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Star Wars Fan Films, now Star Wars Audio Drama
darth fluffy writes "Star Wars Fanfilms have become as popular as anime music videos in the geek world over the past year (if not more), but here's a new spin: a full length Star Wars Fan Audio Drama. Recorded with over 40 actors from 5 different countries. Hurray for the power of home PC's!"
If I was 22 and living in my parents basement.
"I think George Lucas' gonna sue somebody!"
Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion.
begin the great space battle
"Roger, Red leader, I'm going in"
twelve minutes of silence
"This is Red niner. We got 'em. Let's go home"
end the great space battle
has the brains to not kill this.
IF HE'S SMART he'll encourage it. But you never know when he'll stop being smart.
Like Henry Ford said about Model T jokes 'Every joke is another Model T sold' so every SW fan effort is another pile of tickets sold.
It's Christmas everyday with BitTorrent.
Fan fiction is no more than collective imagination. When you envision the "just past the ending" scenes of your favorite move, you don't discuss it? Sounds like boring date, you.
/. It's not much different, IMO.
Fan fiction can be as bad as anything built through a collective, but this departure from a bunch of Harvard screenwriters' 6-month chop-n-splice is a refreshing. How many movies are you skipping because it seems formulaic, formulaic with a single twist or anti-formulaic in an almost reactionary sense?
With fan fiction, its a bit of a random roll of the dice. Now, I will admit that having fans create their own story is a bit like asking for more of the same. But a movie sticks to a genre/premise at some level anyway, so either accept that or eat your popcorn and go home.
The negative on fan fiction seem a bit ironic given the pro open-source stance seen on the
mug
"I think it's interesting to see this many people put this much effort into something they love. But I think it would be even more interesting to see folks put this much effort into something new. Something that would create it's own effect on the world - something new and fresh and...
OK, so when can I expect to see some Cowboy BeBop fan animes?"
I'm a little surprised somebody gave this guy a 'Redundant' rating. He makes a good point. Part of the problem of the vast majority of Fanfics (for any franchise, not just SW) is that the writers of these feel that they need to make the story as familiar as possible. "I better reference everything I know about Star Wars so that these people realize they're reading about it!" So what happens? Too much familiarity, too little creativity, too little risk-taking.
What's really needed is inspiration. Any story can be good, even if it's a fanfic, as long as it's inspired. But here's the problem with Star Wars (or Star Trek.. etc...) too many rules have been defined. You should see the dorks come out of the woodwork whenever somebody does a Star Trek vs. Star Wars crossover fanfic. "Starfleet shields can withstand any laser weapons, Captain Picard was very clear about that. The Empire is powerless against the UFP!" "Bullshit! Just because they call them 'turbolasers', doesn't mean they really are lasers! The Empire could easily..." I'm not making this shit up. People get so uptight about the rules that it's hard to produce any work of fanfiction in these overly defined universes to satisfy lots of people.
At least, with something new (like the parent poster suggested), the rules aren't defined yet. They have control over what they're doing and they can make something truely interesting and inspired.
In the SW storyline, this may give you an idea of the creativity being cultured online for fan fiction.
Described by one writer as:
"an interesting site that will be a delight for anyone with broadband and an interest in obsessive sci-fi fandom. Ask yourself: if you and your friends decided to shoot an entire episode of TOS Star Trek, and you wrote a script set on the recommissioned Exeter, and you rented a warehouse, built a replica of a Constitution-class starship, designed all the sets and lighting to look like 1967 TV, and spent SEVEN YEARS on the project, meticulously recreating the look and sound of a TOS episode, what would the result look like?"
I haven't checked it out yet but looks rather interesting.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Nice to see Slashdot taking an interest in the project. Of coure, now we're on a frantic hunt for more mirrors so 2S doesn't kill the entire StarWarz/JediNet server, but that's okay.
e /2s/
To answer some of the comments (particularly the ones that show that the poster has no clue what they're talking about):
Don't expect GL or LFL to kill the site. For those who haven't been keeping up, fan productions such as fan films have been around for years, and are an ever-expanding community. Lucasfilm takes a fan-friendly approach to the genre, only curtailiing those that somehow tarnish the SW name through extensive sexual content (Tripping the Rift, StarBallz, etc.) or use film footage direct from their films (the original version of The Dark Redemption, for example). While fan productions cannot receive official approval from Lucasfilm, many projects (including Second Strike) have received positive comments from people who work with or work for Lucasfilm or LucasBooks. (Daniel Wallace, for instance, has a regular segment on Second Strike's sister project, ChronoRadio, while Kevin Rubio, Ann Crispin, and others, have interviews scheduled for CR as well). In other words, there's no need to worry about LFL "shutting us down." They're about the most benevolent company in terms of fan productions that there is.
FearUncertaintyDoubt: That's why you'll never hear a space explosion in Second Strike, only ones in the mid-atmosphere, at the highest.
Fan Fiction Naysayers: There's a difference between fan fiction that directly comes out of a film and an original story set in the context of a fictional universe. Second Strike does the latter. It has very few tie-ins directly to previously released materials. It simply uses the backdrop of the time frame created by one comic book series and one novel series as its setup. After that, it could be an audio presentation of any other story or an entirely separate story. The Star Wars tie-in, though, represents the community we wanted to present it for, as a thanks for the support given to the projects that many of our 40+ cast have worked on in the past. In many of our cases, this is the last hurrah before leaving the fan production community.
StewyGriffin: Perhaps it didn't make the page, so you didn't know. The entire production has cost *maybe* $40, mostly for food and such that our Mixer has been using as fuel for late-night mixing. Pretty much everything has been done with programs that we all had to begin with, and, after that, all that was required was time. A fan *film* on the other hand, require a decent sized budget. Part of why Second Strike is audio is to cut down costs to almost nothing.
a1englishman: Listen to the opening of 2S. That's what we're paying homage to. You can tell the most in the model used for the opening narrator.
I'll try to check back again tonight or once I get back to Atlanta this weekend. Just have to remember to ignore the trolls and keep an eye out for people who *have* bothered to check it out who can therefore make *informed* comments.
--NPB
http://www.starwarz.com/timelin