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Fan film

A fan film is a film or video inspired by a film, television program, comic book, book, or video game created by fans rather than by the source's copyright holders or creators. Fan filmmakers have traditionally been amateurs, but some of the more notable films have actually been produced by professional filmmakers as film school class projects or as demonstration reels. Fan films vary tremendously in quality, as well as in length, from short faux-teaser trailers for non-existent motion pictures to full-length motion pictures. Fan films are also examples of fan labor and the remix culture. Closely related concepts are fandubs, fansubs and vidding which are reworks of fans on already released film material.

For films named Fan, see Fan (disambiguation) § Other uses in arts, entertainment, and media.

History[edit]

The earliest known fan film is Anderson 'Our Gang,[1] which was produced in 1926 by a pair of itinerant filmmakers. Shot in Anderson, South Carolina, the short is based on the Our Gang film series; the only known copy resides in the University of South Carolina's Newsfilm Library. Various amateur filmmakers created their own fan films throughout the ensuing decades, including a teenaged Hugh Hefner,[1] but the technology required to make fan films was a limiting factor until relatively recently. In the 1960s UCLA film student Don Glut filmed a series of short black and white "underground films", based on adventure and comic book characters from 1940s and 1950s motion picture serials. Around the same time, artist Andy Warhol produced a film called Batman Dracula which could be described as a fan film. But it wasn't until the 1970s that the popularization of science fiction conventions allowed fans to show their films to the wider fan community.


In the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, there were many unofficial foreign remakes of American films that today may be considered fan films, such as Süpermenler (Superman), 3 Dev Adam, (Spider-Man), Mahakaal (A Nightmare on Elm Street), and Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam (Star Wars).


Most of the more prominent science fiction films and television shows are represented in fan films; these include Star Wars (see Fan films based on Star Wars), Star Trek (see Star Trek fan productions), Doctor Who (see Doctor Who spin-offs), and Buffy the Vampire Slayer (see Unofficial Buffy the Vampire Slayer productions). Because fan films generally utilize characters and storylines copyrighted and trademarked by the original filmmakers, they are rarely distributed commercially for legal reasons. They are exhibited by various other methods, including showings at comic book and science fiction conventions, and distribution as homemade videos, ranging from VHS videocassettes to CD-ROMs and DVDs.


A notable fan film is also Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation, made as a shot-for-shot remake of the 1981 Indiana Jones adventure film Raiders of the Lost Ark. Using the original film's screenplay and score, it principally starred and was filmed, directed, and produced over a seven-year period by three Mississippi teenagers (Chris Strompolos, Eric Zala, and Jayson Lamb). In 2015, the documentary Raiders!: The Story of the Greatest Fan Film Ever Made was released. The film follows three childhood friends, Eric Zala, Chris Strompolos, and Jayson Lamb, from 1982 to 1989 as they set out to make their fan film of Raiders fan film.


In 2012, two Arizona-based teenagers, Jonason Pauley and Jesse Perrotta, made a live action shot for shot remake of the 1995 animated film, Toy Story, with the toy characters animated through stop motion, puppetry, and live actors for the human characters, while using audio from the film. It received a positive response from critics, and the original filmmakers.


Indian-born American filmmaker Adi Shankar started producing a series of satire films based on popular franchises and comic book characters, before evolving into a full-fledged entertainment brand. His films includes The Punisher: Dirty Laundry with Thomas Jane reprising his role from The Punisher and Power Rangers: Unauthorized, a dark reimagining of the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers series.


Filmmaker Sandy Collora gained much notoriety in the early 2000s for a series of fan films he produced featuring DC Comics heroes Batman and Superman. Batman: Dead End premiered at the 2003 San Diego Comic-Con, while World's Finest was prevented from showing in 2004 due to copyright claims from Warner Bros.[2]


Some fan film productions achieve significant quantity and or quality. For instance, the series Star Trek: Hidden Frontier produced 50 episodes over seven seasons – compared to only 34 episodes for the 1970s sci-fi series Battlestar Galactica and Galactica 1980 combined.


Star Trek: New Voyages started as a fan production, but has since attracted support from several crew and cast members from the different Star Trek series, as well as a wide audience.


A similar fan production, Star Trek Continues, produced by Vic Mignogna, have been well received by critics, who praised the quality of the production and stated that the show set a new standard for Star Trek fan films, while highlighting the resemblance of the episodes with those of the original series.


Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning, a Finnish feature-length spoof of both Star Trek and Babylon 5, attracted over 4 million downloads and has been released on DVD in several countries, making it possibly the most successful Finnish movie-production to date.


The Lord of the Rings fan films Born of Hope and The Hunt for Gollum debuted at Ring*Con and the Sci-Fi-London film festival (respectively) in May 2009 and was released on the internet.[3]


Ghostbusters: The Video Game features a small nod to the fan film Return of the Ghostbusters by way of a drawing posted on the wall[4] in the Ghostbusters firehouse headquarters. The child's drawing of a Ghostbuster is signed by a fictional character created in the fan film.


On September 27, 2009, Italian fan film Metal Gear Solid: Philanthropy was released over the internet, a 10,000 Euro production based on Hideo Kojima's Metal Gear Solid video game series.


Dan Poole's stunt work in his fan film The Green Goblin's Last Stand garnered recognition and an endorsement from Spider-Man co-creator Stan Lee.[5]


John F. Carroll's Masters of the Universe trilogy began with The Wizard of Stone Mountain in 2011 and has premiered at conventions in Germany and the US. Other films in the trilogy will be released on the internet in 2013.[6]


Iowa brothers Morgan and Mason McGrew spent eight years recreating the film in stop motion. Titled Toy Story 3 in Real Life,[7] the film was shot using iPhones and was uploaded to YouTube on January 25, 2020. The shot-for-shot remake uses the film's original audio. According to Screen Crush, Pixar's parent company Walt Disney Studios gave the McGrews permission to release the film online.[8]


The Bodo Production announced the development of Live Action Toy Story 2 in 2014. The release date of Live Action Toy Story 2 which is coming in 2024 will mark the 10th anniversary of the project.[9]

Reception[edit]

As media scholar Henry Jenkins points out, fan films are shaped by the intersection between contemporary trends toward media convergence and participatory culture. These films are hybrid by nature—neither fully commercial nor fully alternative. Fan films represent a potentially important third space between the two.[35]


Similarly, Stanford Law Professor Lawrence Lessig argued that for the first time in history, creativity by default is subject to regulation due to growing intellectual property rights like copyright and trademark. This trend results in artists (like the fans mentioned in this article) needing the permission of the copyright owner to engage in mashups or acts of remixing. In Lessig's view, this new phenomena limits creativity.[36] To help artists mitigate the chilling impact of copyright law, Lessig founded the Creative Commons and proposed the Creative Commons licenses.[37][38]

Reanimated collaboration

Fan labor