Fan Film Awards Show discussion

I'm sorry, and I know I'm in the minorty it seems, but I liked Xmas Tauntauns. I thought it was very creative and well-animated. And the song is catchy. I watched the Battle of Hoth just a bit ago, and liked it too. It wasn't nearly as good as Xmas Tauntauns though. Bad overacting on the part of the 'historians' and some inaccuracies. Still, most all of the finalists were quite good. George thinks like a little kid (just look at his movies, Star Wars, Howard the Duck, Willow, etc) and his appeal runs that direction. No surprise he picked Xmas Tantauns. None at all.

SK

 

It was very well done, I just didn't particularly like it because it's not my thing. But no one can complain about the animation or execution.

 

Well, Gerorge looked, almost well... "high" or something rambling on... Does he even know about some of the movies on this network? I think he'd be amazed.

 

Christmas Tauntaun was a cute movie and took some decent 3D and animating skills to make... but a musical winning "best of show"? It was a good movie, but not good enough to deserve that much.

I would've thought that something more along the lines of live-action w/ post-pro would win... not some CGi-movie.

-MYS

EDIT: I didn't even listen to George when he rambled on before he announced the winner.

 

Yeah, I was thinkin' that Uncle George was a little intoxicated. I got the impression that he hasn't even seen the films on the AtomFilms site either. Someone probably handed him the Tauntauns thing and he ran with it!

 

Okay, let's see . . . I'll do this while watching and do it as things come up. Of course, I'll post all at once, so it defeates the "24-esque" novelty, but still . . .

11:00: Show begins after John Edward ends. And I like John Edward, so this better be good.

The opening: Good. Nice to see that Smith wasn't as dry as in the previous show.

"What makes a SW fan film" . . . Wow, some decent clips and some crap.

Nice to see Hardware Wars, Troops, and GLIL given mentions.

11:03, okay already a bit bored. Nice to see Trooper Clerks, but the documentaries never did it for me. I believe I just saw bits of Power of the Sith. So that's another TFN FF Film that's shown up.

11:05 first commercial break, sorta. Jawas Gone Wild. Eh, I find that one pretty funny because a few of my students last semster managed to end up on the newest (forthcoming) Girls Gone Wild during spring break. So it's an amusing topic for me.

11:09 . . . Best Animation. Not too bad a selection. Definitely not up to par with Sacrifices or the animation work of, say, Channik in Legacy, but not nearly as bad as I expected.

The Winner: Hmm . . . Interesting premise, perhaps, but now that I've heard that voice acting, I gotta say, I'm far more impressed with some of our more "flat" fan film actors and voice actors. I had to laugh, though. Not because of the film, but because it reminded me of the DLR reference to GL's "a suit we don't need" TPM DVD comment.

11:15 . . . Troops! Okay, well, part of it. But didn't Troops show up on the last special? So that's not too bad. Actually, it looks more "realistic" as a MOV file. I never thought the opening speeder looked "fakey" until seeing it on TV this time. Odd.

11:18, another commercial break prefaced with a clip from one of the Ep. 2 featurettes from the site, nothing new. I hope the "AOTC Preview Footage" is not just the same ol' same ol'.

11:20 Dantana Morse. Didn't dig it the first time, didn't dig it on TV. I'm harsh on parodies, and, sorry, seeing them on TV doesn't make it better.

11:22 Audience Award: T'Bone!!!!! Rock! My "boss" on TV. Heh.

Holy CRAP, Battle of Hoth looks awesome!!! I MUST SEE THIS! Same for Psychic Hotline.

The Winner: Gangsta Rap . . . Wasn't that on TFN at one point? What happened? And, no, apparently they didn't change the often white-boy sounding rap. And I don't mean Linkin Park white-boy rap. I mean Vanilla Ice white-boy rap. Some of it's still pretty phat.

11:27 AOTC footage: Yep, all old stuff. Damn.

11:30 Commercials again. Dum be dum.

11:33 Smith talking about Padme being hot. He's too old. Yeesh.

Power of the Sith. Sweet. Of course, the winner of this category is a given: it was the only one that qualified.

Sparring Program: Nice to see a young guy get an award, but there are young guys around here doing phenomenal work. This one was good, but only a B in my book. Still, not bad. For a Matrix / SW crossover, we've seen far far worse.

11:40 Empire of One. I'm sorry, but after Join the Empire, you gotta do REALLY well to get me with one of these. If it were an original concept not already done better . . . maybe. And now, yet another commercial.

