Pittsburgh, PA Star Wars Fan Film Awards

All right, enough talk. Who wants to do a fan film?


Lucasfilm Ltd. and AtomFilms Announce Second Star Wars Fan Film Awards; George Lucas, Skywalker Sound and Audience Choice Awards Top List

After their resounding success last year, the Star Wars Fan Film Awards return for a major sequel, with new categories, new prizes, and a new venue for the awards ceremony itself.

The Awards recognize the popularity and entertainment value of fan-made films relating to the Star Wars movies, and their impact on popular culture and the fan community. Therefore Lucasfilm Ltd. and AtomFilms are pleased to announce that the Awards ceremony will take place at this year's Comic-Con International, which runs from July 17 to 20 in San Diego.

The Awards will give creators of Star Wars fan films the opportunity to showcase their work to millions of viewers worldwide, both at the Official Star Wars Fan Film Awards website (www.starwars.atomfilms.com) and at Comic-Con International, the largest comic book and popular culture convention in the world. Original productions qualifying as finalists will compete for top honors, including an award picked by Star Wars creator George Lucas.

"I was particularly happy that we sponsored a Fan Film Awards contest that culminated in 10 fan filmmakers getting trophies at Star Wars Celebration II," in Indianapolis last May, Lucas said. "Out of the current crop of young moviemakers will likely come some of tomorrow's best writers, producers and directors."

"Once we saw the popularity of the Awards last year, we knew we had to continue them," said Jim Ward, Vice President of Marketing at Lucasfilm. "We are pleased to partner again with AtomFilms and with Comic-Con International. We really look forward to seeing our fans' creativity and recognizing their contributions."

"We are excited to extend our partnership with Lucasfilm for the 2nd annual Fan Film Awards," said AtomFilms CEO Mika Salmi. "I can't wait to see what this year's class of fan filmmakers will come up with!"

The three main Star Wars Fan Film Awards, presented at Comic-Con International, will be:

-- George Lucas Selects -- The competition's best overall entry

as recognized by George Lucas.

-- Skywalker Sound Award -- The competition's second best entry

as selected by a team of Lucasfilm and AtomFilms reviewers.

-- Audience Choice Award -- The competition's best overall entry

as selected by fan voting.

Other awards for fan film achievement will also be announced at Comic-Con International. Some of the awards will include cash prizes, and winners will get the special Fan Film Awards trophy first given last year. It consists of the iconic droids R2-D2 and C-3PO getting ready to view a film, with popcorn and soda in hand.

The winners of both the George Lucas Selects and Skywalker Sound awards will receive cash prizes and the opportunity to spend half a day at multi-award-winning Skywalker Sound at Skywalker Ranch, working with an editor on a professional sound mix of their winning films. AtomFilms, producer of the Official Star Wars Fan Film Awards, is accepting film submissions starting immediately and until 12:00 noon Pacific Time June 3, 2003. To qualify for the competition, films must meet the guidelines for Star Wars fan films outlined on the Fan Film Awards website (www.starwars.atomfilms.com).

New finalists will be posted regularly, beginning as early as this month. Those and all eligible fan films submitted before June 3, 2003, which were not finalists in the 2002 Fan Film Awards, will be candidates for award consideration. Lucas Online's official website, www.starwars.com, will feature news updates on the Fan Film competition, details on the prizes, and specifics on the Comic-Con International programming. Star Wars enthusiasts will be able to enjoy and evaluate the competition entries online, and vote for their favorites in June.

Lucasfilm Ltd. is one of the leading film and entertainment companies in the world. Lucasfilm's businesses include George Lucas' film and television production and

 

I would love to do this. I think if I were to do one that the film would have to be a cartoon / animation. Most of the fan films that are live action come off very cheesy. Obviously it has been done well (troops comes to mind).

My brother and I have been working on a six part movie based on a comic book he makes. The process has dragged on forever because its only us. Him the writer and me the animator.

If there was a good idea of a funny cartoon / animation I would be interested in working on it. Live action doesn't really interest me.

LDP

 

Good idea Lando. and good luck.

Remember we only have until June to do this for this year's awards. So keep it simple.


I personally want to do a real live short. Cheesy though it may be.

Okay so here are just a couple of ideas:

Emperor's arrival (me) at a secret Jedi retreat. Royal Guards (Joe/Tom maybe Tony and Carrie should they want to do this part as well) are flanking the Emperor. Various Stormtroopers as well. (Other 501st guys). The Emperor feels the presence of Jedi. He dispatches the Stormies to go and find them. cut to stomies being slaughtered by Jedi (various Fanforce members) One returns badly beaten. The Emperor then sends his Royal Guards, who manage to kill some of the Jedi before themselves falling with again one exception. This time the Emperor himself goes on the hunt. He finds and destroys what Jedi he finds. One escapes and flies away in a starship to warn other jedi.

Okay rather simple. But due to time constraints.... Think about this,it's almost all action, plenty of effects (lightsabers, blaster bolts, force pike lightening, force lightening)

Another idea is one mentioned sometime ago at a meeting.

Jerry Springer: Star Wars style! Nuff said there. Leaves plenty to the imagination.

(Imagines a Luke/Leia bit, Luke/Vader/Leia bit, Han and Chewie bit) Oh the ideas one could come up with.

What else? Remember on six months until this HAS to be submitted.

 

Yeah, but these film awards (and hosting itself) have hefty restrictions. Virtually none of the films on TFN, even Troops, qualifies for these films. I think you have to do a parody or a documentary in order to use the copyrighted material.

 

Hey, how about something in the style of The Blair Witch Project?

Like say there is a crew of three smugglers who decide to check out an antient legend of a sith and document everything they find. They were never heard from again. Their film was found years later, with the horrors (or laughs) that can not be described...

Or something along those lines...

This would be both a parody and a documentary...

I dunno. Just an idea that popped in my head.

 

Troops won the pioneering award.

Also, from what I've seen on the atomic.com website, there's nothing there that we couldn't do ourselves. Of course I'll look further into it (restictions) but I just wanted to see if anyone else is as interested as I am in doing a fan film.

 

Our film won't be anywhere near ready for June. I have begun drawing the characters in Flash. We only have one script done.

My plan is to bring them out on the web for viewing. If anybody knows flash or illustrator and are interested in working on it. PM me

 

I must have gotten my wires crossed somewhere. Maybe it wasn't the awards that I was thinking of, but maybe the hosting of the films on the star wars website or something....

 

I think a parody would present the best chance of winning for us. I like the Jerry Springer idea, but how about The Real World with Star Wars characters? Or Star Wars Survivor. These could both provide some funny moments and wouldn't need to look great(i.e. special effects, etc).

Lets list some possible characters that we could use based on what costumes everyone has.

Emperor
Royal Gaurd
Stormtrooper
Jedi
???

These characters interacting like they were on the Real World or Survivor would be very funny. Imagine a Jedi complaining about the stormtrooper becasue he doesn't do any work aroung the house, or different alliances that could be made for survivor. Anyway, that's my opinion. I say parody over serious film becasue it would be easier.

 

I know at the August picnic there was an idea being bandied about for SW Grease parody. I like the survivor idea as well!

The nice thing about these ideas are that we can make them as long as we need to. If we only want to do keep it to a few minutes, it can be a trailer or an extended commercial. If we feel good about making an entire episode/short film, these ideas fit both well.

 

I think the Grease one is a bit hard to do for the time we have.

Really only a 5-10 minute short would suffice. This seems to follow with what other fanfilmakers are doing.

It would be a rather involved project for something longer than that. With conflicting schedules, such as we have, we just couldn't get it done before June.

Simplicity is the key.

A mini Survivor would be cool. (Instead of a monkey stealing the food like on the last REAL Survivor it could be Yoda. (That fits exactly, think of first Dagobah scene...)

