The Top 5 Star Wars FanFilms

<<andakin: the director sucked. He would have the crowd pantomime whenever there was significant noise or dialogue. He had the opposing basketball team warm up in the background during dialog "Without having the ball touch the ground" because it made background noise. Obviously, this man knew little about editing, since the sound would end up being re-dubbed and mixed later.>>

Obviously you know little about sound editing. It is one thing to lay down a background 'atmos' track - it is quite another to go through a scene trying to sync the sound of a ball bouncing.
The director was trying to make the sound editor's job easier!

 

Zayn - for the record, I HAVE directed. I am a director as well as a writer. Both are hard jobs.

But you seem to think a story is nothing without the director. You also seem to assume that those who wish to give a writer their due obviously haven't directed, otherwise they would see your point of the argument over any other. I'm sorry, but that's just plain arrogant.

Consider this ... who is the most important person in building a house. The builder? The architect? The answer is, they do different things, but they are BOTH important. (actually, the answer is probably the banker!)

You can write a film, but it still needs to be directed. Conversly, a film without a writer doesn't usually do too well.

It's a symbiotic thing, really. Whether or not a director's ego chooses to accept that.

 

I know you have, I was talking to halibut's rather dumb comparason b/w LotR and Boxtree Publications


"I don't think James was saying give the writers more credit, but rather let's recognise them for the important job they do - something which Zayn clearly thinks is tantamount to nothing."

I never said a writers job is nothing, what I've been trying to say is- what do you expect people to do about giveing writers more credit? pay them more? in the end if the story is bad the director should have never taken the script

 

"I don't think James was saying give the writers more credit, but rather let's recognise them for the important job they do"

"What I've been trying to say is- what do you expect people to do about giveing writers more credit?"

I think this is the crux of the point here. Both sides are arguing different arguments, and not the same one

 

*Is under the piano*

 

um ok

/me recognise's the important jobs wirters do...

 

Now let's everyone shake fins

 

I have decided to bump this useless thread from page 62.

I'm in a wierd mood tonight. Ignore my WHO ARE YOU's.

~Neszis~

 

Way to go, Nezis - you NOOB !!!


It's still a dumb thread.

 

Neszis ~ WHY ON EARTH DID YOU RESURRECT THIS THREAD.

:estering on aim::



~DK~

 

TAC's lookin for a fight too...

~Neszis~

 

"/me recognise's the important jobs wirters do... "

Hooray!

 

Bidding starts at thirteen dollars.

Bets?

~DK~

 

<<He just comes right out with his quasi rating system and decides (in classic Newbie fashion) to compare FanFilms to each other.

He's certainly entitled to his opinion, but I have to say that I think his little "rating system" is a bit insulting to the filmmakers. It's one thing to offer up comments and constructive opinions/criticism, it's another to "rate" a person's work with some kind of pseudo credentials to do so. Kind of disrespectful if you ask me.>>


Hey, lets all calm down and take our prozac, okay? If we are going to gather to make films based on someone else's ideas and post them for the world to see, it only stands to reason that someone will eventually rate those films based on their own personal bias. It is neither intrinsicly arrogant or disrepectful.

On that note, here's my list of the top 5 fan films.

Just Kidding

 

Animaster wrote:
<<But the Director isn't the one who creates these things. Usually he does not write the stroy (in fanfilms this is often the case though), and does not usually choreograph the fights. >>

That may or may not be true (it differs from case to case), but he director does decide it what the script says or the choreographer comes up with. The director often doesn't come up with these things, in detail, but he knows (or at least has a general idea) in his head exactly what it is going to look like - he leaves it to other craftsman to make his imagination a reality, but it is his imagination.

Even in the case of scripts, what it says on the page is irrevocably transformed by the director into shots on film, transformed to the point that the finished film becomes only half the writers, and half the directors (or more, depending on how far he strays from the script during filming - Kubrick was known to throw out page after page every day and rewrite on the spot).

Only in the case of the most powerful producers (like Jerry Brukheimer or Joel Silver) who want a specific feel to their movies, is the director not the final arbiter of what is actually seen on film. And even then, a director with a strong artistic vision can make a film statement that is instrinscly his own (Black Hawk Down is nothing like Bad Company or Pearl Harbor and The Matrix cannot be confused with Lethal Weapon or Swordfish).

 

And, as usual, these films simply must write themselves.

SIGH. WILL THE BIGOTRY AGAINST THE WRITTEN WORD EVER END?

Semaj
WRITER-producer
ROGUE

 

I'll agree that the writer sets the basic foundation for the movie - but (and a lot of people don't really get this, including the WGA) in most instances he does not do this in a vacuum.

Yes, there are many cases where a writer crafts a screenplay and then sells it to a studio to make into a movie, in which case he is the founding artistic vision of the piece (which may or may not have any resemblence to the finished article).

