The prequel trilogy of Star Wars films concluded last year with Revenge of the Sith, and the much-anticipated Star Wars television series is still a long way off. Until then, fan films will provide the only semi-regular source of new cinematic entertainment for Star Wars enthusiasts. That’s a heavy burden for us to bear for such a large community. Do we filmmakers realize this? And are we taking steps to meet this demand?

The landscape of the fan film, and specifically the Star Wars fan film, has changed dramatically over the past few years. It may startle some to note that Troops, regarded by some as the father of the online fan film, approaches its tenth anniversary. Since that time, many, many fan films have been made; some better, many worse. Access to technology ushered in WYSIWYG nonlinear video and sound editing, 3D animation and visual effects that rival big-budget Hollywood productions. The genre was born, it grew, and it expanded to encompass a wide variety of franchises, from Star Wars and Star Trek to the vast fictional universes of graphic novels and superheroes. TheForce.net Theater, and later Fan Films.com, provided a reliable stream of juried content and a headquarters for the burgeoning community of fan filmmakers. The model that these sites employ worked well then, but I’m not sure it still works as well. Fan films have changed, as have the people who make and watch them. Just as importantly, the Web, which has always served as the primary means to connect fan filmmakers and fans, is a much different place than it was in 1997. It’s time to start examining these changes, predicting their effects on the future of the genre, and planning accordingly.

As someone who been closely involved with the online fan film movement for most of its history, I wish to make some observations about “The State of the Genre” and some future directions we might pursue to improve fan films. I’ve written a four-part series of opinions-editorials under the collective title, “The Future of Fan Films.” They are subtitled, in order of planned release: “Conflict,” “Collaboration,” “Innovation,” and “Growth.” The first of these essays, “Conflict,” continues below.

CONFLICT

A lot has been said about the upcoming Star Wars television shows, but most people aren’t talking about how they might affect the fan film genre. It seems reasonable to foresee some conflicts between fan films, an historically Web-distributed medium, and the Star Wars TV shows, which Steve Sansweet hints will probably be distributed on the Internet, on iPods, or through some other digital medium. Recall that George Lucas made his career on cutting out distributors and middle men.

A few years ago, it was pretty easy to tell when a video clip on the Web was a fan film and when it was official Lucasfilm material. For one reason, everyone had seen the Star Wars films, and the handful of low-quality clips available online were captured from grainy VHS tapes and uploaded on dial-up modems. Moreover, a dearth of cheap digital video equipment meant that the overwhelming majority of Star Wars fan films made during this time were amateurish. Now it’s getting a lot harder to tell the difference between film and fan film. Thanks to the DVD release of all the Star Wars films and the popularization of broadband Internet, it’s easy to digitally transfer high quality film footage to our computers and share this footage, and some of us already have. At the same time, the production quality of Star Wars fan films continues to improve, both in visual effects and, to a lesser extent, storylines and acting. The line between Star Wars film and fan film blurs a little.

When the official Star Wars television series debut, we’re going to see a flood of new Star Wars video content appearing on the Web. It’s an established fact by now that every mildly-popular television show is digitally captured and made available online for download in one way or another. In some cases, this is done legally by the show’s distributors; for example, iTunes offers downloads of “Lost” and “The Office” for a small fee. In other cases, these shows are made available through less-than-legal channels, such as BitTorrent sites and file sharing networks. Coincidentally, these same channels have been “legally” employed for years by fan filmmakers to widely proliferate their own work. The line between Star Wars film and fan film blurs a little more.

The conclusion is obvious. A casual fan could easily confuse a decent 40-minute Star Wars fan film that was downloaded on the Web with a decent 40-minute Star Wars TV show episode that was, er, downloaded on the Web (either legally or illegally – both are becoming quite popular). For example, if Lucasfilm charges a fee for iTunes downloads of the Star Wars TV show episodes, then it finally has a lot to lose, financially, by allowing fan films to flourish. A system which charges money for some Star Wars content (official TV episodes) and not others (fan films) will confuse many people and lead some to pursue the “free stuff.” The problem is complicated by casual fans who don’t even realize what they’re doing.

Obviously, we love fan films and want to continue making and watching them. So what do we do? And perhaps just as importantly, what will Lucasfilm do?

This series of opinions-editorials on the future of fan films will continue next Tuesday with “Collaboration.” In the meantime, we encourage you to discuss these ideas on our Jedi Council Forums.