Imaginary Worlds - Fan Films Go Pro

Episode Date: November 26, 2020

Fan films allow filmmakers to tell stories set in the worlds of their favorite licensed characters, and fan films have taken off in recent years, thanks to affordable special effects and online distribution. Is that legal? Sort of. But the studios have learned it’s not worth upsetting their hardcore fans by suing them, according to copyright lawyer David Lizerbram. Indie Boom film festival director Anthony DeVito explains why he thinks fan films deserve the same respect as other indie productions. John Lim talks about playing Sulu on the bridge of The Enterprise circa 1966. And Rob Ayling breaks down his fan film, Living in Crime Alley, which puts The Dark Knight in precarious situation.  Star Trek: New Voyages One Day I’ll Become Power/Rangers Unauthorized (Bootleg Universe) Bel-Air Living in Crime Alley Batman vs. Darth Vader (Alternative Ending) Today's episode is brought to you by ConvertKit and BetterHelp. Want to advertise/sponsor our show? We have partnered with AdvertiseCast to handle our advertising/sponsorship requests. They’re great to work with and will help you advertise on our show. Please email [e-mail] or click the link below to get started. Imaginary Worlds AdvertiseCast Listing Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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And this was the early 2000s. So most of the fan films that John was watching were pretty amateurish. And then he came across a series of Star Trek fan films called New Voyages. And I was blown away because they'd actually taken the time to recreate the sets and the costumes and the look and the feel of the original show right down to a T. Red alert. All hands, man and battle stations. Not a drill. Report.

They were hour-long episodes, the same length as the original series, and the writing was spot on to the point where fans were saying, this felt like the extra season of Star Trek that the original series never got. But at that point, they hadn't put out many episodes, and John noticed that they hadn't cast Sulu yet. John is an Asian-American actor, so he got in touch with the filmmakers. And before he knew it, John was on the bridge of the Enterprise, their Enterprise, playing Sulu. It was about as close as I can imagine to stepping onto those sets if I had been alive in the 1960s and had been at Desilu Studios.

This is Sulu. Aye, sir. Desilu Studios. One of the reasons why New Voyages looked so good was because some of the filmmakers had worked on the series Star Trek Enterprise. And even back then, they could use home computers to create special effects that were better than the original series. In fact, there was definitely creative differences between the producers as to whether or not to go back and really stick to the tried and true and make it look as close to the 60s as possible or update it to make it look like it was more of a current production. So that was a tension point, I think, between the decision makers and the producers.

They ended up splitting the difference. So it looks like the 60s with a minor upgrade. And the quality of the fan films got the attention of Walter Koenig, who played Chekhov in the original series, and George Takei, who played Sulu. Both actors wanted to be in these fan films as older versions of their characters. In Sulu's case, it was a time travel snafu. Lisa and I were aboard the Bird of Prey. It was about to explode when the transporter seized us. Instead of materializing on the Enterprise,

we found ourselves on the surface of a planet. They even got DC Fontana, who wrote for original Star Trek shows, to write the episode that had Walter Koenig playing the older version of Chekhov. It's implied that the older Chekhov dies at the end of the episode. It's a little bit vague, but basically the implication is that he passes away. And that actually caused quite a bit of controversy with some of the fans.

So they actually did a redux with a different ending where it can be shoehorned a little bit more neatly into canon. At that point, when they were changing the story to make sure their bootleg fan films could fit into official Star Trek canon, they began to wonder. Are we really a fan film or are we something else? I think fan film is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it perfectly describes exactly what we were doing. On the other hand, it can feel a little limiting to call it a fan film, right? Especially when you have people who worked on the official series, when you have original writers, when you have directors and special effects people,

many of whom are in the industry. Is fan film enough of a category? Is it enough of a label? The lawyers at CBS in Paramount began to wonder that as well. And there were, as I understand it, a couple of phone calls between some of the folks at CBS Paramount and the producers of New Voyages. And they basically came up with a gentleman's agreement. It wasn't anything in writing. It wasn't anything formalized. The rules were, okay, we basically have two rules for you. Number one, you can't use any original footage. So you can't take footage from the episodes and splice it in. The number two rule was you can't make any money off of this. Other than that, the thinking was have fun, have at it.

John thinks that the powers that be realized, they needed the fans to keep the franchise alive. Because at that point, Enterprise was going off the air. The next generation movies had wrapped up. And for a while, there wasn't anything in terms of film or television to fill that void. So that was an era in which I think fans were starting to take it upon themselves to create those stories. Jump cut to 2014. create those stories. Jump cut to 2014. Paramount learns that a group of fans are planning to make a feature-length film called Axnar involving actors who appeared in original Star Trek shows and movies, and the filmmakers were raising a lot of money on Kickstarter. At this point,

the franchise was hot again. The J.J. Abrams reboot movies were doing well at the box office, franchise was hot again. The J.J. Abrams reboot movies were doing well at the box office, Star Trek Discovery was in development, and Paramount sued the fan filmmakers. It took three years for the lawsuit to go through the courts. They eventually settled, and the studio established a new set of rules. Fan films have to be 15 minutes long or less, sets and costumes must be store-bought. Is there a limit for the budget? And once again, fan films have to be non-profit. David Lizerbram is a lawyer who has given talks at Comic-Con about the legality of fan films.

I asked him, why did Paramount bother to settle at all? They own the IP. They have the money to keep the lawsuit going. Paramount kind of took it on the chin and they didn't look good in front of the fans because they were actually the ones who went out and went all the way to the courts with it. And so I think all the rest of the studios and the IP-owning companies just kind of looked at it and said, look, we're going to look at this as a benign phenomenon and possibly something positive that helps keeps our characters alive and keeps the fans excited because those are your fans. Those are the people you don't want to upset.

And social media was giving the fans a pretty big megaphone to express themselves. When I went to college in the 90s, my film professor used to say that film is the only artistic medium where the artists can't afford their own tools. And that was true for a century, but not anymore. With affordable special effects and free distribution online, fan films can look just as good as the real thing and get millions of viewers. Anthony DeVito is one of the organizers of an independent film festival called Indie Boom, and he's been so impressed with fan films,

he created a special category for them within their film festival. It seemed to me that they were not really getting the respect that I felt, that we felt they deserved. These films are in many ways even harder to make than a traditional indie because they involve props and costumes that have to look a certain way. They often involve visual effects, fight choreography, all this great stuff. It's just amazing to watch the stuff that we get and just be blown away by like what people did with very little or sometimes no money.

They featured fan films set in the video game world of Halo or set in World War II with the classic Superman. One of his favorites was set in the Star Wars universe. It's called One Day I'll Become and it was made by a filmmaker in Slovakia. I'll Become, and it was made by a filmmaker in Slovakia. It was kind of done from the perspective of a very young person who is maybe a Jedi and is having visions of his adult life where he may have to fight his friend. And it was real simple. It was beautifully shot. It was one of those things where

you could see it as a seed of something bigger. The special effects of the spaceship battles in this fan film are so good, I had to check to make sure the filmmaker didn't borrow clips from the original Star Wars movies. He didn't. Special effects were made from scratch on a home computer.

So if fan films can look like the real thing, who's to say these stories didn't happen to the characters? It may not be licensed by the studios, but if I see a fan film that feels real to me, and it captures my imagination, as far as I'm concerned, it happened in that world. my imagination, as far as I'm concerned, it happened in that world. And what's most interesting to me is how fan filmmakers are transforming the nature of the licensed characters that they're borrowing. We'll get to that after the break. jewels brought to you by Old Spice Total Body. Hey, it stinks down here. Why do armpits get all of the attention? We're down here all day with no odor protection. Wait, what's that? Mmm, vanilla and shea. That's Old Spice Total Body deodorant. 24-7 freshness from pits to privates with daily use. It's so gentle. We've never smelled so good. Shop Old Spice Total Body Deodorant now.

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without discussing the legality of them because they're both tied up with the concept of fair use. to talk about the artistic merit of fan films without discussing the legality of them, because they're both tied up with the concept of fair use. The copyright lawyer that I spoke with, David Lizerbram, says that the main issue with fair use is whether fan films are taking potential earnings away from the studios. So if you get to the point where, you know, a fan, you know, financed through Kickstarter or whoever they want to finance it, can create an action movie with the special effects and lighting and sound and everything that is essentially equivalent to what a major movie studio could make, well, then potentially that is a substitute.

And potentially you could say, well, hey, I'm just going to watch this Spider-Man fan film instead of paying whatever it takes to go to the movie theater, when people actually went to the movie theaters. You know, at that point, it becomes potentially a substitution if the quality is really close to or equivalent to, you know, the original work. And that potentially could weigh against a fair use defense. And David says the line between free speech and copyright is blurry. So judges have a lot of leeway in these cases. And lately, they've been favoring fan films if the work is considered, quote, transformative. But if you've somehow transformed the original work, you've changed it, you've used it in a new

context, you've added some social or historical or artistic commentary, use it to make a political point, etc. Those are circumstances where a use is more likely to be considered fair use under this kind of transformative doctrine. But it's a very much an evolving area of law. The only way to know for sure is you have to get sued, defend yourself in court, and see what the judge has to say about it. A few years ago, we did an episode about fan fiction. And there are a lot of similarities between fan fiction and fan films. But fan fiction tends to be more transformative, even subversive, in creating romantic relationships or changing the sexuality

of characters in a way that's different from the original works. But fan fiction is a literary adaptation of a visual medium. Nobody is going to read a short story about Kirk and Spock falling in love and wonder if this is a real episode of Star Trek. But fan films try to look like the real thing, which can make the studios nervous. So if you create a fan film that is, let's say, sexually explicit or, you know, has other content that people might find offensive, especially if that's outside the scope of the original work, then you're much more likely to be on the losing end of a legal claim because, you know, obviously the companies don't like to see that kind of thing.

Anthony DeVito, who runs the festival Indie Boom, says that overall fan films do tend to be more conservative and not wanting to rock the boat. Also, a lot of fan filmmakers are just really into craftsmanship. Part of the fun is, can I recreate this thing that I love accurately enough to where I'm like excited to look at it? Like I built the Iron Man armor or whatever. But now there are so many great looking fan films out there.

If the filmmakers want to really stand out, they have to add something else to get people's attention. I follow a lot of cosplay people on Instagram. They're amazing because of the way they keep taking stuff that we know and turning it on its head. And I think that that is starting to find its way into films as well, because a lot of the cosplay people are also involved in fan films. One of the most famous examples of a subversive fan film was a 2015 fake trailer for a dark and gritty reboot of the power rangers starring james vanderbeek and katie sackoff you're out of your mind tommy didn't kill any of us he's a ranger you just forgot what that means why do you think they gave these powers to kids

because we were the only ones who could destroy Rita and her... You are not that stupid! For fuck's sake! Put your shit together and start thinking for yourself, for once in your life! You're not a little girl anymore. Now where's Tommy? Go fuck yourself. The company that owns the Power Rangers, Saban, went after the director, Joseph Kahn, and they got the film pulled off the internet. But the internet loved that film, and there was such an outcry, Saban had to make a deal to bring it back. And sometimes a transformative fan film

can turn into a windfall. Recently, a filmmaker named Morgan Cooper created a fake trailer for a dramatic reboot of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. You're going to Bel-Air to live with your uncle and your auntie. Bel-Air, out of all places. This is a second chance, Will. Don't waste it. Will Smith was so impressed, he made a deal to produce the show, for real, with a fan filmmaker in charge. And that's not the only story I've read of a director being hired by a studio after their fan film got a lot of buzz. And Anthony says, I think it's across disciplines. I think that you can really show off your skills,

whether it's as an editor, as a director, as a special effects guy, as a makeup person, as a prop builder, as a wardrobe and costume, like everything that you could think of that you could potentially get hired to do, you can do in a fan film. And I think it can really impress the people that are watching it. I have to say one of my biggest issues with fan films is the acting, because sometimes they'll put an incredible amount of work and detail into the sets and the costumes and everything like that, and then they'll get their buddy to star in the movie.

You know, it's like, I feel like that actually is often what makes me lose my suspension of disbelief. Yeah, I could see that. I mean, I'm an actor as myself, and sometimes, yeah, sometimes it will take me out of it. I often find it endearing because it's people at all different skill levels wanting to tell a story that really just comes out of love and enthusiasm for the subject matter. When we're looking at films that are submitted to us, I am looking at things that kind of like spark joy, as they say.

And I'm like, OK, this one might not win an acting award, but it's so much fun. Anthony pointed me towards one of his favorite fan films that does everything right, including the acting. The film is called Living in Crime Alley, and it's about Batman. Long-time listeners know that Batman is my favorite character, and I really don't go out of my way to incorporate him into so many episodes.

It just seems like wherever I go, there he is. And this fan film has resonated with a lot of people around the world. The filmmaker is British. His name is Rob Ayling. And the inspiration for his film came from his own experience being raised by a single parent in a working class neighborhood of East London. And when he wrote the script, Rob had just lost his job. Or as they say in the UK, he was made redundant because they were shrinking the workforce. And it was devastating for him. You know, it makes you feel like a failure.

Then it made me see another perspective from having seen my mum go through that process as well. I'd now seen two different perspectives of an adult and a child dealing with poverty. And then I was looking around my room, and this will probably be no surprise to you, Eric, but I've got lots of Batman memorabilia in the room. And I just went, what would happen if someone like Batman or Bruce Wayne Batman was thrown into the mix. How would he deal with this situation of a Gothamite just trying to survive in a city with no hope? And Rob has felt a deep connection to Batman

for a long time. I lost my father when I was five years old. And it was around that time that I discovered Batman. It was almost like he became almost like another father figure to me, an almost replacement father figure, because here's a character who has used the grief of losing his parents and turned it into his greatest asset. We recently did an episode

about whether it's time to reimagine vigilante superheroes who use blunt force to stop crime. And Rob had been wondering whether Bruce Wayne could do more good for Gotham by investing in poor communities instead of beating up poor people. And he wanted to explore that idea in this film. Audiences are not stupid. They're very smart, you know, and they want something in return. And I think it's really important in any production that you do that you give something back to the audience. And most of the time it's a question and it's not necessarily a question that's answered in the film.

The film is set in the neighborhood of Crime Alley, which is where Bruce Wayne's parents were murdered. The main character is a single dad. His daughter is obsessed with Batman. She even wears a homemade Batman costume. I'm not capable of say to them, you catch a joker yet? Two-face. Oh, I forgot that dog may don't speak

yo i'm pretty sure you don't smile either the actors who play the father and daughter vincent jerome and bella champagny are both black and some people have assumed that the casting was on purpose to enhance the social commentary. But Rob says he actually hadn't thought about casting Black actors until Vincent Jerome discovered the script online and he contacted Rob because he wanted to audition for the part.

I wasn't casting him because he was Black. I was casting him because he was the role. And it's the same for Bella as well. You know, they bring across this believable truth. And spoiler alert, I am going to tell you what happens in the film. As I mentioned, the little girl is a big fan of the Dark Knight who patrols their neighborhood. She has been mimicking everything that she has heard

or even potentially has seen either on TV footage or something to do with the Batman. So she's been throwing a Frisbee at stacked cans. She's been growling at a teddy bear. You know, all of these are like Easter eggs to the fandom of Batman anyway, but it's all set up to showcase this idea that at a young age, we will replicate what we see. But the girl doesn't know that her father, in an act of desperation, decides to rob a convenience store so he can pay their bills.

You think I'm playing, man? Put it in your bag. Put it in your bag now. Put it in your bag. The father thinks he got away with it, but when he gets back to the apartment, the window shatters. A smoke bomb fills the room. The father pulls a gun. Batman it, but when he gets back to the apartment, the window shatters, the smoke bomb fills the room,

the father pulls a gun, Batman knocks it out of his hand. Suddenly, Batman realizes the gun is pointed at him again, but the little girl is holding it, still wearing her Batman costume. She instantly, instinctively has to pick up the one thing that is near her to protect the one that she truly loves and who is really the hero in her eyes.

What's really important in that moment there as well is the fact that she is in that costume, the fact that he is in his costume, and he's looking at a reflection of himself in the place in which he was born, aka where Batman was born, in Crime Alley. And it does kind of mirror that idea of, is he really doing enough in that moment? And that is inspiring good, especially to someone at a young age.

Cautiously, Batman takes the gun from the girl. The father is in tears. He embraces his daughter. The father is in tears. He embraces his daughter. Batman doesn't turn the guy over to the police. Instead, he disappears and goes back to brooding on a rooftop. It's quite powerful for a seven-minute film, but it took years for Rob to get the confidence to make it. And friends told him they loved the script. He even met a story editor at DC who said to him that this was good enough to be published in a Batman comic.

But Rob was in a precarious situation. He was still out of work, taking any freelance job he could get. If I'm completely honest with you, Eric, I was afraid of failing. I just wanted to get to a position where I was not only financially stable, but also creatively in a safe zone. But when you tell somebody you're making a Batman fan film, or you think of the idea of making one, there are so many things to consider straight away. First and foremost is the money factor. You just think, oh my God, this is just going to cost so much money. But then there's that level of expectation to making a Batman film. That really scared me. I didn't want to take on a project and fail just like that, you know, and I didn't feel like I was creatively ready for such an endeavor. So I was very grateful to the people that did, you know,

finally pretty much hammer it down to me and say, you are an idiot, but you've got something here. You know, you've got something really good here. Just go for it. You know, what can you lose apart from money? So was the biggest challenge the financial aspect of it? I think definitely the financial aspect was the difficult thing. Yeah, for sure. But I think also making sure that Batman was believable, making sure that the four minutes and 35 seconds was all worth it. But every time Batman's on the screen, the budget goes up. So you're like, okay, so there's a minute that's a thousand pounds. There's another minute that's 2000 pounds. When people see it, they'll realize that he's not really in the film that long, but when he's on the screen, you'll see the budgets there. Rob has gotten a lot of job offers from the film, although many of them are

on hold because of COVID. And it is easier to get someone's attention by saying, you should check out this Batman fan film, instead of saying, you should watch this short independent movie. Pop culture is our mythology. It's our shared cultural language. That's why the lawyer David Lizerbram has become an advocate for fan films. People have been remixing and reusing artistic content since basically the dawn of civilization. Probably the second song ever created was an unauthorized version of the first song. And it's been going like that ever since, you know, cave paintings, you know, it's probably a knockoff of the painting in the cave next, you know, next door. That's just how

people communicate. Culture is important. And we use these symbols, these elements, these archetypes to communicate, you know, anything of value. And so the law has to recognize and adapt to that reality. You know, it seems like a new technological phenomenon, but really it's just a reflection of what's been going on since, you know, long before copyright laws were ever written. Personally, I'd like to see more fan films take up the mantle of fan fiction and pushing the cultural conversation and showing us something that the studios could never make or would never make. That way, fan filmmakers can really embrace the legal term

transformative, which gives them the right to express themselves by using these famous characters. And fan films don't always have to ask difficult, deep questions. They could be pure wish fulfillment that could never happen because of which studio owns the IP. Like Batman vs. Darth Vader. That's a real fan film. And the production values are awesome.

You've made a mistake coming here. Release Superman while you still can. You do not know the power of the dark side. I'll take my science over your magic any day. There are actually two versions of that film with different endings, and they have a combined total of 25.6 million views on YouTube. And I think half of those views are mine. That is it for this week. Thank you for listening.

Special thanks to John Lim, David Lizard Bram, Anthony DeVito, and Rob Ayling. My assistant producer is Stephanie Billman. And I put a link to some of the fan films that I mentioned in the show notes. By the way, the Imaginary World's website has been completely redesigned. I really love the way it looks, and it's now got a search bar, so you can look up episodes by topic or subtopic. The URL is still the same, imaginaryworldspodcast.org. You can also like the show on Facebook. I tweeted emalinski and imagineworldspod. If you really like the show, please leave a review wherever you get your podcasts, or do a shout out on social media. That always helps people discover the show.

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