However, this represents less then half of all produced screenplays.

Most screenplays are generated when a director or producer or some money man gets an idea for a movie (or more often than not buys a preestablished property, cause nothing sells like a sure thing, but I'm not going to touch on that right here, except to point out that most of Hichcock's movies were based on books, with screenplays by other people, but no one would argue that they are totally 'his' movies, not even the WGA, which allowed him to be the first director to use 'a film by' in the credits) and hires a writer and has them produce a draft based on this idea which may be very short, or maybe extremely detailed.

There are some directors (mostly bad ones, who don't care about the material they are working from, only what they are going to make from it once it is ready - for instance Ridley Scott) who will leave the writer alone, make notes when drafts are submitted, and not really worry about it until they get a final draft.

But, most directors (especially the good ones) will sit with their writers while they are working, and they will hammer out the details together. Paul Schraeder did not write Taxi Driver in a vacuum, Taxi Driver was (with the exception of the political candidate and assassination attempt) completely Martin Scorese - and he and Schraeder hammered out the first draft over the course of many months, together, with Scorse throwing out ideas and comments and arguing with Schraeder as Schaeder wrote, and looking over his shoulder at finished scenes. He shaped that screenplay, and then shaped it even more during production and editing. The famous "You talkin' to me" scene was a DeNiro adlib filmed during a scene rehersal that Scorsese decided to keep during editing (and in one of those weird Oscar flukes that continues to astound me, Taxi Driver was nominated for Best Picture and Best Actor, but neither Best Director nor Best Original Screenplay).

Or to take another example that I have seen, E.T. by Melissa Matheson. The idea of E.T., was generated during a dinner conversation between Matheson, her husband of the time Harrison Ford, and Steven Spielberg. Matheson invented the character of E.T., but it was Spielberg who came up with the basic plot (initially, E.T. crashes on Earth and is chased by evil scientists). He also came up with the character of Keys, played by Peter Coyote, who is based on early memories of his father. Melissa Matheson wrote that screenplay, but she wrote it with Spielberg, working in his office, talking with him about it, every day. That movie is a Spielberg movie, from the conception (while, interestingly, some of his other well known works, namely Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan, are not, though he did have signficant imput into rewrites of both, particularly the Dachau scenes and the Normandy Beach scenes). My point is, the director is usually, and should always be, an integral part of the writing process.

Here's a question: George Lucas, when he was working at Zoetrope, came up with the initial idea for Apocalypse Now (namely, a remake of Hearts of Darkness set in Vietnam) - but with Star Wars sequels and Indian Jones, he gave up on and passed it on to his mentor, Francis Ford Coppola to direct. Coppola took that idea, wrote a fairly sparse screenplay (if you can call 240 pages sparse) and made a movie out of it (with many, many improvised lines by Dennis Hopper and Marlon Brando, and some entirely improvised scenes that appear no where in the shooting script). So, looking at the finished product, would you say it is mainly reflects Lucas'

 

Posted twice for some reason

 

Semaj wrote:
<<Using that bar, any Shakespearean play was dead until Brannaugh came along>>

Actually, Shakespeare was a pretty good director of his own plays. And Richard Burbbage was a superior director and actor. And, speaking as a life long Shakespeare lover, reading it on the stage is nowhere near as good as seeing it performed (either on stage or film).

 

I think it should be like this
Music: Did the musical score chosen for the film match the action?(when not using orginal score) Was the music any good?

Special Effects: Do the effects used in the film make sense? Are they any good?

Sound: Did the sound effects used in the film match the action? Were the actors heard clearly? Did they sound good?

Direction: How was the action directed? Did the film flow easily from one incident to the next?

Fight Choreography: Was the Fight Choreography well thought and performed by the actors?

Acting: How did the actors perform their roles? Did they provide adequate, believeable characters, with appropriate emotional and psychological depth.

The Film: Was the film any good?

 

What are you talking about? Oh right, the original point of this thread

 

You know, they should have an awards show where someone official looks at all the fan films and rates them, Like the oscars.

We could call it the Official Star Wars Fanfilm Awards.

They could have a Trophy and everything.

Hey Maybe we could get Kevin Smith to host it! I heard he is a Star Wars Fan.

(;

 

YOU'RE KIDDING ..... RIGHT ????

 

Just to antagonize TAC I will throw in my two cents...hehe kidding.....its not JUST to antagonize TAC hehe


okay anyway that joke will probably fall flat...so onto the message....

Someone about two pages ago made a comment about editors...and I agree... many a movie with good story and script has died a horrible death in the editing room.


Shadoe
MSP Prophet

 

Hey JT,

look at the last part of TSN's post. You'll see the icon (just drawn the wrong way around)