IT’S WATCHMEN WEEK ON FAN CINEMA TODAY!

FCT has covered Watchmen fan films a few times (and even the occasional cool knock-off). With the feature film hitting theaters soon, you’d think there would be an onslaught of related fan productions hitting the web. You’d also be wrong. Hurm. Nonetheless, this week, we’ll take a look at some of the fan-created offerings out there on the web.

Wrapping up the week, here’s a few odds and ends, ranging from pseudo-animation to a compendium of Rorschach’s greatest hits (and by that, I mean punches, slugs, nose-crushers and knock-outs).

And…The Best WATCHMEN Fan Film Ever! See the flicks after the jump.

The Watchmen Animated Series Screen Test is a weird one, using simple image manipulation and quotes from the comic to “interview” some of the main characters of the graphic novel.

The oh-so-imaginatively titled Watchmen Movie: Rorschach is a lot more rough-and-tumble than most of the flicks we’ve covered this week. A British entry, the flick shows a show-no-mercy vigilante that’s fairly in keeping with Moore’s classic character. Inventively, the filmmakers got around the problem of creating an ever-changing mask by simply leaving it blank. I guess if you project inkblots on to it, that says something about your psychology….

And finally, to close out the week, it bears noting that the best Watchmen fan film out there remains the very first one reviewed on FCT nearly two years ago: Watchmen: Page 5. Made by Bryant Hodson when he was in high school, it’s a wonderful yet painfully short take presentation of the comic; it’s so great, you just want it to keep going. If you’ve ever seen it, you might wonder what Hodson’s been up to since—well, check out the Batman fan film beneath it and make sure to watch til the end. Now you’re in the right frame of mind for Watchmen next week.

Watchmen hoopla is slipping into high gear now, with that comic book adaptaion’s big screen debut only a month away. It’s been 22 years since the famed Alan Moore/Dave Gibbons comic book series was collected into what’s now considered the greatest graphic novel ever. With all the hype surrounding the new movie, though, it’s easy to forget about another landmark comic series that got booked up the same year: Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns.

Sure, we’ve had Batman feature films on and off for the last 20 years, some good and some bad, but you know deep down that the story the fans really wanna see brought to life (besides Moore’s The Killing Joke) is Miller’s standard-bearer. And now it’s happened.

Reticom Films just issued Blood and Mud: A Batman Tale on YouTube (available in HD on Reticom’s barely usable site), based on Miller’s masterpiece and its quite the flick. Clocking in at 20 minutes, the flick includes a lot of iconic moments and a few scenes that are bound to be crowd-pleasers. Something of a team effort, the flick is credited to Thiago Micalopulos, but written by Vaner Micalopulos and produced by Carolina Romano.

The plot summary:

In a near future, Bruce Wayne now retired from the duties of the caped crusader, watches Gotham city rot under the merciless attacks of the Mutant gang. His vigilante alter ego torments his thoughts forcing him to avenge Gotham city one last time.

[via Bat Blog]

Blood and Mud – a Batman Tale—Part One

Blood and Mud – a Batman Tale—Part Two

Fan filmmakers are a certain breed: They work hard and they play hard, and sometimes the two things are one and same. So it’s good to be reminded every so often that it’s easy to get carried away, and your intensity can backfire on you if you’re not careful. Just take the unfinished flick, Batman Darkness, created by Bakersfield, CA-based Hectic Films and Dark Knight Productions.

As caught on tape by a local ABC-TV affiliate earlier this year—and posted on YouTube soon after—their Batman blew out his knee while shooting a fight scene. And to show it can happen to anyone, the actor in question was Jeff Smolek, a retired stuntman who’d worked in movies for 26 years, including a stint as the title character in the 1995 feature film, Batman Forever.

The plot of Batman Darkness finds the Dark Knight fighting off vampires who want to turn him into one of their own. Famously, Andy Warhol made a fan film in 1964 called Batman Dracula, which has never been screened publicly and which may no longer even exist; it’s unknown if it had Dracula trying to turn the venerable DC Comics character into a vampire, but it did reportedly include bad guys running around clad only in tin foil jockstraps. One suspects that was not the case with the cast of Batman Darkness.

