![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Highlander: a franchise that loves its fans
As Highlander is remastered season-by-season and reissued on blu ray, the franchise has whole heartedly embraced the fans and made them part of the process. Fan vids have been acknowledged for quite awhile. In fact, at the last Highlander Worldwide con each actor's panel was intoduced by a vid, some created just for the panel. It was great to watch the actors watching our stuff. The producer, Ken Gord, even congratulated me afterwards on my FB page for the vids that were there. And that brings us back to the blu ray. For season 2 they asked for fans to create documentaries not longer than 5 minutes that told the story of the Watchers and for fans to do video commentary for the episodes and talk about what makes the series special to them.
The Watcher documentary appealed to me. My initial plan was to create a tale of how the Watchers became integrated into the series as told by the writers on dvd commentary and cut it with footage from the series. It became evident really quickly that this would be more like a 20 minute documentary if I was going to tell the story I wanted. I opted for letting the footage from the series tell the story. I guess my training as a historian and archivist is showing - I wanted to let the primary source speak for itself.
I was very happy to find my vid was chosen. There were actually four chosen, each taking a different approach. Andrew Modeen wrote what is essentially an essay on the Watchers and their role in Highlander and meaning to the fans. This is presented as a voice-over for scenes from the series and some original scenes that were shot and blended in. Jeremy Off wrote and directed a very professional original fan film about an watcher following his assignment to a challenge. Deana Yates produced a film that took the form a a Watcher video blog.
It's very gratifying to be part of a fandom has been so enthusiastically embraced by the franchise itself.
The Watcher documentary appealed to me. My initial plan was to create a tale of how the Watchers became integrated into the series as told by the writers on dvd commentary and cut it with footage from the series. It became evident really quickly that this would be more like a 20 minute documentary if I was going to tell the story I wanted. I opted for letting the footage from the series tell the story. I guess my training as a historian and archivist is showing - I wanted to let the primary source speak for itself.
I was very happy to find my vid was chosen. There were actually four chosen, each taking a different approach. Andrew Modeen wrote what is essentially an essay on the Watchers and their role in Highlander and meaning to the fans. This is presented as a voice-over for scenes from the series and some original scenes that were shot and blended in. Jeremy Off wrote and directed a very professional original fan film about an watcher following his assignment to a challenge. Deana Yates produced a film that took the form a a Watcher video blog.
It's very gratifying to be part of a fandom has been so enthusiastically embraced by the franchise itself.
no subject
no subject
no subject
There are fans and there are fans; there are HL vids and there are HL vids.
no subject
Of course there's a HL presence on LJ and that's where I was lured into vidding. There's also the HL Fiction and fanfiction that's on fanfiction.net. HL has an increasing presence on Facebook, the main Hihghlander: The Series page has over 9,000O people who are listed as fans. I know that former HL writers Gillian Horvath and Donna Lettow are on FB and have seen vids there.
One of the most active group of HL fans, and one that interacts most with TPTB is Highlander Worldwide which has around 1000-1100 members. The last HLWW con was in LA and we had a panel on the history of HL vidding, the notes for which are on fanlore. There's also where we had vids introducing the panels. I believe Don't Fear the Reaper was used for one. The Richie vid by
There's a lot of going on with fans and HL that has absolutely nothing to do with the official board.
no subject
no subject
I'm very dubious about the value and the quality and the purpose of the franchise's interaction with fan creativity, to be clearer. There's a marked tendency, for one thing, to draw from mainstream communities that contain a visible population of male fans and to spotlight male fans in any work distributed to the public.
I reprinted your list of vids you showed from your fanlore entry in
no subject
I would actually argue that there are two distinct groups of people who sort of make up TPTB. There is quite a difference between the relationship between fans and Davis-Panzer (including the merchandising of HL stuff) and between fans and creative people who made Highlander what it is. Adrian, Peter, David Abramowitz and most of the others involved have an active and positive relationship with fans while Davis-Panzer views us mainly as a source of income.