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The Practical Applications of Fanediting

MCP

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When it comes to our hobbies, more often than not they are simply “that thing we do” when we’re not busy doing other things. Usually, being a film or a TV buff is a passive hobby—something to sit and absorb, maybe to think or talk about afterwards, but it generally doesn’t go beyond that. “Generally” is the key word here, as some of us do go beyond being simple consumers. When we’re unsatisfied with something, a film or a TV show usually, there’s a call to action that we don’t ignore.

So we act on it: removing the excess, reordering scenes, creating whole new experiences from preexisting materials. While the end results of a fanedit can certainly be impressive, what do you do with them? Only a handful of edits have ever been recognized by people in Hollywood, and while the reception has generally been positive (with one fan edited version of Brian De Palma’s 1992 film Raising Cain being included on a new Blu-ray release) fanediting isn’t really a fast track to Hollywood stardom.

Still, there’s a lot of technical know-how involved, from graphic design to the actual preparation of sources, right down to the actual editing.

“Speaking from my own experience, Fanedit.org has been a lot more useful for my career than I would have guessed (which would have been zero) and vice-versa” says ThrowgnCpr, who is also an established editor and one of our site administrators. Administrator and Academy member TM2YC talks about a Christmas gift he once made for his brother: “I recreated the Italian only Blu-ray of Roberto Benigni’s The Tiger and the Snow with English subtitles, so my older brother could actually watch a film he loved without learning Italian first.”

“I’ve found that fanediting hasn’t really had a specific impact on my life, but it has turned out to use a collection of skills I had already to a large extent developed elsewhere,” editor That One Guy says. “Before getting into fanediting I had gotten into making comics as a hobby – this meant I’d tinkered with several graphics packages and had gotten used to the idea of having to try out various tools and often spend a lot of time tinkering to try and achieve the desired result. This could be quite tricky sometimes, especially for printed comics, where moiré patterns [author’s note: this is when two patterns are overlaid and it creates a third, completely different pattern] can throw an extra spanner in the works after you think you’re finally finished with a given page.”

In the case of bionicbob, there has been some semi-professional cross-over: “After discovering the wonderful, rich world of fanedits and seeing what one could do, I went out and bought Final Cut and began to use it not only for my own fan edit creations but for my home videos too. This then led to me shooting videos for friends (weddings, birthdays, etc) and creating DVDs for them.” DominicCobb adds, “I actually have an editing job right now but I’m not sure I’d say there’s a causality there – I just like editing. But fanediting allows me to always have a project to work on to better hone my skills and learn different software more thoroughly.” ThrowgnCpr also says, “I just finished editing a series of outreach videos for work. I never would have been able to do that without messing around with fanediting.”

While we generally consider fanediting to fall under “fair use” as far as legality is concerned, it’s still a very grey area. According to That One Guy, “I haven’t shown any evidence of my fanediting work to employers so far, […] it’s mostly irrelevant to my job. But I can see how making very short edits could serve as an interesting demonstration of a variety of skills, so it’s something I might play around with next year.”

New members join Fanedit.org every day, people who (like so many of us) have discovered fanediting one way or another. While there aren’t any second-generation faneditors at the moment, bionicbob has influenced at least one budding artist: “[My daughter], now 16, basically grew up sitting beside me at the computer watching me edit stuff and learning how to do it herself. Now, she is an amazing editor! Having won awards in school for her work and now seriously considering pursuing editing/animation as a career path! WOW!  Maybe one day I will be visiting her at Pixar Studios! I’m a proud Papa!”

Alongside the topic posted in the Faneditor discussions forum where the quote for this article came from, I posted an anonymous poll asking: “Have your fanediting skills overlapped into real life (or vice versa)?” Of the thirteen responses, five said that fanediting skills have overlapped into their lives, while only one responder said that their “real life” skills were useful in editing. Three responders said the skill overlap went both ways, while another four said there wasn’t much overlap one way or another.

TV’s Frink, creator of the “Ridiculous” prequel trilogy edits and our Master of Lore asks this: “Does ‘teaching me to restrain my temper in a public forum’ count?”

 

Responses for this article were collected from a topic titled “The Practical Applications of Fan Editing” that was posted in the Faneditor Discussions section of the forum. Additional responses were collected privately. I would like to thank bionicbob, That One Guy, ThrowgnCpr, TVs Frink, and DominicCobb for their contributions.

https://www.fanedit.org/the-practical-applications-of-fanediting/
 

eldusto84

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Good read, thanks! It's interesting to consider the fact that fanediting is still a "first-generation" thing because it's still so new. And outside of maybe "The Phantom Edit" and the "Raising Cain Director's Cut," very few fanedits have become acknowledged by Hollywood or the general public. Hopefully that will gradually change (in a good way!).
 

Aztek463

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eldusto84 said:
Good read, thanks! It's interesting to consider the fact that fanediting is still a "first-generation" thing because it's still so new. And outside of maybe "The Phantom Edit" and the "Raising Cain Director's Cut," very few fanedits have become acknowledged by Hollywood or the general public. Hopefully that will gradually change (in a good way!).

I still need to remind myself this is a fairly new hobby. I've been hanging around here for around ten years. I remember a lot of the changes and drama, seen a few people come and go, the advent of Blu-ray and Digital HD. Feels like we've been here a long time when, in reality, it hasn't been all that long.

I think, for better or for worse, fan editing will eventually get more attention in the public eye. I can see a lot of viewers liking the idea, but not so much the big studios. Especially since we're, you know, fixing their "mistakes" (what is and isn't a good film is still subjective) and they're not making money off it.
 

eldusto84

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Ten years, wow! I'm sure the jump to HD via Bluray and digital copies has been a huge boon to fanediting. Plus, professional editing software is becoming cheaper and cheaper. 15 years ago, if you wanted to re-edit a feature film at a resolution equivalent to HD, you'd be spending 5-6 figures easily. Now it can be done for $30 a month with Adobe Creative Cloud.

Fanediting is still a niche thing, but I agree that it will become more and more popular with the general public. There are of course the legal issues with this, as right now I think fanedits are merely tolerated by the studios because they aren't as big a problem as outright piracy. But the idea that a film can now be changed/altered by the average moviegoer has so many interesting implications. Studios and TV networks are adjusting to the fact that audiences aren't "one size fits all" like they used to be. Maybe one day we'll see fanedits on Netflix!
 

Aztek463

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For a few years now I've been tossing the idea of a "Netflix for Fanedits" type of thing, but the logistical and legal nightmares that would make always kill the idea pretty quickly. But one never knows what the future may hold!
 

eldusto84

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Yeah I imagine that would get squashed pretty quick by the studios. But what if there was some kind of payment model in place? Let's say for example that you made a fan edit of The Avengers, and uploaded it to this "Netflix for Fanedits" service. Viewers would pay a fee to rent or purchase the edit, and let's say Disney/Marvel gets 70%, the site gets 20%, and the faneditor gets 10%. Just ballpark figures for the sake of it.

This way, fanedits could become more legitimate since they would actually generate money for the copyright holders. It would make it easier to find and watch the edits too, since I think torrenting and other delivery methods can be intimidating or confusing to the average person.
 

aurllcooljay

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Well if movies can be edited on tv, (for time and content, but you get my point) there may yet be hope in the future.
 

addiesin

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aurllcooljay said:
Well if movies can be edited on tv, (for time and content, but you get my point) there may yet be hope in the future.

Sorry, I don't get your point. To what are you referring?
 

aurllcooljay

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addiesin said:
Sorry, I don't get your point. To what are you referring?

I meant how movies are different on tv. Alternative scenes, scenes edited out for time and content, etc. Of course they need the licenses just to be able to play the movie on TV, so it's a big step from that to fanediting.
 

addiesin

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aurllcooljay said:
I meant how movies are different on tv. Alternative scenes, scenes edited out for time and content, etc. Of course they need the licenses just to be able to play the movie on TV, so it's a big step from that to fanediting.

I got that part, but you said that edited versions of films being shown on TV means there is hope in the future for something. I have no idea what that something is, or whether it even relates to the thread. Hence my confusion.
 

dannydangle

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I think he's referring to the plausibility/legality of a "Netflix for Fanedits" type service. Since television networks are allowed to edit films which they license, perhaps a fanedit streaming service would be able to license films and stream them in altered, fanedited versions, legally.

Whether or not this would actually be plausible I'm not sure but it's an interesting point.
 

addiesin

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dannydangle said:
I think he's referring to the plausibility/legality of a "Netflix for Fanedits" type service. Since television networks are allowed to edit films which they license, perhaps a fanedit streaming service would be able to license films and stream them in altered, fanedited versions, legally.

Whether or not this would actually be plausible I'm not sure but it's an interesting point.

Thanks for connecting the dots. I see now.
 

aurllcooljay

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It was simply a comparison. TV stations can legally make another version of a movie; the next big step is allowing the average Joe to do the same.

EDIT: Darn, didn't read the second page before replying. Dannydangle hit it on the dot.
 
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