Collaboration will play a greater role in the production and distribution of fan films of the future. In this essay, I discuss how the old model of the behemoth fan film site is outdated because fan films and the Web have changed over the years. New technologies and attitudes towards the Web provide today’s and tomorrow’s filmmakers with tools to work together for the betterment of the fan film genre.

A brief history of fan films

Fan films and the Web have enjoyed a close relationship since the 1990s, when technology enabled the average person to make movies on his personal computer and put them online. The Internet quickly surpassed fan conventions as the primary venue for distributing fan films, watching them, and learning how to make them. Most of the earliest Web sites dedicated to fan films focused exclusively on the Star Wars universe, a trend that continues to this day, albeit in a diluted fashion. A few of these sites included the Mos Eisley Multiplex, FanFilms.com, and TheForce.net (TFN) Theater.

More sites popped up here and there, but TFN Theater had a number of advantages going for it, such as built-in fan base pouring in from TheForce.net and exclusive hosting of a great initial crop of fan films like Troops and Bounty Trail. When FanFilms.com (owned by Jeff Yankey) and TFN Theater merged, it was decided that “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” and the format of the new site, TFN FanFilms was left unchanged. Except for a few feature additions, such as the Cast and Crew Database by Ken Lawton, and the recent inclusion of non-Star Wars fan films, the basic structure of the site reflects its 1990s heritage.

So what is this structure, anyway? TFN FanFilms operates in a very straightforward fashion. A staff of three editors run every function of the site: answering emails, posting news updates, and especially selecting and hosting new fan films. Filmmakers seek hosting by filling out a form and submitting it to the TFN FanFilms staff, who review every submission. If it meets certain quality and content standards, we accept it. The film files themselves are hosted on TheForce.net servers which handle thousands of downloads per month. Makes sense, right?

Times have changed

Maybe it did, but not anymore. The fact is that while TFN FanFilms may not have changed much since 2000, the rest of the world has. Most importantly, the fan film genre and the Web have grown wildly to take on wholly different forms, each with their own intricacies and audiences. Let’s take a look at them in more detail.

The new fan film

The most obvious thing to notice about fan films is that there are more of them. Many, many more. When it existed, the Mos Eisley Multiplex could fit all the films it linked to on a single page. Today, TFN FanFilms alone hosts a hundred fan films, with countless more to be found on other sites around the Web.

Fan films have experienced not just growth, but breadth. Not only do we see fans of other movie franchises getting involved, but also fans of television shows, comic books, novels, and even video games. In addition to Star Wars fan films, there are films which take place in the universes of Star Trek, The Matrix, Half-Life, Batman, Sin City, Lord of the Rings, to name a few. Moreover, plenty of parodies mix and match elements from all these sources to create something new.

The last thing to mention is the changing face of professionalism in fan filmmaking. Not only are amateurs getting better, but current and aspiring professionals have been getting involved with fan films for years. It’s become so prevalent that the Official Star Wars Fan Film Awards amended its rules this year to bar union and guild members from participating. Visual effects produced for fan films rival Hollywood productions, partly because they’re being created with the same software and techniques. Some filmmakers have even created fan film trailers to entice investors to greenlight an official version.

It’s important to note that there are still plenty of bad, unprofessional fan films out there. In fact, the vast majority of them probably aren’t worth watching. Sturgeon’s Revelation holds true with fan films as it does in any other domain: “Ninety percent of everything is crap.” There are so many fan films now that it’s getting hard to sift through the rough for the diamonds—a problem I’ll soon address.

The new Web

The growth of fan films is closely connected with the growth of the Web. The number of people around the world who use the Internet has skyrocketed since the 1990s, matched only by an exponential increase in the number of Web sites for them to use.

The stats also suggest that people are using the Internet more often than they used to, for a wider variety of activities. Online participation is hot right now, and I’d go so far as to call fan films one of the first examples. Now people use the Internet to communicate with each other with email, instant messages, text messages, message boards, social networking software, and blogs more than ever before. Moreover, the realm of online entertainment has exploded to include all kinds of online games, photo and video sharing, and other ways to pass the time.

