Speaker 1: Welcome to Nerdificent. I'm one half Nerdifficent, your host if
Speaker 1: you wady. Wayne sitting across from me is the other
Speaker 1: half of Nerdificent, Danny Fernandez. If we both sound really good?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, no, I feel like you might be a
Speaker 1: little sick. Yeah. No. I woke up and it was
Speaker 1: just like frog throat City and I have had to
Speaker 1: talk all day, so I actually like when my voice
Speaker 1: is frog throat City. Yeah, but mine will get into
Speaker 1: smoker ish It'll be like Lindsay Lowen uh. And then
Speaker 1: I love doing my vo auditions that way. So I'm
Speaker 1: sure that's great for the cords. Yes, just going through
Speaker 1: the whole range. But yeah, no, speaking of range and
Speaker 1: and hitting the ups and bottoms of what we can
Speaker 1: do you as people and fans. Today, we're tackling fan films,
Speaker 1: fan films. Yeah. We're also having our friends come in
Speaker 1: that have made a couple of very popular fan films
Speaker 1: Robot Underdogs, so they will be joining us a little
Speaker 1: bit later. But if you off the top of your head, like,
Speaker 1: what are some fan films that you remember? Oh man,
Speaker 1: the fan films, I remember that. I think the latest
Speaker 1: one that comes to bind besides the ones Donnie and
Speaker 1: Rita did, which is DVZ line of hope. Is the
Speaker 1: one we were talking about just before we got started,
Speaker 1: which was The Power Rangers. It was like dark and
Speaker 1: gritty and everyone was like, what, it'd be crazy if
Speaker 1: this was the Power Ranger. And then Power Rangers came
Speaker 1: out and there a little semi gritty. I don't want
Speaker 1: to say it was dark. It was still I feel
Speaker 1: like it was pretty much Power Rangers. But I feel
Speaker 1: like the excitement for the fan film might have been
Speaker 1: ultimately got the green light. I do agree with that,
Speaker 1: I think, and we'll get into that, but I think
Speaker 1: a lot of these fan films do help hype up
Speaker 1: the actual problem parties themselves and probably also showing the
Speaker 1: companies like what could be done and the demand for it.
Speaker 1: But getting into what fan films are, so, they're essentially
Speaker 1: film or video that's inspired by you know, a comic book,
Speaker 1: television program, some type of source like that. It's made
Speaker 1: pretty much by amateurs, I would say, but this can
Speaker 1: lead to having professional filmmakers actually working on the project,
Speaker 1: which we'll get into as well. But yeah, so the
Speaker 1: main issue that they kind of run into is because
Speaker 1: they are fans they're not the copyright holders, so whether
Speaker 1: they should be allowed to do this, like what actually
Speaker 1: as far as fair use, what they're allowed to do,
Speaker 1: we're going to tackle that to in this episode. Yeah. No,
Speaker 1: I think that's very interesting and we'll get more into
Speaker 1: that later. But the allowing to do it and just
Speaker 1: kind of the legality of it all. And I feel
Speaker 1: like for most people it's pretty kosher because it's tensy,
Speaker 1: it's usually free, usually on YouTube, and I think that's
Speaker 1: what makes it so beautiful because it has heard. It's
Speaker 1: not done for profit, it's done just because they're so
Speaker 1: passionate about it. Just like Cosplay, it's like the next
Speaker 1: step up where it's like, Okay, we got a cosplayed down,
Speaker 1: but let's actually do our own spinoff. Let's see what
Speaker 1: that's popping. Yeah, But like if we're looking at Cosplay,
Speaker 1: when you start making money off of someone else's I
Speaker 1: P and you start selling calendars or things like that,
Speaker 1: which I'm totally four, but a lot of these companies
Speaker 1: and sometimes studios, they will We know of a couple
Speaker 1: that have gotten shut down as far as um fan
Speaker 1: films or YouTube videos and stuff for using their trademark
Speaker 1: characters Essentially, I think what happens is when it gets
Speaker 1: bigger than they expected it to be, and when it
Speaker 1: looks better maybe than the film that they made. When
Speaker 1: this amateur filmmaker got their friends together and made a
Speaker 1: better film than your studio, it gets a little spicy,
Speaker 1: it does. Then there's also stories of it being a
Speaker 1: happy ending word now something they get the rights to,
Speaker 1: the actual rights to something and get to create something dope.
Speaker 1: But we'll get, like I said, more into that later.
Speaker 1: We'll just start with the history our deep dive, of
Speaker 1: our deep dive, Deep Dive, Deep Dive. Yeah. So the
Speaker 1: earliest known fan film is uh Anderson Our Gang, which
Speaker 1: was produced in nineteen actually by a pair of filmmakers.
Speaker 1: So Our Gang is essentially the Little Rascals um. It
Speaker 1: was shot in Anderson, South Carolina, and Uh it was
Speaker 1: a short that was based off of Our Gang, and
Speaker 1: the only known copy resides in the University of South
Speaker 1: Carolina's News Film Library. Nice and it seems like the
Speaker 1: technology required to make fan films was the limited factor,
Speaker 1: which makes sense because I feel like we saw boom
Speaker 1: in fan films in the YouTube age because of specifically
Speaker 1: access when YouTube came around, it was the growth of
Speaker 1: the access of being able to produce video yourself. You know,
Speaker 1: back in the day you have to have like the
Speaker 1: family cam that on your shoulder, and then the camera
Speaker 1: started getting smaller and more acces until it was like
Speaker 1: a handheld but also like who was seeing it? Just
Speaker 1: your family, whereas now with YouTube you were able to
Speaker 1: have a larger audience and mainly of the same fandom
Speaker 1: to make it more popular. So going back further after
Speaker 1: our gang um in the nineteen sixties U. C. L.
Speaker 1: A film student, Don Glutt filmed a series of short,
Speaker 1: black and white underground films that were essentially based on
Speaker 1: adventure and comic book characters like Superman, the Spirit and Batman.
Speaker 1: And his final amateur film was nineteen sixty nine spider Man,
Speaker 1: and then he moved on so he was a success story.
Speaker 1: So because of the level of popularity of his films,
Speaker 1: he actually moved into professional work full time. He went
Speaker 1: on to write for a ton of kids shows, Land
Speaker 1: of the Loss, Transformers, Duck Tails, Spiderman and his Amazing Friends,
Speaker 1: g I, Joe, Real American here out Do you remember
Speaker 1: that I was just looking at Oh gosh, if you
Speaker 1: have to show you the p S A S from
Speaker 1: g I Joe. They're so good. Oh yeah, I remember
Speaker 1: the more you know. Yeah, and then somebody did a
Speaker 1: parody of them. That are how I could not stop
Speaker 1: laughing this weekend watching them. But then okay, So Glut
Speaker 1: also went on to write for d C and Marvel Comics. Again,
Speaker 1: this was a fan who had made fan films and
Speaker 1: then went on to write for those properties. And he
Speaker 1: also did the Empire Strikes Back novel that was based
Speaker 1: on the film. Yeah. Yeah, it's funny because I feel
Speaker 1: like back then it probably was way easier to get
Speaker 1: a Spiderman or Batman film than it is now. Now
Speaker 1: now it's a big undertaking. It's if you get a
Speaker 1: superhero film, your name is, it's like who is that guy?
Speaker 1: Back then it was like, oh yeah, sure Spiderman, I
Speaker 1: see what you mean. Yeah. Yeah. As far as popularity,
Speaker 1: if you do want to go back and watch all
Speaker 1: forty one of Glett's amateur films, there's a DVD set
Speaker 1: called I Was a Teenage Movie Maker, which I think
Speaker 1: is so cool, and you can go back and watch
Speaker 1: all these old films that he did. That's tight. And
Speaker 1: then in nineteen sixty four, any Warhol produced a film
Speaker 1: called Batman Dracula, which could be described as a fan film.
Speaker 1: It was like his homage to Batman, accept completely without
Speaker 1: dcent comments permissions in Andy Warhol, do you think like
Speaker 1: I wonder? Yeah, yeah, he did it completely without their permission,
Speaker 1: and it was considered to be the first film that
Speaker 1: was featuring a blatantly campy Batman. Yeah back then, but yeah,
Speaker 1: you can actually still catch it. We'll try and leave
Speaker 1: in our footnotes on our site. We'll try and leave
Speaker 1: a lot of the YouTube links where you can watch
Speaker 1: some of these. Oh yeah, definitely check it out and
Speaker 1: let us know what you think. But then, it wasn't
Speaker 1: until the nineteen seventies that the popularization of science fiction conventions,
Speaker 1: uh you know, like we talked about in our Comic
Speaker 1: Kind episode. It allowed fans to show their films to
Speaker 1: a wider fan community, which is great because before it
Speaker 1: was just you and your friends. You watch it, and
Speaker 1: I feel like when you see other people do things
Speaker 1: is when it really catches fire. So I can only
Speaker 1: imagine sitting down in a theater at a convention and
Speaker 1: see someone do a fan film to be like nudging
Speaker 1: my buddy and just yo, we gotta get on that. Yeah. Also,
Speaker 1: you can like live out all of your fan fiction.
Speaker 1: You know, it's basically like your fan fiction come to life.
Speaker 1: Like whatever characters that you wanted to see battle each other,
Speaker 1: you finally get to have that Danny storylines that you want. What. Well,
Speaker 1: since we haven't done a fan fiction episode, why don't
Speaker 1: you break down what fiction? Fan Fiction is something I'm
Speaker 1: very familiar with someone that it wrote it when I
Speaker 1: was a teenager and kind of still read here and there.
Speaker 1: But fan fiction is essentially fiction that is written by fans.
Speaker 1: It is stories about characters that are written. So Harry
Speaker 1: Potter fan fiction essentially would be stories about or mine
Speaker 1: E and you know, Harry Potter and um, their romantic
Speaker 1: life or their daily life or whatever you want to
Speaker 1: write about. But it's essentially these stories that are written
Speaker 1: short stories, and some of them are actually have like
Speaker 1: fifty chapters. I have read fan fiction that has like
Speaker 1: fifty chapters long. Um. But there are fan fiction sites.
Speaker 1: One of the most popular ones the last couple of
Speaker 1: decades that I used to play around on was fan
Speaker 1: fiction dot Net. So if you ever want to read
Speaker 1: you you can find anything anything that you're into. If
Speaker 1: you're into Star Trek, if you're into sailor Moon, whatever,
Speaker 1: it will be on there. But yeah, it's essentially stories
Speaker 1: that are written by fans and they're damn good. There
Speaker 1: are some that are really good and those people should
Speaker 1: be getting paid for them. But yeah, I used to
Speaker 1: read a lot of anime fan fiction and I would
Speaker 1: write some of it. So yeah, it's basically the text
Speaker 1: version of this. Yeah, it's basically the text version of
Speaker 1: a fan film. Um and where you're able to kind
Speaker 1: of live out these these storylines that you have always
Speaker 1: wanted to see. Oh yeah, back to fan films. Now,
Speaker 1: there's a ton of fan films. You know, you have
Speaker 1: Star Wars, Star Trek, Buffy the vampires Layer, Doctor Who,
Speaker 1: anime fan films. Uh, you know, once again plug in
Speaker 1: light of hope from our guests who you will here
Speaker 1: later in the episode. But because fan films generally utilize
Speaker 1: characters and storylines copyright and trademarked by the original filmmakers,
Speaker 1: they are rarely distributed commercially for legal reasons. But like
Speaker 1: I said, you can just type fan film into YouTube
Speaker 1: and you'll have a plethora of things to play with.
Speaker 1: Because we now live in an age where not only
Speaker 1: it's filmmaking accessible, but so is special effects. You know,
Speaker 1: even on vines and Twitter videos you're seeing some wild
Speaker 1: stuff and Instagram too. Yeah, on all the social media,
Speaker 1: I feel like you can see a lot of people
Speaker 1: and like you were saying, with special effects, which to
Speaker 1: plug our friends again, who did dbz liaut of hope.
Speaker 1: I know that they had a lot of I think
Speaker 1: even in the first year that they started to the
Speaker 1: more recent years that they actually were able to utilize
Speaker 1: more technology in their film. Yeah. Yeah. So filmmaker Sandy Cholera,
Speaker 1: he actually gained a lot of notoriety in the early
Speaker 1: two thousands for a series of fan films he produced
Speaker 1: featuring Batman and Superman. But I think his most famous
Speaker 1: ones were Batman. It was dead End, uh and that
Speaker 1: premiered at San Diego Comic Con in two thousand and three,
Speaker 1: but World's Finest, his other fan film was actually prevented
Speaker 1: from showing in two thousand and four due to copyright
Speaker 1: claims from Warner Brothers. So he essentially so dead End
Speaker 1: was before Nolan's Batman trilogy, and it showed audience this
Speaker 1: like gritty comic book style, dark night film and you
Speaker 1: can only possibly wonder that that probably excited audiences. I
Speaker 1: don't want to say that it necessarily influenced Nolan. I
Speaker 1: mean it might have, but it probably got people hyped
Speaker 1: about seeing that type of Batman. And it's very interesting
Speaker 1: to see that Warner Brothers block to free screening because
Speaker 1: I don't necessarily think it was besides any power outside
Speaker 1: of their connection with San Diego Comic com Like, I
Speaker 1: don't think they hit him with a C CND or something.
Speaker 1: I think it was as simple as Warner Brothers being like,
Speaker 1: they can't show that, and we're Warner Brothers and you
Speaker 1: better make sure they don't show it. Yeah. I wonder
Speaker 1: when Nolan was originally in talks, like what if it
Speaker 1: was at the same time, you know what I mean, Like,
Speaker 1: I wonder if that could have influenced because they were
Speaker 1: preparing to have Batman begins. I don't know, I don't know.
Speaker 1: But moving on, there's also Star Trek New Voyages that
Speaker 1: was a fan production, but it's another successful one where
Speaker 1: it attracted support from so many people as well as
Speaker 1: crew and cast members. That's another thing that we're seeing
Speaker 1: is a lot of times either voice actors or actors
Speaker 1: of the actual series or films. They love seeing these
Speaker 1: fan films and when they get involved then it ends
Speaker 1: up being greenlit. So Star Trek new Voyages was one
Speaker 1: of those. Another one was the Lord of the Rings
Speaker 1: fan films Born of Hope and The Hunt for Golem
Speaker 1: and those debuted at Ring Con. If we didn't even
Speaker 1: talk about Ring Con in our comic con, I don't
Speaker 1: even know that that existed either. That's the first time
Speaker 1: I love that. So now there's I love this specific
Speaker 1: ones because there's one coming up called a Con and
Speaker 1: then there's Ring Con and um Star Wars Celebration. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But to answer your question, by the way, so Warner
Speaker 1: Brothers hired No. One in January area of two thousand three,
Speaker 1: So look this came out in two thousand three. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so two thousand four was when they're like, we're not
Speaker 1: letting that happen again, especially because if they hired them
Speaker 1: in two thousand three, that year is probably when the
Speaker 1: buzzing talk started happening. The movie dropped in two thousand five. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that could have been it. Even though a lot of
Speaker 1: people do see it as like free promotion or publicity,
Speaker 1: my thing might be it could possibly be because now
Speaker 1: fans have in their head how they want it to be.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's it. Maybe when they see this story, that's
Speaker 1: what they want and think that this new film is
Speaker 1: going to be. And so maybe that's why it got
Speaker 1: to definitely see that. So another one is the Legend
Speaker 1: of Zelda, which is a very popular video game, and
Speaker 1: they had a fan film called The Hero of Time
Speaker 1: uh and that was also had a huge following. The
Speaker 1: movie premiered in Atlanta in two thousand and nine and
Speaker 1: online in number of two thousand and nine, only to
Speaker 1: be shut down by Nintendo on January. Nintendo is very litigious.
Speaker 1: They are very, very very protective of their rights, so
Speaker 1: that was coming from a mile away. I think even
Speaker 1: the Hero of Time crew knew any Pokemon like fan
Speaker 1: made game because there's a yeah, there's a unity of
Speaker 1: Pokemon fan made games. They get shut down almost instantaneously
Speaker 1: because Nintendo is that litigious. So yeah, that was definitely
Speaker 1: gonna happen. It's such a weird and when we bring
Speaker 1: Donnie and read on, you know, this is something I
Speaker 1: want to talk to them about because it is such
Speaker 1: a weird line and balance that you have to have
Speaker 1: is like, these are fans these are amateur fans that
Speaker 1: are making something. But then, like we said, it gains
Speaker 1: traction and a lot of times, like people think this
Speaker 1: is harmless, but no, they'll get shut down. Well, because
Speaker 1: there is a level you get when you are to
Speaker 1: grain momentum and popularity that does in a way start
Speaker 1: to infringe upon the rights for the creators, because, like
Speaker 1: you were saying earlier, sometimes fans make a film that
Speaker 1: the community will enjoy better than an actual copyrighted material,
Speaker 1: and they will use that as a scapegoat as to
Speaker 1: why it was unsuccessful. Instead of being like, oh, we
Speaker 1: didn't make the movie as good as it could be,
Speaker 1: it was like, well, people really like this version and
Speaker 1: they had an idea of what it should look like
Speaker 1: based off of this fan made thing, so it ruined
Speaker 1: our chances, which in a way could be kind of true,
Speaker 1: but lots of times it's mostly from the idea of oh,
Speaker 1: this is how good it can be. Yeah, yeah, uh.
Speaker 1: For those of you that don't know, uh, there was
Speaker 1: a live action dragon ball Z film, which, if you
Speaker 1: don't know, dragon ball Z is a very very popular anime.
Speaker 1: There was a live action dragon ball Z film. I
Speaker 1: can't even remember the name. Of it if he was
Speaker 1: the name of that which one, Oh, Evolution, Dragonball, Evolution, Revolution, Evolution.
