The Indie Indy: Fan Films, Copyright, and Public Appetite

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Myself with the 'Adaptation' guys in Chicago.

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A few years ago, I heard about a group of indie filmmakers-- middle-school kids, actually-- who, a year after Raiders of the Lost Ark hit the cinemas, decided to make their own version, in homage to the modern classic that had captured their imagination. It took them seven years and around five thousand bucks, but Raiders: The Adaptation was born. This project began in 1982, before things like Youtube or miniDV were even glints in anyone's techie eye. Technically, the kids' project was a scene-by-scene remake and not an adaptation, but whatever. The movie was never intended to make any money and was never distributed to cinemas, but word spread and the DIY Indiana Jones flick made its way to aintitcoolnews guru Harry Knowles' film festival.

Now Paramount, the studio behind the Indiana Jones movies, is making a film about the remake of Raiders... even as studios vigorously pursue anyone they see as messing with their profits.

The kids who made the fan-film began by videotaping a screening of Raiders, and continued by using the music from the original film without permission. Once it saw the light of day (as it were) at the first film festival, it became a "public performance", thus sinking these kids further into the copyright quagmire; techdirt has further details.

My point is that not all "copyright infringement" is bad. For example, Dangermouse created The Grey Album, a mashup of The Beatles and Jay-Z; record companies cried foul, apparently not comprehending that such a mashup would not satiate the public's desire for either the Fab Four or Lil' Hov. Instead, music fans would be more likely to seek out the sources from which the mashup was created.

I think the same is true of fan films.