Damn, so far, I'm a spoilsport. Eh, continuing . . .

11:41 Dude! The AOTC novel trailer is better than half the ATOC film TV spots.

11:44 The only music they have for the entire special plays again, and we are back . . .

Best -Umentary:

Sorry, none of these caught my eye. Maybe it we because we were watching something small, not full films. Maybe it's because I've read the Formula script. Either way, there ws just something missing.

11:49 Psychic Hotline's back on. Cool. Somewhat odd, but I like the premise. An *original* parody. Amazing to finally see one.

11:52 The GL Selects: "It's becoming democratized." Ooooh, how that reminds me of Jim Ward . . . ::ahem::

Dude, can he not memorize the name beforehand? Is it that hard?


Christmas Tauntauns...not as bad as I'd heard. Kinda catchy. But

 

You must understand, though, that they have to keep it all within a certain time frame. (Wish they would do something like that for the Oscars!) Personally, I was quite pleased with the clips they showed of Wan-Abi.

 

I just watched the replay. From what I saw it looked like Mr. Lucas picked his choice out of a hat, which makes me wonder whether he watched them at all.

I agree that "Walking Papers" was quite funny, and it was good to see Fanfilms acknowledged on national television. I just think it's a shame that so many lawyers are involved. The parameters of the competition left out some of the best films ever and seemed to stifle creativity more than encourage it.

Kevin Smith is great.

 

I know Kevin Smith is the guy that hosted the special, but I've never heard of him before? Would someone care to enlighten me as to way he is so famous?

 

Clerks, Mallrats, Chasing Amy, Dogma, Clerks: The Animated Series, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.

That sums it up.

 

Humm, I suppose that's why I've never heard of him. I haven't seen or heard of any of those movies.

 

wheres the capture ppl?

 

PixelMagic.......You're kidding me????? Oh yeah....Nathan, don't forget about the short part in Scream 3.

 

I haven't seen or heard of any of those movies.

 

I know! Can you BELIEVE it?????????

 

We could include the Scream 3 part, but if we do that, we have to start crediting him for things like Drawing Flies, Starwoids, Daredevil, and all the other things he's worked on.

 

Gotta give credit where credit is due though.....

 

Well I missed most of the show. Simpsons Rule and I did not know it was on. When is it going to get replayed?

From what I saw, the show was well put together. It was not designed for you and me, the 'regular' fan film watchers/creators. It was designed for the rest of the world that did not even know fan films existed. I had no idea about this site or all the fan films till about a year ago. I knew there were a few out there, but not this many.

The show was a marketing tool for AOTC but it was also allot of exposure for fan films. There should be allot of downloads the week.

PS, the next MTV show should be a debate between Ozzy and George. no one is going to know what their saying.

 

OK... I was plesantly surprised to see Darth Vaders Psychic Hotline.. that looked so much better on the big screen than on my PC... If I had a choice between the ramblings of Ms Cleo every 5 minutes or Darth Vader telling me he's my dad, I would perfer the later...

All in all, much like all main stream media, I believe the awards show was "dumbed down" a little so everyone could watch it... those really interested will go to google and type in Star Wars Fan Films and come here...
besides, everything on TV said "Official" fan films... I kind of like the "Un-Official" fan films we got here

Edit: What George said about fan films in general was encouraging to hear... and I did like the Christmas Tauntauns choice... call me wierd, but it was a catchly little toon... and the best thing to come out of all of this?? After seeing an hour long sopecial on fanfilms, my family no longer looks at me like I'm sort of freak for making a fan film... I've been vindicated!!!

 

Well, I know I'm very likely to be in the minority on this, but I really like this show overall, and, for what little my opinion is worth, I think Lucas didn't do a bad job in his selection for the Lucas Award. I was VERY encouraged by what Lucas had to say about FanFilms in general and how they spent a little time talking about how these things were made, even showing clips from at least one of the "making-of" spoofs.

First, I should say that I tuned into the show very skeptical of how it would be. I was also very nervous at how it would reflect on the fan film hobby. Daft had once made the point that if it creates interest in fan films, it would be good for the genre in general, as more people would seek out the films we make. In the back of my mind, I had a nagging fear that the opposite would also be true, and, if the show was just not good, it could actually turn people OFF to the idea of searching the net for other films. The only contest entries I had seen were Fenn's Psychic Hotline (nice, fun, good compositing), The Power of the Sith (lots of fun + cute) and Empire of One (very disappointing Join the Empire knockoff IMO). I hadn't seen much of the others. I was really turned off by the Empire of One and wasn't really interested spending time with animations and music videos.

