News: Star Wars Fan Movie Challenge

AtomFilms and Lucasfilm have tweaked their annual
Star Wars fan film contest this year. They’ve changed the name (it’s now the Star Wars Fan Movie Challenge); the categories (“serious” fan films are allowed); and the prize money (Before: Up to $2,000; This year: Zilch). The contest challenge submission deadline is April 30.

We’ve always had some reservations about the contest challenge, and while this year’s alterations take a few positive steps forward, it’s still a mixed bag. While there’s no full-on legalese version of the rules available online to pore through, let’s take a look at the Info & Guidelines page at the challenge site, and see what there is to see:

- Spike TV will “showcasing” the movies. Great—the winners will appear on the Jar Jar Binks of basic cable. What does “showcasing” mean? Probably airing the flicks with a non-stop soundtrack of fart sounds dubbed under them, although that might be a little too sophisticated for the average Spike TV viewer.

- Serious or dramatic fan films (the challenge considers them “fan fiction”) are allowed for the first time. This is a great step forward for the contest and Lucasfilm in general. Traditionally, the company has always taken great pains to convince fan filmmakers to make only parodies or documentaries—two genres that are protected by the First Amendment, and which therefore could be made without Lucasfilm’s approval. By creating the original contest and only allowing those categories, it was a not-so-subtle move to dissuade filmmakers from expanding the Star Wars universe. There may well be an agenda behind this change, but let’s take it at face value and give it a big thumbs up.

- Lucasfilm will be showcasing fan movies on the StarWars.com site. Seems like a no-brainer, and yet this is one of the most significant aspects of the challenge. If a serious fan film won and was featured on the site, it would be tantamount to being endorsed as a cannon addition to the Star Wars universe—a very big deal indeed.

- The “Timeline” section merely gives the dates for submissions, rating, awards ceremony and such. The “Award Categories” lists a few of the groupings, and intriguingly lists “more” as a category. Whether this is to save space or to leave some leeway for new categories hinging on what they get submitted remains to be seen.

- The “Selection Process” portion includes a key line—not the part where it says you’ll be giving all rights to Lucas, because that’s been there for years. Rather, it’s the new rule that winning films will “receive awards and recognition of little to no cash value.” When you consider the advertising money that Spike TV, AtomFilms and StarWars.Com are each going to make from this content they’re acquiring for free, it’s downright shameful to leave the filmmakers out of the loop like that. The previous award amounts, which ranged from $1,000 to $2,000 for the “George Lucas Selects” Award, were token gestures at best, but dropping them altogether is pathetic. In 2006, Spike TV charged $3,500 for a 30-second ad during its UFC programming, which means that one minute of ads during one airing of whatever TV special they come up with would cover all the prize money for the contest across all the outlets (Spike, StarWars.Com and AtomFilms) combined. When you consider how many people will access these movies online, and how often Spike will likely rerun the special (they need something to put between the infomercials), that’s a discrace.

- Next, it’s the “Fan Movie Guidelines” area, which notes that it’s merely a batch of suggestions, the first one being that folks should keep their flicks under 5 minutes (an idea we agree with). It goes on to suggest parodies and documentaries before getting to serious flicks, just so everyone can tell what side their bread is still buttered on, and suggests using all kinds of products, with an oh-so-helpful link to the Star Wars Galaxies MUG.

This is followed by a list of “don’t's,” all of which are designed (and quite reasonably so) to keep the companies from getting sued. In other words, nothing copyrighted that other people own; no union people that will get SAG, WGA or other related unions picketing Lucasfilm at the Presidio complex; and nothing that would appear in an R or even PG-13 movie, like swearing, sex, nudity and other things that make life worth living. This is plain hypocritical when you consider that Chewbacca walked around naked in four out of the six movies–and in the most amateur Star Wars production ever, The Star Wars Holiday Special. So there.

So like I said, the contest challenge is a mixed bag this year. What will be most interesting to see is whether the lack of prize money translates into lower quality productions or, though there’s no way to find out, fewer entries altogether. We’ll find out the cold hard truth on May 15, when the entries go online and voting opens for the Audience Choice Award.