Episode 5: Fan Films

I love doing my vo auditions that way. So I'm sure that's great for the cords. Yes, just going through the whole range. But yeah, no, speaking of range and and hitting the ups and bottoms of what we can do you as people and fans. Today, we're tackling fan films, fan films. Yeah. We're also having our friends come in that have made a couple of very popular fan films Robot Underdogs, so they will be joining us a little bit later. But if you off the top of your head, like,

what are some fan films that you remember? Oh man, the fan films, I remember that. I think the latest one that comes to bind besides the ones Donnie and Rita did, which is DVZ line of hope. Is the one we were talking about just before we got started, which was The Power Rangers. It was like dark and gritty and everyone was like, what, it'd be crazy if this was the Power Ranger. And then Power Rangers came out and there a little semi gritty. I don't want to say it was dark. It was still I feel

like it was pretty much Power Rangers. But I feel like the excitement for the fan film might have been ultimately got the green light. I do agree with that, I think, and we'll get into that, but I think a lot of these fan films do help hype up the actual problem parties themselves and probably also showing the companies like what could be done and the demand for it. But getting into what fan films are, so, they're essentially film or video that's inspired by you know, a comic book,

television program, some type of source like that. It's made pretty much by amateurs, I would say, but this can lead to having professional filmmakers actually working on the project, which we'll get into as well. But yeah, so the main issue that they kind of run into is because they are fans they're not the copyright holders, so whether they should be allowed to do this, like what actually as far as fair use, what they're allowed to do,

we're going to tackle that to in this episode. Yeah. No, I think that's very interesting and we'll get more into that later. But the allowing to do it and just kind of the legality of it all. And I feel like for most people it's pretty kosher because it's tensy, it's usually free, usually on YouTube, and I think that's what makes it so beautiful because it has heard. It's not done for profit, it's done just because they're so

passionate about it. Just like Cosplay, it's like the next step up where it's like, Okay, we got a cosplayed down, but let's actually do our own spinoff. Let's see what

that's popping. Yeah, But like if we're looking at Cosplay, when you start making money off of someone else's I P and you start selling calendars or things like that, which I'm totally four, but a lot of these companies and sometimes studios, they will We know of a couple that have gotten shut down as far as um fan films or YouTube videos and stuff for using their trademark characters Essentially, I think what happens is when it gets bigger than they expected it to be, and when it

looks better maybe than the film that they made. When this amateur filmmaker got their friends together and made a better film than your studio, it gets a little spicy, it does. Then there's also stories of it being a happy ending word now something they get the rights to, the actual rights to something and get to create something dope. But we'll get, like I said, more into that later. We'll just start with the history our deep dive, of

our deep dive, Deep Dive, Deep Dive. Yeah. So the earliest known fan film is uh Anderson Our Gang, which was produced in nineteen actually by a pair of filmmakers. So Our Gang is essentially the Little Rascals um. It was shot in Anderson, South Carolina, and Uh it was a short that was based off of Our Gang, and the only known copy resides in the University of South

Carolina's News Film Library. Nice and it seems like the technology required to make fan films was the limited factor, which makes sense because I feel like we saw boom in fan films in the YouTube age because of specifically access when YouTube came around, it was the growth of the access of being able to produce video yourself. You know, back in the day you have to have like the family cam that on your shoulder, and then the camera started getting smaller and more acces until it was like

a handheld but also like who was seeing it? Just your family, whereas now with YouTube you were able to have a larger audience and mainly of the same fandom to make it more popular. So going back further after our gang um in the nineteen sixties U. C. L. A film student, Don Glutt filmed a series of short, black and white underground films that were essentially based on adventure and comic book characters like Superman, the Spirit and Batman.

And his final amateur film was nineteen sixty nine spider Man, and then he moved on so he was a success story. So because of the level of popularity of his films, he actually moved into professional work full time. He went on to write for a ton of kids shows, Land of the Loss, Transformers, Duck Tails, Spiderman and his Amazing Friends, g I, Joe, Real American here out Do you remember that I was just looking at Oh gosh, if you have to show you the p S A S from

g I Joe. They're so good. Oh yeah, I remember the more you know. Yeah, and then somebody did a parody of them. That are how I could not stop laughing this weekend watching them. But then okay, So Glut also went on to write for d C and Marvel Comics. Again, this was a fan who had made fan films and then went on to write for those properties. And he also did the Empire Strikes Back novel that was based

on the film. Yeah. Yeah, it's funny because I feel like back then it probably was way easier to get a Spiderman or Batman film than it is now. Now now it's a big undertaking. It's if you get a superhero film, your name is, it's like who is that guy? Back then it was like, oh yeah, sure Spiderman, I

see what you mean. Yeah. Yeah. As far as popularity, if you do want to go back and watch all forty one of Glett's amateur films, there's a DVD set called I Was a Teenage Movie Maker, which I think is so cool, and you can go back and watch all these old films that he did. That's tight. And then in nineteen sixty four, any Warhol produced a film called Batman Dracula, which could be described as a fan film.

It was like his homage to Batman, accept completely without dcent comments permissions in Andy Warhol, do you think like I wonder? Yeah, yeah, he did it completely without their permission, and it was considered to be the first film that was featuring a blatantly campy Batman. Yeah back then, but yeah, you can actually still catch it. We'll try and leave in our footnotes on our site. We'll try and leave a lot of the YouTube links where you can watch

some of these. Oh yeah, definitely check it out and let us know what you think. But then, it wasn't until the nineteen seventies that the popularization of science fiction conventions, uh you know, like we talked about in our Comic Kind episode. It allowed fans to show their films to a wider fan community, which is great because before it was just you and your friends. You watch it, and I feel like when you see other people do things

is when it really catches fire. So I can only imagine sitting down in a theater at a convention and see someone do a fan film to be like nudging my buddy and just yo, we gotta get on that. Yeah. Also, you can like live out all of your fan fiction. You know, it's basically like your fan fiction come to life. Like whatever characters that you wanted to see battle each other,

you finally get to have that Danny storylines that you want. What. Well, since we haven't done a fan fiction episode, why don't you break down what fiction? Fan Fiction is something I'm very familiar with someone that it wrote it when I was a teenager and kind of still read here and there. But fan fiction is essentially fiction that is written by fans.