 

Okay so I'm going to make this official.

For those who truly want to do a fanfilm I will hold a brainstorming session, (bring your pencils, paper etc) on March 1st.

That's a Saturday. (Location to be determined later)

We'll go over ideas everyone has come up with to that point.

Think of new ideas.

Figure out what's reasonable to do.

Plan on who is doing what in the production. Doubling up on duties is a necessity. So plan on acting as well as behind the scenes work.

Plan a shooting schedule.

Determine where to get the eqipment from. This will be the job of a "producer/equipment manager".

DO NOT VOLUTEER unless you fully plan on putting in a LOT of work to get this done. Suggestions are welcome but only if you have some idea and basic plans on how your suggestion can come to fruition.

This is not a SWAP sponsored event. Me saying this is "official" is to just get the ball rolling. The only way this would become a SWAP sponsored event is if the overwhelming majority of current active members helps out with production.

I plan on doing something even if it's the cheeseist thing on the planet. So help or no, something from Pittsburgh will be presented. (If you'd rather not have a cheesy representation of fanfilms in Pittsburgh then help out.)

Sorry, if this seems strong in statement. I just really want to do this instead of just talking about it, and when I put my mind to something I want to see it completed instead of just some idea floating around in the fibrous tissue that is my brain.

 

Date sounds good in my head....

I'll try to make it- the earlier, the better. Maybe meet for some breakfast and brainstorm at an Eat N Park?

Anyways, I'm interested. I like survivor. There is a SW survivor parody that is done on the net with action figures we can use for inspiration.

I acted in college, and I also picked up some makeup, directing, and techie stuff.

 

I'll help anyway I can. I can do the video editing/special effects. I have all the programs and know-how to do that. Stuff like the opening crawl and lightsabers/lazers are cake to do in After Effects. I'm not too shabby with 3d Max if we need/can get a blue screen to make backgrounds.

I do have one idea. We make a old school saftey/training video. You know those cheesy black and white deals that they used to show us in highschool.

OK, here is the idea...

Starts off with a class of Imperial Stromies, Guards, etc... The teacher of the class starts the movie and we go from color to black and white.

The film's premise would be proper Imperial duties. We could have one of them be helping people cross a bust street, another could be the proper way to shoot from the hip.

Anyway that's all I got off the top of my head.

 

then there's always mine and stacies infamous pretty fly for a jedi music video...but we were going to do that soon anyway with my boyfriend as "the jedi" we just need a hairpiece so he can have a padawan hair do.

 

I liked the Skywalker Springer episode idea or a family thearpy session among them with the Empoerer or Yoda as the shrink.

"Hmm how feel you young Skywalker?"

"Terrible my dad always off conquering the universe and my mom she disappered one day and never even told me and now, now I find out this hot chick I wanna is my sister whos also seeing my best friend."

"Son, shut up" Vader strangulation. "Its all Obi-wans fault"

 

Actually, I kinda like Jedi Dave's idea of a Sith 'Blair Witch' style fan film the best. I think that would be something totally differant. It would be farily easy to do also.

Also, I have a SHARP VL-AH150 Hi8 viewcam with 400x digital zoom and 270 degree rotating lens that could be used for filming if needed.

 

Greetings, blokes.

I officially sponsor the Star Wars Survivor idea. As was noted before, it'd be fairly easy, it wouldn't have to look terribly grand photographically (as it'd be docu-style), and I think it'd be all kinds of fun.

I would love nothing more than to help push a film through to completion with you crazy fiends, though, with my work schedule being horrifically random and poopy, I can't know for certain what days and whatnot I could make and such, and as a result, would be potentially unreliable.

Which bites the Big One , let me tell you.

However, I feel that the area in which I could contribute most to the project would be as a writer. And, typically, writers don't tend to be around the actual production a whole lot.

As such, this is what I intend to do:
1) Do my darnedest to make the March 1 brainstorming session.
2) Between Now and Then, I will pump out a first draft of my ideas for a Star Wars Survivor script.
3) If it turns out I can't make the meeting, I will give my draft to Shewski, who could then present it to those attending.
4) Those present can then read it over, and decide if they like anything in there, can add to it, adapt it, whatever.

To prove that I'm not a total hack, I submit the following evidence: during college I had two one-act plays of mine performed on stage by fellow students at the annual play festival. The first one, "Riding the Regurgitator," was clearly the audience favorite the year it was performed.

Also, I'm also a big fan of Survivor, and think I may be able to do justice to the material.

At any rate, those are my intentions. A Star Wars Survivor script, as written by Yours Truly, will exist for perusal by March 1st. Bet your bottom dollar on it.

Needs to get up early for work,
Yours Truly

 

If I had to choose between Survivor and Real World fan films, I would pick the Real World becasue it's probably easier to make. The big thing would be outdoors vs. indoors. Survivor would need to be outside and we would need to pick a spot that was somewhat away from the city. Since we don't have any nice beaches nearby I would suggest going to an area with a lot of trees and call it Survivor: Endor. However, would we only be filming one episode of Survivor? If so then I propose that we have the tribe already merged with Palpatine getting the boot, only so he could force lightning everyone as he leaves. We could discuss this more at the brainstorming session, and if everyone decides to do something else I will be all for it. We should give serious consideration to the films that would be easiest to make, since it would be our first film project.

 

Hey, here's another idea (considering only one person has mentioned in liking my previous idea).

How about a Star Wars Celebrity Game Show. Like how Saturday Night Live does the Celebrity Jeopordy. I think it would be hilarious to see something like that done with SW characters. And I think that would be an easy thing to do too.

Some other ideas for a game show:

Family Feud - The dark side (stormies, emperor, guards, etc..) against the light side (jedi, padawans, reble solder, ect..)

Pyrimid - "Things that associated with Jabba's palace. Ready. Go!"

 

This sounds like a great idea, and I'm all in. If it helps any, I have experience in filming, editing, etc. That's what I'm gonna be going to school for (Which reminds me Sal, I'll have a question for you at this brainstorming thing) I honestly can't think of any good ideas at the moment, but I did have a question. Does anyone have the editing equipment, or know where we could go to edit it all?

 

I am a two-time Alumni of the Art Institute of Pittsburgh and they have an editing suite that I can use, as long as students don't need it. I'm sure I can persude them to let me use the facilities, especially if I give them credit for the studio time.

This really isn't a problem.

Let's first get to planning and shooting.

 

As long as the camera we would use for filming has a firewire link I can do it on my computer here at home. Like I said before I have all the tools nessacary for video editing. And like Sal I can use the video suite at my school anytime since I am an alumni.

 

Since it seems the general concensous is for the 'Survior' style film. I would like to suggest a location for the shoot.

There is a State Park out this way, east of the burgh, in the mountains that might make a great back drop for Fluke's 'Survivor:Endor' idea. It is Blue Knob State Park. It is located in between Ebensburg, PA and Bedford, PA on a PA map (to give everyone a general idea of location).

I know this might be a far haul from Pittsburgh but the park is in the mountains and parts of it are rather secluded and densly forested to give it that Endor feel we would be looking for. But it is still rather easily accessable to these areas from State Route 869 which runs through that part of the park. Also there usually are not alot of people at the park in the spring which would make it easier for filming. We would not be distrubing other people and people would not be disturbing us.

There are pavillions in the general area, that I am talking about, that we could use as a base of operations for the filming.

There is also a camp ground, swimming pool, Ski Resort and an old Forest Fire watch tower, which I think is still there, on the other side of the park. They are close enough by that we might be able to use them in the filming also if needed. Just a thought though.

I am just throwing out this idea for everyone's 2 credits worth and for brainstorming purposes.

 

Before we have the brain storming meeting, we should know who will be able to participate in the movie and what characters people have who want to be part of it. Post below if you will help out and/or the costumes/charaters you will be able to play.