Fan Films - History

History

The earliest known fan film is Anderson 'Our Gang.' which was produced in 1926 by a pair of itinerant filmmakers. Shot in Anderson, South Carolina, the short is based on the Our Gang film series; the only known copy resides in the University of South Carolina's Newsfilm Library. Various amateur filmmakers created their own fan films throughout the ensuing decades, including a teenaged Hugh Hefner, but the technology required to make fan films was a limiting factor until relatively recently. In the 1960s UCLA film student Don Glut filmed a series of short black and white "underground films", based on adventure and comic book characters from 1940s and 1950s motion picture serials. Around the same time, artist Andy Warhol produced a film called Batman Dracula which could be described as a fan film. But it wasn't until the 1970s that the popularization of science fiction conventions allowed fans to show their films to the wider fan community.

Most of the more prominent science fiction films and television shows are represented in fan films; these include Star Wars (see Category:Star Wars fan films), Star Trek (see Star Trek fan productions), Doctor Who (see Doctor Who spin-offs), and Buffy the Vampire Slayer (see Unofficial Buffy the Vampire Slayer productions). Because fan films generally utilize characters and storylines copyrighted and trademarked by the original filmmakers, they are rarely distributed commercially for legal reasons. They are exhibited by various other methods, including showings at comic book and science fiction conventions, and distribution as homemade videos, ranging from VHS videocassettes to CD-ROMs and DVDs.

Filmmaker Sandy Collora gained much notoriety in the early 2000s for a series of fan films he produced featuring DC Comics heroes Batman and Superman. Batman: Dead End premiered at the 2003 San Diego Comic-Con, while World's Finest was prevented from showing in 2004 due to copyright claims from Warner Bros.

Some fan film productions achieve significant quantity and or quality. For instance, the series Star Trek: Hidden Frontier produced 50 episodes over seven seasons - compared to only 34 episodes for the 1970s sci-fi series Battlestar Galactica and Galactica 1980 combined.

Star Trek: New Voyages started as a fan production, but has since attracted support from several crew and cast members from the different Star Trek series, as well as a wide audience.

Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning, a Finnish feature-length spoof of both Star Trek and Babylon 5, attracted over 4 million downloads and has been released on DVD in several countries, making it possibly the most successful Finnish movie-production to date.

The Lord of the Rings fan film The Hunt for Gollum debuted at the Sci-Fi-London film festival in May 2009 and was released on the internet.

Ghostbusters: The Video Game features a small nod to the fan film Return of the Ghostbusters by way of a drawing posted on the wall in the Ghostbusters firehouse headquarters. The child's drawing of a Ghostbuster is signed by a fictional character created in the fan film.

On September 27, 2009, Metal Gear Solid: Philanthropy was released over the internet, a 10,000 Euro production based on Hideo Kojima's Metal Gear Solid video game series.

Dan Poole's stunt work in his fan film The Green Goblin's Last Stand garnered recognition and an endorsement from Spider-Man co-creator Stan Lee.

John F. Carroll's Masters of the Universe Trilogy began with the Wizard of Stone Mountain in 2011 and has premiered at conventions in Germany and the US. Other films in the trilogy will be released on the internet in 2013.