-How can we enter
the fictional world without disrupting it?
-How can we be
sure that imaginary actions will not have real results?
-How can we act on
our fantasies without becoming paralyzed by anxiety?
Yet what if we negate these concerns entirely, and embrace the
spectator disrupting the story, creating real results, and embracing their
exploration in the fantasy world? Star
Wars Uncut (2012), the collective fan-based cinema montage of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (1977),
does just that.
After watching the film, I found the
Henry Jenkins reading on Convergence
to be most pertinent to the experience of critiquing this unique film. For
the production, the entire 2-hour movie was split in 15-second segments and
dispersed to fans that reenacted the segment however they liked. Then the 796
film segments were collected and edited back together in the correct order. As
a viewer, this made it impossible to become “immersed” in the film because you
only had 15 seconds to enjoy each clip before it disappeared forever. By
remaining distanced and alienated from the world of the film, this project
allows you to closely study the convergence of old and new media, the co-dependent relationship
between producers and consumers, and the extreme relevance of Jenkins’s core
claim:
“…convergence
represents a shift in the ways we think about our relations to media, that we
are making that shift first through our relations with popular culture, but
that the skills we acquire through play may have implications for how we learn,
work, participate in the political process, and connect with other people
around the world.” (23)
He also emphasizes that the
convergence culture, is “where old and new media collide, where grassroots and
corporate media intersect, where the power of the media producer and the power
of the media consumer interact in unpredictable ways.” (2) This
is all exemplified in Star Wars Uncut.
To recap my experience with the film, I am going list key observations that I
made as I watched it, therefore getting a sense of my spectator “stream of
consciousness”, since I was never fully “immersed” in the movie. This also
fits the nature of the film: a new interpretation or idea every 15 seconds.
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MY SPECTATOR STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS:
-This movie
could offend die-hard Star Wars fans. Does some of it seem disrespectful at
all? How much weight should we ever give the audience’ critiques and
interpretations of our work? If I was George Lucas, how should I feel about
this movie: flattered or ashamed?
-I wonder what
the other filmmakers thought of each other’s interpretations. Some seemed to
take it much more seriously than others, yet regardless, they all turn out silly
since they are a cheaper representation of a classic.
-People are so
creative. I cannot believe they came up with this many different ways to
interpret a 15-second segment, all from the same movie. I loved how they used
other forms of media to narrate their segment (not even an entire scene) in a
creative way:
-News channel reports
-Techno music video remixes
-Infomercials
-All types of animation
-Digital media: Paint, MUD text, Social networking
-Consumerism is
displayed here, as many people used Star
Wars merchandise such as actions figures and costumes for their scenes. On
that, some people had a lot of resources and talent, and others did not. Does
that affect how we view their level of fandom?
-Are the
filmmakers all diehard fans of the original movie, or do they just like to make
movies in general? Does that even matter? How do you even measure fandom?
-How do I feel
about those who actually incorporated REAL footage or sound effects from the
original film? Is that blasphemous and disrespectful? Is that cheating? Did the
producers of this project have any rules, or was every interpretation
allowed?
-Do we judge or
categorize a movie based on the type of people who watch it? (ie: chick flicks)
Is that good or bad? Is there innate social status tied to fandom of certain
genres?
-In this movie,
the fans are entirely controlling our perception of the narrative. Is that
causing me anxiety?
-Some of the
funniest parts were the incorporation of non-related pop-cultural references
into the sequences, like Simpsons and Disney dolls. What does that say about us,
and our love of—and dependency on—popular culture to make us laugh?
-SOUND:
-The constant
non-diegetic orchestration unified the movie and attempted to keep me immersed
in the world of the film.
-Dialogue
format: original recording, subtitles, other languages, modernized
colloquialisms, children’s book format, etc.
-The humming of
the famous non-diegetic motifs made them diegetic, and got the most laughs. But
WHY?
-How much
enjoyment and satisfaction did the filmmakers feel for their 15 seconds of
“fame”?
-This project put
all the workload on the fans, thus switching the relationship between PRODUCERS
and CONSUMERS:
-The 1977 Original Film: Producers (the original makers and distributors) had to do all the work,
while the consumers just had to buy it and watch it.
-The 2012 Fan-Based Film: Producers just had to distribute the clips to the consumers and piece
them back together. The consumers had to do all the work. Thus the consumers
became the producers, and the producers became the consumers. Though the consumers
did return to their role, consuming their product in full, once the producers returned
to their role, and produced the film.
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All of my thoughts relate to Jenkins’s
main concepts: “Convergence” is the
flow of content across multiple media platforms, the cooperation between
multiple media industries, and the migratory behavior or media audiences who
search to obtain entertainment. It involves technological, industrial,
cultural, and social changes. It depends on the consumer’s active participation
to seek out new information and make connections among different media content.
This establishes a “Participatory
Culture,” where everyone is interacting with each other according to a new
set of rules and resources, built upon a “Collective
intelligence”: no one knows everything but we all know something, and
together as the consumers/participators, we become our own source of media
power, and can co-produce within the world of converging media.
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