It is stories about characters that are written. So Harry Potter fan fiction essentially would be stories about or mine E and you know, Harry Potter and um, their romantic life or their daily life or whatever you want to write about. But it's essentially these stories that are written short stories, and some of them are actually have like fifty chapters. I have read fan fiction that has like fifty chapters long. Um. But there are fan fiction sites.

One of the most popular ones the last couple of decades that I used to play around on was fan fiction dot Net. So if you ever want to read you you can find anything anything that you're into. If you're into Star Trek, if you're into sailor Moon, whatever, it will be on there. But yeah, it's essentially stories that are written by fans and they're damn good. There are some that are really good and those people should

be getting paid for them. But yeah, I used to read a lot of anime fan fiction and I would write some of it. So yeah, it's basically the text version of this. Yeah, it's basically the text version of a fan film. Um and where you're able to kind of live out these these storylines that you have always wanted to see. Oh yeah, back to fan films. Now, there's a ton of fan films. You know, you have Star Wars, Star Trek, Buffy the vampires Layer, Doctor Who,

anime fan films. Uh, you know, once again plug in light of hope from our guests who you will here later in the episode. But because fan films generally utilize characters and storylines copyright and trademarked by the original filmmakers, they are rarely distributed commercially for legal reasons. But like I said, you can just type fan film into YouTube and you'll have a plethora of things to play with. Because we now live in an age where not only

it's filmmaking accessible, but so is special effects. You know, even on vines and Twitter videos you're seeing some wild stuff and Instagram too. Yeah, on all the social media, I feel like you can see a lot of people and like you were saying, with special effects, which to plug our friends again, who did dbz liaut of hope. I know that they had a lot of I think even in the first year that they started to the more recent years that they actually were able to utilize

more technology in their film. Yeah. Yeah. So filmmaker Sandy Cholera, he actually gained a lot of notoriety in the early two thousands for a series of fan films he produced featuring Batman and Superman. But I think his most famous ones were Batman. It was dead End, uh and that premiered at San Diego Comic Con in two thousand and three, but World's Finest, his other fan film was actually prevented from showing in two thousand and four due to copyright

claims from Warner Brothers. So he essentially so dead End was before Nolan's Batman trilogy, and it showed audience this like gritty comic book style, dark night film and you can only possibly wonder that that probably excited audiences. I don't want to say that it necessarily influenced Nolan. I mean it might have, but it probably got people hyped

about seeing that type of Batman. And it's very interesting to see that Warner Brothers block to free screening because I don't necessarily think it was besides any power outside of their connection with San Diego Comic com Like, I don't think they hit him with a C CND or something. I think it was as simple as Warner Brothers being like, they can't show that, and we're Warner Brothers and you

better make sure they don't show it. Yeah. I wonder when Nolan was originally in talks, like what if it was at the same time, you know what I mean, Like, I wonder if that could have influenced because they were preparing to have Batman begins. I don't know, I don't know. But moving on, there's also Star Trek New Voyages that was a fan production, but it's another successful one where it attracted support from so many people as well as

crew and cast members. That's another thing that we're seeing is a lot of times either voice actors or actors of the actual series or films. They love seeing these fan films and when they get involved then it ends up being greenlit. So Star Trek new Voyages was one of those. Another one was the Lord of the Rings fan films Born of Hope and The Hunt for Golem and those debuted at Ring Con. If we didn't even talk about Ring Con in our comic con, I don't

even know that that existed either. That's the first time I love that. So now there's I love this specific ones because there's one coming up called a Con and then there's Ring Con and um Star Wars Celebration. Yeah. But to answer your question, by the way, so Warner Brothers hired No. One in January area of two thousand three,

So look this came out in two thousand three. Yeah, so two thousand four was when they're like, we're not letting that happen again, especially because if they hired them in two thousand three, that year is probably when the buzzing talk started happening. The movie dropped in two thousand five. Yeah, that could have been it. Even though a lot of people do see it as like free promotion or publicity, my thing might be it could possibly be because now fans have in their head how they want it to be.

Maybe that's it. Maybe when they see this story, that's what they want and think that this new film is going to be. And so maybe that's why it got to definitely see that. So another one is the Legend of Zelda, which is a very popular video game, and they had a fan film called The Hero of Time uh and that was also had a huge following. The movie premiered in Atlanta in two thousand and nine and online in number of two thousand and nine, only to

be shut down by Nintendo on January. Nintendo is very litigious. They are very, very very protective of their rights, so that was coming from a mile away. I think even the Hero of Time crew knew any Pokemon like fan made game because there's a yeah, there's a unity of Pokemon fan made games. They get shut down almost instantaneously because Nintendo is that litigious. So yeah, that was definitely

gonna happen. It's such a weird and when we bring Donnie and read on, you know, this is something I want to talk to them about because it is such a weird line and balance that you have to have is like, these are fans these are amateur fans that are making something. But then, like we said, it gains traction and a lot of times, like people think this

is harmless, but no, they'll get shut down. Well, because there is a level you get when you are to grain momentum and popularity that does in a way start to infringe upon the rights for the creators, because, like you were saying earlier, sometimes fans make a film that the community will enjoy better than an actual copyrighted material, and they will use that as a scapegoat as to

why it was unsuccessful. Instead of being like, oh, we didn't make the movie as good as it could be, it was like, well, people really like this version and they had an idea of what it should look like based off of this fan made thing, so it ruined our chances, which in a way could be kind of true, but lots of times it's mostly from the idea of oh, this is how good it can be. Yeah, yeah, uh.

For those of you that don't know, uh, there was a live action dragon ball Z film, which, if you don't know, dragon ball Z is a very very popular anime. There was a live action dragon ball Z film. I can't even remember the name. Of it if he was the name of that which one, Oh, Evolution, Dragonball, Evolution, Revolution, Evolution. I don't even This is how much I don't care about that film, and it's my favorite anime. So anyways, that film was made by Fox and then Donnie and

ritat at Robot Underdog, who are coming on. They made their own fan film, and you should see the amount of comments that were like, this is what it should have been like and these are you know, amateur filmmakers as opposed to an actual studio. Uh, and so a

lot of fans kind of kind of grasp onto that instead. Well, yeah, because it's funny because I feel like when you have a fan film, it's being created by people passionate about the source material, so it'll follow it more closely, it'll take less risks and try and be true to the source,

versus a Hollywood one which wants to always. I feel like the problem with a lot of nerd properties that Hollywood tries to tackle that only recently has been broken was the it's basically like the habit of trying to approach the source material and go, let's make this realistic and or for everyone that all the time for a big audience, and it's what's happened on a larger scale to Hollywood, where people are afraid to take creative risks

because they would much rather try and make something palatable. But lots of times, the best piece of creative material is one that makes a choice. And when you're trying to make it for everyone, you're not making a choice. You're actually watering down the choice is made. I think also, when you're trying to make it for everyone, you piss off the fans. I understand that you your market is

not just the fans. Your movie is not going to be successful then if it were just Even when you look at um like the latest run of Marvel films, I feel like they're not just made in y C. But I feel like they're not specifically just made Like when they made Wonder Woman, they didn't just make get for comic book readers of Wonder Woman, like they tried to appeal to a much larger audience, which they got. Well. I feel like with the smart way they did that.

And here's in first my take on that. My take on that is when people do that, when they're like we're trying to make for everyone, they're just being greedy because the reason you bought that the rights to that, the only reason is because you feel the fan base is big enough to support that the thing you're creating, that's why you bought it. So now that you bought it, you're trying to be greedy. And I was like, how do I get more people on top of this instead

of just making it the best and hoping people follow. Now, what I feel like movies like Wonder Woman and Black pant did was they took the source material and looked at it's actual the Venn diagram of its actual source material. They didn't look at outside reasons it can be better. They looked at what they had and why it's good. Wonder Woman is good even as a comic book because if you are a woman, it's very empowering as a woman. You can read Wonder Woman. It's empowering as a comic book.

It's good for everyone. So they took that and really blew that out. So they're like, let's make a movie that the comic book fans will see, but women will really enjoy because this is a comic book on its own strength is empowering for women. So it's it's that's a smart move to look for ways for that, and I feel like Black Panther did the same thing, same VENN diagram. This comic book is a good comic book character for comic book fans, but if you're a black person,

this is good. So how do we make this movie a good movie for all black people even if you don't like comic books, because that's what I saw a lot of tweets of was like, I'm not even into comics. Yeah, and I absolutely love this film. It's it's real funny listening to the read when they talk about it because Kid furies like a real big comic book fan and Crystal does not care for it. So it's interesting to

hear both sides in one take. And it is and it goes even bigger that you don't even have to be black, because the fact of the matter is if you make a good product for a marginalized group, a minority group, if it's good enough, everyone's gonna still like it. But that doesn't take away the fact that that's who

was made right. Yes, I agree, And I also feel like it's so interesting when people are like, oh, I really related to this, It was like, yeah, you know, people of color do also have a similar stories and issues. Yeah weird, weird. Oh you have a little kid's sister. Weird. Um. Anyways, so I agree, But I do remember that when Wonder Woman came out, there were a lot of women that

were like, I'm not and this isn't stereotyping anything. I read a ton of comics, but I had a lot of friends of mine that said, you know, I don't read comics, and I'm very into it. It was also a good war film. Yeah it had all the nice sides. But we've been dancing around it. But let's full jump into the legal stuff. So a fun thing is Canada's Copyright Monertization Act explicitly added an exemption which allows non commercial creation of fan film material in two thousand twelve.

That is, man, that's so cool because that really is a modernization of your copyright Act because it's taking into account a trimd that is happening and protecting people who's doing those trends because at the end of the day, yeah, they're not trying to make money. They're just trying to make a fun thing that they can share with the fan base and there's no harm in that. And like you were, saying it does create buzz for it and

lots of times. Another thing that's being said on light of hope is like, man, this gets me excited to see like a whole studio Dragon ball Z movie, you know, yeah, yeah, how it could look, and also a studio that would like respect the property exactly. So moving on this one was a big one. So the U S Court rule Lens versus Universal Music Group, So essentially, a woman named Stephanie Lenz she posted on YouTube a home video of her kid dancing to Prince's song Let's Go Crazy and

Universal so it wasn't Prince. Universal sent YouTube a takedown notice basically claiming that her video violated their copyright, and so the court ruled and acknowledged that creative fan activities on copyrighted works might fall under fair use, and they asked that copyright holders check and respect fair use before using these d m c A takedown notices, which is d m c A is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act essentially, yeah,

tackles some of that fair use. This was all the crossfire that happened with YouTube's messy breakup with Universal Music Group in the first place, because they used to have a partnership and that's why they had all the videos up there. In the moment that partnership ended, they did a wide sweep of takedowns, and if you weren't smart about fair use laws, like me, back then, I had a very popular YouTube video where I was parodying this video of these guys called It was called like Late

Night Special and They're humping Ottoman. It was like on every late night show. Well, me and my friends did a parody. We had the pretty rickey song in the background Late Night Special. We got the takedown. I freaked out. You know now I see it and I roll my eyes because I've seen it enough. But if you're on YouTube as a kid and you see that it's a very legal like notice and you freak out and you're like,

you remove the song please, I don't want to be sued. Yeah, Well, it also sucks because a lot of these people, I mean, aside from this, this was like her just posting a video over kid dancing. When you can take stuff down like that, I feel like that has a huge precedent

as far as what they're allowed to take down. We have a lot of friends that do movie reviews or they'll of view TV shows, and it's like they have to be super careful about their fair use as far as like even what they're allowed to show, how much they're allowed to show. Uh So it's super gray when it comes to a lot of these I P s and and companies, Some are much more stricter than others. I think a lot of anime companies are a lot more stricter, some of them that I can think of.

But since fan films tend to be fairly long and extensive in nature, it's a lot harder to kind of just wave it as fair use because they're not just using like a still or a tiny bit of a teaser trailer like they're actually making an entire film. Some companies see it and think of it as free promotion and others don't. And we'll we'll get into that with Donnie and Rita Robot Underdog right after this. Welcome back to Netificent. I am Danny Fernandez And if you why

do you way? I hope you enjoyed that ad for I'm just gonna assume it was Atlanta Monster again. I've been doing those ads going back for I'm gonna have to check it out. Uh yeah, I wanted to correct something, so right before the break, I was saying that Universal Music Group had a nasty split with YouTube, but it was actually Warner Music Group that had a split from YouTube.

