A trip to Whedeonville, Seattle
Late last week, Wired News published my story about visiting the set of Cherub, a highly successful fan-made Web satire of Joss Whedon’s TV series Angel. Cherub just wrapped filming for its second season, and it was a real treat to see the cast and crew in action. They filmed in show creator Scott O. Moore’s converted garage, and yet managed to have a very professional setup with excellent camera equipment, as well as truly excellent actors. The group even let me play a bit part as an evil elf in the Christmas episode.
Fan shows like Cherub demonstrate how much our creativity is dependent on being able to use already-existing culture as a springboard for our fancies. Copyright expansionists would like to see fan films squelched because they dare to use familiar characters and situations to tell new stories. Though Cherub is a clear parody, and hopefully won’t be targeted by Warner Bros.’ lawyers, it’s part of a new wave of popular culture made possible by media remixing. To find out more about cool fan films set in the Whedonverse, read my article!
June 14th, 2006 at 2:37 pm
Great article. It was nice of you to help out those fan filmmakers get the attention they deserve for their efforts.
June 16th, 2006 at 4:46 pm
Speaking of Whedon stuff, you do know about the worldwide June 23rd (or thereabouts) fan-sponsored “Serenity” screenings to a) celebrate Joss Whedon’s birthday and b) raise money for Joss Whedon’s favorite charity Equality Now? The info can be found here: http://www.cantstoptheserenity.com
June 21st, 2006 at 4:13 pm
Cool — though of course I think we should also be giving money to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, seeing as they’re standing up to AT&T and the government right now. Go, EFF! (www.eff.org)
June 27th, 2006 at 6:39 pm
Yeah, it’s funny. Previous generations had popular characters and tropes they could work with, but ours are copyrighted. You can’t write a story about Kirk and Spock without Paramount’s permission.
Not to mention the mashups. I really want to see Arthur Dent get beamed onto Picard’s Enterprise, where they find Cthulhu sleeping on a faraway planet…damn copyright. And a beholder, too!
I think I’ve read someone writing about this…it may even have been you.