Speaker 1: I don't even This is how much I don't care
Speaker 1: about that film, and it's my favorite anime. So anyways,
Speaker 1: that film was made by Fox and then Donnie and
Speaker 1: ritat at Robot Underdog, who are coming on. They made
Speaker 1: their own fan film, and you should see the amount
Speaker 1: of comments that were like, this is what it should
Speaker 1: have been like and these are you know, amateur filmmakers
Speaker 1: as opposed to an actual studio. Uh, and so a
Speaker 1: lot of fans kind of kind of grasp onto that instead. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: because it's funny because I feel like when you have
Speaker 1: a fan film, it's being created by people passionate about
Speaker 1: the source material, so it'll follow it more closely, it'll
Speaker 1: take less risks and try and be true to the source,
Speaker 1: versus a Hollywood one which wants to always. I feel
Speaker 1: like the problem with a lot of nerd properties that
Speaker 1: Hollywood tries to tackle that only recently has been broken
Speaker 1: was the it's basically like the habit of trying to
Speaker 1: approach the source material and go, let's make this realistic
Speaker 1: and or for everyone that all the time for a
Speaker 1: big audience, and it's what's happened on a larger scale
Speaker 1: to Hollywood, where people are afraid to take creative risks
Speaker 1: because they would much rather try and make something palatable.
Speaker 1: But lots of times, the best piece of creative material
Speaker 1: is one that makes a choice. And when you're trying
Speaker 1: to make it for everyone, you're not making a choice.
Speaker 1: You're actually watering down the choice is made. I think also,
Speaker 1: when you're trying to make it for everyone, you piss
Speaker 1: off the fans. I understand that you your market is
Speaker 1: not just the fans. Your movie is not going to
Speaker 1: be successful then if it were just Even when you
Speaker 1: look at um like the latest run of Marvel films,
Speaker 1: I feel like they're not just made in y C.
Speaker 1: But I feel like they're not specifically just made Like
Speaker 1: when they made Wonder Woman, they didn't just make get
Speaker 1: for comic book readers of Wonder Woman, like they tried
Speaker 1: to appeal to a much larger audience, which they got. Well.
Speaker 1: I feel like with the smart way they did that.
Speaker 1: And here's in first my take on that. My take
Speaker 1: on that is when people do that, when they're like
Speaker 1: we're trying to make for everyone, they're just being greedy
Speaker 1: because the reason you bought that the rights to that,
Speaker 1: the only reason is because you feel the fan base
Speaker 1: is big enough to support that the thing you're creating,
Speaker 1: that's why you bought it. So now that you bought it,
Speaker 1: you're trying to be greedy. And I was like, how
Speaker 1: do I get more people on top of this instead
Speaker 1: of just making it the best and hoping people follow. Now,
Speaker 1: what I feel like movies like Wonder Woman and Black
Speaker 1: pant did was they took the source material and looked
Speaker 1: at it's actual the Venn diagram of its actual source material.
Speaker 1: They didn't look at outside reasons it can be better.
Speaker 1: They looked at what they had and why it's good.
Speaker 1: Wonder Woman is good even as a comic book because
Speaker 1: if you are a woman, it's very empowering as a woman.
Speaker 1: You can read Wonder Woman. It's empowering as a comic book.
Speaker 1: It's good for everyone. So they took that and really
Speaker 1: blew that out. So they're like, let's make a movie
Speaker 1: that the comic book fans will see, but women will
Speaker 1: really enjoy because this is a comic book on its
Speaker 1: own strength is empowering for women. So it's it's that's
Speaker 1: a smart move to look for ways for that, and
Speaker 1: I feel like Black Panther did the same thing, same
Speaker 1: VENN diagram. This comic book is a good comic book
Speaker 1: character for comic book fans, but if you're a black person,
Speaker 1: this is good. So how do we make this movie
Speaker 1: a good movie for all black people even if you
Speaker 1: don't like comic books, because that's what I saw a
Speaker 1: lot of tweets of was like, I'm not even into comics. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I absolutely love this film. It's it's real funny
Speaker 1: listening to the read when they talk about it because
Speaker 1: Kid furies like a real big comic book fan and
Speaker 1: Crystal does not care for it. So it's interesting to
Speaker 1: hear both sides in one take. And it is and
Speaker 1: it goes even bigger that you don't even have to
Speaker 1: be black, because the fact of the matter is if
Speaker 1: you make a good product for a marginalized group, a
Speaker 1: minority group, if it's good enough, everyone's gonna still like it.
Speaker 1: But that doesn't take away the fact that that's who
Speaker 1: was made right. Yes, I agree, And I also feel
Speaker 1: like it's so interesting when people are like, oh, I
Speaker 1: really related to this, It was like, yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: people of color do also have a similar stories and issues.
Speaker 1: Yeah weird, weird. Oh you have a little kid's sister. Weird. Um. Anyways,
Speaker 1: so I agree, But I do remember that when Wonder
Speaker 1: Woman came out, there were a lot of women that
Speaker 1: were like, I'm not and this isn't stereotyping anything. I
Speaker 1: read a ton of comics, but I had a lot
Speaker 1: of friends of mine that said, you know, I don't
Speaker 1: read comics, and I'm very into it. It was also
Speaker 1: a good war film. Yeah it had all the nice sides.
Speaker 1: But we've been dancing around it. But let's full jump
Speaker 1: into the legal stuff. So a fun thing is Canada's
Speaker 1: Copyright Monertization Act explicitly added an exemption which allows non
Speaker 1: commercial creation of fan film material in two thousand twelve.
Speaker 1: That is, man, that's so cool because that really is
Speaker 1: a modernization of your copyright Act because it's taking into
Speaker 1: account a trimd that is happening and protecting people who's
Speaker 1: doing those trends because at the end of the day, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're not trying to make money. They're just trying to
Speaker 1: make a fun thing that they can share with the
Speaker 1: fan base and there's no harm in that. And like
Speaker 1: you were, saying it does create buzz for it and
Speaker 1: lots of times. Another thing that's being said on light
Speaker 1: of hope is like, man, this gets me excited to
Speaker 1: see like a whole studio Dragon ball Z movie, you know, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: how it could look, and also a studio that would
Speaker 1: like respect the property exactly. So moving on this one
Speaker 1: was a big one. So the U S Court rule
Speaker 1: Lens versus Universal Music Group, So essentially, a woman named
Speaker 1: Stephanie Lenz she posted on YouTube a home video of
Speaker 1: her kid dancing to Prince's song Let's Go Crazy and
Speaker 1: Universal so it wasn't Prince. Universal sent YouTube a takedown
Speaker 1: notice basically claiming that her video violated their copyright, and
Speaker 1: so the court ruled and acknowledged that creative fan activities
Speaker 1: on copyrighted works might fall under fair use, and they
Speaker 1: asked that copyright holders check and respect fair use before
Speaker 1: using these d m c A takedown notices, which is
Speaker 1: d m c A is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act essentially, yeah,
Speaker 1: tackles some of that fair use. This was all the
Speaker 1: crossfire that happened with YouTube's messy breakup with Universal Music
Speaker 1: Group in the first place, because they used to have
Speaker 1: a partnership and that's why they had all the videos
Speaker 1: up there. In the moment that partnership ended, they did
Speaker 1: a wide sweep of takedowns, and if you weren't smart
Speaker 1: about fair use laws, like me, back then, I had
Speaker 1: a very popular YouTube video where I was parodying this
Speaker 1: video of these guys called It was called like Late
Speaker 1: Night Special and They're humping Ottoman. It was like on
Speaker 1: every late night show. Well, me and my friends did
Speaker 1: a parody. We had the pretty rickey song in the
Speaker 1: background Late Night Special. We got the takedown. I freaked out.
Speaker 1: You know now I see it and I roll my
Speaker 1: eyes because I've seen it enough. But if you're on
Speaker 1: YouTube as a kid and you see that it's a
Speaker 1: very legal like notice and you freak out and you're like,
Speaker 1: you remove the song please, I don't want to be sued. Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: it also sucks because a lot of these people, I mean,
Speaker 1: aside from this, this was like her just posting a
Speaker 1: video over kid dancing. When you can take stuff down
Speaker 1: like that, I feel like that has a huge precedent
Speaker 1: as far as what they're allowed to take down. We
Speaker 1: have a lot of friends that do movie reviews or
Speaker 1: they'll of view TV shows, and it's like they have
Speaker 1: to be super careful about their fair use as far
Speaker 1: as like even what they're allowed to show, how much
Speaker 1: they're allowed to show. Uh So it's super gray when
Speaker 1: it comes to a lot of these I P s
Speaker 1: and and companies, Some are much more stricter than others.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of anime companies are a lot
Speaker 1: more stricter, some of them that I can think of.
Speaker 1: But since fan films tend to be fairly long and
Speaker 1: extensive in nature, it's a lot harder to kind of
Speaker 1: just wave it as fair use because they're not just
Speaker 1: using like a still or a tiny bit of a
Speaker 1: teaser trailer like they're actually making an entire film. Some
Speaker 1: companies see it and think of it as free promotion
Speaker 1: and others don't. And we'll we'll get into that with
Speaker 1: Donnie and Rita Robot Underdog right after this. Welcome back
Speaker 1: to Netificent. I am Danny Fernandez And if you why
Speaker 1: do you way? I hope you enjoyed that ad for
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna assume it was Atlanta Monster again. I've
Speaker 1: been doing those ads going back for I'm gonna have
Speaker 1: to check it out. Uh yeah, I wanted to correct something,
Speaker 1: so right before the break, I was saying that Universal
Speaker 1: Music Group had a nasty split with YouTube, but it
Speaker 1: was actually Warner Music Group that had a split from YouTube.
Speaker 1: Universal Music Group has been hand in hand in a
Speaker 1: deal with YouTube that allows them to just pull videos
Speaker 1: that they infringes upon them, like yeah, so that's why
Speaker 1: it's pretty quick when it's a Universal Music because they
Speaker 1: since they have a contract with YouTube, all they have
Speaker 1: to do is cough and it just plugs the video
Speaker 1: and it's gone. Yeah. So we are joined here by
Speaker 1: two of our very good friends, Donnie and Rita McMillan
Speaker 1: from Robot Underdog here. So y'all have I'm just gonna say,
Speaker 1: like the most popular Dragon ball Z fan film that
Speaker 1: is out there. Yeah, that's just facts at this point, opinion.
Speaker 1: Thank you very much. I don't know what to say.
Speaker 1: That's about. It's good of a compliment as you can get. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's done really well. It's been a lot of fun. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what are your current numbers for your for both of them,
Speaker 1: it's definitely for both of them, wow collectively? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: the first one did insane, just blew up. I don't
Speaker 1: ye didn't even know why yeah, and that's that's a
Speaker 1: light of hope. Um, So how did y'all get started?
Speaker 1: When did you get started? Like, what year was it
Speaker 1: when you got started? When did you decide that you
Speaker 1: were going to make a Dragon ball Z fan film?
Speaker 1: How did you? How did that happen? So we started
Speaker 1: with the first fan film we did was a Miles
Speaker 1: Morales Ultimate Spider Man, So that is the blackest fanic
Speaker 1: Spider Man, who was one of our favorite characters. I'm Hispanic,
Speaker 1: Donnie's black boom like diagram, Miles Morales. So that's how
Speaker 1: we actually got started into fan films, was we wanted
Speaker 1: to represent characters who weren't being represented in film that
Speaker 1: were of course minority, and also just characters we love
Speaker 1: and I think bring something new to the genre, like
Speaker 1: geek culture. So we started with the Miles film, and
Speaker 1: then after that, for some crazy reason, we thought that
Speaker 1: we should do the hardest live action project ever, which
Speaker 1: was Dragon ball Z. And that was probably what I
Speaker 1: just want to say, because, like you were saying, with
Speaker 1: the hardest, most people argue that Dragon ball Z cannot
Speaker 1: be made into live action. We hear that all the time.
Speaker 1: That was quite literally, like because it was at the
Speaker 1: beginning of us launching our YouTube channel, So we were thinking,
Speaker 1: all right, we did the Spider Man thing, what can
Speaker 1: we do next that will be like, like everyone says
Speaker 1: you can't do it because they had just come out
Speaker 1: with um evolution, Dragon ball about or didn't talk about that. Well,
Speaker 1: that's the thing. That's like our number one comment, and
Speaker 1: anything we do is better than evolution. That was the thing.
Speaker 1: We're like, well, if I couldn't do it, evolution, yeah,
Speaker 1: like you were saying, Evolution just was the one that
Speaker 1: Fox had made. Yeah, yeah, And being filmmakers, were thinking, well,
Speaker 1: like we wanted to kind of align everything. We wanted
Speaker 1: the channel to do well, but wanted to showcase our
Speaker 1: filmmaking skills. So if we could do something that Hollywood
Speaker 1: couldn't do on a micro budget, then job well done
Speaker 1: kind of you know, And we wanted to prove that
Speaker 1: these films that fall flat when the superhero based it's
Speaker 1: a lot of times it just feels like fans aren't
Speaker 1: involved in the creative process, and so it was the
Speaker 1: whole thing. It was like, well, it's let's before the fans,
Speaker 1: by the fans and show them that when geeks freak out,
Speaker 1: over movies being wrong, it's justified because they actually a
Speaker 1: lot of times have better opinions. Yeah, we're actually saying
Speaker 1: before the break, how the reason that tends to happen
Speaker 1: is because you know, Hollywood has this problem with trying
Speaker 1: to make it super relatable, trying to make it for everyone,
Speaker 1: and then watering down the actual perspective of the peace
Speaker 1: and the source material. Yes, and when you do that,
Speaker 1: you alienate the fans, and you also ruin the story itself.
Speaker 1: Like the reason it has a fan basis because it's
Speaker 1: a unique story and perspective. So in order to embolden that,
Speaker 1: you have to embrace it and look from there versus
Speaker 1: the other way of looking at it as like, Okay,
Speaker 1: these nerds like this thing, but obviously everyone's not gonna
Speaker 1: like this thing, So how do I make it like
Speaker 1: everyone nerds are going to spend their money because it
Speaker 1: has the names that, oh, that's how you get your
Speaker 1: movie roasted and you end up like dragon Ball. It's
Speaker 1: super arrogant the approach. It's like, it's a lot of arrogance.
Speaker 1: Like we got to talk to a director who was
Speaker 1: we can't say who, but he actually interviewed to direct
Speaker 1: the movie, and he was basically just saying that it's
Speaker 1: old Hollywood and they're so arrogant, like even if you
Speaker 1: have numbers, they don't care. Like he was saying that
Speaker 1: they either needed to be set in the United States,
Speaker 1: all white cast, like which is going to piss people off,
Speaker 1: don't understanding of the films Tokyo, you're going to piss
Speaker 1: off the fan base that you're planning to capitalize on.
Speaker 1: Or it was either that or getting no money, like
Speaker 1: a super low budget. And he tried to like tell him,
Speaker 1: He's like, look, I love this, It's like one of
Speaker 1: my favorite animals of all time. Like I try to
Speaker 1: tell him, like I showed him all the numbers. They
Speaker 1: did not care. They're just old and arrogant and they
Speaker 1: don't want they don't care. What's so funny is when
Speaker 1: that fallout happens, then you get them trying to be like, well,
Speaker 1: you know, we're just trying to make it work and
Speaker 1: all this stuff, but literally, you weren't trying to make
Speaker 1: it work. As a matter of fact, you made an
Speaker 1: ultimatum for a white cast, Like you you really put
Speaker 1: the movie on the line where it's like we're only
Speaker 1: going to make this movie if it can be a
Speaker 1: white cast and it really just goes to show. He
Speaker 1: was like, oh, you want diversity, all right, well we
Speaker 1: won't give you any money. Yeah, it's built off an
Speaker 1: old model. Because I thought about this a lot, because
Speaker 1: I was thinking, like, why would people even make those
Speaker 1: kind of decisions. But you know, if you go back
Speaker 1: twenty years before everyone had the Internet, it kind of
Speaker 1: makes sense if you have a white majority country to
Speaker 1: make something that caters towards that audience. I mean, you're
Speaker 1: still neglecting the other people in the country, but at
Speaker 1: least you can make some sense out of it, Whereas
Speaker 1: now it's like we're all connected, like we're globally connected.
Speaker 1: If you make a Japanese franchise, if you tell a
Speaker 1: story from that world and it just totally whitewasher or
Speaker 1: just change it dramatically in any way, you're left with
Speaker 1: something totally new and different. That's why people freak out
Speaker 1: over like a death Note on Netflix, you know those
Speaker 1: kind of shows. The thing is with both death Note
Speaker 1: and like a Kira death Note could have been a
Speaker 1: new person. Like if you think, like re drops the
Speaker 1: Notebook every so thousand years or every hundred years, why
Speaker 1: not set it in like I don't know, thirty thirty
Speaker 1: United States. It's a completely new kid if you want,
Speaker 1: like an American cat, Like you could do that with
Speaker 1: something else. Yeah, no, that's what's so wild about it.
Speaker 1: And even that's how I felt about Ghosts of the Shell,
Speaker 1: where it's like ghost in the Shell at its core,
Speaker 1: skeletons would be an interesting story no matter who's at
Speaker 1: the mantle. Like it's just this cyber cop using technology
Speaker 1: to solve crimes. It's basically just the future of crime.
Speaker 1: But when you use the same character, same name, and
Speaker 1: then cast Scarlett Johansen, that becomes a problem. It's a
Speaker 1: problem to sit in a movie and watch a white
Speaker 1: woman be addressed as a Japanese woman. Like that's what's
Speaker 1: so funny is people like I don't see the problem. Well,
Speaker 1: they could have just acknowledged it, like like something like
Speaker 1: Altered Car have been I don't know if you guys,
Speaker 1: but it's like the Asian guy dies and he makes
Speaker 1: up in the white guy's body. Yeah, but it's like
Speaker 1: because they showed you that, and it's like it wasn't
Speaker 1: as bad because it's like, okay, like we understand that
Speaker 1: this he's still the Asian guy. Yeah, you know, like
Speaker 1: he's just in this body. You know, that's that that's
Speaker 1: me transparently seeing you cheat. You're like diversity. We're going
Speaker 1: to get people writing you because that was in the book.
Speaker 1: People were very angry. But oh well, I guess what then?
Speaker 1: I guess the book is trashed too. I don't care
Speaker 1: a damn I don't care. Now y'all care about what's
Speaker 1: in the book. Like that's what's so funny. It is
Speaker 1: like y'all weren't mad at the Beguild because they completely
Speaker 1: erased the black women in that story. But when oh man,
Speaker 1: let somebody touch your oversaturated part of Hollywood. Oh no,
Speaker 1: it's like, yeah, no, it was whack in the book,
Speaker 1: and it was whacked. Now you know when you want
Speaker 1: to know what book also doesn't hold up the Bible
Speaker 1: that ships you're really going to get people, alright, if
Speaker 1: we just celebrated Easter, what's your Twitter handle? That that
Speaker 1: stuff is out to ask you? What are some fan
Speaker 1: films that you enjoy? Did you watch any like over
Speaker 1: while you were making yours? Were you inspired? Are there
Speaker 1: ones now that you particularly like? Oh yeah, there's a lot.
