I never did follow-up…

At Comic-Con, RvD2 won the Star Wars Fan Movie Award for Best Visual Effects, which is a previously non-existent category apparently created solely to award us for it.¹

Not to look a gift horse in the mouth; MC Steve Sansweet had some amazingly kind things to say about both RvD and RvD2. I’m paraphrasing here, but it was to the effect of “When they announced that they were going to do a second one, we all wondered how they could possibly top themselves. But they did. Great work.”

I may be reading into things, but that very brief kudos holds a lot of information between the lines. To wit:

-I assume that the “we” means, generally, “folks at Lucasfilm,” potentially up to and including Lucas himself (to whom Sansweet has a direct line)

-They were aware of — and apparently liked — RvD well before RvD2 hit the scene

-They were paying enough attention to us to notice that we had announced a sequel in the works. This also means:

-They were aware of our call for donations before the film, and are almost certainly fully aware of the fact that we are selling DVDs. Regardless of the fact that the donations were true, voluntary donations, and the content being sold is legally ours to sell, both could have raised some hackles, and the fact that LFL has not only turned a blind eye to our activities but actively praised those activities’ product is worth my gratitude.

I may be cynical about what LFL is offering the fans these days, but there can be no denying that they do know how valuable those fans are.

So thank you, Steve Sansweet, Atom, and Lucasfilm. I probably wouldn’t have given two shakes if you didn’t like the films, but it does mean something to me that you did.

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1. Oddly, a category that did exist in previous years, and the one for which I actually thought we would be in the running — Best Action — was omitted from this year’s competition. ↩

RvD2 in the Atomfilms Contest

For those not familiar, Lucasfilm got wise to the fan film phenomenon about five years ago and started an official contest for the best in fan films. At the time it was something of a joke, since they only allowed parody fan films and not serious, and many of the fan films submitted were created for the contest and in no way representative of actual fan filmmaking.

The rules (and rewards) have gone through several permutations, including changing from their insistence that content be exclusive to allowing non-exclusive content, as well as allowing, for the first time last year, “serious” fan fiction films to be submitted. So this year we decided to enter the contest.

So if you have a few minutes, pop over to the official Atomfilms site (now simply Atom.com¹), register if you haven’t already, and give us a vote or two if you liked our stuff. You have to be registered and signed in to vote.

NOTE: If you have a pop-up blocker, you have to disable it in order to get the voting option. Also, the site seems to not play nice with Safari, but Firefox is fine.

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1. I apologize in advance for subjecting you to the profoundly shitty experience that is the new Atom. Apparently they’ve been turned into an offshoot of Comedy Central, so everything on there has to be “funny”. Which, like most “comedy” sites, only means that it’s tedious.↩

Weezer Video: Pork and Beans

Okay, so you know that “music video from a prominent band” I mentioned?

As some of you have no doubt surmised, it was Weezer, for their single Pork and Beans. That is really us, but since it was shot in HD and then downscaled to YouTube I’ve been cut out of almost every shot.

Fun fact: they apparently wanted Star Wars Kid initially; when that didn’t pan out, they called us. Works for me!

We also managed to talk them into letting us do the lightsaber effects for the video ourselves, although ultimately I did all the lightsabers and Ryan did all the drumsticks (which they wanted in red and then changed).

That is *really* everyone it’s supposed to be. Doing the shoot was incredibly surreal given that we had all seen and enjoyed each others’ videos, and everyone there was incredibly cool and fun to talk to. (And yes, they’d all seen the South Park episode they were in.)We all exchanged e-mails, which may just turn out to be your high school yearbook “K.I.T.!!!” gesture, but hopefully not.

Anyway, we all had a great time and even though we’re not in there for much of it, we’re proud to be a part of it and we hope it gets a bazillion views.

One Year of RvD2, Five Years of RvD

One year ago, on March 1, 2007, Ryan and I released RvD2: Ryan vs. Dorkman 2 on YouTube. As of this writing YouTube counts 2,618,867 views of the film, and new people continue to find and comment on it on a daily basis.

Five years ago, March 1 2003, Ryan and I released the original Ryan vs Dorkman, having no idea what it would get us, besides bragging rights on a message board. From its sudden YouTube popularity in March/April 2006, we got industry contacts — including my manager — worldwide attention, and the kick in the pants we needed to go make RvD2, which set off a brand new round of fun and attention.

So, with the anniversary of both films — a year of RvD2, and a full half-decade of RvD — I thought it was a good opportunity to chat about what we’ve been up to this year.