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Homemade Hollywood: Fans Behind the Camera
Fan Fun, free and totally illegal!
Who would swing off a six-story building for a homemade
Spider-Man movie? Why would newlyweds spend $20,000 on a Star Wars film from
which they can never profit? How did three nobodies blow Steven Spielberg's
mind with an Indiana Jones flick they made as teens in the Eighties?
They're all part of the Fan Film revolution--an underground
movement where backyard filmmakers are breaking the law to create unauthorized
movies starring Batman, James Bond, Captain Kirk, Harry Potter and other
classic characters. Regular people are making movies that the fans want to
see--and which copyrights and common sense would never allow.
Homemade Hollywood :
Fans Behind The Camera traces the fan film movement from the 1920s, when con
men made fake Little Rascals movies, to the internet video sensations of today.
Crossing the divides from a pop culture history of truly outlaw cinema, to an
exploration of Hollywood's
changing attitude towards its audience, Homemade Hollywood uncovers the
innovations and controversies surrounding these secret films and reveals how
they're changing today's media.
Get insights from the fan filmmakers themselves as well as
Hugo Award-winning author Timothy Zahn, director Eli Roth ( Hostel , Cabin Fever ),
punk rock icon Tommy Ramone, authors Henry Jenkins ( Convergence Culture ), Don
Glut ( The Empire Strikes Back ), Andrea Richards ( Girl Director ) and others. A
foreword from Chris Gore, founder of Film Threat and movie expert on G4TV's
Attack of the Show, sets the tone.
Who would swing off a six-story building for a homemade
Spider-Man movie? Why would newlyweds spend $20,000 on a Star Wars film from
which they can never profit? How did three nobodies blow Steven Spielberg's
mind with an Indiana Jones flick they made as teens in the Eighties?
They're all part of the Fan Film revolution--an underground
movement where backyard filmmakers are breaking the law to create unauthorized
movies starring Batman, James Bond, Captain Kirk, Harry Potter and other
classic characters. Regular people are making movies that the fans want to
see--and which copyrights and common sense would never allow.
Homemade Hollywood :
Fans Behind The Camera traces the fan film movement from the 1920s, when con
men made fake Little Rascals movies, to the internet video sensations of today.
Crossing the divides from a pop culture history of truly outlaw cinema, to an
exploration of Hollywood's
changing attitude towards its audience, Homemade Hollywood uncovers the
innovations and controversies surrounding these secret films and reveals how
they're changing today's media.
Get insights from the fan filmmakers themselves as well as
Hugo Award-winning author Timothy Zahn, director Eli Roth ( Hostel , Cabin Fever ),
punk rock icon Tommy Ramone, authors Henry Jenkins ( Convergence Culture ), Don
Glut ( The Empire Strikes Back ), Andrea Richards ( Girl Director ) and others. A
foreword from Chris Gore, founder of Film Threat and movie expert on G4TV's
Attack of the Show, sets the tone.
297 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 2008
About the author
Clive Young
6 booksClive Young is an author/lecturer covering the crossroads between high tech and popular culture.
He is the author of Homemade Hollywood: Fans Behind The Camera [Continuum, 2008], the first in-depth look at the Fan Film movement, where amateurs create their own unauthorized movies starring world-famous characters, from Indiana Jones to Captain Kirk to Harry Potter. The book follows their stories and more as it traces Fan Films from the 1920s--when con men made fake Little Rascals movies--to the YouTube videos of today.
He is the author of Homemade Hollywood: Fans Behind The Camera [Continuum, 2008], the first in-depth look at the Fan Film movement, where amateurs create their own unauthorized movies starring world-famous characters, from Indiana Jones to Captain Kirk to Harry Potter. The book follows their stories and more as it traces Fan Films from the 1920s--when con men made fake Little Rascals movies--to the YouTube videos of today.
While senior editor of Pro Sound News since 1994, he has also written for MTV, VH1.com, American Songwriter, Music Business International, Wine Enthusiast and other outlets, and his book, Crank It Up [Backbeat Books, 2004], profiling the worlds top roadies, received strong reviews from Billboard and Hit Parader, among others. As an in-demand speaker, Young has lectured extensively on film, fan films and music at universities, libraries and conventions around the U.S. He lives in Rockville Centre, NY with his wife and daughter. Visit his website, www.cliveyoung.com.
"
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
April 14, 2012
I wrote the following review upon my first reading when the book first came out. I think my opinions still stand, and I remain grateful that this book got published.
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As a fan and creator of "Star Wars" fan films, this book's greatest strength also represents its greatest failing. "Star Wars" people are, and not just with regard to fan filmmaking, the 800-pound gorilla of movie buffs; their fan films have received the most scholarly and media coverage so far.
