid who loves Sci-Fi (and fan films)–or maybe you’re a parent of a kid like that–and you just happen to live in Lake Tahoe. Well, you might wanna look into a course being offered this summer at Lake Tahoe Community College’s day camp Kids College, aimed at tweens ages 10-14. Daryl Frazetti, a professor at the college, will be offering a kid-friendly version of his Star Trek anthropology class called, The Creatures and Cultures of Star Trek and Star Wars. Here’s the course description:

Warp into adventure with your favorite Star Trek and Star Wars characters. This fun and informative course will use the force to help guide travelers to strange new worlds where they will seek out and study the lives of such aliens as Klingons, Ferengi, Vulcans, Wookies, Ewoks, Jedi, and more. We will explore their foods, languages, behaviors and technologies. Be sure to beam aboard and be a part of these intergalactic travels. (15 students maximum)

Each class is two hours long and meets twice a week for roughly a month. The reason I mention it here is that fan films will be a part of the curriculum, and it turns out students will be shooting a little video of their own, so who knows? Maybe some flicks will emerge from the class.

As mentioned some time ago, Frazetti knows his stuff when it comes to fan productions. I was honored a while back to vet an essay he wrote about fan films for a book that’s coming out right around the same time as mine: Fear, Cultural Anxiety and Transformation: Horror, Science Fiction and Fantasy Films Remade. It’s a collection of essays on…well, the book title says it all, really. Frazetti’s essay, “Distinct Identities of Star Trek Fan Film Remakes” covers a lot of ground in a small space, covering history and motivations behind a slew of Trek fan productions. If you’re (hopefully) looking forward to my book, you’ll want to give his essay a read, to be sure. Folks who’ve seen the 1999 documentary, Trekkies, may remember Frazetti well; these days, he’s a professor in the Department of Anthropology at LTCC, but back then, he was “that guy who dresses his cats in Star Trek uniforms.”

DC Comics and its parent company Warner Brothers have had a mixed history with fan films over the years, from shutting down one of the first Superman fan flicks to hit the web, to requesting that San Diego Comic Con respect its copyrights by not presenting fan films featuring its characters—a move that ended the screening of fan films at SDCC after 2003. On the other hand, plenty of fan productions featuring the company’s characters have come online in recent years, and none have endured the cease and desist orders or other suppressive actions that marked the comic book giant’s early interactions with fan filmmakers.

After the 2004 SDCC where the fan film programming was canceled due to the request from Warner Bros. and DC, a story appeared on Superherohype.com that claimed that the companies had declared they were tentatively accepting of fan films. The statement was unofficial, however, and was unattributed to any specific person at either company. The story came from noted fan filmmaker Aaron Schoenke, and has been online for nearly four years without comment or retraction from the companies, both of which make it very credible (FWIW, I’ve always taken it as legit), but whether it’d stand up in a court of law without a specific source making the statement on the record is another thing.

So I got a source to go on the record. I’ve emailed DC’s PR dept a few times about this over the last few months and never got a response (surprise). Fortunately, after his panel at New York Comic Con the other day, I got to ask none other than Paul Levitz, president of DC Comics, for the company’s official stance on fan films; he stated definitively:

“We’re against anything that monetizes our assets and our copyrights without our permission. We are not against things where people use our assets if they don’t do anything monetarily with them.”

Paul Levitz States DC Comics’ Policy Towards Fan Films

So there you have it: In my eyes, this turn of events is revolutionary, and a real credit to DC. In the space of a scant few years, they’ve gone from sending lawyers after amateur filmmakers to giving permission to openly use characters worth billions of dollars without fear of legal reprisals–a truly staggering corporate mindshift.

This was my third visit to the New York Comic Con, which, gee, is in its third year. As always, it was a blast. Friday—which was “industry-only” for the majority of the day—was the best day, as you could actually get down the aisles. Come the weekend, however, all of New York City decided to fly its proverbial freak flag and jam into the Javits Center. I read that they were expecting 60,000 people this weekend, and I think it’s safe to say they hit their numbers. It’s a far cry from two years ago when they were swamped by 20,000 people unexpectedly and had to bring the show to a near standstill due to fire marshal issues. As a result, I kind of miss the smaller vibe, but damn, I still had fun.

(l-r) Dan Poole, Adam Bertocci, Fanboy Will, Chris Notarile, Dan Galiardi, Clive Young

And there was fan film news! Poke around the web, and everyone’s talking Hellboy and Hulk previews, but off in the corner of the world called 1E07, we had a phenomenal panel on fan films, featuring all-star panelists…and me, too.

Clive Young, stylin’ in a Homemade Hollywood: Fans Behind The Camera T-shirt.

I kicked it off with a PowerPoint talk about the history of fan films and their legality. People couldn’t believe it when they learned that Andy Warhol and Hugh Hefner used to make fan films. I also used the moment to push the upcoming Homemade Hollywood: Fans Behind The Camera book; Chris busted my chops for “shamelessly promoting” myself, but from him, that can only be taken as a compliment.

(l-r) Adam Bertocci; Fanboy Will in his cool ‘Fan Films Are Not A Crime’ T-Shirt; Chris Notarile; Dan Galiardi

Next, Dan Galiardi showed the trailer for his Iron Fist movie and gave some insight into the “Comics To Film” class he teaches at Five Towns College—where they make fan films for class assignments.

Chris did shtick before moving into great advice about keeping at it until you gain momentum and the attention of others. Fanboy Will talked about FanboyTheatre.com and his podcast, The Fan Film Podcast. I missed a lot of what they said ’cause I was trying to get someone to fix the sound and turn down the lights so we could see the screen. The NYCC staff volunteer—a 13-year-old kid, no joke—was so clueless that he was looking on a tiny mixing desk in the back of the room to see if the light switch was on there. When ya want something done right—something as simple as getting the AV dept on the ball—ya gotta do it yourself, so I spent half my time jumping off the stage and running out of the room.

Adam talked a bit about his upcoming short, Brooklyn Force, and then proceeded to steal the show—the sound was terrible and you couldn’t hear the clip he showed at all, so he started reciting the actors’ lines, in essence inventing Fan Film Karaoke. It may have been a desperate move, but he brought down the house with the ovation of the day.

Dan Poole followed with a clip from his early 1990s fan film, the legendary The Green Goblin’s Last Stand—best known for his jaw-dropping swing around a building six-stories up just so he could ‘get the shot.’ That was followed by the trailer to his next opus—his first original feature film, The Photon Effect, which looked pretty damn good.

Then we opened it up to the floor for questions, and got some pretty good ones from the audience—and yes, we had an audience. Here’s a photo I took from the stage about 10 minutes into the show:

During the panel, however, other events let out and people just kept filtering in. By the end of it, we had well over 200 people and it was a true standing room only crowd (there’s about 90 in this photo alone—yes, I counted)

All in all, it was a great turn out, everyone on the panel had cool stuff to tell the crowd, and it was a really nice moment for the often-ignored fan film world, if I say so myself. Hopefully we can talk NYCC into doing another one next year.

Oh, and I got some great fan film news while I was there which I’ll post in a few days. Very good news, especially if you make fan films about DC Comics.

More photos are available at http://tinyurl.com/3fv9zk

Blinky Productions’ blog post on it: http://tinyurl.com/43y5wj

Adam Bertocci’s forum post on it (near bottom of the page): http://boards.theforce.net/fan_films/b10015/27225369/p2/

Going to New York Comic Con in New York City this coming weekend? Make sure you check out the fan film panel! I set this up a while back and roped in a bunch of folks–it’s a real ‘who’s who’ of the East Coast fan film world. In fact, the only drawback is that halfway through out panel, Shane Felux of Star Wars: Revelations is doing a talk down the hall about his new pro gig, Trenches–rotten timing. Anyway, if you’re gonna be at the Con, come check out our panel!