A final trend to pay attention to is the increase of people on the Web with high-speed Internet access. This has profound effects on the popularization of online video like fan films. People can download files faster, and they want high resolution and high quality whenever they can get it, a far cry from the postage-stamp sized video clips we used to expect online. The high-definition movie trailers offered on Apple’s Web site are a good example. With bigger hard drives, better sound systems, and brighter computer monitors, it’s no longer a pipedream to enjoy watching a lengthy video on your computer. Many already do this, thanks to DVD drives, Web sites that broadcast video content, and BitTorrent and file sharing software that lets them download movies and TV shows on their computer.

So, to recap:

• Many more people are online.


• They’re using the Web more than ever, to do more things.


• They want to participate.


• They also want to look at stuff and be entertained.


• Their computers are becoming media centers ideal for watching and making videos.

I’ll talk more about this in my upcoming essay in this series, “Growth.” The bottom line to remember is that the Web is changing the way people use computers in an important way.

The Social Web

The term “Social Web” implies a use of the Web that involves people communicating with each other. This is not a new concept. People have used message boards to talk online since the 1980s. Today, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Web developers talk about “user-generated content” and “users adding value.” The basic idea this boils down to is that with the Social Web, the more people use a Web site, the more valuable it gets for everybody. An example of this would be TFN FanFilms’ Cast and Crew Database. Not only does this site facilitate communication between filmmakers, but it exists entirely because filmmakers use it. Without them, there would be nothing there. Contrast this with most of the Web sites of the 1990s (and many today), where a company hires a Webmaster to put content on their site for you to read—a very “one way” mode of communication. A relevant example would be this very Web site. I write, you read. Lather, rinse, repeat. The only value you—the user—provide by using the site is ad revenue. (That’s a different, albeit important, kind of “value.”)

Another idea under the aegis of the Social Web is the wisdom of crowds. The theory holds that if you get a big enough crowd together, somebody is bound to know the answer. This seems obvious in real life, but the Internet is different in important ways. Online crowds can be much bigger than offline ones. Moreover, in certain situations, individual members of online crowds can be heard much more easily than their physical counterparts. As a result, the Internet facilitates some interesting possibilities as far as mass communication goes.

The wisdom of crowds theory has another interpretation. If you ask a large group to comment on, rate, or review something, a majority usually emerges. Sometimes this majority’s opinion is valuable; other times, it isn’t. A few Web sites closely integrate the wisdom of crowds into their business models. For example, Rotten Tomatoes collects movie and game reviews from numerous critics across the Internet and averages their ratings into a single percentage of “freshness,” called the Tomatometer. So while you may consistently disagree with Roger Ebert’s reviews, his opinion aggregated with those of many other critics might provide a reliable guideline for whether a movie is worth seeing.

The question of whether the wisdom of crowds is more reliable than that of a few people is a tough one. But it’s also a very interesting idea. Let's explore it in contexts more applicable to fan films.

For the fans, by the fans

The Completely Unofficial Star Wars Encyclopedia is one of the best features on TheForce.net. A fellow named Bob Vitas is solely responsible for compiling over 50,000 entries involving all aspects of the Star Wars universe, from characters to planets. As far as I know, this encyclopedia is still the most complete of its kind on the Web (or anywhere else). It’s really quite an achievement.

Last year, another dedicated fan, Chad Barbry, started a Star Wars-themed wiki called the Wookieepedia. In case you’ve been living in a cave, a wiki is an online encyclopedia or database than anyone is allowed to edit. Since the Wookieepedia started in March 2005, it has amassed over 30,000 entries in just over a year and continues to grow rapidly. The quality of many articles is stunning, as is the efforts of the fan community who created them.

Two sites, essentially one purpose. Historically, this has been a bad situation for the Star Wars fan community, but in this example things have gone smoothly so far. Mr. Vitas contributes his expertise to the Wookieepedia as well. Unfortunately, there have been some plagiarism issues, but this is a problem common to most wikis, such as Wikipedia. In any case, it should be interesting to see what becomes of the Completely Unofficial Star Wars Encyclopedia and the Wookieepedia in the future.

