FAN FILM FRIDAY: INTERVIEW: Clive Young talks about the Fan Film Subculture

Sorry. I don't get out as much as I used to. Please forgive my ignorance. I'm checking out your links now. There's some impressive stuff there! Cool!

As Republibot is a huge undertaking, requiring many different talents and skills, we left out the 'i' as an allusion to the old saw that there is "No 'I' in Team"

Not buying it?

Neither am I. Going to go fix it now....

You haven't heard of The House of L'Stok? *sigh* Few have! I write, publish, edit*, run the odd event or two, produced the odd audio drama, even put out an audio book.

I'm hoping to do more next year!

K

* Did you know you'd left the "i" our of "Republbot's Greatest Hits"?

Kirok, first I've got to congratulate you on a really cool screen name. I've been walking around Republibot World Headquarters* yelling "I...Am...Kirr-Ock!" in dramatic tones for about an hour now as a result. But as the others are threatening to beat me, I'll just get down to business at hand.

We reviewed Clive's book a week back, and while I'd forgotten the "Community Theater" quote, I do totally agree with it. I think there is something of a community nature to these projects, and even though they're grueling, time consuming, and frequently hillariously incompetent, there is a kind of joie de vivre that permeates them that is enervating and that you really can't buy anywhere else. There's something that comes from a project that is both a labor of love and a bonding (or sometimes clashing) experience is really, really, really cool, and goes a long way towards explaining my fascination with 'em.

We've toyed with the notion of actualy reviewing Fan Films on the site. I myself lean towards it, but I always pull back and don't do it at the last minute, mostly because what yardstick do you use to judge 'em? It hadn't occured to me that doing that would make them competetive in a way that's probably counterproductive to the form, but in between yelling "I Am Kir-Ock" and "I'm Replying to Kir-Ock," I've given it some thought, and I think you're right. I think we should probably just accept them for what they are. Thank you for pointing that out.

As a slight expansion of that, I've got a bunch of friends who are under the weird misapprehnsion that Fan Films are a way to make the big time, how if they can make one (Invariably a Trek one), or if they can pitch a script to Cawley, this will somehow translate in to a glorious life beyond the dreams of avarice in California, with a beautiful wife, an even more beautiful mistress, and hot and cold running cocaine. I keep explaining that the Phase 2 are totally backed up, with like six episodes in production right now, and even if they wanted your script, they don't pay for 'em. "Yeah, but he had a cameo in the new Star Trek movie." Swell, but that's got more to do with JJ Abrams being really cool than it does anything else, and a one-second cameo does not the big-time make. I suspect that this kind of outlook (Which isn't the majority, but definitely is present) might in some way be related to the part of my own brain that makes me want to critique these things; the part that makes me want to, I dunno, play TV Star, I guess; the belief that despite all evidence to the contrary, I could somehow do it better. Maybe not. Just a thought.

Anyway, I drifted a bit there. Thanks for posting!

You speak as though you've got some first-hand experience with these things. Have you been involvediin any fan productions?

* notice I didn't say which world.

Yeah, that's a good point. Just by osmosis, everyone knows basically what Trek is. B5 is far, far less known, and considerably more challenging as storytelling goes, so maybe only half of the people who know of it have a real working knowledge of it. And of them, how many have the free time, discressionary income, and delusional nature that lets them make these things? Pretty much just me. And I promised Straczynski I wouldn't do such a thing. Sigh.

And then there's the new Galactica which, for some reason, by it's very bleak nature, seems to render Fan Films kind of...well, there's actually been one or two in the early days, but it seems to ward 'em off for some reason. (unless you count "The Plan" which, despite not being a fan film, felt like one, and mined the same general territory fan films do http://www.republibot.com/content/dvd-movie-review-battlestar-galactica-... ) So, yeah, good point.

I was assuming it was psychological, or perhaps because B5 uniforms are much harder to make than the goofy vellour pajamas the Trekies favor...

Cool interview, I never knew Clive's background but the combination of journalistic, technical and entertainment industry background sounds just right.

For the record I'm against the idea of public critique of fan films, it might be an advantage to users, saving you from having to wade through the "pages of crap", but it creates a winner/loser mentality in something that has nothing to do with competitiveness.

Clive put it nicely when he called it, "modern-day community theater, replacing the high-school gym with YouTube". Other than in fantasies like "Fame" and Disney's "High School Musical", how much community theatre would *really* entertain a mainstream audience?

A fan production is not a product like a commercially released movie which, quite legitimately, aims to make a truckload of money for its makers by entertaining its audience.

To use a trite metaphor, a fan production is the journey and not the destination, it is the act of making it that is the accomplishment not the finished item. It would be as difficult to judge which fan productions were most successful as it would be to judge which community theatres had accomplished the most.

There is no one magic rule with which we can grade productions against each other. The differences in quality between the finished items derives from the natural talent and determination of the cast and crew, the percentage of professional help they have had, their desire to please their audience and whether they want to use it as a stepping stone to bigger and better things.

Without these things a fan production can still be a great experience in the way that it allows the participants to "push the envelope" even if it is on the same creative level as theatre sports or karaoke. But on this level they are not spectator sports, they are participation sports.

Cheers

Kirok of L'Stok

I had lost track of Clive's site during one upgrade or another. Thanks for the reminder.

They start to get the idea of telling their own stories in their own original 'universe', without being tied down by some show's backstory or what have you. And yet very few of these projects seem to actually come to fruition. Any ideas about that?

That's easy. If you put out a call for actors/crew/etc. for "a Star Trek film" you've got a lot of people who know what it is, have some kind of expertise in the franchise, and want to be part of it. If you do the same for "my original movie" nobody knows what you're talking about. Somebody like Cawley might be able to pull it off at this point, having built a track record, but even he is focusing on another property (albeit with far more favorable terms.)

A site that sounds like what Neo has in mind is http://www.fanfilms.net It's pretty minimal, but pretty straightforward.

Actually, I think Clive's own site is a damn good contender for that role, really: http://fancinematoday.com/ It's a very good place to start looking. I certainly wouldn't be adverse to a "Fan Films Only" Youtube sub-channel, but given the pretty-much-illegal nature of Fan Films in general, I can see why they'd be wary to do that, even though there's obviously enough interest.

What is needed is a web site that fan films can be posted to youTube is so chaotic that it is hard to find the good stuff. When you do a search you end up with pages of crap. A site that had some standards for fan films would make it much easier to get into watching them.