Yet this book takes a full sixty pages before we first visit that galaxy ("Hardware Wars") and the seminal "Troops" does not rear its ugly head until page 138.
This book presents a case of looking at that famous photo of Earth among space, and realizing that this world of ours we thought was so big actually connects to even bigger things, new and exciting mysteries and possibilities once obscured by a veil, now as plain and clear as anything you could ask to see. This is a book of history that goes back to before we were putting the movies we made with DV cameras on the Internet, a book of greater breadth than a galaxy far, far away.
Yet there is still room out there in the publishing world for the definitive history of "Star Wars" fan films. As Whitman might have noted, we are large, we contain multitudes. Think of every "Star Wars" project which could have made for a fascinating chapter all by itself yet didn't even get a mention, and you will be shaking your fist at the book for the unpardonable sin of not being eight hundred pages long.
Always leave 'em wanting more, indeed.
"Homemade Hollywood" fits our saber-swinging and incompetent performances into wider social contexts while staying comfortably within the realm of cinema. It resists the temptation to overwiden its stance, to take us into "Textual Poachers" territory and trace what we do into the whole history of art. Our guide trusts us to make those connections for ourselves; this is a book about and for moviemakers, treating the art form of cinema as just fine enough to write a book on, thank you, and it fills a previously unexplored canvas with color and depth.
As a bonus, although he doesn't out-and-out state it, Clive Young gives us a history not only of fan films but of amateur filmmaking in general. As a series of case studies of the make-your-own-movie model, the text walks us through a survey of what the amateur auteur had available to him from the days of Super 8 film to the After Effects era.
As a proper and serious filmmaker, then, I can promise you that this book belongs on my shelf by Sidney Lumet's "Making Movies", by Syd Field and Robert McKee and Rick Schmidt and all those other standards that filmmakers own. It is at once a work of serious scholarship and enjoyable journalism that shines a light on a subject few else would think to touch, and it does so in a way that not only conveys its love of these movies but inspires and rekindles that love in others.
====
As a fan and creator of "Star Wars" fan films, this book's greatest strength also represents its greatest failing. "Star Wars" people are, and not just with regard to fan filmmaking, the 800-pound gorilla of movie buffs; their fan films have received the most scholarly and media coverage so far.
Yet this book takes a full sixty pages before we first visit that galaxy ("Hardware Wars") and the seminal "Troops" does not rear its ugly head until page 138.
This book presents a case of looking at that famous photo of Earth among space, and realizing that this world of ours we thought was so big actually connects to even bigger things, new and exciting mysteries and possibilities once obscured by a veil, now as plain and clear as anything you could ask to see. This is a book of history that goes back to before we were putting the movies we made with DV cameras on the Internet, a book of greater breadth than a galaxy far, far away.
Yet there is still room out there in the publishing world for the definitive history of "Star Wars" fan films. As Whitman might have noted, we are large, we contain multitudes. Think of every "Star Wars" project which could have made for a fascinating chapter all by itself yet didn't even get a mention, and you will be shaking your fist at the book for the unpardonable sin of not being eight hundred pages long.
Always leave 'em wanting more, indeed.
"Homemade Hollywood" fits our saber-swinging and incompetent performances into wider social contexts while staying comfortably within the realm of cinema. It resists the temptation to overwiden its stance, to take us into "Textual Poachers" territory and trace what we do into the whole history of art. Our guide trusts us to make those connections for ourselves; this is a book about and for moviemakers, treating the art form of cinema as just fine enough to write a book on, thank you, and it fills a previously unexplored canvas with color and depth.
As a bonus, although he doesn't out-and-out state it, Clive Young gives us a history not only of fan films but of amateur filmmaking in general. As a series of case studies of the make-your-own-movie model, the text walks us through a survey of what the amateur auteur had available to him from the days of Super 8 film to the After Effects era.
As a proper and serious filmmaker, then, I can promise you that this book belongs on my shelf by Sidney Lumet's "Making Movies", by Syd Field and Robert McKee and Rick Schmidt and all those other standards that filmmakers own. It is at once a work of serious scholarship and enjoyable journalism that shines a light on a subject few else would think to touch, and it does so in a way that not only conveys its love of these movies but inspires and rekindles that love in others.
November 27, 2020
This book should be awesome and it just isn't. The best part is about a group of scam artists during the Our Gang heyday who went around the country, city by city, producing Little Rascals type movies starring the children of the town. Michel Gondry should be doing this right now. In any event this book feels like an extended research paper. The subject is full of fun and energy, but in contrast, the writing is formal and unengaging. Way too much time is spent on Star Wars fan fiction.
February 16, 2011
An exceptional history of fan cinema. Needs a follow-up book to cover modern era.
July 26, 2015
Had to rate this well - it's got a couple of pages talking about the StarLego movie that Myles & I made :-)
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews