Ubik
Regular
Just developing my thoughts around a topic I started discussing over on JMS News. That thread was about fan films in general, and as it’s deathly silent here, I figured I’d try spark some discussion. Bear with me, whilst I lay out some pre-amble…
There are plenty of seriously impressive fan made trailers and features out there. One that caught my eye this weekend was a fan made trailer for a live action Akira film. And I don’t mean a bunch of scenes from other films cut together to resemble a trailer, I mean it’s shot from scratch. This is just superb work, and pretty much compresses the entire film into five minutes. Fan made productions seem more and more viable these days. The technology is there to enable people to shoot good looking films for very little money. The standard of CGi in this trailer is just superb, as is a lot of the green screen work.
http://io9.com/this-is-the-closest-w...cti-1575003004
I also just watched these Italian made Star Wars fan films on Sunday (Dark Resurrection Vol 0 and Vol 1.). There were a fun distraction. Whilst it’s still clearly a fan production done on a small budget, I thought the production values were impressive and the acting no worse than the SW prequels! On the whole a really enjoyable effort.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQzOQI1Rdn0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DZzpKMGmUs
Another one that occurs to me is the Batman vs. Predator vs. alien short film. Sounds awful doesn’t it? Not so… I was really impressed how well this was executed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSxe8E4HRHE
So, looking at all of the above, I remain surprised that we’ve not seen any live action B5 fan films or web series. There are countless Trek web series made to a fairly high standard, some of them even featuring members of the original cast. I know B5 was never as big a phenomenon as Trek, but it surprising that there aren’t sections of the fan base attempting something similar. Especially when there is little hope of new material in the B5 universe.
I’m discounting Star Wreck as I see that more of a Trek parody, but it does serve as a great example of what can be done by a bunch of ambitious fans.
Sure, fan fic / series can be awful, and I’m not saying ‘this should happen’, I’m just a somewhat surprised it hasn’t. The above films show that fans can add meaningfully to an established series / fictional world.
Discuss…
There are plenty of seriously impressive fan made trailers and features out there. One that caught my eye this weekend was a fan made trailer for a live action Akira film. And I don’t mean a bunch of scenes from other films cut together to resemble a trailer, I mean it’s shot from scratch. This is just superb work, and pretty much compresses the entire film into five minutes. Fan made productions seem more and more viable these days. The technology is there to enable people to shoot good looking films for very little money. The standard of CGi in this trailer is just superb, as is a lot of the green screen work.
http://io9.com/this-is-the-closest-w...cti-1575003004
I also just watched these Italian made Star Wars fan films on Sunday (Dark Resurrection Vol 0 and Vol 1.). There were a fun distraction. Whilst it’s still clearly a fan production done on a small budget, I thought the production values were impressive and the acting no worse than the SW prequels! On the whole a really enjoyable effort.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQzOQI1Rdn0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DZzpKMGmUs
Another one that occurs to me is the Batman vs. Predator vs. alien short film. Sounds awful doesn’t it? Not so… I was really impressed how well this was executed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSxe8E4HRHE
So, looking at all of the above, I remain surprised that we’ve not seen any live action B5 fan films or web series. There are countless Trek web series made to a fairly high standard, some of them even featuring members of the original cast. I know B5 was never as big a phenomenon as Trek, but it surprising that there aren’t sections of the fan base attempting something similar. Especially when there is little hope of new material in the B5 universe.
I’m discounting Star Wreck as I see that more of a Trek parody, but it does serve as a great example of what can be done by a bunch of ambitious fans.
Sure, fan fic / series can be awful, and I’m not saying ‘this should happen’, I’m just a somewhat surprised it hasn’t. The above films show that fans can add meaningfully to an established series / fictional world.
Discuss…
Last edited: