I originally thought fan films would be really easy to come by but it has turned out that they are a little thin on the ground. Also in trying to keep with me "stay positive" vibe it doesn't really leave me a whole lot to watch, as I have discovered.
This however is awesome. I got nothing negative to say about this. It's just fucking awesome.
But I think from here on out Fan Film Friday is going to be a "when it feels right" kind of "regular" posting and since I only post awesome stuff I'll probably stop commenting on it as well. It will become sort of like what Cosplay Wednesday has become where my words won't get in the way of the awesome, I'll just present it without comment so you can enjoy because I can only really say "This is good, it's acted well, it's shot well, the sound is good, etc" before it get's incredibly boring and redundant for everyone involved.
This video is much in the same vein as #dirtylaundry, a short film with somewhat of a budget about a character but not overtly about a character. It takes a bit to get started but is well worth your time. I won't spoil anything for you, check it out. Also stay tuned all the way to the end as there's a stinger with a cameo that really sells the video in my opinion.
Another Punisher short. Well done for the most part. I think the reason so many people are wearing masks, including the Punisher, is because it's a very small cast and they all had to pull double duty. Other than that a good outing.
It looks like Machinima contracted this from the great people at Bat in the Sun so it has a budget behind it and some shilling at the end that's a bit annoying but past that it's a nice little battle.
An interesting little animated short based on the Punisher issue of the same name. It reminds me a little bit of a low budget Maxx. On one hand I really want to support this because clearly a lot of time, talent and effort went into this. I can forgive the voice acting, even though it treads into hilarious territory most of the time, but the harder part is that Frank kills almost an entire squad of police in his quest to kill his friend. That just doesn't go with the character and that bothers me. But still, check it out with a grain of salt.
Sorry I've been so lax on Fan Film Friday. I quite frankly forgot I DID Fan Film Friday's. Then I did remember but was too lazy. Now I remember and I'm not being lazy so hopefully more 3F.
This week is special because I helped fund this one through "indiegogo". It came to my attention via a friend so I sent something like $20-$50 it's way. I don't really remember how much but I probably helped pay for half of someone's lunch on one day of shooting. In retrospect I should have advertised it here. I'm just realizing that now. I don't typically think of this place in that way besides the Venn Diagram of "awesome people who would support this" and "awesome people who come here" would just be concentric circles with the former being much larger than the latter so I don't really know how much extra attention I would have generated.
All in all I'm pretty happy with my donation. I don't really throw money around, believe it or not, so when I do spend money it's for something I actually want to give money to and am excited about.
I was pretty excited about seeing this project happen, the test shots they showed for the project looked promising so I thought I'd help out. I like who they picked for Superman and Wonder Woman and I like that Superman has a slight drawl. Both Superman and Wonder Woman (Danny Kelly and Margie Cox) are costumed excellently and in shape ready to work. Which I always appreciate. All in all it's a great trailer for the shoe string it was shot on. I think they did an excellent job all things considered so check it out.
This week is a quickie. This weeks has been busy at work and I'm dealing with health stuff but this year my goal is to not miss a feature or at least miss as few as possible. So this week is the result of a compromise, I picked something short.
But, just like I say to the ladies, don't let it's length fool you, it's just as good as something longer and will still leave you satisfied.
This week I picked something from Blinky500 to show support for the Deadpool Webseries as well as the Save One to Save Many campaign. So we get one of my most favorite teams ever in Blue and Gold (Blue Beetle and Booster Gold) giving a PSA about smoking. I can't really find who's playing Booster but Beetle is played by Chris .R. Notarile and they both do a great job. Even though it's just over a minute long they have great back and forth, the script is good and you get a couple of great character moments. Even the kids do a pretty decent job with their thick Jersey accents. I don't have much to say about this because it is so short other than this is why we need fan films. This is made by a person who is passionate about the characters, comics and film making and that is obvious in everything done by Blinky. This takes characters that will never see the light of day in pretty much anything other than the comics and puts them on a bigger stage and does it very well in the process.
I don't know what to say about this really. I'm not going to credit anybody because I didn't like it and I don't want to sully any ones name with my opinion. If people want to Google search the people involved with this I don't want them stumbling across my negative review. So no one is getting credited and they'll probably thank me for that later.
Where to start. Well, they made Elektra a scientist. She's a scientist ninja. A scientist ninja working with Iron Fist. I don't recall Elektra every working with Iron Fist. They're both sort of periphery characters of Daredevil, that's sort of the person they have in common. Daredevil would hang out with both of these people but I don't know of any time they hung out together let alone one doing SCIENCE for the other. Just generic SCIENCE, nothing specific, just vague, lab coat wearing SCIENCE.
There is no plot. Zero, none at all. For all I know this is a home movie of shit just happening. You could argue that there is also no acting. There are flashes of acting by the mysterious appearing/disappearing antagonist and Dr. Elektra M.D. Doctor of SCIENCE. But this is basically a vast desert of acting talent and with no plot to prop them up it falls completely flat.
They sure as shit can kung-fu though. Iron Fist definitely can kung fu. The rest not so much. The ninjas a little bit and Unbreakable Dragon can hold his own. Elektra and White Lotus look like they've never even seen a punch in real life. So they know kung fu but what about the fight scene? Those must be good right? Nope. Not at all actually. Filmed at half speed and no contact the fights have no impact what so ever. There are some eye catching flourishes but nothing looks like it connects with any force. This is the most embarrassingly apparent when Iron Fists uses The Fist on Unbreakable Dragon, the chi of the undying dragon looks to have the force of a "good game" slap on the chest that you'd see on a basketball court.
This is longest 8 minutes I've had to endure in a long, long time. It was painful for me. Looking at the comments a lot of people loved it, there are a lot of positive comments. The uploader responded to one of them saying that it was a zero budget movie but the credits seems to boast a full cast & most of a crew. It has a producer for gods sake and a director who isn't the star. A producer who isn't also the Director/Writer/Star/Editor. Like a separate dude got a producer credit, like a real producer would get. It essentially looks like 2 guys in Tai Kwon Do class got together a bunch of friends and filmed it in an empty warehouse for a weekend but some poor asshole got suckered into producing it.
Alright, alright, the positives. Clearly the main knows martial arts and doesn't flail too much in the making of the kung fu. The costume is pretty good but the mask looks like it keeps losing the actors eyes in the opening scene but it's competently made. The dragon tattoo looks good, it must be either magic marker or make up but it always looks crisp and clean. Ummmm...the title screen is pretty okay. The main is in shape... I think that's about all that's positive about this. I think the short would have been best if they could have found a real fight coordinator, they can't be too hard to expensive to find. Other zero budget short films have great fight scenes using if not a real fight or stunt coordinator at least by rehearsing it a couple of times. It looks like they filmed the rehearsal with how stiff and slow everything is. Also the music on this, while good songs individually, don't match anything going on as if they scored it using the shuffle option on their iPod.
Anyway, I'm just going to rail on this so I'm going to wrap it up. Take a look...I guess? Maybe you'll find something I didn't or maybe you just want to subject yourself to the same pain I did.
Since you can't have Iron Fist without Power Man and since you can't have the bad without the good here's the opposite of the Iron Fist feature. A brief fan trailer that showcases Eric Thomas Wilson as Luke Cage. Well shot, well acted, the effects are good the guy playing Cage looks, talks and acts the part. There's even a Sweet Christmas. Why couldn't they turn this into an 8 minute film? Hell, why couldn't they turn this into a feature film.
From uploader patrickhwillems comes the white washing of the greatest black superhero ever in the Marvel Universe. This is just damn funny. Well acted, well shot and damn, damn funny.
This week was a bit harder to find stuff. Last week I found Powers on page one of You Tube, this week I had to go allllll the way to page five which is where I found this little gem. I found a few things before it that were bad beyond review but when I came across this I was pretty happy.
