I Was A Jedi Back When They Were Still Cool
OK, I admit, they’re still cool…
Not everyone loved Michel Gondry’s latest flick “Be Kind Rewind“, but for a film geek like me it was pure heaven. In particular the idea of super low budget fan made films is so awesome… it reminds me of the summer of 1998 or 1999 (just before Star Wars: Episode One was released) when dear friend and uber-genius Steve Tsuida had the idea for a group of us to film a “trailer” for a new Star Wars movie.
The idea was to create a “proof of concept” for a film club for kids and teens. We wanted to get kids to build their own movie(s), start to finish, on a grander scale than just a school project type thing. Everyone would get to do something, whether it was fund raising or set design or costumes or makeup or stunts or writing… everything would be done by the kids, we would just handle the logistics and overall management. Wonderful idea, then we found out about the joys of insurance costs and legal issues involved with putting a bunch of minors on camera. Oh well, maybe we’ll try it again sometime now that I’m like, old ‘n stuff.
So anyway, before finding out the bad news, we spent the summer scouting locations, building props and costumes, and learning how to do all sorts of neat CGI effects on this new-fangled candy-coloured gumdrop computer called an iMac. What we wanted to do was show both the kids and prospective donors the kind of project we were proposing; that we were actually serious about making a film and had at least a base starting knowledge of the work involved.
Having the luxury of southern Alberta at our fingertips, finding otherworldly locations wasn’t very difficult. One particular highlight was having our shoot interrupted by a busload of Japanese tourists who, in full cliched stereotype mode, had us pose for a few hundred pictures! We made our own costumes, dear sister did our makeup, best buddy Dave “Chainsaw” Bargen choreographed a sweet little lightsaber battle, and Steve put it all together with music and sound effects (it’s amazing how much information you can find online about the low budget effects used in the first movie).
Sadly, I can’t find the finished video (I’m sure it’s buried on some CDR backup somewhere in my basement), but trust me, it was awesome. Now that Be Kind Rewind has come out, it seems that people everywhere are realizing how much fun it can be to make their own versions of their favourite movies… screw budgets and effects and all that other nonsense! Fun and passion are the only things you need. Makes me miss my brief foray into “real” movie making with my RoLL Video buddies back in Ontario.
Here’s a great example by some French dudes taking on the famous Light Cycle scene from Tron:
This is exactly how people discover their true talents and passions. I love that it’s become “cool” for anyone to post their own projects where the only factor they’re being judged on is how much fun they had making it! I gotta get me a camera…
Bucknell prof Eric Faden has produced the most amazing video mashup I’ve ever seen: “A Fair(y) Use Tale” cuts together thousands of extremely short clips from dozens of Disney cartoons, lifting indivudal words and short phrases to spell out an articulate, funny, and thoroughly educational lesson on how copyright works. This is the most subversive and hilarious use of Disney material I’ve ever seen — and there’s even a really smart chapter about why Faden used Disney material to make his film. This should be required viewing in every K-12 classroom in the country. 
