Fan Films

Like most people around the world, I love movies. I watch everything from low budget B-flicks to mega million dollar Hollywood productions. While a lot of them have not been gems, I continue to watch, hoping to find my new favorite movie.

I started collecting movies when I was around 12 years old and have amassed nearly 5,000 of them in the past 20 something years. However my collection is growing at a much slower rate lately. Between having a family, school, gas prices and the fact that so many of the movies produced today are just sub par, I have become very choosy about which movies I buy or rent. While the big budget movies coming out of Hollywood these days may have incredible FX, a great many of them are poorly written and a lot of the acting is worse than you would see in a bad B-flick. Don’t even get me started on how bad the B-flicks have gotten. Just as I was becoming more and more jaded about the whole of cinema I was introduced to a new viewing experience, fan films.

Many of these short films have better writing and acting than a lot of the stuff the big studios churn out. Fan Films are a labor of love for most of the people that take the time to make them. Who in the world would make a Blue Beetle short other than a true fan? Well Blinky Productions has done several shorts with Blue Beetle, including the hilarious Blue and Gold PSA. Now before you get the wrong impression Blinky Production isn’t just limited to using Blue Beetle and Booster Gold. If you check out their website, Youtube or countless other fan film sites that feature their shorts, you will see films starring Powergirl, The Flash, Michael Meyers, Hourman, The Question, and many more. Perhaps because I am a Blue and Gold fan from way back I am a bit biased when I say the fan films put out by Blinky Productions are some of my favorites, but don’t just take my word for it, check them out.

While fan films cover a wide range of topics, I tend to search out the Star Wars and Superhero shorts. Some of them have production values that would stand up to anything done in Hollywood, especially some of the Star Wars fan films. There are numerous sites where you can find fan films, just put fan films in your search engine and you’ll see, but I have a few that I frequent and personally think are the most user friendly.

Fan Films.net
This is the site I use the most. The films are broken down into topic and the site is fairly easy to navigate.

The Force.net
This is another good site with links to some other great fan film sites.

Fanboy Theatre
Another good site with lots of information and links

Fan Flicks.com
This one came highly recommended by a few friends.

My list may not be a comprehensive one but it will help you get a good start in discovering some of the often brilliant fan produced films that are out there.