Unlikely

This post is to note the beginning of another semester at the University of Macau. I will again be using this space to upload information relevant to my courses. I’m sure it will prove to be another productive semester. And to all of my students in the Communication Technology III course, I look forward to reading your blogs and to our discussions throughout the semester. Please be on the lookout for blog assignments here and on our UMModdle page.

So I wanted to make a post to emphasize a nice comment the blog received the other day. It was from Clive Young, who is the author of “Homemade Hollywood,” a study of fan film productions. In his own words, it “covers the history and future of the form, from the 1920s to today’s backyard efforts.” This is definitely an interesting subject, a practice that appears to be growing, and oddly has gone fairly ignored in critical literature or film histories. He does rightly note that such academics as Henry Jenkins, the Director of the MIT Comparative Media Studies Program, have positively responded to his work. Jenkins own interview with Young can be found here.

It would seem as if the question of fan films is only the beginning of a discuss of how we turn public media into part of our personal experience. I’ll try to follow up on this post with more thoughts on issues of mimesis, reception studies, and the shift terrain of media distribution. Meanwhile, check out Young’s blog where he keeps up to date with the latest in fan film productions http://fancinematoday.com/.

First you must find your subject, for instance a film, star, or product, then you must find it’s audience or fans. Once you have found these two you need to think about the context around each one. Think of the context as the world around them, their history, and the media in which they appear. In the case of a pop star, the context would be how she or he became a star, their raise to fame, and the place they occupy in media such as television, on-line, and print press. Then think about the same for the audiences or fans, where do they come from, what do they do to express their interest in the star, and do the see themselves?

As to the form of the project, you might first think of it as a long blog post or short article, with images spread through out to illustrate and reference the subjects being talked about. One technique would be to juxtapose the original artist material and fan made material. This could be two youtube clips, one the original video and another a video made by a fan.

Another idea is to show how people have added a favorite star or character to their world. An example would be someone’s car that they have painted in the colors of their favorite cartoon character. This could also include changes to the interior, steering wheel, and seat covers. Along the same lines you could look at the fashion that people wear, how it is themed around their favorite sport’s team or how it mimics the fashion of their favorite star.

And lastly, you could look at fan films which are often short films made as a tribute to a commercial feature film. Sometimes the tribute is clear and other times amateur films try to mimic a popular film without explicitly saying they are a fan film. Here it would be interesting to look at discussion forums and comments on video sites where people discuss and critique each other’s films.

Ok I hope these additional notes are helpful in continuing to work on your final projects.

Fans are people into one thing, person, or hobby. Using our friendly online etymology dictionary we can learn that “fan” most likely comes from fantatic, itself “pertaining to a temple” or “fanum.” So a fan is someone who is dedicated to something in an almost religious sense. In Japanese there is the similar term “Otaku,” which, as wikipedia describes it, “is a Japanese term used to refer to people with obsessive interests, particularly anime, manga, and video games.” This specific emphasis on technology is similar to the slang term, “nerd,” a relatively new word in American English that refers to someone with an obsessive relationship with knowledge or originally a conservative traditionalist.

So fandom always implies two things, the original and the place from which it is appreciated. A fan of the anime from Kyoto is similar to but different from a fan of anime from Orange County California.

Nerd, otaku, and fan are all now positively used. They are a marker of inclusion in a community of interest and a sign that one is passionate about something. The valorization of nerdiness is a trend against the image of cool, e.g. a kind of laid-back disinterest. This can be overstated but it it interesting to think if a larger trend toward nerd or fan culture is a reaction against the individualism of a lone rebel. Surely on some level fan cultures and communities sometimes form tighter bonds than traditional neighborhood and geographic definitions of community.

A few documentaries that deal with Fan Cultures and Nerd or Otaku Culture:
Heavy Metal Parking Lot
Vinyl
Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control
Michael Lau
http://www.flickr.com/groups/harajuku/
http://thesartorialist.blogspot.com/

It seems like there is a simultaneous push and pull online of building and erasing context. Blog posts, comments, and forum chatter build the story around an image or an event. They make the links and attach possible and sometimes appropriate interpretations. Significance, or should I say culture, is hung like a caption beside them reminding us how to read what is before us.

The other move or tendency is to strip images away from their discovered context, to erase the frames and colors that surround them. Stripped bare, the image can be re-contextualized or exhibited in all it’s original beauty/purity.

Project Description:
Digitally edit a frame grab, separating the main actor(s) from the background. Present the original image beside a frame where the actor(s) have been replaced with white (or in the case of a white background, black). And finally create a third frame where the actor(s) appear on a totally white frame. In accompanying text comment on the source of the frame grabs, what you think is the lighting used in the scene and your thoughts on the relationship between the subject and background in the scene.

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