Zombie Room

Last year in Cannes Film Festival me and Essi went over to the Palais des Festivals, the main building where the Film Market was set up to. The Market, in short, is a place where production or sales companies present their film productions, and buyers (for example, distributors) make deals and acquire distribution rights. It was the first time for me and Essi in such a huge market, and the sheer amount of films in production, in distribution and in development was just overwhelming.

The most fascinating thing we bounced into were the films we instantly identified as being complete, total ripoffs of great films with a strong franchise, trying just to ride at their marketing and fool people to think they are the the right ones. Last year, the biggest thing in Cannes was, of course, the new Indiana Jones film, and we were shocked to find how unscrupulous attempts there were made to copy and ride the great Spielberg franchise. Jack Hunter, “Indiana Jones without Ford, Spielberg or budget”, was the name that got us all excited about, and as we dug deeper into the subject, we got to know a production house called The Asylum, solely focused on doing films like this. Ripoffs – or, mockbusters, as they are often dubbed.

This led me wonder what’s the main, big difference between my first feature, Star Wreck, and films like The Terminators, Transmorphers, Allan Quatermain and the Temple of Skulls, or AVH: Alien Vs. Hunter. Looking at the bigger picture, we started to wonder what’s the main difference between Fan Fiction and Ripoff?

Similarities are definitively striking:

THE SIMILARITIES

We both, fan fiction filmmakers and ripoff-filmmakers ride on an existing franchise that has been created by great filmmakers, nursed by writers, producers and directors to make it’s way to the heart of millions of people around the world. By tapping into this vein, instead of trying to build something completely original, we skip this tedious and most uncertain process of filmmaking, and jump right into the middle of a blooming concept with already-built fanbase tuned to consume whatever the franchise has to offer.

What’s even worse, we both aim to make money with our productions – films based on other people’s hard work. The difference, though, is quite big: wherein most of the fan fiction is distributed over the Internet for more or less free, the mockbusters are directly slammed into DVD and rolled over to markets into the discount shelves right next to the original productions, or into video rental stores to fool the hasty customers to pick them instead of originals. But nevertheless, we make money with them, whether it’s by selling merchandise, DVDs, or just plain pay-to-support, we’re getting money based on work made by others.

To make the circle perfect, both fan films and the ripoffs copy most of their content from the existing brand, both visually and storywise. The characters have close resemblance to the originals and the main visual elements like space ships or monsters are much like in the original ones. Fan Fiction usually goes even further with this, by taking the exact original elements – like names, 3D-models and even music – and use them quite nonchalantly. The ripoffs are usually a bit more discreet on this – not because they believe it’s wrong, but because they want to avoid the lawsuits. And they are quite good at it, crawling at the grey area.

Uhh, that makes me feel bad. But what makes us different, then? Is my work more respectable than someone else’s, or am I just another ripoff artist?

THE DIFFERENCES

The reason we, the fan fiction filmmakers, do these films is because we love the originals so hard that we want to expand the story, world and characters laid out by others before us. Parody and fan fiction are the biggest complements that can be given to a filmmaker – works that prove that whatever they’ve done has inspired others so hard that they want to give their shot at it. We’re not in it to exploit, but to expand.

One of the most important points the fan fiction filmmakers aim at is the quality of their replicant. Fan films are, when done right, usually of the highest possible quality, made with a lot of love, a lot of background research and a lot of effort to reach at least close to the level of the original. The ripoff filmmakers just want to make a cool poster and enough decent-quality shots to make a trailer that might fool somebody, but usually rest of the film is just utter crap, disrespecting the original in the most terrible ways.

One thing which I believe when working on a fan film is definitively honesty. I want to state out loud that this is not the original, but a work inspired by the original and made by fans, for the fans, not to exploit the franchise but to pump more life into it. We’re not claiming we’ve done something original, but we’re saying that what we’ve done is a work of love towards the original, and should not be mistaken for anything else.

The reason I started writing this entry was because today I bumped into one of the most interesting, intriguing and highest-quality fan fiction films ever made: The Hunt for Gollum. It’s fan fiction in two levels: first, it explores a story left untold by J.R.R. Tolkien, and it’s directed, acted, edited and scored with a close resemblance to Peter Jackson‘s awesome Lord of the Rings film trilogy. The trailer is quite stunning, and the 40-minute film will be released on May 3rd at Scifi London film festival.

I’m definitively looking for this one, just check out the trailer: