The last chapter of Homemade Hollywood talks about the future of fan films, and one of the things I discuss in it is how Big Media is slowly going to appropriate (OK, steal) the look and feel of fan films. It’s happened in other mediums (for example, Alternative rock and indie films), and it’s starting to happen in fan productions as well—and here’s a brand-new case in point: This week, Hasbro released an amateur stop motion-styled tour of its new Star Wars Millennium Falcon toy, done as a parody of MTV’s Cribs.
They really go to town with this one. The audio edit is excellent, grabbing sounds and dialogue from throughout the real movies; they deliberately mention stuff that only mega-fans would know, referring to a game of “Dejarik,” which I presume is the hologram chess game that C3PO and Chewie played; and they deliberately under-sell the toy.
You don’t get a clear look at the Falcon—the shots move by quickly and many of them are shaky, shadowy or both, which insinuates that this was made by amateurs instead of marketing pros sitting around a conference table in London (TheForce.Net has implied that this came from the UK division of Hasbro). It works though, because as a result, you wind up replaying it to get a better look. It can’t be easy to sell fans on a $155 toy, so you can’t blame ‘em for trying the viral video route.
However, no sooner did the clip appear on YouTube then it got removed (albeit not before it got blogged about all over the place), which makes it rather curious as to who put it online, and who pulled the plug. Luckily, it seems to have reappeared on YouTube at a different location.
0 Responses to “Star Wars Millennium Falcon, Cribs Style”