The Creative Potential in the Fan - Franchise Relationship

When more people have the opportunity to freely express their thoughts, whether completely original or influenced by something special to them, it brings about an environment where creativity can blossom. With the coming of the Internet, the entertainment industry has found its ways to monetize the creative works very comfortably in this relatively new medium. They have done so while having regular and usually-not-so-good interactions with a parallel ecosystem where fans and regular users contribute content which at times is way better than the original. I see the possibility of a positive change in this entire platform where we create and receive content at speeds we never had. This is just a way how I look at it and is not a detailed explanation where the legal and technical aspects are figured out. I am only putting this out here, that is all. Who doesn’t like a good film!? Films are an effective medium and can sometimes grow into something so influential that it spans generations and differences among cultures. Good films grow into franchises which simply have officially stamped things that are controlled and sold by the rightful owners of the concept. But with this success also grows a parallel market where users come up with alternate versions, storylines, spin offs and even games or books based on the original idea. All of this constitutes fan fiction and for this fan fiction to get officially ‘recognized’, either it has to be consumed by the original franchise (legal bullying etc.) or get permissions to make a small profit off of the concept. This is a ripe ground for debates where fair use, creative commons and the pro-copyright groups all try to fight it off on a turf that has a new ‘example setting’ legal suit to offer almost every other month. What if there could be an entire economy of both the original franchise and the fan fiction where anyone with a camera or any other creative tool could present a story or its part in his/her own way with no risk of landing in a legal confrontation? All they would have to do is approach the company with the concept and be willing to share the profits. Though this is already in place but here the key difference is that it is not big companies purchasing the rights to make a game, say, of Star Wars, but individual developers and hardware enthusiasts who always wished to have a game which allows them to battle R2D2s in real!! No board room meeting would ever come with the concept like that. The best trait of the Internet is that the genuinely good content does get noticed and spread. Spamming and marketing gives an immediate sense of visibility but if the end product lacks quality, it fades out with the ad-campaign. Some people ‘stay viral’ and make a career out of this exposure while others just exist as that one blip that happened in a huge screen. Here is where an uninfluenced and pretty democratic platform, like reddit, will let such works of fans get noticed. This also brings me to consider the media and entertainment houses and what they can do to make this whole journey an effective one. Releasing an entire book as a series of movies has been a tried and successfully tested model that always works and probably will as well. This is usually followed by books or computer games that are read or played by the people having that specific interest. Now if, consider again, Peter Jackson released the LOTR trilogy as a film, a computer game and a TV series. That would leave out the places for the fans to fill in with their own and countless renditions of this series. Fan fiction is common for legendary works like Star Wars, LOTR, Sherlock Holmes and James Bond but it is all very tightly laid out - the company works with the rightful owners of the concept on a film which gets all the attention and the profits. The other entertainment media have a lesser share or even a chance in the equation to prove themselves and hence hearing the comment, “The book/game/movie was better…” has become more common than ever. There should be an understanding that a single source of direction for creative work in different forms does not yield interesting results, the monotony and the isolation of this vision can be felt and becomes more audible as soon as someone else does the same thing. The personal touch and the different experience of this new creator gets instantly reflected into this re-work or extra-work adding a new color to the universe of the fantasy. This entire concept will make creative works last longer than they do and bring in the community into the process - the same community which has till now only had the access to legendary works of art from the other side of the glass.