Motti Then...
There’s a lot of tools in the first Star Wars movie (Greedo, Uncle Owen and even C3PO in his overly fey moments come to mind), but Admiral Motti beats them all hands down. Who the heck is Admiral Motti? (I had to look him up, to be honest). He’s the big mouth in the Death Star “board room” scene—the one who taunts Vader mercilessly (“Your sad devotion to that ancient religion has not helped you conjure up the stolen data tapes”) until the Big Guy lays that phantom Force choke hold on him, just to get Motti to shut the hell up already.
Well, that’s the last we see of Motti in the movies, but according to Richard LeParmentier, the actor who played the mouthy Imperial, his character escaped the space station before that terrorist Luke Skywalker blew it up. It’s not in the books or anything—that’s just the story ’cause he says so. Good enough for me. And now he want to make a fan film about it, called Motti Now. Read More »
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When I interviewed MIT’s Henry Jenkins for my upcoming fan film book, , he made a comment that perfectly summed up what spurs so many people to create their own vision of a franchise with a fan film, explaining, “Fan-created production is borne out of a mixture of fascination and frustration…the idea that there’s something that fans are gravitating toward that’s really interesting to them, but that the end result is something that didn’t fully satisfy.”
That comment came to mind while I watched the awkwardly titled fan flick by Sacha Feiner. You don’t need to have seen 1990’s Gremlins 2: The New Batch to enjoy it, but some background will help. Read More »
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Steven Davis, Rajneel Singh.
Today starts our epic interview with Rajneel Singh, director of the classic Matrix fan film, .
If you’ve seen the 16-minute flick, you know that Singh can make a pulse-pounding action flick on a non-existent budget; if you haven’t seen it and you happen to dig Keanu Reeves’ second-best franchise, then you owe it to yourself to check the fan film out.
After you do, come back and find out how they did it, with the first installment of our multi-part interview with Singh. Read More »
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Five years ago this month, a pair of determined martial artists from New Zealand teamed up to make an incredible fan film: The Fanimatrix. At the time, hype for the Matrix feature film trilogy was hitting stratospheric heights; caught up in the excitement, Rajneel Singh and Steven A. Davis of Auckland, NZ, decided to see if they could make a Matrix movie, too—and they certainly did.
Released on the web September 27, 2003, The Fanimatrix exploded on contact; written up on Slashdot the day it came out, the fan film’s website got nearly 3 million hits during the first five days the flick was available. Some say that as a result, it instantly became the most-seen short film from New Zealand ever.
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Here’s a few Star Wars-related goodies, and unusually, two of ‘em are musically inclined….
MANDALORIAN DANCE
This 51-second flick, Mandalorian Dance, has been out for a little over a month, and I’ve been meaning to post it—a stop-motion animation fan film featuring Boba Fett shakin’ it loose, Flashdance-style. Made by Patrick Boivin, this had me cracking up, plus it actually builds to an ending.
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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, —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. Read More »
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Remember that incredible Star Wars fan film set I wrote about the other week? Here’s the software equivalent: Folks, the Star Wars Title Sequence Generator is a steaming hot plate of awesome! I like this thing so much, I actually debated whether to write about it, ’cause I selfishly wanted to keep it secret and use it on the fan film I daydream about making someday. There’s no way it’ll stay under the radar for long though—this thing is just too cool—so it’s time to spill the beans.
SWTSG is Mac-only freeware by Darel Rex Finley that does exactly what the name implies: It lets you create an opening sequence for your fan film that will mirror the beginning of the Star Wars movies. Now, you might say, “Big deal; even iMovie can do text like the opening crawls. So what?” Buddy, that ain’t half of it. This program replicates all of the openings! Read More »
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It’s every fan filmmaker’s dream these days—make a flick that’s got that extra spark, that certain something that makes it blow up, going from a little video shared with your friends, to the next multi-million-view hit on YouTube. How do you get there? Well, a lot of friends and some software to game the page counts are probably a good start, but if you’re a fine, upstanding citizen (and of course you are, right? Yeah, me neither), you’ll want to take the high road.
As you’re sweating it out on that hike, perhaps you’ll want to take a look at a new book (and it’s not even mine!): by professor/producer Frederick Levy.
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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. Read More »
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Mike O’Hearn, who I’ve written about a few times, appears as “Titan” on NBC’s American Gladiators, but fan film fans know him as Superman from Sandy Collora’s World’s Finest faux trailer fan film from 2004. Now Slashfilm has reported that O’Hearn is in the running for big-screen reboots of Conan The Barbarian and Captain America.
While the news has lit up the comic book blogosphere, somehow I doubt that it’s going to happen. Respectfully, I’d think that if the Hollywood machine was in motion to cast the guy, they wouldn’t want him blabbing all over the place until they formally announced the various films—much less to a radio show in Omaha, Nebraska, which is where O’Hearn reputedly spilled the beans. Read More »
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