Brothers Bird and Jason Sanders comprise Hectic Films, and have made a slew of short films and webisodes, including their Daddy 911 series, in which a foul-mouthed mobster gets bratty kids in line. Meanwhile, Dark Knight Productions is the production slate of Rod Reed. Bird met Smolek, the stunt man, while bartending at a local establishment, Ethel’s Corral. Smolek also has stunt credits for Glory, The ‘Burbs, Leaving Las Vegas, Star Trek: Insurrection and Drowning Mona. He has also worked on television shows such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Walker, Texas Ranger.

While Smolek has hopefully recovered since the incident, there’s no recent mention of Batman Darkness on the Hectic Films website, which leads one to surmise that it’s been shelved indefinitely. Even so, the flick’s still a strong reminder to all fan filmmakers—if you’re going to get violent in your movie, be careful!

Batman Reborn

This is the latest installment in an occasional series on fan films that were never completed.

Plenty of fan films get announced every year—fan film forums are filled with ancient posts where an eager amateur filmmaker announces, “Hey, I’m gonna make a flick, and it’s gonna be awesome, with stunts, explosions, fights, car chases and more. And as soon as I start writing the script and saving my allowance for a videocamera, you’ll be begging me to be on my crew.” As might be expected, the vast majority of these movies never get made.

There’s the handful, however, that enter production, get fellow fans excited with online postings that feature glimpses of the film, and then they disappear. Perhaps they collapse under the weight of the filmmakers’ overambitious scripts. Sometimes, essential castmembers, crew or equipment moves away. And occasionally the flicks die a premature death because filmmaking is hard, and it’s harder when you have no money and a lot of schedules to juggle. In all of these cases, what’s left behind is the dream of what could have been.

And that’s what saddens me about Batman Reborn, which was one of the most promising fan films of 2007.

Early in the life of FCT, I got an email from Bronx-based filmmaker Nicholas Ortiz, telling me a bit about his movie, a wildly different take on the classic DC Comics/ Warner Brothers character. He also sent along some links to trailers on YouTube, and overall, I thought it was a great idea. It was also a perfect example of something I talk about in Homemade Hollywood. Academics like to refer to fan films and their ilk as “vernacular cultures”—essentially subcultures or hobbies that grow organically from people, as opposed to being handed to you by a corporation that’s trying to sell you something (Knitting and graffiti? Vernacular cultures. Star Wars fandom? Not a vernacular culture). One of the reasons that academics find value in fan-created media is because it provides an alternative telling of familiar media that would never be cultivated or allowed by the media’s owner—and Batman Reborn was a very alternative view of the Dark Knight.

The gist of it was nothing less than a complete reinvention of Batman. Why would a rich, suburban, multi-millionaire want to save the inner city? He wouldn’t, so in Ortiz’s take on the iconic character, Batman is a regular guy from a rough neighborhood, Two-Face is a crime lord, and the cops are even more crooked than the criminals.

Sadly, the project had to be abandoned, but you can get a glimpse at what could have been at the Granma Productions website and in the YouTube clips below (of note, “Remembering The Past” includes footage of the world-famous 5 Pointz graffitti building, one of my favorite NYC landmarks). Have any thoughts or critiques about the clips? Leave ‘em in the comments area below.

Batman Reborn Fan Film Trailer

Batman Reborn Exclusive Scene

Batman Reborn Deleted Scene.

Batman Reborn “Remembering the Past”

Batman Reborn Two-Face Introduction

Batman Reborn Flashback Scene

There’s nothing like a massive, runaway blockbuster film to inspire tributes from fans. Sometimes they’re pretty stupid, and other times, they’re just cool.

Take, for instance, Silent Shadow of the Bat-Man—a retro, 1920s Dark Knight short, made from editing together a slew of vintage silent films, such as The Bat (1926), The Man Who Laughs (1928), The Cabinet Of Doctor Caligari (1920); Edison’s Frankenstein (1910), The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz (1910), and a tad of the sound-era Batman serials from 1943.

Presented in two parts on YouTube, the flick features a who’s who of yesteryear stars, including Jack Pickford as Bruce Wayne; Conrad Veidt as The Joker; Werner Krauss as The Penguin; Olga Baclanova as The Catwoman; George Beranger as The Scarecrow; J. Carrol Naish as R’as Al Ghul; Eddie Gribbon as Inspector Gordon; and Louise Fazenda as the Woman of Ill Repute.

Simple (and occasionally slow) in its execution, the 12-minute fan edit makes a  pointed but respectful statement about how the Batman we know and fear today was derived from uncredited sources. Edited together in two days by Andre Perkowski, the short also benefits from his self-composed soundtrack, reminscent of some of David Sylvian’s atmospheric works from the mid-’80s. For a truly different take on The Dark Knight, this definitely worth a watch.

The popular The Dark Knight Project fan film keeps on keepin’ on. Regular FCT readers may recall the flick as the one shot on the same Chicago streets that appeared in the feature films as parts of Gotham. As a result, the flick has the look cold, aided by sweet props like a Gotham City Police car used in the features. The flick was made entirely before The Dark Knight hit theaters; based on hints of plot released on the official movie’s website, the fan tribute was written so that it could fit into the features’ timeline.

Viewed by more than 5,500 people since it debuted on July 14, The Dark Knight Project has been slightly altered since it first hit the web, according to writer/director Jerry Vasilatos. He wrote in to mention that “I was able to change that shot of the SWAT guys climbing the rope once I saw how it was used in The Dark Knight; now it’s just copters with spotlights on the building, so there’s not too much confusion” as to when the movie takes place—between Batman Begins and The Dark Knight.

Additionally, the flick now has its own 17-minute, behind-the-scenes video online. From the project inception, to the batsuit, to shooting on location in Chicago, it’s all there for your viewing pleasure.

Everyone has a talent in this life, even the people you can’t stand (they have a knack for pissing you off, after all). Movie fan Bob Dullam’s special talent, on the other hand, is to make your jaw drop, and if you don’t believe it, consider this: He built that Dark Knight Batmobile (AKA The Tumbler) in the photo there. By hand. By himself. Without a kit or blueprints. And it’s drivable. Dude, this thing belongs in a fan film.

Working with photos and DVD stills from Batman Begins, Dullam single-handedly conjured up this behemoth in his own garage, spending between $50-70,000 on it—and he’s still not done. Next on the agenda? Some nagging exterior details, then the interior, followed by a matching Batsuit—and then the insane, stunt-man-plastering Batpod motorcycle from The Dark Knight.

Posting on Superherohype.com’s forums, Dullam (as YoungBat) remarked, “[I’m] not building this to sell. You wouldn’t want to sell this if you had one, believe me. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime project.”

Sure, of course, but why would he want to build the Tumbler alone? Wouldn’t some extra hands lighten the load? Nope. “I have found with other things in the past that if you have help, the help often does not get it (parts) right, and you have to do it over 95 percent of the time, plus I like to work alone. All parts are scratch built, except tires, rims, brakes, engine, etc., meaning all bodyparts, brackets, just about everything external on the car…. I love building this stuff.”

It’s not the first movie-related poroject he’s taken on; indeed, a visit to his company’s website, www.dullam-causey.com, reveals that in fact, Dullam fabricates all kinds of things for a living, including some impressive Hellboy and Superman replicas. As might be expected, all this has lit up the web in the last few days, garnering stories in places like Wired.

So, to a single-minded blogger like me, all this fairly well screams, “Make a fan film, buddy!” And if he’s not the fan filmin’ type, well, if you ever wanted a picture-perfect Tumbler in your flick, well now you know where to go and who to bribe. In the meantime, visit Dullam’s site for a drool-worthy gallery of Tumbler photos.

Any time a big franchise movie comes out, it inevitably motivates fans to grab a video camera and make fan films. The upcoming July 18 release of The Dark Knight in theaters, however, has inspired a number of intrepid filmmakers to shoot their own flicks beforehand, in hopes of releasing them in time to surf the wave of hype building for the Hollywood movie. Today, we look into a Blair Witch Project-styled Bats flick, The Dark Knight Project, being shot by professional film editor Jerry Vasilatos in Chicago.

According to HollywoodChicago.com, the movie will follow two high schoolers as they try to capture the first video footage of Batman for a school project. The characters Heather Nolan and Mikey Bale (whose names allude to the director and star of the Dark Knight feature film) witness a bomb scare evacuation, and are ultimately saved from The Joker’s henchmen by the Caped Crusader himself.

In an effort to add an extra dimension to the movie, the young main characters have been blogging about getting Bats on tape on their own MySpace page.