Fan Films

Fan Film Friday: The Very Real Adventures of Batman and Robin

Jerry Whitworth a sometime contributor and commenter to this site sent me a link to a Batman and Robin parody by Channel Flip (a UK based internet tv/video station for the 18-30 guy market) called The Very Real Adventures of Batman and Robin. In this version of reality Robin is the competent one and Batman, well let’s just say it’s the closest you’re ever going to see to Ricky Gervais playing the Caped Crusader. A very British Batman and Robin.

I’ve heard the Channelflip name before as their head co-founder Wil Harris is a sometime contributor to the This Week in Tech podcast, but I had no idea they were producing stuff like this. This is a series and there are over a dozen short episodes.

Fan Film Friday: Maxwell Lord’s Advril commercial

I came across this fan sketch when I was researching Maxwell Lord’s biography. It’s a spoof commercial for Advril by Chris R. Notarile which features the Blue Beetle (Notarile) who is suffering from a headache until Maxwell Lord (Daniel Shaw) appears with headache pills – a sly reference to Countdown to Infinite Crisis where Max gave the Blue Beetle a lethal bullet induced headache. You’ll find many more sketches and films by Notarile on Youtube under his Blinky Productions channel.

Fan Film Friday: Batman: City of Scars

In terms of fan-films you can’t get much more well recognised than Bat in The Sun productions. Their new production Batman: City of Scars has just premiered on Daily Motion. It was made by the brothers Aaron Schoenke (writer, screenplay, editor, director, producer) and Sean (screenplay, composer, producer). Batman and the Joker are played by Kevin Porter and Paul Molnar who reprise their roles from the Schoenke’s Batman Legends.

The official description of the film is:

When the Joker escapes from Arkham and murders the parents of a young boy, Batman recalls the pain of losing his own parents as a child. He is pushed past his limits to the point where his focus becomes revenge on all who stand in his way, including many of Gotham’s underworld. Finally, Batman is forced to look at the psychological profile of his own mind and accept the consequences of his life to find resolve.

The result is amazing. This isn’t just another re-edit or parody, this is a full-on, high-quality 30 minute episode. I may even suggest that their Batman does a better “Batman Voice” than Christian Bale. The look of it reminds me a lot of the Batman: Arkham Asylum game.

If you liked the film you may want to take a look at their appeal for the Red Eye charity which works with inner city kids.

[Via: The Forbidden Planet and Spin Off Online]

Fan Film Friday: Five Fan Trailers

Anybody like fan films? The increasing distribution of cheap video cameras and the availability of digital production techniques has created a renaissance in the number and quality of fan-films. And video sites like Youtube have allowed producers to share their work with an audience vastly larger than their predecessors would have dared to dream of. Personally I think that fan films work best when they’re short – the longer a film, any film, is the more likely it is to show its budgetary and technical constraints. This is why some of the most eye-catching and well received fan films of recent years have been in the format of shorts or extended-trailers.

There is, however, another phenomena that has appeared – the fan trailer. This is distinct from a true fan-film or a fan-film made to look like a trailer, as a fan-trailer doesn’t usually contain any new footage. It’s creator takes existing footage from a TV show, movie or cartoon and re-edits it to create their own brand new cinema-style trailer for that show. Sometimes fans will even take footage from multiple movies and blend them together with their own captions to create a fantasy trailer for a project that never actually existed. These are 5 of my favourites.

1. Justice League

Youtube user facoloco11 put together a fan trailer for a Justice League trailer for a course in Entertainment Marketing that he was taking at university. He and his class took the characters outlined for the George Miller’s Justice League: Mortal film, recast them, and then used clips from a range of different movies to create a trailer for a story where 7 retired heroes reunite to save from the world from a robot invasion. What interested me was the use of Common as Green Lantern, he had been cast in that role in Miller’s film and this trailer shows how good he could have been. The Superman Return and Batman Begins shots are easily enough to spot and I believe the robots are from I Robot.

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Rapid Fire Theatre’s Improv on Infinite Earths

Take one improv team, add costumes, and a healthy knowledge of DC comics and you get the Rapid Fire Theatre‘s 2009 Halloween improv slot: Improv on Infinite Earths…

Halloween 2009 edition of Rapid Fire Theatre’s “Theatresports”, featuring the Justice League (Superman, Batman, Robin, Wonder Woman, Zatanna, Green Lantern, Flash) versus The Legion of Doom (Lex Luthor, Bizarro, Penguin, Scarecrow, Cheetah, Gorilla Grodd) in a epic battle of improv skills – with the fate of the world hanging in the balance!

Oh, that Bizarro’s such a naughty fellow.

[Via: Topless Robot]

Villains Day Off fan-film

This great fan film was the 2009 Award Winner at the Superman Celebration in Metropolis, IL. It was written and directed by George Doerr VI and features Thomas Hayes as Lex Luthor and Doerr as the Joker. I particularly liked the “Villains Just Want A Day Off Song” sung by Poison Ivy (Jenny Garofalo) to the tune of “Girls Just Want To Have Fun”.

The Adventures of Little Batman and Robin – shear genius

Imagine the 1960s Batman TV show recast with young children…

From the description on Youtube:

Based on the 1966 Batman TV series, a very young Bruce Wayne takes on the famous, pint-sized villains of Gotham City. Directed, shot and edited by Joe Valenti of Valenti Vision Films and Produced by Jordan Wachtell. In Part 1, the Dynamic duo discover Gotham’s latest jailbreak!

New World’s Finest Fan Film

KLANG!!!

That ladies and gentlemen was the sound of my jaw hitting the floor. The people who created the amazing Batman: Dead End have created an equally amazing trailer for a hypothetical World’s Finest motion picture (I think I recognize the actors from CBR’s SDCC coverage). If you have the bandwidth to download the larger version of their film (80meg, there is smaller version) then I’d recommend it. The production values, the seriousness they bring to the characters, there is no camp or kitch, everything just clicks. Both the heroes look like they stepped out of an Alex Ross painting or a Jim Lee blockbuster. If Batman Begins or Superman 5 show even a fraction of the potential of this team then I shall be one happy fan.

Official Site: Collora Studios