To steal a phrase from the forum, what does this have to do with fan films? Everything. My fellow staff members and I embody the Bob Vitas of the fan film community, the “one guy” running the show. We post the news. We pick the films. We pay for the hosting. We do this for a few reasons: we want to, we think we’re good at it, and the model of TFN FanFilms requires that somebody has to. But maybe this isn’t the best way. Maybe the Wookieepedia model makes more sense. Encyclopedias collect knowledge that already exists—in this case, knowledge that was produced mainly by LucasFilm and its licenses. Conversely, fan films are an entirely community-driven endeavor. All knowledge that exists, all the tutorials and reviews and the films themselves, come from the same people who read those tutorials and reviews and watch those films. Except for emailing suggestions, these people—actually, you—have little influence in the day-to-day operations of TFN FanFilms. Shouldn’t the community of fan filmmakers, by anyone’s definition the reason the hobby exists, have as much say in what films are shown? What news is relevant? By that same token, should we at TFN really have to foot the hosting bill for thousands of video downloads per month? Is it fair that three guys have to review countless film submissions and emails each month?

Maybe you’re thinking: “Hey, if you guys don’t want to do this, I’d be more than happy to.” That’s not the point. We love the work and we’re happy to do it. The point is if this isn’t the best way for everyone, we should start looking at alternatives or changes.

What kind of changes? So glad you asked. Here are some ideas for how to involve the fan film community for the greater good. I’m sure you, gentle reader, have a few suggestions yourself. (Make sure to share them on the Fan Films forum after you finish reading.)

Content selection

People have always wanted a way to review the films we host, or to search for the top-rated fan films so they don’t miss the best ones. I’ve always thought this makes sense—fan films on TFN are reviewed all the time, but on the Fan Films Forum where they’re not easily found. Maybe the idea of ratings can be taken a step further.

Have you seen Digg? It’s a news site where its users vote to determine which stories make the front page. The more “diggs” or votes a story gets, the higher it gets bumped on the site. Anyone can submit a story, and there’s no behind-the-scenes staff choosing what gets posted. (I believe there is staff to do maintenance, like remove duplicate stories or bad links, but the approval process is entirely hands-off.)

I can imagine a system like this working with fan films. Rather than letting one or two people decide what makes a film “worthy,” why not let everyone have a say? Theoretically, enough votes in the system would cancel out discrepancies and the truly good content would always be highly rated. On the other hand, the majority can’t always be trusted. An off-beat but good film might get panned, or the same kinds of films might get approved again and again because the same people are voting.

News aggregators

We try to post fan films new updates whenever we find some, but I’m certain that interesting things are happening under the radar. For example, lots of filmmakers, like the Return of Pink Five crew, keep fans updated on their progress with blogs. And besides production, other fans simply like to comment on the fan film hobby in their own blogs.

This is good stuff, but it’s hard to keep track of it all. It would be nice if we used RSS feeds to let everyone know when someone within the fan film community has written an update. TFN already does this for its content; however, even we can do more by offering a TFN FanFilms-exclusive feed specific to news or film releases. Networks like these are really popular in other communities. I imagine they have a lot to offer ours.

Wikis

It’s hard to believe there isn’t a Fan Film Wiki yet, but there should be. Fan filmmaking is its own domain of knowledge, with a cornucopia of jargon and hobby-specific practices. A wiki would let us centralize all of this information with the added benefit of letting anyone easily contribute.

For example, fan filmmaking tutorials currently exist on the TFN FanFilms site, but some of them are out of date. If they were posted to a wiki, anyone could easily make changes to improve them. As it stands, they’d have to email us and we’d need to log into the content management system for something as simple as a typo. Another example would be the list of tutorials maintained by DVeditor on the Fan Films Forum. This list contains links to tutorials from all over the Web. Sometimes the links go dead, for which there’s no real solution. That information is simply gone forever unless it’s been backed up. Again, a wiki would help by cutting down on redundancy and eliminating the need to host tutorial pages online, maintain links to those pages, and ensure that content from those tutorials is mirrored.

Tutorials are just one example of the content that a Fan Film wiki might contain. Other information might include notable fan film personalities, fan film history, and pages about fan films themselves—a Fan Film IMDb of sorts. Motivation to maintain such a wiki is not an issue, in my opinion. In many cases, these resources already exist; they’re just hard to find or outdated. And if the Wookieepedia is any indication, fans are more than willing to put in the time to make something like this happen.

Decentralized hosting

Hosting used to be the bane of the fan filmmaker’s existence. Finding a place to cheaply, reliably host a huge video file was almost impossible. Lots of people submitted films to TFN not because they thought they were cinematic masterpieces, but simply because we offered free hosting to the films we accepted.

We still host all the films we accept on our own servers, and the associated bandwidth costs are nothing short of insane. Fan films have been getting longer—some are even feature-length now. Throw in an expectation of both low- and high-resolution versions of our films (clocking in at several hundred megabytes in most cases) and you can picture the dollar signs adding up. So far it hasn’t been a problem, but that could change in a heartbeat. Some may recall we temporarily ceased the hosting of several popular films in the past, most recently Revelations, because the download servers were being hammered.

In this realm, we’re not so far behind. Ken Lawton was innovative enough to conceive the Fan Films Hosting Pool, a management system for hosting fan films through BitTorrent. The site gets some use, but not as much as it might, for a few reasons. Some people don’t like BitTorrent, don’t know what it is, or can’t set it up properly. Others prefer direct downloads to films offered by TFN FanFilms. The Hosting Pool isn’t well-publicized, which might also limit its popularity. Whatever the reasons are, we should work on addressing them. BitTorrent makes too much sense for the fan film community to ignore.

Another option to consider is the rise of free video hosting and streaming sites, something unheard of just a few years ago. Examples include Google Video and especially YouTube, fast becoming one of the most popular sites on the Web. While the video quality these sites provide can’t yet compare to what we offer on TFN FanFilms, and users have to jump through hoops to save local copies, I think they’re already useful for distributing ancillary materials like animatics, rough cuts, and visual effects tests. In the future, we may see improvements to video hosting and streaming sites that expand the possibilities even more.

Cooperation among fans

With all of this technology enabling cooperation among fans, it’s surprising that we see so little of it. This is a problem both within the fan film community and outside it. With a few notable exceptions, most fan films are produced by small pockets of geographically-linked filmmakers who generally do most or all of the work themselves. When they do look to the fan filmmaking community, it’s typically to seek resources (tutorials, 3D models) or to ask quick questions on a discussion forum. Far less often, fan filmmakers from different regions or countries will use the Internet as a medium by which to pool talent and resources. The logistics of this kind of collaboration are complicated enough to understandably deter most filmmakers, especially ones whose intentions are merely to have a good time. But when a more professional or epic fan film is desired, it follows that the best people, locations, and props may not be found locally. The results of a more expansive search generally pay off. For example, many filmmakers have recognized the value of contacting the 501^st Legion when a fan film requires Imperial personnel. The film turns out better, and best of all, more fans are involved in its production.

Unfortunately, cooperation among the various fan activities is also infrequent. As surprising as it sounds, people involved with Fan Films, Fan Fiction, and Fan Audio rarely communicate, much less work with, each other, despite the obvious advantages to doing so. A few noble efforts have been made to marry these areas, but they’re the exception to the rule. The Fan Fiction forum on TheForce.net alone produces thousands of stories each year set in the Star Wars universe. How many of these have been adapted for fan film screenplays? To my knowledge, almost none. Yet plot and character development is universally acknowledged as a devastating weak point of most fan films, to the point where even a hint of plot innovation or dialogue creativity sparks disproportionate acclaim. It makes no sense to treat the creative efforts of other fans within a fictional universe as off-limits or irrelevant. Instead, we should be making a conscious effort to meet new fans and share our passion for the hobby with them. Besides laziness, there’s no reason not to, and the rewards more than justify the effort.

Let’s do it

Change isn’t upon us—it was upon us years ago, but nobody noticed. Fan films and the Web have grown markedly from the days when TFN FanFilms first emerged as the premiere fan film portal on the Web. The hobby of fan filmmaking encompasses more sources of inspiration and involves more potential fans than ever. Films are longer and more professional, but they’re not much better. Opportunities to involve more fans and new ideas haven’t yet been realized.

The Web is not just a place to read the news, but also a place to make the news, remix it, and share it with friends. It’s a huge, social network with which people want to interact and participate. It’s also an increasingly capable media delivery system and entertainment center. The time has never been riper for fan films to really take off—if we want them to.

It’s time to start thinking about a fan film community that democratizes the hobby. If all fans working together can produce something better than a couple of guys, then let’s try it. Nobody wants to see better fan films more than the audiences themselves. And we fan filmmakers are desperate to get our films watched and discussed. Technology has progressed to the point where new options have emerged for making fan films, learning about them, and distributing them for people to enjoy. Tools like wikis, RSS feeds, and BitTorrent fling open the doors to an increasingly collaborative, community-oriented kind of filmmaking.

Without collaboration, fan films won’t improve, and may not even survive. Let’s not wait around to find out.

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