Fan Films

[CatNadian]

These last few years,i've been watching some fan films about Star Wars,Star Trek and a few other franchises,ans some were well done,have good stories plus some are a follow up on episodes of the franchises in question,my favorites from ST are the Star Trek Continues series,and a few from Star Wars.
so does anyone else watch fan films?
and which ones do you like best?

[The Romulan Republic]

I like fan films in theory. I love the idea that ordinary people can in some sense contribute to these universes. I love the potential it provides for creativity. But of course its hard to make a good fan film, even on the off-chance you get a fan who's a good writer, because you probably won't be doing it with top notch actors and special effects.

My short list of recommendations (may be expanded in the future):

https://www.youtube.com/user/ItsJustSomeRandomGuy (Marvel/DC shorts animated using action figures. Hilarious. In my opinion, probably the second best on-screen interpretation of the Joker after Heath Ledger's).

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEiV8t ... 3GgHZr25-w (a collection of shorts based on the Dresden Files urban fantasy book series).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvswNDAAZCU ("TROOPS"- a COPS parody using Star Wars stormtroopers).

https://huntforgollumfilm.github.io/web ... ilm-hd.htm ("The Hunt for Gollum"- an LotR prequel starring Aragorn that heavily imitates the style of the films).

[CatNadian]

There is also this Ghostbusters movie i saw months ago,its quite good,and nicely done
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sN0w54ZmMxs

[Lord Revan]

I like fan films in theory. I love the idea that ordinary people can in some sense contribute to these universes. I love the potential it provides for creativity. But of course its hard to make a good fan film, even on the off-chance you get a fan who's a good writer, because you probably won't be doing it with top notch actors and special effects.

you kind of have to judge fanfilms with a different set of standards then professional films since even most independent films have greater budgets then most fanfilms, as a result even good fan films tend to poorer production value then any proffesional films.

when it comes to fan films (and I'm counting machima to this as well) is that first you need a good writer, then your second priority should decent if not good actors and last you should worry about special effects, since a good story, especially if the actors can sell it will be able to compensate for poor effects (or simply a lack of effects)

the film "Prelude to Axanar" (which while done by professionals is in essence a fan film) shows how a good script and acting can easily compensate for lack of effects.

[The Romulan Republic]

Actually, that's much the same priority list I'd have for a professional film too.

Writing comes first because it lays the groundwork, establishes the foundations for everything else, and if it suck their will be no coherent story, and even the best actor can only do so much with a shitty role.

Next is acting. A good cast can sometimes somewhat salvage a mediocre work.

Effects are last. People are accustomed to effects not having 100% realism, even if the standards are higher than they were in the past, and you can get a lot of milage out of suggesting a lot with very little, particularly in suspense/horror.

One other thing I'd add, though, which costs less than fancy effects but requires a competent director and editor, is pacing. A lot of films (and I'm talking professional films made by people who should know better) have God awful pacing. They're either rushed, incoherent, and choppy, or they drag. Or both. The new Star Wars comes particularly to mind right now. Some of that's the script's fault, but a director or editor can make it better or worse.

Edit: As a great example of all of this, I'd use one of the examples I listed previously in this thread, the "I'm a Marvel and I'm a DC" shorts. The effects are, at best, literally a guy playing around with action figures. But they're entertaining (to me, anyway, and based on their number of Youtube likes, a lot of other people) because of the writing and because the guy who makes them is a fairly decent voice actor.

[Lord Revan]

Actually, that's much the same priority list I'd have for a professional film too.

Writing comes first because it lays the groundwork, establishes the foundations for everything else, and if it suck their will be no coherent story, and even the best actor can only do so much with a shitty role.

Next is acting. A good cast can sometimes somewhat salvage a mediocre work.

Effects are last. People are accustomed to effects not having 100% realism, even if the standards are higher than they were in the past, and you can get a lot of milage out of suggesting a lot with very little, particularly in suspense/horror.

One other thing I'd add, though, which costs less than fancy effects but requires a competent director and editor, is pacing. A lot of films (and I'm talking professional films made by people who should know better) have God awful pacing. They're either rushed, incoherent, and choppy, or they drag. Or both. The new Star Wars comes particularly to mind right now. Some of that's the script's fault, but a director or editor can make it better or worse.

Edit: As a great example of all of this, I'd use one of the examples I listed previously in this thread, the "I'm a Marvel and I'm a DC" shorts. The effects are, at best, literally a guy playing around with action figures. But they're entertaining (to me, anyway, and based on their number of Youtube likes, a lot of other people) because of the writing and because the guy who makes them is a fairly decent voice actor.

true but I'm less forgiving about a movie that had a budget in the millions of dollars and I have to pay to see then a one that has budget in the thousands at most and is free to watch.

oh and if you want a really good example of bad pacing that most won't disagree on, Star Trek the Motion(less) Picture. Where the effects just go on and on with no rime or reason, it also serves as an example of bad effects, while technically profficient for the most part the way the effects are used just kills the movie. Start Trek 1 is also proffesional film so I hold it to greater standards as they had a decent budget for the time and full support from Paramount pictures.

there's this Youtuber called Nixxiom who makes WoW Machima and the effects in his vids are quite bad sometimes pasting what looks like realistic fire into WoW backrounds but you forgive that since the vids are entertaining still and it's clear that it's a case of lack of resources and not laziness that gives us the bad effects, now if Blizzard did something similar we'd be calling for their heads presumebly metaphorically as Blizzard has both the resources to make so much better.

[The Romulan Republic]

Well obviously, you should make allowances for people who don't have a lot of resources, in the sense that you recognize their are some things they just won't be able to do.

At the same time, though, while lack of resources might require smaller scale and simpler work, it does not excuse poor quality work. I expect even amateur, low-budget projects to make a good effort and produce something worthwhile, whatever limitations they face. You don't need money to have a good script, for instance, and while you can say "Well, it wasn't written by a professional writer", at some point a bad script is a bad script.

And really, that is, to me, the line- I will excuse bad effects. I'll even excuse bad acting to a point. But if you can't produce a good script, there's almost no point. But that might partly be my own biases, since my own interest in film is largely in writing and I tend to look at things from the writer's perspective.

[CatNadian]

Exactly,the most important part,is a good story,and people can do that without SFX or CGI.

PS this thread can also be used to post fan film links

Pilgrim of eternity
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3G-ziTBAkbQ
good story btw worth watching.

[Lord Revan]

well even saying that a story "story" is needed might be a bit much, obviously if you're gonna make a story driven film then the story has to be intresting, but even a humourous skit that has next to no real story can work if the stript is done right.

Alot of the bad fan films I've seen seem like a random collection of "cool things" with no thought put to the overall structure of the film, a film is after all more then just a random images put together is arbitary order. Granted this often emphasied by having the rather poor effects take the center stage in a way few professional films ever do (reason why alot of the "fixes" to the PT end up being even worse then the actual PT).

[CatNadian]

well even saying that a story "story" is needed might be a bit much, obviously if you're gonna make a story driven film then the story has to be intresting, but even a humourous skit that has next to no real story can work if the stript is done right.

Alot of the bad fan films I've seen seem like a random collection of "cool things" with no thought put to the overall structure of the film, a film is after all more then just a random images put together is arbitary order. Granted this often emphasied by having the rather poor effects take the center stage in a way few professional films ever do (reason why alot of the "fixes" to the PT end up being even worse then the actual PT).

True but as we see professionals often do movies that have really bad stories,have awful SFX and bad acting.

SyFy channel has alot of those

[Lord Revan]

well even saying that a story "story" is needed might be a bit much, obviously if you're gonna make a story driven film then the story has to be intresting, but even a humourous skit that has next to no real story can work if the stript is done right.

Alot of the bad fan films I've seen seem like a random collection of "cool things" with no thought put to the overall structure of the film, a film is after all more then just a random images put together is arbitary order. Granted this often emphasied by having the rather poor effects take the center stage in a way few professional films ever do (reason why alot of the "fixes" to the PT end up being even worse then the actual PT).

True but as we see professionals often do movies that have really bad stories,have awful SFX and bad acting.

SyFy channel has alot of those

obviously, though I'm just pointing out that "fanfilms" rarely are truly that much better then professional films and those that claim so often are judging the fanfilms using different standards (perhaps even unintentionally).

That's not to say that aren't some really good fan films or some god awful professionally made film it should be noted that for all their faults the PT are nowhere near to being the worst films ever made by a professional film crew, there's this one finnish film that was so bad that not even the critics went to see it(as in you literally couldn't even pay to get people to go see it), oh and before you ask it was an "art" film not a mindless action flick.

[Adam Reynolds]

Bit late to the party, but one set of fanfilms that are generally fairly good technically are lightsaber duels. Probably because all it takes are dedicated sword fighters and a bit of simple computer animation that can be done somewhat cheaper. Though they tend to have the problem that, despite the potentially interesting duels, they tend to not be even remotely emotionally engaging. Far less than even the Duel of the Fates, never mind Luke and Vader or Kylo Ren and Rey.

[Lord Revan]

Bit late to the party, but one set of fanfilms that are generally fairly good technically are lightsaber duels. Probably because all it takes are dedicated sword fighters and a bit of simple computer animation that can be done somewhat cheaper. Though they tend to have the problem that, despite the potentially interesting duels, they tend to not be even remotely emotionally engaging. Far less than even the Duel of the Fates, never mind Luke and Vader or Kylo Ren and Rey.

they actually demonstrate a problem I have with alot of "serious" fan works, they seem more concept for a story or a string of things the makers though would be cool to see, without the "boring"(read:hard to make) part of character building that makes people instrested in the fight outside of the technical aspect.

that way you can have for example a duel that's technically really good but there's no connection to the characters so you can't appreciate it beyond the technical aspects.

[Elheru Aran]

Well some lightsaber videos, at least back in the day (90s or early 00s mind you) were as much technical exercises as they were fan-films... geeks trying to demonstrate their video wizardry. IIRC the guy who made the "Ryan vs. Dorkman" videos snagged a job at either ILM or Lucasfilm that way.

[Q99]

There was a neat little Culture fanfilm I saw once, called 'Something Real', of a human having a conversation with a drone. Alas, it seems to be off the net.