Highlander: a franchise that loves its fans

[valoise]

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.

Comments

[luscious-words.livejournal.com]

Congratulations! That's really cool. :)

[pat-t.livejournal.com]

That is great. I'm thinking about getting a Blu Ray player and buying the Blu Ray version. And congrats.

[unovis.livejournal.com]

My impression has been that TPTB have only seen a tiny, controlled sample of the full, historic range of HL vidding. The franchise has also ignored fan creativity except for a narrow band of stuff, mostly connected with the mainstream official bulletin board and Gen and low=rated het writing, art, and vids.

There are fans and there are fans; there are HL vids and there are HL vids.

[mackiedockie.livejournal.com]

Congratulations on being selected, Valoise! The original show was originally so secretive about the Watchers and their checkered and deep history, that it must have taken some serious archival detective work to put togeter a coherent study. I'll look forward to seeing what you created when the opportunity presents!