Universal Music Group has been hand in hand in a deal with YouTube that allows them to just pull videos that they infringes upon them, like yeah, so that's why it's pretty quick when it's a Universal Music because they since they have a contract with YouTube, all they have to do is cough and it just plugs the video and it's gone. Yeah. So we are joined here by two of our very good friends, Donnie and Rita McMillan

from Robot Underdog here. So y'all have I'm just gonna say, like the most popular Dragon ball Z fan film that is out there. Yeah, that's just facts at this point, opinion. Thank you very much. I don't know what to say. That's about. It's good of a compliment as you can get. Yeah, it's done really well. It's been a lot of fun. Yeah, what are your current numbers for your for both of them, it's definitely for both of them, wow collectively? Yeah, yeah,

the first one did insane, just blew up. I don't ye didn't even know why yeah, and that's that's a light of hope. Um, So how did y'all get started? When did you get started? Like, what year was it when you got started? When did you decide that you were going to make a Dragon ball Z fan film? How did you? How did that happen? So we started with the first fan film we did was a Miles Morales Ultimate Spider Man, So that is the blackest fanic

Spider Man, who was one of our favorite characters. I'm Hispanic, Donnie's black boom like diagram, Miles Morales. So that's how we actually got started into fan films, was we wanted to represent characters who weren't being represented in film that were of course minority, and also just characters we love and I think bring something new to the genre, like

geek culture. So we started with the Miles film, and then after that, for some crazy reason, we thought that we should do the hardest live action project ever, which was Dragon ball Z. And that was probably what I just want to say, because, like you were saying, with the hardest, most people argue that Dragon ball Z cannot be made into live action. We hear that all the time.

That was quite literally, like because it was at the beginning of us launching our YouTube channel, So we were thinking, all right, we did the Spider Man thing, what can we do next that will be like, like everyone says you can't do it because they had just come out with um evolution, Dragon ball about or didn't talk about that. Well, that's the thing. That's like our number one comment, and anything we do is better than evolution. That was the thing.

We're like, well, if I couldn't do it, evolution, yeah, like you were saying, Evolution just was the one that Fox had made. Yeah, yeah, And being filmmakers, were thinking, well, like we wanted to kind of align everything. We wanted the channel to do well, but wanted to showcase our

filmmaking skills. So if we could do something that Hollywood couldn't do on a micro budget, then job well done kind of you know, And we wanted to prove that these films that fall flat when the superhero based it's a lot of times it just feels like fans aren't involved in the creative process, and so it was the whole thing. It was like, well, it's let's before the fans, by the fans and show them that when geeks freak out, over movies being wrong, it's justified because they actually a

lot of times have better opinions. Yeah, we're actually saying before the break, how the reason that tends to happen is because you know, Hollywood has this problem with trying to make it super relatable, trying to make it for everyone, and then watering down the actual perspective of the peace and the source material. Yes, and when you do that, you alienate the fans, and you also ruin the story itself. Like the reason it has a fan basis because it's

a unique story and perspective. So in order to embolden that, you have to embrace it and look from there versus the other way of looking at it as like, Okay, these nerds like this thing, but obviously everyone's not gonna like this thing, So how do I make it like everyone nerds are going to spend their money because it has the names that, oh, that's how you get your movie roasted and you end up like dragon Ball. It's super arrogant the approach. It's like, it's a lot of arrogance.

Like we got to talk to a director who was we can't say who, but he actually interviewed to direct the movie, and he was basically just saying that it's old Hollywood and they're so arrogant, like even if you have numbers, they don't care. Like he was saying that they either needed to be set in the United States, all white cast, like which is going to piss people off, don't understanding of the films Tokyo, you're going to piss off the fan base that you're planning to capitalize on.

Or it was either that or getting no money, like a super low budget. And he tried to like tell him, He's like, look, I love this, It's like one of my favorite animals of all time. Like I try to tell him, like I showed him all the numbers. They did not care. They're just old and arrogant and they

don't want they don't care. What's so funny is when that fallout happens, then you get them trying to be like, well, you know, we're just trying to make it work and all this stuff, but literally, you weren't trying to make it work. As a matter of fact, you made an ultimatum for a white cast, Like you you really put the movie on the line where it's like we're only going to make this movie if it can be a

white cast and it really just goes to show. He was like, oh, you want diversity, all right, well we won't give you any money. Yeah, it's built off an old model. Because I thought about this a lot, because I was thinking, like, why would people even make those kind of decisions. But you know, if you go back twenty years before everyone had the Internet, it kind of makes sense if you have a white majority country to

make something that caters towards that audience. I mean, you're still neglecting the other people in the country, but at least you can make some sense out of it, Whereas now it's like we're all connected, like we're globally connected. If you make a Japanese franchise, if you tell a story from that world and it just totally whitewasher or just change it dramatically in any way, you're left with

something totally new and different. That's why people freak out over like a death Note on Netflix, you know those kind of shows. The thing is with both death Note and like a Kira death Note could have been a new person. Like if you think, like re drops the Notebook every so thousand years or every hundred years, why not set it in like I don't know, thirty thirty United States. It's a completely new kid if you want, like an American cat, Like you could do that with

something else. Yeah, no, that's what's so wild about it. And even that's how I felt about Ghosts of the Shell, where it's like ghost in the Shell at its core, skeletons would be an interesting story no matter who's at the mantle. Like it's just this cyber cop using technology to solve crimes. It's basically just the future of crime. But when you use the same character, same name, and then cast Scarlett Johansen, that becomes a problem. It's a problem to sit in a movie and watch a white

woman be addressed as a Japanese woman. Like that's what's so funny is people like I don't see the problem. Well, they could have just acknowledged it, like like something like Altered Car have been I don't know if you guys, but it's like the Asian guy dies and he makes up in the white guy's body. Yeah, but it's like because they showed you that, and it's like it wasn't as bad because it's like, okay, like we understand that this he's still the Asian guy. Yeah, you know, like

he's just in this body. You know, that's that that's me transparently seeing you cheat. You're like diversity. We're going to get people writing you because that was in the book. People were very angry. But oh well, I guess what then? I guess the book is trashed too. I don't care a damn I don't care. Now y'all care about what's in the book. Like that's what's so funny. It is like y'all weren't mad at the Beguild because they completely erased the black women in that story. But when oh man,

let somebody touch your oversaturated part of Hollywood. Oh no, it's like, yeah, no, it was whack in the book, and it was whacked. Now you know when you want to know what book also doesn't hold up the Bible that ships you're really going to get people, alright, if we just celebrated Easter, what's your Twitter handle? That that stuff is out to ask you? What are some fan films that you enjoy? Did you watch any like over while you were making yours? Were you inspired? Are there