Speaker 1: I guess I'll just start naming a couple of my
Speaker 1: favorite We're actually really good friends with the East Mahat crew,
Speaker 1: h Danny Shepard, Jeremy Lee, all those guys, and they
Speaker 1: had the Night Wing the series what Yeah, that came
Speaker 1: out that we watched and really loved. And a few
Speaker 1: before that was like Batman Verse Predator. I don't remember what.
Speaker 1: That's the first one I've ever seen and still one
Speaker 1: of my favorites. It's probably it's so SD and like,
Speaker 1: you know, just old. It's probably like super pixelated. But
Speaker 1: when I saw that, I was like, you could make
Speaker 1: your own Batman movie. Yeah, you were talking about dead End?
Speaker 1: Do you guys see that? Oh? Okay, dead End. Yeah.
Speaker 1: There's also several snape in the Marauders by our good
Speaker 1: friend just his channel's Broadshroke Productions that he's working on.
Speaker 1: I think he's going to try Cowboy Bebop and like
Speaker 1: an anime perhaps. And then there's Troopers. Troopers, Yeah, Troops
Speaker 1: truph So Troops was a parody of Star Wars and Cops. Essentially,
Speaker 1: it was like a mockumentary fan film set in the
Speaker 1: Star Wars universe where they're essentially like interview. It's like
Speaker 1: an everyday glimpse of Stormtroopers on the job. It's hilarious,
Speaker 1: It's it's shot and edited just like an old episode
Speaker 1: of Cops. Perfect. Yeah. I felt really bad that I
Speaker 1: somehow missed that for the longest time. We we met
Speaker 1: the guy that made it at a panel at a con,
Speaker 1: a couple of cons ago, and uh, I was just
Speaker 1: blown away, like, wait, how did I not see this?
Speaker 1: Because originally debuted, wasn't the internet not like YouTube? So
Speaker 1: commered at comic Con. It did premiere at San Diego
Speaker 1: Comic Con. Yeah. It was done by Kevin Rubio, Sean
Speaker 1: Jordan's and Patrick Perez. Yeah. Yeah. Another one, another Star
Speaker 1: Wars one was Chad Vader. So Chad Vader was the
Speaker 1: younger brother of Darth Vader. Uh. And that was actually
Speaker 1: that became really popular on Channel one oh one, and
Speaker 1: George Lucas was a fan of the series, so Matt
Speaker 1: Sloane got hired as the voice of Darth Vader for
Speaker 1: the Force Unleashed video game. So just showing that when
Speaker 1: you have a popular fan film or fan show and
Speaker 1: the people that are involved, I think that's the other thing,
Speaker 1: Like the people that are involved also enjoy it, then
Speaker 1: you can sometimes brought in for the for the real deal.
Speaker 1: That's what's interesting with Star Wars fan films specifically, is
Speaker 1: at least early on, it seemed like Lucas really embraced those,
Speaker 1: uh those films because a lot of those people created
Speaker 1: a viable option to get into the industry. So the
Speaker 1: guy that did Troopers, he I think he's doing the
Speaker 1: comic book, like he's making a Star Wars comic book.
Speaker 1: Now there are the legal hoops, and you do have
Speaker 1: a thirty million hit Dragon Balls fan film. Have you
Speaker 1: gotten any any problems from that? Has has Toey hit
Speaker 1: you up or any I mean, well with the fan film, no,
Speaker 1: I mean they've actually we've actually got a pretty we
Speaker 1: got a weird relationship with Toey, I'd say, because they
Speaker 1: like us and we get invited to a bunch of
Speaker 1: cool stuff. But you know, when you're dealing with videos
Speaker 1: on YouTube, just because the people at the company are
Speaker 1: supportive of whatever you're doing, you still have like people
Speaker 1: that their job is to like just kind of mass
Speaker 1: flag videos. So what we get we get hung up
Speaker 1: on our like reaction videos and stuff like that. So
Speaker 1: I have to be really careful because it's it feels
Speaker 1: like we're on a shortlists sometimes because it felt weird.
Speaker 1: We have thirty million views are films, but then our
Speaker 1: reaction videos about the video as far as the film,
Speaker 1: so there's been no I mean, it's all been positive.
Speaker 1: And what's interesting is the time that we released the
Speaker 1: pilot was actually when Adi Shankar, like almost the same
Speaker 1: day he released the bootleg Power Rangers and they got
Speaker 1: taken down and so but because he's rich and a
Speaker 1: producer and has Hollywood connections, like he fought Sabin in
Speaker 1: one and so that that court case is kind of
Speaker 1: set the precedence where like, if you're creating all of
Speaker 1: your if you're writing an original script, creating original video,
Speaker 1: original soundtrack, everything is your own original work, that case
Speaker 1: kind of stands as a precedent to say, Okay, they
Speaker 1: can legally do this. It falls within the fair use.
Speaker 1: We really make a point to at the beginning, it's
Speaker 1: like this isn't you know this is a tribute to
Speaker 1: the sourcement's aerial. We credit the original creators, and you know,
Speaker 1: we do everything we can just to kind of lighten
Speaker 1: any issue that they would be there. Basically, the checklist
Speaker 1: is don't take away money from the official releases, don't
Speaker 1: use any of their like sound effects images, stuff like that,
Speaker 1: and then let people know that you're not the official one. Like,
Speaker 1: as long as we're not confusing people and like trying
Speaker 1: to pretend like you're an official product, they're going to
Speaker 1: be cool. Yeah, because I think half the reason the
Speaker 1: Power Rangers video gott in such hot water as they
Speaker 1: were legitimately making that new Power Rangers movie and so
Speaker 1: it confused them because we actually got in trouble with
Speaker 1: our Miles morales Um project. And what's weird is Brian
Speaker 1: Michael Vendace straight up like created a fan film like
Speaker 1: contest just because I think we won it. I think
Speaker 1: we were number one or we were on you already
Speaker 1: remember it. It was just you know things, but I'm
Speaker 1: pretty sure we were number one. Well, what was cool
Speaker 1: as we got to meet him and were cool. We're like, hey,
Speaker 1: we're the ones that did the thing, and okay, great,
Speaker 1: we'll put it in the show notes, so y'all can
Speaker 1: go check it out. Yeah that'd be awesome. Yeah, but okay,
Speaker 1: so so so but you got flagged. So yeah, So
Speaker 1: it was weird because we tweeted Michael Bendes and he
Speaker 1: was like, oh, this is great. And again the contest
Speaker 1: got made and we were on there and so we're like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's all good, but we at least the exact same
Speaker 1: week as the Amazing Spider Man. Yeah, so we're promoting
Speaker 1: it is like, you know, ho Spider Man thing, and
Speaker 1: I think that's why we got flagged. Yeah, but it
Speaker 1: was funny because when we were kind of dealing with
Speaker 1: all that, we got word from even people within Sony
Speaker 1: that they really liked it and everyone had seen it.
Speaker 1: We're like, oh, that's that's cool. Can we get a
Speaker 1: video back? Yeah, they're getting it back a long time. No,
Speaker 1: it was actually, can we get our channel back? Because
Speaker 1: they took your channel. That's why we're Robot Underdog too,
Speaker 1: that's right. So it was Robot Underdog. The original one
Speaker 1: just gone. Yeah, it had to be down for like
Speaker 1: a year. We reclaimed it when it came back, but
Speaker 1: we had already grew all the subscribers on the other channel.
Speaker 1: That's so I can't I always wondered why you were
Speaker 1: a Robot Underdog too. We need to do like a
Speaker 1: switch a kind of thing because that, Yeah, that's that's
Speaker 1: so frustrating to me. That they can actually take your
Speaker 1: channel for an entire year. So what they do is
Speaker 1: if you get three copyright strikes within three months, then
Speaker 1: your channels disabled for like a year or whatever. And
Speaker 1: so was it all from Miles Morales because they not
Speaker 1: only flagged the trailer, like the teaser trailer we released,
Speaker 1: but they flagged every behind the scenes video we did
Speaker 1: where we even said the word Miles Morales. Really, so
Speaker 1: even if we didn't have footage, we didn't have comic books. Still,
Speaker 1: how could they do that because they're a huge corporation
Speaker 1: and we were nobody at the time. We didn't have
Speaker 1: a network behind us. We had like five to ten
Speaker 1: thousand subscribers. If that it was our very first project,
Speaker 1: like we don't we could have fought it. We were
Speaker 1: just naive and scared. Yeah, probably could a network and
Speaker 1: well with your fan base you could base right right
Speaker 1: right now, I feel like your fan base would go
Speaker 1: to war. It would take them down. I feel like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it would be a lot better now. Oh man, but
Speaker 1: what if you were just reviewing the Miles Morales like
Speaker 1: comic book, Because what you said is you also get
Speaker 1: flagged for reaction. So I know a lot of what
Speaker 1: you all do is also like dragon Ball Super after
Speaker 1: reactions and stuff. Do you get flagged for those or what?
Speaker 1: What reactions are you getting flagged for? I mean, it's
Speaker 1: weird because we're we actually don't even show the video
Speaker 1: at all, right, Like we just say, hey, one, two, three,
Speaker 1: sync up along, Yeah, because we don't want any legal issues.
Speaker 1: But like I said, it seems like we're on some
Speaker 1: kind of short list, you know, because we're so known
Speaker 1: for the dragon Ball for dragon Ball content. So for
Speaker 1: whatever reason, no, we did a couple where people were complaining,
Speaker 1: so we're like, okay, so I'll play it on my iPhone.
Speaker 1: It's like our ends has very shallowed up to field,
Speaker 1: so we'll put it completely out of focus. I'll turn
Speaker 1: the brightness down. Like literally they could just see like flashes.
Speaker 1: It was like unidentifiable, but people who were also watching
Speaker 1: along could kind of get like some visual cues to
Speaker 1: know where we were in the episode. And that video
Speaker 1: got flagged a couple of months ago, and so we
Speaker 1: fought it, and it was actually from a copyright troll
Speaker 1: like company, like basically like a company that makes money
Speaker 1: off of taking down these videos. So they were like
Speaker 1: a law firm and Uh, what's crazy is whenever you
Speaker 1: fight a copyright strike on YouTube, it literally says, if
Speaker 1: you fill out this form, you're saying I agree to
Speaker 1: go to court, like they can sue you legally, like
Speaker 1: if you submit this counter like a counter to it.
Speaker 1: And so we're just like, let's just do it. It's
Speaker 1: just so we're going up against the law firm. Is
Speaker 1: that what we're talking about? All right? I really must
Speaker 1: want this reaction video because there's the thing you have
Speaker 1: to because if not, anytime you get a strike on YouTube,
Speaker 1: all of your features are disabled. We can't live stream,
Speaker 1: we can't use YouTube space, we can't use like any
Speaker 1: of the things like we need to make content for
Speaker 1: our fans. So it was wait a whole three months
Speaker 1: or fight it out and try to win, and fortunately
Speaker 1: we won. Yes, like more creators. Yeah, I hope this
Speaker 1: is inspiring to more creators um to fight back because
Speaker 1: I feel aside from that also having pressure from the internet,
Speaker 1: I feel like your followers and stuff could also tweet
Speaker 1: at these companies to kind of step in and help you.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, there's just that intimidation factor when you're an
Speaker 1: independent person and you're going up against a company. But
Speaker 1: if you know you're in the right fight, you know,
Speaker 1: pushed over. You can look up the things online, but
Speaker 1: it's literally like if you know, you'll know, if you know,
Speaker 1: you're not taken away from the official release, Like nobody
Speaker 1: was watching our video in place of watching the episode
Speaker 1: unidentifiable like that was in no way taking money away
Speaker 1: from them. So we had a case. But like if
Speaker 1: you're just gonna straight like you know, some people have
Speaker 1: like the reaction videos that's in the screen, like even
Speaker 1: like what we did with you guys on Funimations channel,
Speaker 1: like that, I would say does not fall into fair use.
Speaker 1: We had to get explicit permission from toy. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: actually got permission from them directly. They sent us the
Speaker 1: download of an episode. We did a watch along for
Speaker 1: the second to last episode of dragon Ball Super and
Speaker 1: Donnie and Rita joined us for that, and we were
Speaker 1: allowed to show the episode on YouTube because they explicitly
Speaker 1: sent it to us. So yeah, but we're actually going
Speaker 1: to take a break and after this we will go
Speaker 1: into the future of fan films. Right after this, Welcome
Speaker 1: back to Nerdificent. I am Danny Fernandez, Boom and me.
Speaker 1: Who's beat Box. If you may not know I beat
Speaker 1: box with my mouth, the theme song and the introduced
Speaker 1: if you I appreciate it, IFFI, and we are joined
Speaker 1: again with Donnie and Rita of Robot Underdogs. So, y'all,
Speaker 1: what do you think the future of fan film are
Speaker 1: now that there's like such technology where I feel like
Speaker 1: people can actually make like y'all's like can make a
Speaker 1: real film. I mean, it is insane how accessible it's become,
Speaker 1: you know. I mean even when we started, I felt like,
Speaker 1: you know, it felt accessible. Did the technology change a
Speaker 1: lot from when you started to Yeah? Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: it's just every year there's this new plug in, there's
Speaker 1: this new software that allows you to do more cheaper,
Speaker 1: you know, there's new websites that have built assets. I mean,
Speaker 1: you can get so crazy on a small budget. Now
Speaker 1: it's really there's no excuse. I mean, ever since you've
Speaker 1: had ten a DP on an iPhone, you can make movies.
Speaker 1: You're on your on your own if you want to.
Speaker 1: Now on the tin that you get four kiss incredible,
Speaker 1: I mean, and it's I had someone come up to us.
Speaker 1: We were at a con. We did a panel, and
Speaker 1: after the panels, some young guy came up to me
Speaker 1: and he's like, hey, I want to make films like
Speaker 1: a like a light of hope, Like what do you
Speaker 1: suggest or whatever? And it's like the iPhone you have
Speaker 1: in your hand right now, that's enough because he wanted that.
Speaker 1: He wanted the answer to be by this new camera,
Speaker 1: by this by that. It's like you actually have Like,
Speaker 1: first off, you're going to suck on the first thing
Speaker 1: you do. It's going to be horrible. It's like you
Speaker 1: do like, God, I'm so glad we had another secret
Speaker 1: old YouTube channel with like our old projects that you
Speaker 1: guys will under the Yeah, it's gonna take a while,
Speaker 1: so like you might as well just start on what
Speaker 1: you have, yeah, because it's not the tools. Why your
Speaker 1: thing didn't turn out good isn't because of the tools
Speaker 1: you had access to. Yeah, And also I think it
Speaker 1: is like the resources. Like my brother has been teaching
Speaker 1: himself how to edit, and it's just been YouTube tutorials
Speaker 1: and like reddit stuff, and he's seeing the where he
Speaker 1: started and where he is now. It really is you
Speaker 1: can learn almost anything off the internet, and that's gives
Speaker 1: so much more to you for Yeah. So he's like
Speaker 1: using after effects and all those things, and it's crazy
Speaker 1: to know that he just did that from just the
Speaker 1: gumption too. I'm going to figure this out. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: lock myself in this room and just watch these videos
Speaker 1: and follow these guys. But it's it's dope. It's beautiful
Speaker 1: because it's like, you know, college is expensive, and then
Speaker 1: to think that you're going to dive into a life
Speaker 1: of debt for an art degree that you don't know
Speaker 1: if you'll ever make a dollar off of. I mean,
Speaker 1: like we did, you know you can learn so much
Speaker 1: for free you really don't need school anymore. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna ever encourage someone to just not go
Speaker 1: to college, but highly considerate if you know what I mean, Like,
Speaker 1: look at what your career path is. What do you
Speaker 1: want to do? You want to be an entertainer? Maybe
Speaker 1: google some stuff, right, Yeah. A lot of writer, a
Speaker 1: lot of writers and filmmakers feel that way where it's
Speaker 1: like something that you could teach yourself, especially now, like
Speaker 1: you were saying on YouTube, I know a lot of
Speaker 1: my friends have taught themselves editing from YouTube. Where would
Speaker 1: you recommend aside from YouTube, Like if someone is starting
Speaker 1: to make shorts or sketches or starting to make you know,
Speaker 1: smaller fan films or even larger ones. Where would you
Speaker 1: recommend them uploading their stuff? Is YouTube the only place
Speaker 1: for them to go or is there another? Are there
Speaker 1: other outlets that you recommend? Well, we actually just started
Speaker 1: a new series on our channel. It's called Robot Underdog Presents,
Speaker 1: and it's basically like opening it up for other filmmakers
Speaker 1: who make fan films. So, I mean, we can't guarantee
Speaker 1: people have a lot of views, but we can say, okay,
Speaker 1: we've made this audience. They like geek stuff sci fi.
Speaker 1: If your film is good and you don't want to
Speaker 1: spend four years making a YouTube channel, because that's what
Speaker 1: we had to do. Like it's not you can't just
Speaker 1: upload something and expect people to see it. Like it's
Speaker 1: not going to happen. I mean, you might get like
Speaker 1: fifty thousand views like a bee, but if you spend
Speaker 1: a year on a project, you want more. So, um,
Speaker 1: that's definitely an outlet. And if people have films, they
Speaker 1: can you know, hit us up, they can submit to you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they can submit on our website and you know, if
Speaker 1: it's good, that's definitely something that we're willing to put
Speaker 1: on our channel and open that up. People could do Twitch.
