Fan Films: Derivative Fanboyism or Legitimate Art Form?

09/04/2012 10:00 am by

I was on the Internet the other day, ignoring my professional and personal responsibilities like I usually do, and I came across the following two videos:

 

So they got rid of the mullet, but not the upsetting half-shirt?

I think I might be the one on mushrooms right now.

So I think it’s safe to say that fan films are getting crazy.  Fan films, the act of making a film based on pre-existing intellectual properties, have been around for almost as long as there has been film.  But since anyone with a cell phone and a computer can make a movie now, fan films have pretty much exploded all over the pop cultural spectrum.  Some are great, most are ok, and a lot are DREADFUL, but the one thing they have in common is the passion that went into making them.

tron guy Fan Films: Derivative Fanboyism or Legitimate Art Form?I wish his passion was the only thing I could see…

 This raises a question that I find myself pondering, and it’s one I pose to you: “are fan films art?”  On the one hand, these are all works based on someone else’s intellectual property.  These are movies that you can’t make a dime from unless you want to be sued into oblivion.  They are, by nature byproducts of someone else’s creative work.  On the other hand, fan films are labors of love.  These movies are made, not by people looking for profit, but by people who care so much about a character or characters that they personally need to continue breathing life into them.  It’s also a great way to exhibit filmmaking talent.  I could make an impressive short film, put it on YouTube, and no one but my Mom would watch it.  However, if I take all of my talent and make a Robocop Versus Buckaroo Banzai fan film, it’s a safe bet I’ll get more hits than you’d expect.

RoboBanzai.egg e9f9f 590x418 Fan Films: Derivative Fanboyism or Legitimate Art Form?INCEPTION!

Generally, I tend to have a soft spot in my heart for fan films.  So, while you contemplate where you stand on the subject, I’d like to present my four all-time favorite (until something cooler comes out next week) fan films:

Troops

If you were in college in 1999, you proudly spent 30 minutes downloading this…

Batman: Dead End

Yes, that’s Boner playing the Joker.

Portal: No Escape

The cake is a lie.

Grayson

The original working title was “Robin’s Big Adventure”

So what do you think?  Are fan films a waste of time and money made by obsessed fan-people?  Or are they labors of love?  Got a favorite fan film or know of one that’s so bad it makes you want to gouge your eyes out?

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About Joe Lyons

Joe Lyons, aka SweetMonkeyCreek, likes to write funny things from his compound in Pittsburgh, PA. When he's not writing stories, plays, or founding secret societies, Joe works tirelessly on his weather machine, which he promises is not for world domination...even though there is an alarming amount of evidence indicating that it is.

Filed Under: Art, Internet, Movies, Nostalgia, Pop Culture, Pop Culture Oddities, Sci Fi, Technology, Technology and Geek Culture, Teh Internets, Trailers, Video Games Tagged With: , , , , , , ,


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  • http://twitter.com/Avath Avath

    I actually did a course this summer at university about social media and young people and a part of the course was about fan fiction. Specifically it was about Harry Potter fan fiction and how Warner Brothers lost it shit and started banning, suing, deleting websites that featured it. Until one girl fought back and they were all like “okay =(” (hence the now close cooperation between JK Rowling, WB and some HP fansites). One girl was chief editor of such a website (I forget which one) and still in her teens when she had one of the biggest HP fansites, and was editing many hundreds of fan contributed “news stories” or plain fan fiction. She argued that writing fan fiction had sparked an interest in the kids for reading, learning grammar, learning to write better, and learning to give and take constructive criticism – all skills that would help them later in life. She also said that the sense of community in the fan fiction world had helped many a lonely child. WB learned that they can make a lot of money out of these fans that fuel their own obsession this way, and thus let them be. I sense that it would be the same type of learning in making fan films: you learn tools for film making, you exercise your eye for detail, you learn to give and receive criticism etc…… and the companies should be happy due to the (free!) advertisement and obsession-fueling. I think fan-anything is creative – it practices being creative and thinking out of the box and coming up with new ideas (like the HP puppets on youtube. Oh man. So creative. So awesome.). So what if the core idea isn’t original? I mean, how many of these books and movies are completely original, with no borrowed inspiration from another source? THAT’S RIGHT. NONE. NONE AT ALL.

    (GOOD LORD. As I said on FB: I should try out for this mamapop gig because I am awesome at writing comments the size of essays)

    • http://www.actclassy.com/ SweetMonkeyCreek

      Great points! Lucasfilm does the same thing. They embrace the fan film community in some really cool ways.

      • http://twitter.com/Avath Avath

        I thought it was so awesome when JK Rowling enlisted the help of the largest HP fansites to help her announce the name of Pottermore. Savvy business too.

  • http://www.twitter.com/bstephenson Brad Stephenson

    I’d go see Grayson. Also, I can’t believe Boner is dead. Not Boner from Growing Pains… my boner after seeing the guy in the Tron suit.