Hey, welcome back to The Fan Cinema Today Pre-Game Show for the Star Wars Fan Movie Challenge Awards Ceremony! Tonight is the big event at the San Diego Comic Con, so now I’ll foolhardily try to guess who will take home the gold, even though I haven’t watched all 41 entries in the contest. Who’s gonna win? Hell if I know, but let’s take it apart anyway.
The Audience Choice Award:
The mathematical geniuses over at theforce.net’s fan film forum looked at the sheer number of views for each film and found that Padme—a spoof mixing Star Wars and Juno together—was the most-viewed fan film in the running this year.
However, it would be safe to guess that the Challenge’s judges will weigh the number of views against a flick’s percentage of thumbs up / thumbs down reviews (to vote for a flick, you have to give it a thumb…although sometimes I was tempted to give ‘em the finger—haw haw haw!). Padme has far more views than any other flick in the running (nearly 25 percent more than its closest competitor, Jedi Gym), yet had a low ‘positive thumb’ rating. It’s a tough call without knowing the contest’s formula for divining winners, so as a result, heck, I’m saying it’s Padme. It’s a cute flick, so a win wouldn’t be undeserved.
The George Lucas Selects Award:
It’s biggest award of the night, and it’s chosen by hewhohasalreadybeennamed. Lucas has a history of going with comedies, like Pink Five, Pitching Lucas and last year’s Chad Vader, so the dramatic entries are out. Typically, he eschews the “humorous genre mix” flicks, too, which means Padme, FreeJediReport.Com and other efforts of their ilk are unlikely to nab this one. I suspect that no entries created with starwars.com’s Mashup feature will win with Lucas, ‘cause they merely use his footage—they didn’t shoot anything themselves, which I’d venture would be a turn-off for a dyed-in-the-wool filmmaker. Similarly, the “all dueling all the time” movies like Ryan Vs. Dorkman 2 and Concrete Hustle are probably out too, despite their popularity, because they lack plots.
Then again, the Big Guy is often unpredictable (Greedo blaster shot, anyone?) so your guess is as good as mine. Accordingly, I’ll venture that it’s Landspeeder Mayhem, because of its uncanny similarity to cruising Modesto in a hot rod, circa 1963 (like I would know).
The 7-11 Award Categories:
There’s no categories with that name; rather, that’s what I call the mystery awards that haven’t been announced yet—because they’re usually categories of convenience. Many awards over the years seem to have been created just to fit the circumstances—case in point, Best Original Song, which was given only once, to One Season More in 2005.
If there’s surprise categories created out of the blue this year, I suspect they would be for Best Anime, so that Star Wars: The Lost Faith and Manga Wars: Ambush at Beantoine can duke it out. Alternately, it wouldn’t be out of the question to see a Best Duel award, going to Contract of Evil; Concrete Hustle; or Ryan Vs. Dorkman 2. I would also guess that given starwars.com’s big-deal debut of its mashups section last year—and the weak entries derived there from—there’ll have to be a Best Mashup award.
The Profound Closing Comment:
While this is the closest thing that fan films have to an Oscars ceremony, the important thing to remember is that all the movies entered into the contest—even the ones that got turned down—represent the creativity of the common man (or woman). If you got off your ass and made a film, then you’ve already won, simply because you did something, you made an effort, you tried to—as Bruce Cockburn once sang—kick at the darkness til it bleeds daylight. Or something like that.
In the meantime, post your predictions in the comments below, then come back tomorrow to see if you were right!
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