Flash comes to us from uploader InfluenceFilms, directed and starring Jason Damian as Wally West. I'm going to be honest, it's a bit of a mixed bag but it's an entertaining mixed bag dammit.
The plot is nigh incoherent. Someone died, let's see if I can properly explain it. The person that died was a friend of Wally's uncle. The person that calls Wally is the son of the friend of Wally's uncle so Wally Flash's it up to help out the son of a friend of his uncle. He runs around a bit, he meets with the Justice League (a scene introduced by the completely out of place but funny "Meanwhile at the Hall of Justice" from the Super Friends cartoon), there's some talk about how super powers don't elevate you above normal man, Wally doubts himself, he goes to Barry's grave and seeing thugs about to kill the son of his uncles friend. The plot is pretty paper thin and I don't think it holds up any scrutiny or analysis. There's also a cameo by Lex Luthor but it doesn't amount to much.
Okay, so the plot is barely there, but the acting is actually pretty... hit or miss as well. Wally is played pretty well by Jason Damian, I don't know if this was shot sequentially or what but he goes from a little stiff in the opening scene to actually pretty good by the end of the 5 minutes of the film and his voice over is pretty competently done as well. There a brief cameo by John Stewart Green Lantern played by John A Clark and he is by far the best actor in the group. He looks good in the costume and delivers his lines really well. He's in it for MAYBE 8 seconds but he's a highlight. The other highlight are the 2 thugs who provide some comic relief. I think one of them was told to act like he was in a 1920's gangster movie or possibly like Joe Pesci, either way it's hilarious.
I had fun with this. It's not going to win best independent film or anything but it's a fun 6 minutes with a gag reel tacked on to the end of it which I found pretty funny. They portray super speed the best possible way they can considering the, what I assume is a, shoe string budget. The Flash costume looks a little weird but the other costumes are pretty good, also considering the zero budget. It's shot in an entirely non distracting or detracting way, that's pretty much the highest praise I can give it. The camera is there, it's pointed at things, those things are in focus and in the frame and you know what, I'll take that. The acting is what you'd expect from a pool of either amateur actors or friends of the director. I'd say it's worth a look as there's certainly worse. A lot worse. Like next weeks entry, which I also found on page 5.
As will be common for this feature I typed in "superhero fan film" into You Tube and picked the first one that interested me. This week it's Powers. Uploaded by user brianbedell and directed by Michelle Massey, it stars Brian Bedell as Christian Walker and Madeline Blue as Deena Pilgrim.
I picked this because I know nothing about the comic book Powers other than 1) it exists and B) it's pretty good. But I haven't gotten around to actually reading it. I am familiar enough with the premise behind the book to not get lost so I thought I'd give this a go as something different.
I'm glad I did because I really liked it. It's shot well, there's good framing, the cuts don't get in the way, things are balanced in the frame. The camera work isn't obvious, I didn't notice the camera work at all, cinematography can be thankless in that respect because unless you're using your frame to say something that isn't being said by the characters or the setting the best you can hope for is unnoticeable. I mean unnoticeable in a good way, with unnoticeable you aren't actively detracting from the scene and are enhancing the scene subtly. So I give props to cinematographer Adam Goral.
The acting is actually really good, Brian Bedell manages to put some emotion in his performance, you can empathize with the character and it never feels wooden or hokey. Madeline Blue does very good as well, her characters personality works as a good foil for Christian Walker's displayed personality. In this scene she plays the role of a plot device, something to induce exposition so the role she's supposed to play isn't dynamic. That being said her line delivery is good, she has good body language and get's across what she needs to get across in the time she has to do it with what she has to work with. Having not read the book I can't say if the portrayals are accurate to the written characters however. I found the roles to be well played and believable.
I was impressed with this choice and it's a good way to kick off Fan Film Friday with a bang. It made me really want to read the book so I can see if the page translates to what I saw here and, really, isn't that the goal of a fan film? A well made fan film will encourage others to become fans and a poorly done fan film will turn potential fans away. This is a well made fan film.