Speaker 1: I guess, like we actually just started a Twitch channel
Speaker 1: because um, as most people know, essentially YouTube stop sending
Speaker 1: notification to our subscribers and to every other YouTube channel
Speaker 1: they don't notify people who have subscribed. So it's really
Speaker 1: shaking things up and having a lot of creators trying
Speaker 1: to figure out, like what do I do. Like I've
Speaker 1: spent years of my life putting all this time and
Speaker 1: money into like this channel, and people have said, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm committed, like I want to watch your stuff, and
Speaker 1: then you're dealing with a middleman that doesn't want to
Speaker 1: notify people. Um I've noticed that Twitch always sends notifications
Speaker 1: right now that could change, But I mean that's another
Speaker 1: platform that people could could try and upload too, but
Speaker 1: it's really hard to build an audience there. To kind
Speaker 1: of piggyback off what you're saying, I think what's really
Speaker 1: important for up and coming or people that want to
Speaker 1: be content creators. I think you have to look at
Speaker 1: the platform like what you want to do. Are you
Speaker 1: a filmmaker? Do you want to make short films or whatever? Um?
Speaker 1: And is that all you want to do? Because if
Speaker 1: that's the case, that means you're talking about like every
Speaker 1: few months maybe you're uploading a video. Maybe once a
Speaker 1: year you're uploading a video. So YouTube doesn't favor those
Speaker 1: kind of creators, So you need to you need to
Speaker 1: look at that before you pick your platform, and then
Speaker 1: maybe like find a channel like ours or someone else,
Speaker 1: like I know, Maschinema used to host like fan film stuff.
Speaker 1: Find someone else to host it. Like if you don't
Speaker 1: want to be like an online personality and constantly upload
Speaker 1: YouTube videos every single week, you can host it somewhere else. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's definitely that's a big incentive for why we we
Speaker 1: did that because for us, we like to make you know,
Speaker 1: the highest quality stuff we can, and we do relatively
Speaker 1: upload regularly, like especially a dragon Ball Super out, we're
Speaker 1: doing weekly stuff. But um, you know, we want to
Speaker 1: put all our energy into the big like the internet
Speaker 1: blockbuster thing, you know, And so that used to the
Speaker 1: algorithm on YouTube used to cater to that, just like
Speaker 1: everything else. But now that everything's changed, like like you're
Speaker 1: saying it, it is more like you got to talk
Speaker 1: about trending topics or you gotta find something that keeps
Speaker 1: you making content basically daily. And if that's what you're
Speaker 1: wanting to do as a new creator, then maybe YouTube
Speaker 1: is the perfect spot. But I would overall my biggest
Speaker 1: advice to be not to let views or any of
Speaker 1: that be something you're thinking about, like while you're making
Speaker 1: your film, Like make something good, like something great that
Speaker 1: has a great story, great characters, and the views will come. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think that's going into like with these studios that
Speaker 1: are just trying to capitalize on things and they're not
Speaker 1: actually thinking of the passion of the fandom. So instead
Speaker 1: of going into it thinking I'm going to go viral
Speaker 1: and be famous from this, instead making it because it's
Speaker 1: something you're passionate about, something that you can't not make.
Speaker 1: Like that's how it was with us. It's like people
Speaker 1: are like, oh, why how did you get into that.
Speaker 1: It's like we didn't ever think about it. We just
Speaker 1: couldn't not do it, Like it was like just something
Speaker 1: we had an itch, like we had to make these
Speaker 1: films and so we did. It wasn't like a second thought.
Speaker 1: Or you remember the music videos when like Obama would
Speaker 1: have a speech and then someone would make a match
Speaker 1: up every word and it it would be like a popular
Speaker 1: song like that, that trendy kind of thing. I remember
Speaker 1: there was a moment when that was authentically going viral
Speaker 1: online and companies like big networks were wanting that same
Speaker 1: like I want the viral video. There was that phase
Speaker 1: where everyone we were looking for viral. We're buying viral content.
Speaker 1: What things aren't you can't buy viral. But but people
Speaker 1: overlook why things go viral. People videos go viral because
Speaker 1: some crazy person had the audacity to spend obscene amount
Speaker 1: of time on something that didn't need to exist. But
Speaker 1: now that it, that's all you could have ever wanted,
Speaker 1: and like and when you when you pay for that,
Speaker 1: you're paying for like, okay, I need this in five days. Well,
Speaker 1: actually the last video took me a month to make
Speaker 1: and that's why it's got thirty million views or whatever
Speaker 1: it is, you know, so they feel super like corny
Speaker 1: in corporate I remember before we started recording, I told
Speaker 1: you that I was at full screen, and that's the
Speaker 1: note they would always give us in the writer's room,
Speaker 1: was like, okay, but how can we make sure this
Speaker 1: goes viral? Um, can you understand the actual definition of
Speaker 1: the word viral is like unexpectedly, like an anomaly. Well
Speaker 1: that was with light of hope What was so crazy
Speaker 1: is we worked on that thing forever. We knew it
Speaker 1: was going to do well because we've kind of built
Speaker 1: up a little audience and some height behind it because
Speaker 1: it was you know people. What's cool about what we've
Speaker 1: been able to do is kind of take people on
Speaker 1: the ride of us just putting stuff together. So it
Speaker 1: felt like it was a community making the thing. So
Speaker 1: when we finally uploaded it, we were like, man, they're
Speaker 1: probably be tired of waiting. Who knows. It was like
Speaker 1: five am and we've been trying to upload the video
Speaker 1: for twenty four hours and then like all of the
Speaker 1: Internet gods were raining down on us and punishing us
Speaker 1: and things were going wrong, and finally it was like
Speaker 1: five am we uploaded the video. I had to go
Speaker 1: to work at like seven. We just laid down for
Speaker 1: like an hour, woke up and it was like already
Speaker 1: like it hit like seventy five thousand views, and we're like, oh,
Speaker 1: like that's good. Yeah, we're done here, Like we kind
Speaker 1: of did it, and it was like I got, we got,
Speaker 1: I got home from work and it was like a
Speaker 1: million or something like that, and it it just wow, Okay,
Speaker 1: that's great. It doesn't have to go any further than that,
Speaker 1: and it just kept happening. It was like every day,
Speaker 1: like it's not stopping. It's been a week, it's not,
Speaker 1: it's not still still climbing. It was like, this is
Speaker 1: so this is the viral thing, all right. So it
Speaker 1: is weird because when you get the taste of that
Speaker 1: viral bug, you think, oh, man, like we gotta keep
Speaker 1: that up. But you got to accept things happen sometimes
Speaker 1: that are so out of your control. All you can
Speaker 1: do is just make good content that you're proud of
Speaker 1: and just let the Internet do its thing also too.
Speaker 1: I will say on that note to follow up on that,
Speaker 1: like the pilot episode has way more views than the
Speaker 1: latest film we released, which was like episode two and
Speaker 1: three combined as a film, But as a filmmaker, I
Speaker 1: am so much more proud of the second film, And
Speaker 1: even though it has like one tenth of the views,
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter, Like I would much rather have people
Speaker 1: watch that. I'm more proud of that. It doesn't have
Speaker 1: anything to do with the view count. That's what I'm
Speaker 1: proud of, because I mean we were better as filmmakers.
Speaker 1: That was actually our first film out of film school,
Speaker 1: out in l A, so like we were garbage filmmakers
Speaker 1: at the time. We like ran around in Griffith Park
Speaker 1: with like a camera and that's I was that where
Speaker 1: it was filmed. The wo I love that. I love
Speaker 1: whenever it's like, oh, yeah, I've run there, recognize that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we shot in anything that was free, Like we shot
Speaker 1: in our apartment for one of the scenes with Gohan
Speaker 1: and the first one, which we were really proud because
Speaker 1: it didn't look like our apartment. That happen and it's like,
Speaker 1: you can't quite identify what this place is, So what
Speaker 1: do you feel is next for you too? Uh? Well,
Speaker 1: right now, we're working on a fan film called Blue Exorcist.
Speaker 1: It's anime inspired. Yeah, it's about actually reading. You're directing
Speaker 1: that one, so long't you take take that? Um. Basically,
Speaker 1: we're just adapting the Blue Exercist anime, more so of
Speaker 1: the manga than the anime, and just trying to hone
Speaker 1: our skills as filmmakers. The Dragon ball Z projects were
Speaker 1: very fight based, very action based, and so now for
Speaker 1: the next few projects we do, we're just taking a
Speaker 1: step back and personally I'm working on writing myself and
Speaker 1: our teammate Tyler Tackett co wrote the Blue Exercist script
Speaker 1: and um, probably for the next few projects, I'll be
Speaker 1: looking into writing them, just really practicing writing and directing
Speaker 1: and more so character development the actual story aspect um.
Speaker 1: That's another thing with the first episode of dragon Ball
Speaker 1: the dragon Ball Z project feels more kind of like
Speaker 1: a music video, like we just you know, as filmmakers,
Speaker 1: we need to grow and like practice the you know,
Speaker 1: the arcs and and things like that. So we're gonna
Speaker 1: do a few more anime projects that are less action alright,
Speaker 1: And so do you think you're going to take a
Speaker 1: step out of anime and do you know, make make
Speaker 1: your big, big Hollywood piece soon. Personally, I would like
Speaker 1: to make it animated something. I don't know, if that's
Speaker 1: just kind of what I would like to do next
Speaker 1: afterlive actions, Yeah, I know, I would love to do
Speaker 1: something animated, and it doesn't necessarily even have to be anime,
Speaker 1: just an animated project and we'll see how it goes. Honestly,
Speaker 1: I love I love YouTube. I love the feeling of
Speaker 1: putting your content out there and getting direct feedback with
Speaker 1: the audience. I love having creative control. Um. Of course,
Speaker 1: shared with Donnie over stuff like I don't know how
Speaker 1: I would handle somebody being like, no, it has to
Speaker 1: be this way, Like I'm not sure if I'm ready
Speaker 1: for that, you know, like personally, I feel like I
Speaker 1: need to learn my own style first and then maybe
Speaker 1: do something that could be bigger budget. Well that's what's
Speaker 1: weird is we've both been working in the industry for
Speaker 1: you know, a few quite a few years now, and
Speaker 1: it's it's so liberating to have your own platform where
Speaker 1: you can make what you want, how you want, when
Speaker 1: you want, and it's you know, we started the YouTube
Speaker 1: channel to launch our career and become filmmakers, make feature
Speaker 1: films and all that. But it is, like she said,
Speaker 1: it's it's become kind of strange. We're in a weird
Speaker 1: place because sure, if if a movie comes our way,
Speaker 1: we're jumping on it. That's awesome, But at the same time,
Speaker 1: it's gonna it would be really weird to abandon our
Speaker 1: audience because it is cool to be able to be
Speaker 1: on that journey with our followers. So it's cool like we, yeah,
Speaker 1: we have a Patreon and uh, those that support us,
Speaker 1: we monthly will connect with them, tell them what we're doing,
Speaker 1: where we're at with things and you know, get their
Speaker 1: thoughts and opinions on things, and it's just it's this
Speaker 1: really cool collaborative way of making film. When you remove
Speaker 1: the ego of like I have all the answers, I'm
Speaker 1: the artour of this film. You know, it's like, you know,
Speaker 1: you're just You're just a guy with or a woman
Speaker 1: with some creative ideas. And it's possible that the people
Speaker 1: that are supporting you might want to contribute, especially when
Speaker 1: it's fan films, you could make the wrong choice just
Speaker 1: because you've got a million things going on in in your head.
Speaker 1: So it's actually light of hope. We credit all the
Speaker 1: time to doing it the way we did it, Like
Speaker 1: we're bouncing ideas off people. If we see some crazy comment,
Speaker 1: you know, we might disregard it. But but like we
Speaker 1: got some crazy suggestions. But every now and then you're like,
Speaker 1: there's some gyms in there, and I just can't help
Speaker 1: but think. Man, like, if if a ghost in the
Speaker 1: shell read the comments for sure, I mean responded to them,
Speaker 1: would even would we even be in this situation we
Speaker 1: need to respond to one. I was gonna say, do
Speaker 1: you feel like studios now are getting smarter where they're
Speaker 1: vetting out, like you know, they're kind of letting things
Speaker 1: leak a little bit, or like so and so is
Speaker 1: in talks to play this role. And I feel like
Speaker 1: a lot of times that's their kind of way of
Speaker 1: like seeing how the fandom reacts before they make a
Speaker 1: full blown commitment. And I do feel sometimes they've gotten
Speaker 1: a little bit smart about that. I think it's director
Speaker 1: based to Like I saw Chris McKay on Twitter, um,
Speaker 1: and I had a lot of respect for him for
Speaker 1: putting out this poll, Like he said, like, what's the
Speaker 1: most important quality of Nightwing to you? And it involved
Speaker 1: one was the race, and then it was like acrobats,
Speaker 1: good looking or whatever, and um, it's because it wasn't
Speaker 1: until recently that they revealed like Dick Grayson was part
Speaker 1: romani in the comics or whatever, like people thought he
Speaker 1: was just all white, but then it was revealed that
Speaker 1: he wasn't. And so, like, I respect Chris McKay for
Speaker 1: putting that out there, even though that meant that like
Speaker 1: he could no longer have the option to like whitewash
Speaker 1: this project, because that was like such a huge response
Speaker 1: from fans like, oh, now you know that he was
Speaker 1: so you have to cast somebody with that like a
Speaker 1: piece of that ethnicity in them. So yeah, but it's
Speaker 1: also very interesting too. You know, we talked about the
Speaker 1: horror stories that could happen with fan films, but there
Speaker 1: are some good stories, like I feel like Bat in
Speaker 1: the Sun really kind of came out on top because
Speaker 1: they did the Superhero beat Down and uh, for those
Speaker 1: who don't know, Superhero beat Down is a series on
Speaker 1: YouTube where it's basically fan films that pit different superheroes
Speaker 1: against each other. And they were the ones who got
Speaker 1: the chance to create the Ninjack Versus the World web series,
Speaker 1: which is based off of the Valiant Comics universe. So
Speaker 1: they went from doing you know, unauthorized fan stuff to
Speaker 1: just going straight up getting the rights and actually getting
Speaker 1: to do a legit take on stuff. Look at the
Speaker 1: Street Fighter was about to say that, yeah, official one
Speaker 1: after all. Yeah, So they did street Fighter Legacy and
Speaker 1: then they got permission from Capcom to do the Street
Speaker 1: Fighter Assassin's Fist series and funding too, And now it's
Speaker 1: on Hulu, it's on Amazon, it's on well, it was
Speaker 1: on Go nine even it's on Amazon now. So it's
Speaker 1: like it's cool, man, it's we're really watching all of
Speaker 1: the different facets of the entertainment industry kind of merge
Speaker 1: in this new way. It's cool that there's but that
Speaker 1: is also including YouTubers. You know. The thing like everything
Speaker 1: is becoming so micro based, like micro channel based, Like
Speaker 1: we just started our Twitch channel and we'll have people
Speaker 1: will stream for like five hours, and there's people like
Speaker 1: spending their time watching us. I don't know why, but
Speaker 1: it's kind of like everything so split up that eventually,
Speaker 1: once especially the younger generation comes up, entertainment is going
Speaker 1: to have to realize that like, Okay, they're gonna watch
Speaker 1: what they want to watch. And I think that's gonna
Speaker 1: change things, especially for your internet creators. I mean it's
Speaker 1: already changed things so much. It's the whole reacon, Netflix,
Speaker 1: Hulu in Amazon are thriving so much is because now
Speaker 1: we've fostered a culture of watching what we want when
Speaker 1: we want, versus sitting around waiting weekly so much so
Speaker 1: that it's a weird treat when they flip it on us,
Speaker 1: like with Handmaids Tale, like they released that on a
Speaker 1: weekly basis and people are like, oh, this is different, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's regular to me. Yeah. And Amazon also has their
Speaker 1: pilot season where you can vote. Yeah, that's a big thing.
Speaker 1: So you as the audience gets to watch the pilot
Speaker 1: episode and then you vote on what gets picked up.
Speaker 1: That's a big deal. And if you have a lot
Speaker 1: of friends, Yeah, some friends that their shows got picked
Speaker 1: up and they were just like tweeting out getting all
Speaker 1: their famous friends to retweet them and uh. It is
Speaker 1: cool though for for creators to have that opportunity. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it has been the great equalizer in a lot
Speaker 1: of ways. It's kind of a weird thing because we're
Speaker 1: watching the like i mean, the establishment, for lack of
Speaker 1: a better expression, kind of figure things out and kind
Speaker 1: of get involved as well, but like, we still have
Speaker 1: a lot more control than creators did ten years ago,
Speaker 1: five years ago. Yeah, that's pretty cool. Yeah, well, I
Speaker 1: think that's a great place to leave this off. Danny
Speaker 1: and Rito. Where can people find you? Robot Underdog on Twitter, Facebook,
Speaker 1: and Instagram? Um, YouTube, it's Robot Underdog to just the
Speaker 1: number two. Yeah, I think that's it. You can find
Speaker 1: us individually on Instagram, Um, Donnie McMillan and I'm read
Speaker 1: to McMillan on Instagram. But yeah, definitely the YouTube page
Speaker 1: go subscribe. Oh on Twitch too, can't forget twitch. We
Speaker 1: literally just started our twitch, so it's like we always
Speaker 1: forget to say twitch, but we streamed twice a week
Speaker 1: on Twitch, and don't forget. If you have made a
Speaker 1: fan film, are looking to they are accepting submissions. Yeah, yeah, actually,
Speaker 1: and we're going to be releasing our first one of
Speaker 1: the series, which is gonna be it's called Red hood
Speaker 1: It and it's going to be releasing in a week
Speaker 1: or so next week. Yeah, so it's gonna be awesome.
Speaker 1: Been released nice, right, Well, you know me. You can
Speaker 1: catch me at if you I F Y n w
Speaker 1: A d i w E on Twitter and Instagram, is
Speaker 1: your boy if d s on the twitch. A lot
Speaker 1: of you all been coming out Zygang. I've been seeing
Speaker 1: you zygang. Hashtag nerd Gang too, nerd Gang. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: at ms Danny Fernandez, M S D A n I
Speaker 1: f E r n n d e Z. And also
Speaker 1: follow us on our socials at Nerdificent everywhere on Facebook,
Speaker 1: Instagram and Twitter and let us know what you want
Speaker 1: us to cover and some of your favorite fan films
Speaker 1: or if you've made a fan film, send it to us.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, definitely well, we'll urt those on the social account.
Speaker 1: And uh you know, if you have an already fox
Speaker 1: Star review, tell us how much you love us. Helps
Speaker 1: us out a great deal. Thank you so much, and
Speaker 1: I'll see you all the way. B