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Star Wars Prequels Media Movies Entertainment

2005 Star Wars Fan Film Entries Online 147

Posted by timothy from the choose-wisely dept.
Marty Broxterman writes "The 2005 Official Star Wars Fan Film awards are underway, and the 16 finalists are now online. Three of the best entries are: Sith Apprentice - Darth Vader and other baddies duke it out to be the Emperor's new lackey in this parody of 'The Apprentice' - very funny, and the sequence with Darth Vader's "talent" has to be seen to be believed; Tiny Toys - Where a woman must defend herself from a pint-sized army of Star Wars toys. Almost a Kill Bill parody at times... amusing; and One Season More - a completely CGI rendition of one of the songs from the "Star Wars Musical" that's been floating around the web for a few years - some amazing animation. Voting for the contest takes place here."
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2005 Star Wars Fan Film Entries Online More

2005 Star Wars Fan Film Entries Online

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  • Slightly off topic (Score:5, Funny)

    by hnile_jablko ( 862946 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @07:18AM (#12087307)
    I friend of a friend made a promotional ad for the lead of to episode one. it was 2 star wars nerds (the sort from the triumph the insulting dog bit) jumping the queue to see the movie. there were these 2 cute girls in line not very happy about this. one nerd turns to the girls and waves his arm a la Obi, proclaiming "This is not the movie you want to see. Go about your business." The girls leave in disgust with the 2 uber-nerds believing their jedi mind tricked worked. BRILLIANT STUFF!!!

  • blah (Score:4, Funny)

    by bioglaze ( 767105 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @07:20AM (#12087311) Homepage Journal
    It will take forever to download 2005 files.

  • Here's the best (Score:4, Funny)

    by mirko ( 198274 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @07:22AM (#12087320) Journal
    Why did they forget Him [jedimaster.net] ???
    • Pretty cool site. Love the SWK. Lots of versions I've not seen there.... They're marketing the kid too ... oh the irony....

      [after having perused the site]

      Dude, fix your links....

  • Anyone have any torrent links? (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    They would be very nice

  • Media sites rant (Score:5, Insightful)

    by shani ( 1674 ) <shane@time-travellers.org> on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @07:29AM (#12087351) Homepage
    I know I shouldn't complain, but why the fuck can't companies just put links to the videos? Even normally sane organisations like the BBC do this crap.

    I hate feeling like an luser - I thought it was just Linux, but I have problems in Windows too. :(

    • Re:Media sites rant (Score:4, Interesting)

      by fuyu-no-neko ( 839858 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @07:41AM (#12087390)
      I have the same problem, although given time I can usually work through the source of the site to work out the URL. (I fear for the day that the US government decides to make the "View Source" command illegal - I just know the UK will blindly follow suit)

      It would be common sense to reach the widest possible audiance for something like this, so these tricks go against all common sense. Then again, common sense is rarely that common isn't it :o/
      • I'm pretty sure it is already illegal. Reverse engineering of a web site in order to gain access to copyrighted matirial.


        • FUD.

          I'd hardly call "HTML" an encryption method.

        • Reverse engineering? Pff.
          Their website doesn't give you a finished product (except for flash)---it gives you source code (HTML, CSS, javascript), and it's up to you to do something with it.

          As for flash, running 'strings' on the .swf file doesn't seem to count as reverse-engineering for me. You wouldn't be able to re-create their flash interface by just knowing the media file URL; you don't get the source code to their flash program, but just a fragment of the data used by the source code to do what it doe
          • "As for flash, running 'strings' on the .swf file doesn't seem to count as reverse-engineering for me."

            Its the *IAA Lawyers you have to worry about. Just because you don't think is doesn't mean they don't.
    • I'd imagine it's because they don't want to be associated with material which is outside their control. I agree though - they should just have some sort of disclaimer.
    • They have advertisements that they want to play first.

      Your adblock might be killing them.
    • No kidding. Since Atom Films is crawling, I can't tell... did someone make a rendition of "Revenge of the Slashdot Effect?" It's unfortunate that ROTSE is too close to gaotse for my liking.
    • A tiny amount of Googling turned up their blooper reel [theforce.net], but no joy on the actual film :-(

      I agree - they're gits for not allowing the download of the film.

    • They cant because of contest rules (Score:5, Interesting)

      by gad_zuki! ( 70830 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @08:29AM (#12087518)
      I remember emailing the creator of Pink 5 [shockwave.com] a year ago (two?) asking for a high-quality direct download and he told me that Lucas's rules prohibit anyone from distributing their own work for a year or so. He thought it was due to Lucasfilm producing a DVD of the fan films, but I dont think that has ever happened.*

      *cavaet: this is all from memory and second hand information
    • They want to make sure only professional media pirates can steal copies of the videos. If ordinary people could steal copies, that would infringe on the rights of pirates.
    • I eventually managed to scrape through the javascript detection and recreate the form on my hard drive with the right values.

      Hopefully, these links will work:

      One Season More [speedera.net]
      Tiny Toys [speedera.net]
      Sith Apprentice [speedera.net]

      (Leave a comment if you want a more in-depth explanation of how to get the direct links)

  • Wow (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @07:30AM (#12087355)
    These vids make Episode 1 look good.

    • Re:Wow (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Given that the time between this link going live and your post is scarcely enough to watch one of them, I'll take that assessment with a pinch of salt.
    • Yeah, like that's a hard thing to do.

      The average fan could eat alphabet soup and excrete a better movie script.

      I'm so damn close to getting a free ipod [freeipods.com] [freeipods.com], which I'll fill entierly with CC licensed podcasts and rips of CDS I own.
    • That was irony, right? ;) You know: seduced by The Dark Side, Lucas is. :)

  • Broken Allegiance still rules (Score:4, Interesting)

    by starseeker ( 141897 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @07:30AM (#12087356) Homepage
    I'd say Broken Allegiance http://www.theforce.net/fanfilms/shortfilms/broken allegiance/ has to be my favorite fan film. Sure the acting isn't top notch, but after all it's a fan film and it's way better than average. Their villian is awesome and a lot of small touches really work well. The design for the villian's ship - amazing. Plus the blooper reel had me laughing almost the whole way through.

    I guess my tastes run away from spoofs toward "serious" movies, and in general most fan films don't have the resources to pull this off. I keep hoping Tydirium works out though: http://www.tydirium.tv/

  • Spooky Voice (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @07:35AM (#12087376)
    Why do these fan films always have an evil guy with an incredibly lame "spooky voice"?

    The whole Apprentice video sucked. Including the Vader talent segment.

    • Its supposed to be funny


      laugh> hahahahaha /laugh>


      OK, it could be funnier, but the people making these haven't been out in a long while and think Monty Python references are as funny now as when they were at school

    • "The whole Apprentice video sucked"

      Oh? I thought it was kind of cool when Donald Trump said "You're fired!" as he kicked Anakin into a burning volcano.

    • I agree. lame. Don't waste your time with this. It was boring.

      Google up this, it's much better:
      SW_ep3_trailer_captioned.wmv

      It's the game captioned version of the episode 3 trailer.
    • Why do these fan films always have an evil guy with an incredibly lame "spooky voice"?

      The whole Apprentice video sucked. Including the Vader talent segment.

      Not only the spooky voice, but WHY must they ALWAYS talk in a stupid RHYTHM that makes them SOUND like idiots? This always seems to be an issue with fan-made stuff, especially Star Wars. It doesn't come across well, the audio is very hard to hear. I give them credit for making it, but for all the effort they put into it, you would think that they

    • The guy who made the Apprentice rip-off is based out of Knoxville, TN and works for the local WB affiliate there. I've been waiting for this to come out for some time, but I was bitterly disappointed. Personally, I have to agree. I think it sucked. I've seen much better and funnier.

  • Raiders of the Lost Ark fan film (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @07:46AM (#12087410)
    A friend recently told me about this film [austinchronicle.com], an amazing-sounding film made over the span of seven years by three boys, which ultimately was lauded by Spielberg as a true work of art. I've been unable to find any copies of the film itself... anybody have any pointers?

  • Just to throw something else out there. (Score:3, Informative)

    by iibbmm ( 723967 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @07:51AM (#12087429)
    Back in 1999 a friend and I put together Ultracheese-When Senators Attack IV. It garnered praise from the Python-fan crowd, and I'm still proud of it today. If the idea of a completely retarded parody of Episode 1's Trailer sounds like a good idea to you, check it out. www.ultracheese.com
  • ... of these screening with Episode III: Revenge of the Sith? Then maybe we'll get of $7 worth.
  • It was bad enough to read fanzines and fan stories in the 80's - now we have to endure bad storytelling and childish phantasies onscreen.

    A typewriter doesn't make you an author, a videocam not a Steven Spielberg and a piece of CGI software ...

    • Re:Digital Fandom (Score:5, Insightful)

      by starseeker ( 141897 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @08:25AM (#12087510) Homepage
      "It was bad enough to read fanzines and fan stories in the 80's - now we have to endure bad storytelling and childish phantasies onscreen."

      No, you don't. Don't read/watch them. Problem solved.

      "A typewriter doesn't make you an author, a videocam not a Steven Spielberg and a piece of CGI software ..."

      But if they're having fun, and Lucasfilms isn't upset about it, what's the big deal? It's their time and money. People don't have to be authors to have fun writing, or Steven Spielberg to have fun making a movie. Sure the results will suck, but so what? It's not life or death. It's not even to make money. It's to have fun. I cringe at most of them too, but every once in a while I see one or two I want to take a look at (and occasionally end up liking), which is all I'm concerned about. $DEITY knows enough commercial TV is almost as bad, and they get paid for it.

    • Re:Digital Fandom (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Mant ( 578427 )

      The great thing about fan fiction in its various forms is you can completely ignore it. Even if you don't it costs you nothing, just stop reading or watching if you don't like it. OK, if you hear about some slash fiction ideas you want to wash your brain out, but apart from that ;)

      So, you don't have to endure it. It is really Sturgeon's Law, 90% of everything is crap, only with the lowering costs to produce/publish/distribute the bar is lowered. So instead of getting loads of crap and some good stuff just

      • So, you don't have to endure it. It is really Sturgeon's Law, 90% of everything is crap, only with the lowering costs to produce/publish/distribute the bar is lowered. So instead of getting loads of crap and some good stuff just from people paid to make it, now you get it from people doing it for fun.

        It's worse than 90%, but perhaps I am just a snob.

        You are on to something though; a very disconcerting trend. The deluge of crap, be it in the form of hyper-commercialized Britney Spears or Bob "I'm Neil

    • Re:Digital Fandom (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      And a forum don't make you a critic...
    • Note to self: never mix nerds and cynical comments.
    • It was bad enough to read fanzines and fan stories in the 80's - now we have to endure bad storytelling and childish phantasies onscreen.

      Attention: you don't have to do shit. Don't wanna see'em? Don't wantch'em. Prolem solved, idiot.

      A typewriter doesn't make you an author, a videocam not a Steven Spielberg and a piece of CGI software ...

      Um, where the fuck do you think future directors come from? Since you mentioned Steven Spielberg, you might want to know he got his start at 8 years old with his [cnn.com]

  • First Thought (Score:4, Funny)

    by Kaorimoch ( 858523 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @08:24AM (#12087506) Journal
    How many other people clicked on this article and wondered "Where's the torrents?"

  • Start Wars Clone Wars.... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Invalid Character ( 788952 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @08:28AM (#12087513) Journal
    For anyone who is a fan of animation and Star Wars, i highly suggest taking a look at the Star Wars Clone Wars mini series (directed by Gendy Tartakovski of Sarmurai Jack and Dexter's Lab). Very stylized and very engaging. Sometimes I think Star Wars would have been better off as such a series of cartoons or animations.

    Instead of trying to portray ultra realism (and failing) why dont more producers just make the leap along with the audience of suspending disbelief and making a more interesting and entertaining production through animation?

    • I totally agree. I've loved the Clone Wars miniseries. It's had a few flaws, but they've been easy to overlook. I think they even got to try out some things Lucas had wanted to do in films but couldn't (e.g., the Jedi and Clone Troopers boarding another ship pirate-like only via rocket pack - a scene originally destined for A New Hope).

      I can only hope Ep 3 will be as good...
      • Agreed. I hope that eventually the whole miniseries comes out on DVD a la The Animatrix. I'd probably pay $20-$25 for it. Alternately, they could bundle it with the Ultra Super-Spiffy Deluxe Premium Platinum Mega edition of the Episodes 1, 2, and 3 box set.
        • The first two "seasons" are out on DVD already. They were released last week or the week before. The latest season only lasted a week but the episodes were 12 minutes long instead of 4 minutes long. The animation is great, the stories are excellent. I described these cartoons to my Fiancee as "the way Star Wars should be." They are great!
      • The did, and they have.

        The second volume of the mini series is out now. I.e. Chapters 20-25 are out and in one of them they do just that.

  • I felt that these short films were pretty good but I'm a fan of parodies. I really liked Sith Apprentice but my favorite Star Wars parody is A Lost Hope from sequentialpictures.com. It's a parody of a trailer for Episode 3.

  • The classic (Score:3, Interesting)

    by traabil ( 861418 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @08:30AM (#12087522)
    In my book, the fan films climaxed with Star Wars Troops [theforce.net]. In addition to the interesting look into a storm trooper's life, it also provided another (more realistic) view into Luke's dark background.
    • I second that. Troops is definitively the best fan-made movie (not like I've seen a lot, but still). It's a parody of Star Wars of course, but also of "Cops", the American show where you get to see a cop's day of work. Very funny, and very well adapted to a Sci-fi universe from what I can tell (I don't watch Cops, I'm not even in USA, and I'm not even American).

      However I'm not sure one can say it's a solid, realistic view of Luke's background :)

      • Somewhat of a parody of COPS I would say, but other than having Tom Servo as one of the droids this was more of an adoption of what a show like COPS would be like if it started Sandtroopers on Tatoone. It is funny in it's seriousness, rather than how most parodies exploit slapstick humor.
    • They are comming out with a part two to this called imps. It is suppose to be a "History Channal" styled documentory on the best damn job in the galaxy.

      imps [theforce.net]

      Also one that looks like it should be really good
      Heart of an Empire [heartofanempire.com]

    • I also consider "Troops" to be one of the best Star Wars fan films, but another great show is Duality [pocketmovies.net]. It has a great fight scene, good special effects, and a clever ending proving that "Troops" was not the last word in fan films. Highly recommended.

  • if George Lucas entered Ep 1 or Ep 2 (Score:5, Interesting)

    by AtariAmarok ( 451306 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @08:49AM (#12087576)
    If George had anonymously entered his movies in the contest, there is too high of a chance he'd lose.

    "What? A Rastafarian camelhead alien with snail eyes and a long long tongue? Meesa thinks only an idiot would put such in a Star Wars movie."

  • While not starwars, I certainly found it humourous!

    Gack Trek [mediachill.com]
  • The best SW fan film ever [crapville.com]! ...no wait!

  • The dark side (Score:4, Funny)

    by argent ( 18001 ) <peter@slashdot . ... t a r o nga.com> on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @09:22AM (#12087718) Homepage Journal
    Flash advertisements? Browser busting links? Realplayer? Windows Media? A Jedi needs not these things!

  • Damn, those sucked (Score:2, Informative)

    by Aqua OS X ( 458522 )
    Dude, I know those folks put a lot of work into those films, but those were painful to watch. Those two comedies weren't funny at all, and that CGI musical was down right creepy.

    Mod me down if you must.

    • Heh. You think that's bad? I helped make one of the ones that lost to these!

      Our postmortem started with, "Well, we forgot to make it actually interesting but otherwise we all did great!"
    • The moral of the story is, when you're making a film:

      Script FIRST, film LATER.

      No matter how small your budget, there's no excuse for a poor script and awful acting. If you can't come up with a decent script, and can't find anyone who can act, then it's perhaps better not to make it.
  • It's completely unwatchable. 40 seconds of sound, one frame. another 40 seconds, one more frame. Useless.

    What's the point of my T3 if they can't serve up the data to me. Pricks.
  • The best fan film I've ever seen was one of the winners of that program of them Kevin Smith hosted a hojillion years ago; Christmas Tauntauns. http://atomfilms.shockwave.com/af/content/tauntaun s [shockwave.com]
    • Yeah -- there was no download link for the film -- only streaming -- so I emailed the creators asking for a copy, and they sent me the first copy they had ever made to send to anyone. As far as I know, I might have the only copy of the video outside of the creators -- they were really nice about it. They told me it was surprising to get an email requesting the video, as no one had ever asked before. They send me a CD with a high-quality laser-printed label and everything! I got it in the mail and just about
  • Talk about follow the Javascript trail... why can't sites just serve up a nice Object tag with the url of the data!

    It is the job of the browser to choose a plugin; its idea of the association between plugins and MIME types is always correct.

    Hardcoding the associations in Javascript is retarded; how is the web developer supposed to know this information better than my browser?

  • "A Lost Hope" is better (Score:4, Informative)

    by Captain Irreverence ( 761516 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @10:54AM (#12088356)
    What...no Star Wars Episode III: A Lost Hope [sequentialpictures.com]? It's better...and much, much funnier...than any of these films.

    "Warn you we tried. Listen you did not. Now screwed we all will be!"
  • A lot of comments about the quality of the vids and nobody commenting on the Babylon 5 and Star Trek uniform cameos in that Apprentice video? What is SlashDot coming to?

  • Direct Links (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @11:02AM (#12088427)
    Direct Links (but still likely incurs ads). Can someone tcpdump the shockwave and/or realplays and mirror them somewhere?

    1. aieko [atomfilms.com] is here in full glory
    2. anakin_dynamite [atomfilms.com]is here in full glory
    3. boba [atomfilms.com]is here in full glory
    4. cheap_seats [atomfilms.com]is here in full glory
    5. ewok [atomfilms.com]is here in full glory
    6. love_of_the_film [atomfilms.com]is here in full glory
    7. kessel_run_infraction [atomfilms.com]is here in full glory
    8. one_season_more [atomfilms.com]is here in full glory
    9. real_men_empire [atomfilms.com]is here in full glory
    10. sith_apprentice [atomfilms.com]is here in full glory
    11. speeder [atomfilms.com]is here in full glory
    12. star_wars_elements [atomfilms.com]is here in full glory
    13. star_wars_tv [atomfilms.com]is here in full glory
    14. tiny_toys [atomfilms.com]is here in full glory
    15. walk_bamboo_bush [atomfilms.com]is here in full glory
    16. the_yody_years [atomfilms.com]is here in full glory

    Sorry for the "full glory" stuff, but /. doesn't allow html posts with less than a certain number of characters per line (why?)

  • One of the funniest short videos I've seen, spoofing Star Wars and American Pie.

    Link [ifilm.com]
  • I'm going to wait for "Revenge of the Pith - When Citrus Goes Bad".
  • They Killed JAR JAR woohoo
  • ...but I wonder if the "Tiny Toys" one is anything like the Stephen King short story Battleground [horrorking.com]? I always loved that story and thought that it would be a neat movie. I really wanted to see it made as a mix of CGI and live action after I saw the little guys in Toy Story [imdb.com].

  • How? (Score:2)

    by jafac ( 1449 )
    How can something be a "kill bill" parody, when kill bill itself was a parody?
  • In senior English in high school, we could get out of exams by making on-topic videos. I was a part of The Beo Wulf Project, Shakespeare's The Tempest (animated...very badly), and Oliver Wars. Oliver (played by the biggest guy in our group) wanted more food, but the only way to get it was through Jedi training. And then two Jedi knights come to save Oliver from the Siith Lord, with one Jedi dying and the Siith Lord losing his head in the process. Incidentally, cause of death of the Jedi knight was being
  • Can't wait to put mine up. It's going to be full length and all green-screened. All of the effects are being created and rendered with Blender. I hope to start filming this summer. Crossing my fingers!
  • vote for Real Men of the Empire
  • Is the best one I've watched so far. The rest have been lame at best...
  • As a mindless automaton in the service of Bob Bean (the Vader in Sith Apprentice) http://www.vaderpainter.com/ [vaderpainter.com], I must bow to the glory of my Master! Gooooooo Bob! Congrats.

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