My new 'Fan Film' goes into production tomorrow night... can't wait! The film is coming together really nicely. I've managed to persuade a guy in Texas to do all the voices i need for the film, and i'm using Audacity to give them depth and to Master them... its all ticking along nicely!
If you film lots of footage, you could actually do quite alot of different versions of the film! A serious one, a one minute one, and funny one even one with a different ending! You could do a dvd and on it choose your ending, you could have such a stupid ending for one version like a giant elephant squashes both of them or the light sabra cuts through one of them to reveil Bart Simpson etc. Just as long as you shoot alot of material.
A quick update for the Fan Film enthusiasts (and other special genre eg SciFi/horror, Adventure) in this year's AMPS Fest. The judge will again be Bob Forward who writes really great comments and has offered two free special effects from his website to all entrants. Have a look at his website www.detonationfilms.com Bob is a wild and crazy man and a great film maker,
Thanks Graeme, Bob is a past President of AMPS and initiated the special genre categories. Yes, he is famous for blowing things up and told us that one of his inspirations was Thunderbirds.
His sons starred in the Agent 12 Series which we included in the AMPS UNICA entry bringing down the wrath of the Iranian representative who obviously was completely unaware of the American comic book tradition.
Bob is definitely an original and as mentioned earlier he will judge the special categories and write his excellent comments.
The good old BBC don't seem to understand Fan Films atol. Our group is looking to do a Doctor Who fan film but we got a patronising email response when we asked about the copyright issues. In words and tone used to explain things to a five yar old. we were told that copyright is a complex area and that, blah blah, etc.
Like we don't know this given our current legal issue against a body that has infringed one of Film Thurso's properties.
The communication we sent in the first to the beeb explained fully that we have an understanding of copyright matters which in such was the reason we sent the email to find out what we might be permitted to do. Net result was a "no".
This shows how dumb the beeb are considering the vast amount of international fan film Who content exists online.
People aren't making fan films to infringe copyright or make money. They do it because the love the original thing.
Whilst I think it would be nice if copyright issues would be waived for non-commercial ventures, there's the pretty well-known fact that in copyright law, if you're not seen to be protecting and defending it, you lose it.
So if the BBC allowed their copyright to be infringed by you, then in a subsequent more significant court case, the defence could sight YOU as a reason why they should be allowed to infringe too.
Isn't it more a simple matter of law, than the bbc being 'dumb' or whatever?
From your post though, you seem, to know more of the intricacies than me, so how do you see it work?
I fully realise that Chris given that Film Thurso is currently going after a local organisation for copyright infringement. The point of the BBC being dumb is that we offered clear terms specifically siting that the project was for the purposes of raising funds for the BBC's Children In Need appeal and that we as a group or our individual members would make no financial gain from the venture.
Our email requested the relevant permissions with regard to copyright on Doctor Who and provided our terms of complience so the Beeb's reply was quite specifically an "own-goal". We were very clear that we will NOT infringe copyright in the course of producing either a fan-film or any other venture.
The Beeb said "No" thus denying themselves the opportunity for fund raising to a most worthy cause and some good PR.
Yes they are dumb!