In the end, I think it was a very good show, and a good showcase for fan films.
PadawanNick's bullet list review:

THE REALLY GOOD:
- Kevin Smith: Did a great job of poking fun at everybody including George, himself and Star Trek fans. One of my pet peeves about the show was his little claw hand motion every time he said Attack of the Clones, then he turns around had has the Scalcious Crumb puppet tell him to quit it. Priceless. Great Job Kevin!
- Fan Film Backgrounder: The show did a great job of showing people what exactly a fan film was and included some funny looks into people making them (Jedi vs. Gonk - [Director] OK now he's killing you. [Jedi] Reacts to imaginary attack.) The show also showed a nice cross section of the visual quality and styles that appear in fan films. Troops was forced to represent the more "serious" type of work we see here at TF.N, but Fenn's effects looked very nice on TV and the animations looked really good too. I think a lot of people are going to be surprised to see what's been accomplished.
- George's Comments About Fan film: Basically, he seemed to be saying that he was happy that so many people were inspired by Star Wars to go out an make their own films. Most encouraging was his statement the he hopes to see this sort of thing continue.

The Good:
- Splicing Fan Film Commercials into commercial breaks: This was a really cool little touch to the show. Kevin would cut to commercial, and up would come a Star Wars based ad.
- George's Pick: I have to admit that I never saw any of the films not shown on TV, but I really thought that his pick WAS the most original piece of the lot. The tune was very catchy (I can still recall the chorus after hearing the song only once.) and it contain totally original models, animation and even lip-syncing. (Not to mention the premise is that all a kid wants for Christmas is SW toys. Big brownie points there. )

The Not so good:
- Kevin Smith's ATOC "Claw": Already covered that above.
- Empire of One: Also already mentioned.
- Time given to Jar Jar's Papers and Sparring Program: I understand about cutting down other films to make room, but I just didn't understand why these two got sooooo much screen time. The Walking Papers thing was pretty neat and I liked it, especially the ending, but it just seemed to get so much time when other good films only got a few seconds of screen time. Same with Sparring Program. It basically amounted to an effects test and not a really great one at that, but, oh well.

Again, the big thing for me is that fan films in general got some great, prime time exposure and George openly commented that he actually hopes that Star Wars will continue to inspire such proje

 

I have to add that I did like Christmas Tauntauns, and I honestly could see why George Lucas would pick that out for his award. It wasn't all Amateur Light and Magic FX, it was well animated, and, above all, it is very easy for any Star Wars fan to identify with the little girl. I personally liked that the main character was a little girl. She reminded me very much of my daughter. Also, fandom does come across as being somewhat male dominated. I appreciated the little fangirl's perspective.

 

Folks, the awards show was what it was ... a chance to give a nod to fan filmmakers while LFLs lawyers were in the way.

My guess is that when you get George alone, with a few in him, he would say that he was impressed with all the films. But when he's got lawyers telling him what to do to protect his franchise - and since the organizing principle of every lawyer is to make sure nobody has any fun - ... well, in the end, you get what you get.

But it's a start. And we all should remember that. To have an awards show of sorts honoring the work that we do - even that SOME of us do - gives that work LEGITIMACY beyond the "wink and a nod as long as we don't make money" that it has been up to this point.

I, for one, am damn appreciative that LFL not only allows us to do what we do, but told the world about it on cable TV.

 

OK everyone- I've digitized portions of the show from last night and I'm working with DaftMaul to get them on the web so they are downloadable for everyone. Basically, the whole show will be available except for the bits where the films were actually being aired. They're chopped up into 10 different segments too so you can see the parts you want. Stay tuned!

unclepain

 

Here are a load of clips, thanks to the hard work of Jeremy West (he of Power of the Sith fame )

The clips are minus the actual fanfilm clips - cos you can get them from somewhere else.

Opening 8.2MB

Mockumentary 'n' stuff 8.0MB

Young Jedi Award 2MB

Pioneer 500k

AOTC Preview 6MB

Best Animation 2MB

Ending 700k

Audience Award 2.5MB

Celebration 1.5MB

Lucas Select 3MB

EDIT: Links removed by request from Atomfilms

 

And I quote : I'm glad it went to somebody in Britain

Heh-heh, could George Lucas BE any cooler? What a guy.