ones now that you particularly like? Oh yeah, there's a lot. I guess I'll just start naming a couple of my favorite We're actually really good friends with the East Mahat crew, h Danny Shepard, Jeremy Lee, all those guys, and they had the Night Wing the series what Yeah, that came out that we watched and really loved. And a few before that was like Batman Verse Predator. I don't remember what. That's the first one I've ever seen and still one of my favorites. It's probably it's so SD and like,

you know, just old. It's probably like super pixelated. But when I saw that, I was like, you could make your own Batman movie. Yeah, you were talking about dead End? Do you guys see that? Oh? Okay, dead End. Yeah. There's also several snape in the Marauders by our good friend just his channel's Broadshroke Productions that he's working on. I think he's going to try Cowboy Bebop and like an anime perhaps. And then there's Troopers. Troopers, Yeah, Troops

truph So Troops was a parody of Star Wars and Cops. Essentially, it was like a mockumentary fan film set in the Star Wars universe where they're essentially like interview. It's like an everyday glimpse of Stormtroopers on the job. It's hilarious, It's it's shot and edited just like an old episode of Cops. Perfect. Yeah. I felt really bad that I

somehow missed that for the longest time. We we met the guy that made it at a panel at a con, a couple of cons ago, and uh, I was just blown away, like, wait, how did I not see this? Because originally debuted, wasn't the internet not like YouTube? So commered at comic Con. It did premiere at San Diego Comic Con. Yeah. It was done by Kevin Rubio, Sean Jordan's and Patrick Perez. Yeah. Yeah. Another one, another Star Wars one was Chad Vader. So Chad Vader was the

younger brother of Darth Vader. Uh. And that was actually that became really popular on Channel one oh one, and George Lucas was a fan of the series, so Matt Sloane got hired as the voice of Darth Vader for the Force Unleashed video game. So just showing that when you have a popular fan film or fan show and the people that are involved, I think that's the other thing, Like the people that are involved also enjoy it, then you can sometimes brought in for the for the real deal.

That's what's interesting with Star Wars fan films specifically, is at least early on, it seemed like Lucas really embraced those, uh those films because a lot of those people created a viable option to get into the industry. So the guy that did Troopers, he I think he's doing the comic book, like he's making a Star Wars comic book. Now there are the legal hoops, and you do have a thirty million hit Dragon Balls fan film. Have you

gotten any any problems from that? Has has Toey hit you up or any I mean, well with the fan film, no, I mean they've actually we've actually got a pretty we got a weird relationship with Toey, I'd say, because they like us and we get invited to a bunch of cool stuff. But you know, when you're dealing with videos on YouTube, just because the people at the company are supportive of whatever you're doing, you still have like people that their job is to like just kind of mass

flag videos. So what we get we get hung up on our like reaction videos and stuff like that. So I have to be really careful because it's it feels like we're on a shortlists sometimes because it felt weird. We have thirty million views are films, but then our reaction videos about the video as far as the film, so there's been no I mean, it's all been positive.

And what's interesting is the time that we released the pilot was actually when Adi Shankar, like almost the same day he released the bootleg Power Rangers and they got taken down and so but because he's rich and a producer and has Hollywood connections, like he fought Sabin in one and so that that court case is kind of set the precedence where like, if you're creating all of your if you're writing an original script, creating original video,

original soundtrack, everything is your own original work, that case kind of stands as a precedent to say, Okay, they can legally do this. It falls within the fair use. We really make a point to at the beginning, it's like this isn't you know this is a tribute to the sourcement's aerial. We credit the original creators, and you know, we do everything we can just to kind of lighten

any issue that they would be there. Basically, the checklist is don't take away money from the official releases, don't use any of their like sound effects images, stuff like that, and then let people know that you're not the official one. Like, as long as we're not confusing people and like trying to pretend like you're an official product, they're going to

be cool. Yeah, because I think half the reason the Power Rangers video gott in such hot water as they were legitimately making that new Power Rangers movie and so it confused them because we actually got in trouble with our Miles morales Um project. And what's weird is Brian Michael Vendace straight up like created a fan film like contest just because I think we won it. I think we were number one or we were on you already remember it. It was just you know things, but I'm

pretty sure we were number one. Well, what was cool as we got to meet him and were cool. We're like, hey, we're the ones that did the thing, and okay, great, we'll put it in the show notes, so y'all can go check it out. Yeah that'd be awesome. Yeah, but okay, so so so but you got flagged. So yeah, So it was weird because we tweeted Michael Bendes and he

was like, oh, this is great. And again the contest got made and we were on there and so we're like, oh, it's all good, but we at least the exact same week as the Amazing Spider Man. Yeah, so we're promoting it is like, you know, ho Spider Man thing, and I think that's why we got flagged. Yeah, but it was funny because when we were kind of dealing with all that, we got word from even people within Sony that they really liked it and everyone had seen it.

We're like, oh, that's that's cool. Can we get a video back? Yeah, they're getting it back a long time. No, it was actually, can we get our channel back? Because they took your channel. That's why we're Robot Underdog too, that's right. So it was Robot Underdog. The original one just gone. Yeah, it had to be down for like a year. We reclaimed it when it came back, but we had already grew all the subscribers on the other channel. That's so I can't I always wondered why you were

a Robot Underdog too. We need to do like a switch a kind of thing because that, Yeah, that's that's so frustrating to me. That they can actually take your channel for an entire year. So what they do is if you get three copyright strikes within three months, then your channels disabled for like a year or whatever. And so was it all from Miles Morales because they not only flagged the trailer, like the teaser trailer we released, but they flagged every behind the scenes video we did

where we even said the word Miles Morales. Really, so even if we didn't have footage, we didn't have comic books. Still, how could they do that because they're a huge corporation and we were nobody at the time. We didn't have a network behind us. We had like five to ten thousand subscribers. If that it was our very first project, like we don't we could have fought it. We were

just naive and scared. Yeah, probably could a network and well with your fan base you could base right right right now, I feel like your fan base would go to war. It would take them down. I feel like, yeah, it would be a lot better now. Oh man, but what if you were just reviewing the Miles Morales like comic book, Because what you said is you also get flagged for reaction. So I know a lot of what you all do is also like dragon Ball Super after

reactions and stuff. Do you get flagged for those or what? What reactions are you getting flagged for? I mean, it's weird because we're we actually don't even show the video at all, right, Like we just say, hey, one, two, three, sync up along, Yeah, because we don't want any legal issues. But like I said, it seems like we're on some kind of short list, you know, because we're so known

for the dragon Ball for dragon Ball content. So for whatever reason, no, we did a couple where people were complaining, so we're like, okay, so I'll play it on my iPhone. It's like our ends has very shallowed up to field, so we'll put it completely out of focus. I'll turn the brightness down. Like literally they could just see like flashes. It was like unidentifiable, but people who were also watching along could kind of get like some visual cues to

know where we were in the episode. And that video got flagged a couple of months ago, and so we fought it, and it was actually from a copyright troll like company, like basically like a company that makes money

off of taking down these videos. So they were like a law firm and Uh, what's crazy is whenever you fight a copyright strike on YouTube, it literally says, if you fill out this form, you're saying I agree to go to court, like they can sue you legally, like if you submit this counter like a counter to it. And so we're just like, let's just do it. It's just so we're going up against the law firm. Is

that what we're talking about? All right? I really must want this reaction video because there's the thing you have to because if not, anytime you get a strike on YouTube, all of your features are disabled. We can't live stream, we can't use YouTube space, we can't use like any of the things like we need to make content for our fans. So it was wait a whole three months or fight it out and try to win, and fortunately

we won. Yes, like more creators. Yeah, I hope this is inspiring to more creators um to fight back because I feel aside from that also having pressure from the internet, I feel like your followers and stuff could also tweet at these companies to kind of step in and help you. Oh yeah, there's just that intimidation factor when you're an independent person and you're going up against a company. But if you know you're in the right fight, you know,

pushed over. You can look up the things online, but it's literally like if you know, you'll know, if you know, you're not taken away from the official release, Like nobody was watching our video in place of watching the episode unidentifiable like that was in no way taking money away

from them. So we had a case. But like if you're just gonna straight like you know, some people have like the reaction videos that's in the screen, like even like what we did with you guys on Funimations channel, like that, I would say does not fall into fair use. We had to get explicit permission from toy. Yeah, we actually got permission from them directly. They sent us the

download of an episode. We did a watch along for the second to last episode of dragon Ball Super and Donnie and Rita joined us for that, and we were allowed to show the episode on YouTube because they explicitly sent it to us. So yeah, but we're actually going to take a break and after this we will go into the future of fan films. Right after this, Welcome back to Nerdificent. I am Danny Fernandez, Boom and me.

Who's beat Box. If you may not know I beat box with my mouth, the theme song and the introduced if you I appreciate it, IFFI, and we are joined again with Donnie and Rita of Robot Underdogs. So, y'all, what do you think the future of fan film are now that there's like such technology where I feel like people can actually make like y'all's like can make a real film. I mean, it is insane how accessible it's become, you know. I mean even when we started, I felt like,

you know, it felt accessible. Did the technology change a lot from when you started to Yeah? Yeah, I mean it's just every year there's this new plug in, there's this new software that allows you to do more cheaper, you know, there's new websites that have built assets. I mean, you can get so crazy on a small budget. Now it's really there's no excuse. I mean, ever since you've had ten a DP on an iPhone, you can make movies. You're on your on your own if you want to.

Now on the tin that you get four kiss incredible, I mean, and it's I had someone come up to us. We were at a con. We did a panel, and after the panels, some young guy came up to me and he's like, hey, I want to make films like a like a light of hope, Like what do you suggest or whatever? And it's like the iPhone you have in your hand right now, that's enough because he wanted that. He wanted the answer to be by this new camera,

by this by that. It's like you actually have Like, first off, you're going to suck on the first thing you do. It's going to be horrible. It's like you do like, God, I'm so glad we had another secret old YouTube channel with like our old projects that you guys will under the Yeah, it's gonna take a while, so like you might as well just start on what you have, yeah, because it's not the tools. Why your thing didn't turn out good isn't because of the tools

you had access to. Yeah, And also I think it is like the resources. Like my brother has been teaching himself how to edit, and it's just been YouTube tutorials and like reddit stuff, and he's seeing the where he started and where he is now. It really is you can learn almost anything off the internet, and that's gives so much more to you for Yeah. So he's like using after effects and all those things, and it's crazy to know that he just did that from just the

gumption too. I'm going to figure this out. I'm gonna lock myself in this room and just watch these videos and follow these guys. But it's it's dope. It's beautiful because it's like, you know, college is expensive, and then to think that you're going to dive into a life of debt for an art degree that you don't know if you'll ever make a dollar off of. I mean, like we did, you know you can learn so much

for free you really don't need school anymore. I mean, I'm not gonna ever encourage someone to just not go to college, but highly considerate if you know what I mean, Like, look at what your career path is. What do you want to do? You want to be an entertainer? Maybe google some stuff, right, Yeah. A lot of writer, a lot of writers and filmmakers feel that way where it's like something that you could teach yourself, especially now, like you were saying on YouTube, I know a lot of

my friends have taught themselves editing from YouTube. Where would you recommend aside from YouTube, Like if someone is starting to make shorts or sketches or starting to make you know, smaller fan films or even larger ones. Where would you recommend them uploading their stuff? Is YouTube the only place for them to go or is there another? Are there other outlets that you recommend? Well, we actually just started

a new series on our channel. It's called Robot Underdog Presents, and it's basically like opening it up for other filmmakers who make fan films. So, I mean, we can't guarantee people have a lot of views, but we can say, okay, we've made this audience. They like geek stuff sci fi. If your film is good and you don't want to spend four years making a YouTube channel, because that's what we had to do. Like it's not you can't just upload something and expect people to see it. Like it's

not going to happen. I mean, you might get like fifty thousand views like a bee, but if you spend a year on a project, you want more. So, um, that's definitely an outlet. And if people have films, they can you know, hit us up, they can submit to you. Yeah, they can submit on our website and you know, if it's good, that's definitely something that we're willing to put on our channel and open that up. People could do Twitch.

I guess, like we actually just started a Twitch channel because um, as most people know, essentially YouTube stop sending notification to our subscribers and to every other YouTube channel they don't notify people who have subscribed. So it's really shaking things up and having a lot of creators trying

to figure out, like what do I do. Like I've spent years of my life putting all this time and money into like this channel, and people have said, oh, I'm committed, like I want to watch your stuff, and then you're dealing with a middleman that doesn't want to notify people. Um I've noticed that Twitch always sends notifications right now that could change, But I mean that's another platform that people could could try and upload too, but

it's really hard to build an audience there. To kind of piggyback off what you're saying, I think what's really important for up and coming or people that want to be content creators. I think you have to look at the platform like what you want to do. Are you a filmmaker? Do you want to make short films or whatever? Um? And is that all you want to do? Because if that's the case, that means you're talking about like every few months maybe you're uploading a video. Maybe once a

year you're uploading a video. So YouTube doesn't favor those kind of creators, So you need to you need to look at that before you pick your platform, and then maybe like find a channel like ours or someone else, like I know, Maschinema used to host like fan film stuff. Find someone else to host it. Like if you don't want to be like an online personality and constantly upload

YouTube videos every single week, you can host it somewhere else. Yeah, that's definitely that's a big incentive for why we we did that because for us, we like to make you know, the highest quality stuff we can, and we do relatively upload regularly, like especially a dragon Ball Super out, we're

doing weekly stuff. But um, you know, we want to put all our energy into the big like the internet blockbuster thing, you know, And so that used to the algorithm on YouTube used to cater to that, just like everything else. But now that everything's changed, like like you're saying it, it is more like you got to talk about trending topics or you gotta find something that keeps you making content basically daily. And if that's what you're wanting to do as a new creator, then maybe YouTube

is the perfect spot. But I would overall my biggest advice to be not to let views or any of that be something you're thinking about, like while you're making your film, Like make something good, like something great that has a great story, great characters, and the views will come. Yeah. I think that's going into like with these studios that are just trying to capitalize on things and they're not

actually thinking of the passion of the fandom. So instead of going into it thinking I'm going to go viral and be famous from this, instead making it because it's something you're passionate about, something that you can't not make. Like that's how it was with us. It's like people are like, oh, why how did you get into that. It's like we didn't ever think about it. We just couldn't not do it, Like it was like just something we had an itch, like we had to make these

films and so we did. It wasn't like a second thought. Or you remember the music videos when like Obama would have a speech and then someone would make a match up every word and it it would be like a popular song like that, that trendy kind of thing. I remember there was a moment when that was authentically going viral online and companies like big networks were wanting that same like I want the viral video. There was that phase

where everyone we were looking for viral. We're buying viral content. What things aren't you can't buy viral. But but people overlook why things go viral. People videos go viral because some crazy person had the audacity to spend obscene amount of time on something that didn't need to exist. But now that it, that's all you could have ever wanted, and like and when you when you pay for that,

you're paying for like, okay, I need this in five days. Well, actually the last video took me a month to make and that's why it's got thirty million views or whatever it is, you know, so they feel super like corny in corporate I remember before we started recording, I told you that I was at full screen, and that's the note they would always give us in the writer's room, was like, okay, but how can we make sure this goes viral? Um, can you understand the actual definition of

the word viral is like unexpectedly, like an anomaly. Well that was with light of hope What was so crazy is we worked on that thing forever. We knew it was going to do well because we've kind of built up a little audience and some height behind it because it was you know people. What's cool about what we've been able to do is kind of take people on the ride of us just putting stuff together. So it

felt like it was a community making the thing. So when we finally uploaded it, we were like, man, they're probably be tired of waiting. Who knows. It was like five am and we've been trying to upload the video for twenty four hours and then like all of the Internet gods were raining down on us and punishing us and things were going wrong, and finally it was like five am we uploaded the video. I had to go

to work at like seven. We just laid down for like an hour, woke up and it was like already like it hit like seventy five thousand views, and we're like, oh, like that's good. Yeah, we're done here, Like we kind of did it, and it was like I got, we got, I got home from work and it was like a million or something like that, and it it just wow, Okay, that's great. It doesn't have to go any further than that, and it just kept happening. It was like every day,

like it's not stopping. It's been a week, it's not, it's not still still climbing. It was like, this is so this is the viral thing, all right. So it is weird because when you get the taste of that viral bug, you think, oh, man, like we gotta keep that up. But you got to accept things happen sometimes that are so out of your control. All you can do is just make good content that you're proud of and just let the Internet do its thing also too.

I will say on that note to follow up on that, like the pilot episode has way more views than the latest film we released, which was like episode two and three combined as a film, But as a filmmaker, I am so much more proud of the second film, And even though it has like one tenth of the views, it doesn't matter, Like I would much rather have people watch that. I'm more proud of that. It doesn't have

anything to do with the view count. That's what I'm proud of, because I mean we were better as filmmakers. That was actually our first film out of film school, out in l A, so like we were garbage filmmakers at the time. We like ran around in Griffith Park with like a camera and that's I was that where it was filmed. The wo I love that. I love

whenever it's like, oh, yeah, I've run there, recognize that. Yeah, we shot in anything that was free, Like we shot in our apartment for one of the scenes with Gohan and the first one, which we were really proud because it didn't look like our apartment. That happen and it's like, you can't quite identify what this place is, So what do you feel is next for you too? Uh? Well, right now, we're working on a fan film called Blue Exorcist.

It's anime inspired. Yeah, it's about actually reading. You're directing that one, so long't you take take that? Um. Basically, we're just adapting the Blue Exercist anime, more so of the manga than the anime, and just trying to hone

our skills as filmmakers. The Dragon ball Z projects were very fight based, very action based, and so now for the next few projects we do, we're just taking a step back and personally I'm working on writing myself and our teammate Tyler Tackett co wrote the Blue Exercist script and um, probably for the next few projects, I'll be looking into writing them, just really practicing writing and directing and more so character development the actual story aspect um.

That's another thing with the first episode of dragon Ball the dragon Ball Z project feels more kind of like a music video, like we just you know, as filmmakers, we need to grow and like practice the you know, the arcs and and things like that. So we're gonna do a few more anime projects that are less action alright, And so do you think you're going to take a step out of anime and do you know, make make your big, big Hollywood piece soon. Personally, I would like

to make it animated something. I don't know, if that's just kind of what I would like to do next afterlive actions, Yeah, I know, I would love to do something animated, and it doesn't necessarily even have to be anime, just an animated project and we'll see how it goes. Honestly, I love I love YouTube. I love the feeling of putting your content out there and getting direct feedback with

the audience. I love having creative control. Um. Of course, shared with Donnie over stuff like I don't know how I would handle somebody being like, no, it has to be this way, Like I'm not sure if I'm ready for that, you know, like personally, I feel like I need to learn my own style first and then maybe

do something that could be bigger budget. Well that's what's weird is we've both been working in the industry for you know, a few quite a few years now, and it's it's so liberating to have your own platform where you can make what you want, how you want, when you want, and it's you know, we started the YouTube channel to launch our career and become filmmakers, make feature films and all that. But it is, like she said,

it's it's become kind of strange. We're in a weird place because sure, if if a movie comes our way, we're jumping on it. That's awesome, But at the same time, it's gonna it would be really weird to abandon our audience because it is cool to be able to be

on that journey with our followers. So it's cool like we, yeah, we have a Patreon and uh, those that support us, we monthly will connect with them, tell them what we're doing, where we're at with things and you know, get their thoughts and opinions on things, and it's just it's this really cool collaborative way of making film. When you remove the ego of like I have all the answers, I'm the artour of this film. You know, it's like, you know, you're just You're just a guy with or a woman

with some creative ideas. And it's possible that the people that are supporting you might want to contribute, especially when it's fan films, you could make the wrong choice just because you've got a million things going on in in your head. So it's actually light of hope. We credit all the time to doing it the way we did it, Like we're bouncing ideas off people. If we see some crazy comment, you know, we might disregard it. But but like we

got some crazy suggestions. But every now and then you're like, there's some gyms in there, and I just can't help but think. Man, like, if if a ghost in the shell read the comments for sure, I mean responded to them, would even would we even be in this situation we need to respond to one. I was gonna say, do you feel like studios now are getting smarter where they're vetting out, like you know, they're kind of letting things leak a little bit, or like so and so is

in talks to play this role. And I feel like a lot of times that's their kind of way of like seeing how the fandom reacts before they make a full blown commitment. And I do feel sometimes they've gotten a little bit smart about that. I think it's director based to Like I saw Chris McKay on Twitter, um, and I had a lot of respect for him for putting out this poll, Like he said, like, what's the

most important quality of Nightwing to you? And it involved one was the race, and then it was like acrobats, good looking or whatever, and um, it's because it wasn't until recently that they revealed like Dick Grayson was part romani in the comics or whatever, like people thought he was just all white, but then it was revealed that

he wasn't. And so, like, I respect Chris McKay for putting that out there, even though that meant that like he could no longer have the option to like whitewash this project, because that was like such a huge response from fans like, oh, now you know that he was so you have to cast somebody with that like a piece of that ethnicity in them. So yeah, but it's

also very interesting too. You know, we talked about the horror stories that could happen with fan films, but there are some good stories, like I feel like Bat in the Sun really kind of came out on top because they did the Superhero beat Down and uh, for those who don't know, Superhero beat Down is a series on YouTube where it's basically fan films that pit different superheroes against each other. And they were the ones who got the chance to create the Ninjack Versus the World web series,

which is based off of the Valiant Comics universe. So they went from doing you know, unauthorized fan stuff to just going straight up getting the rights and actually getting to do a legit take on stuff. Look at the Street Fighter was about to say that, yeah, official one after all. Yeah, So they did street Fighter Legacy and then they got permission from Capcom to do the Street Fighter Assassin's Fist series and funding too, And now it's on Hulu, it's on Amazon, it's on well, it was

on Go nine even it's on Amazon now. So it's like it's cool, man, it's we're really watching all of the different facets of the entertainment industry kind of merge in this new way. It's cool that there's but that is also including YouTubers. You know. The thing like everything is becoming so micro based, like micro channel based, Like we just started our Twitch channel and we'll have people will stream for like five hours, and there's people like

spending their time watching us. I don't know why, but it's kind of like everything so split up that eventually, once especially the younger generation comes up, entertainment is going to have to realize that like, Okay, they're gonna watch what they want to watch. And I think that's gonna change things, especially for your internet creators. I mean it's

already changed things so much. It's the whole reacon, Netflix, Hulu in Amazon are thriving so much is because now we've fostered a culture of watching what we want when we want, versus sitting around waiting weekly so much so that it's a weird treat when they flip it on us, like with Handmaids Tale, like they released that on a weekly basis and people are like, oh, this is different, Yeah, it's regular to me. Yeah. And Amazon also has their

pilot season where you can vote. Yeah, that's a big thing. So you as the audience gets to watch the pilot episode and then you vote on what gets picked up. That's a big deal. And if you have a lot of friends, Yeah, some friends that their shows got picked up and they were just like tweeting out getting all their famous friends to retweet them and uh. It is cool though for for creators to have that opportunity. Yeah, and it has been the great equalizer in a lot

of ways. It's kind of a weird thing because we're watching the like i mean, the establishment, for lack of a better expression, kind of figure things out and kind of get involved as well, but like, we still have a lot more control than creators did ten years ago, five years ago. Yeah, that's pretty cool. Yeah, well, I think that's a great place to leave this off. Danny and Rito. Where can people find you? Robot Underdog on Twitter, Facebook,

and Instagram? Um, YouTube, it's Robot Underdog to just the number two. Yeah, I think that's it. You can find us individually on Instagram, Um, Donnie McMillan and I'm read to McMillan on Instagram. But yeah, definitely the YouTube page go subscribe. Oh on Twitch too, can't forget twitch. We literally just started our twitch, so it's like we always forget to say twitch, but we streamed twice a week on Twitch, and don't forget. If you have made a

fan film, are looking to they are accepting submissions. Yeah, yeah, actually, and we're going to be releasing our first one of the series, which is gonna be it's called Red hood It and it's going to be releasing in a week or so next week. Yeah, so it's gonna be awesome. Been released nice, right, Well, you know me. You can catch me at if you I F Y n w A d i w E on Twitter and Instagram, is your boy if d s on the twitch. A lot of you all been coming out Zygang. I've been seeing

you zygang. Hashtag nerd Gang too, nerd Gang. Yeah, I'm at ms Danny Fernandez, M S D A n I f E r n n d e Z. And also follow us on our socials at Nerdificent everywhere on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter and let us know what you want us to cover and some of your favorite fan films or if you've made a fan film, send it to us. Oh yeah, definitely well, we'll urt those on the social account. And uh you know, if you have an already fox Star review, tell us how much you love us. Helps

us out a great deal. Thank you so much, and I'll see you all the way. B