A fan film worthy of Kickstarter?

For a few weeks I've been noodling with a some ideas after watching both the Star Wars Saga and Season 4 of TCW on Blu-Ray. The behind the scenes material is outstanding, especially when you have a chance to peak into the Lucasfilm creative process. Specifically in regard to TCW, I still have a number of friends and family that just can't get past the animated nature of the series, regardless of the quality storytelling and visual effects. With a fifth season underway I thought to myself, how hard would it be to cut the first four seasons into a two 100 minute movies? You wouldn't get all the gritty details, but you could still tell a heck of a story, right?

Now rewind to C6. There hasn't been a shortage of impressive cosplay photo galleries floating around the web, which not only showcases the incredible costuming talent of the Star Wars fan community, but also the passion for bringing Star Wars to life. There are a number of convincing "doubles" for the PT as well, like Anakin, Ahsoka, Count Dooku and many more.

Then it hit me! After recutting the two 100 minute movies, the sound, dialogue, story and everything needed for a script is already complete. It would be a matter of visually recreating a shot-for-shot remake of these 100 minute movies, telling a live action version of the Clone Wars using our very own talented fan community of "doubles." Consider, our actors are lip-synching on location or in front of a green screen, and with the help of some VFX artists, we could have a decent live action story with half the work.

OK, I don't want to marginalize the immense effort this would take, but where there's a will (and maybe a Kickstarter budget) there's a way. I'd be willing to Executive Produce, lend a creative hand with model building, and fund the venture as best I can. I have a vision to make these films closer to the style of the OT by integrating actual models/sets and similar OT lighting techniques. Moreover, I'm floating the concept here, as this is as good a start as any. It certainly wouldn't get very far off the ground without the support of this community, and perhaps a few talented individuals may be willing to jump on board and give us some momentum. If that is the case, then we just may have a fan film project worthy of Kickstarter.

Thoughts?

 

Probably a good test case to see how Disney's lawyers will treat it.
Get it out there for them to resist, if that's their intent.

 

So are you saying you'd take live-action actors and impose them over the CG environments from the show?

Whatever your plan, make sure you do a proof-of-concept before you dig into the full thing. It may be even more work than you realize. Starting off with a full scene or even a single episode should give you and idea of just what you'll need to do.

 

Thanks for the response. Actually, I'd only use the full audio from the show. The visuals would all be made by our team, with the models being "actual" models, not CGI. Although I could see some green screen work, but I have access to a great miniature modeling community. That will give us an OT feel, hopefully!

 

Vaportrail is right, produce a two minute scene and take it from there.

 

Couldn't agree more, guys! Thanks so much for the feedback thus far. On that note, do you have any recommendations on folks that may be interested in doing the proof of concept film from the production side of things? In as much that I have everything I need aside from cosplayers, I'd prefer to pull some resources from our community, in addition to what I currently have available.

I'm sure you all know the value in a few extra sets of hands, even for a short 5 - 10 minute film. If I had to choose one thing, it be a camera and lenses. My Cannon is a SLR made from the same body as the mid-grade Cannon DSLR. Not good enough for a final project IMHO, do you think the demo film would be hurt by using this camera? My thought is yes, but, again I'm in uncharted water. Someone with those resources would be a valuable asset, especially if we move forward with the final project.

 

What other video projects have you made?

 

My day job affords me the opportunity to executive produce, direct, write dialogue and create audio for TV commercials which are used in our marketing campaigns. Typically I partner with a local media firm who puts together the pre and post production crew. I've also spent a good deal of time in the recording studio both as a producer and musician, and have a home studio built in my house. Unfortunately, to use these conventional resources I'd be looking at a budget over $200k to just scratch the surface. Thus, to do it right, I'd need some crowd sourced funds and perhaps some talent from our Star Wars community to help with the project, and possibly control costs through volunteering or at least to do the work at a reduced compensation structure.

 

I'm very interested to see how the test turns out. Having actors lip-sync their lines is definitely something I'd never considered. If you have decent enough actors, I'd say just go for it and make it a straight live-action adaptation. Certainly record the audio at least, you never know.


And really? All this for Clone Wars?
I have some books you should read by this dude named Zahn...

 

Sounds interesting.. but it just seems like shooting miniatures is intrinsically more expensive and time consuming than CG. Also, not sure why you're being so hard on DSLR video. A mid-range Canon DLSR (I'm assuming either a 60D or a 7D) isn't anything to sneeze at. The glass (lenses) are far more important than the camera body. Consider that as I'm sure you know, you can get a nice fast prime lens for a few hundred dollars that will shoot some pretty nice video. There's nothing particularly different about the video mode on a 60D versus a 5D MK II, and people certainly use the later in professional productions. They're used as everything from stunt cameras in movies (most recent example I can think of is from the Avengers) to TV productions, and of course music videos.