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Fanedit/Fanfilm hybrid category?

hebrides

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Hi, everyone. This is partly a general discussion for the site and partly to help me think of/define a new term for one of my dissertation chapters.

I've started to notice a bit of a trend in fanediting lately.

In Adywan's SW Revisited, Ady put himself (and George Lucas, I think) into the awards ceremony. GL may have been an effects shot, but Ady adding himself was a hybrid of a new effects shot and new footage.

In slark's DeTarnished, slark himself was a body double for a key shot.

Today, Adywan announced on Facebook that new live-action filming for the Hoth battle in ESB:R will begin in three days.

Fanedits and fan films have always shared a lot of the same basic principles, and both have for many years included new effects shots. I think, though -- and please correct me if I'm wrong -- that new live-action footage was until recently almost exclusively the province of fanfilms.

Obviously, this may have something to do with the decreasing costs involved in shooting and editing HD footage, since the difference in footage quality between live action in major motion pictures and fan-made works has been too great until recently to make seamless edits.

Whatever the cause, though, there's definitely a trend developing where faneditors don't just edit existing content and/or create new effects shots, but also actually create entirely new live-action footage to be incorporated into their edits. This technique blurs the traditional distinction between fanfilms and fanedits.

This seems to me to be a potentially new category, or at least a new technique that deserves a name.

Can anyone else think of examples where this has been done and/or any suggestions for what to call it when it is done? Thanks in advance for any and all feedback! :)
 

TMBTM

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To me, if those are additions to an already existing movie, then it's a fanedit, with additionals footages.
A fanfilm would be a movie based on same characters, or univers, but something different. Even though it can use some footage of the existing material it's based on (like, I don't know, "dream footage" of the existing movie, things like that)
 

Captain Khajiit

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I agree with TMBTM. The additional fan-created footage in such fanedits makes them seem like fan-made special editions of existing films to me.
 

Brumous

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There's a spectrum of technical originality in the use of new live material. At one end is filming new model shots, practical effects or body doubles, or recording new voice dubs or foley effects for the limited alteration of a limited number of scenes. At the other end of the spectrum is the full-blown fan film.

I say "technical originality" because the limited end of the spectrum might display more creative innovation than a full-blown fan film. The fan film might rely on familiar character tics, well-worn plot devices, and other cliches. There's a whole body of fan films that aim for perfect replication of the original source material with only a minor amount of story invention. The fun is in achieving that perfect replication and inhabiting the world of a favorite movie or TV show yourself. Maybe that's even what defines a fan film.

When fans begin to depart from the source material in major ways, then they get closer to the normal artistic processes of influence, homage, and emulation which all artists use.

So I think as fanedits incorporate more and more original live shots, they may or may not move toward becoming fan films. If they are trying to create an entirely new vision or interpretation of the source material -- which many fanedits do -- then I think you have a pretty good case that a new category of artistic work is being generated.
 

hebrides

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Interesting comments, Brumous, and I think that's pretty close to what I'm thinking about for the dissertation chapter. That film isn't a fanedit, but it's not exactly a fanfilm either, though it is in some ways a remake of an existing film. About 40% of its dialogue comes from the English subtitles of a Hindi film, which is itself an adaptation of a Shakespeare play. It also replicates (with a much lower budget) some shots from the Hindi film and uses some of the sound effects from it (most notably a ringtone for a cell phone). But the rest of the film is an original updating of the Shakespeare play, with new dialogue and situations, so it's definitely a hybrid between a standard fanfilm, an adaptation a la Raiders: The Adaptation, and something original.

All of this is pretty far afield from what I started talking about with Ady and slark's examples, but I think the "new category of artistic work" applies in both cases.
 
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