• by Shankar Gupta , January 11, 2005

Short film and animation site www.AtomFilms.com has teamed up with "Star Wars" producer LucasFilms to host the Fourth Annual Star Wars Fan Film awards, which solicits submissions from "Star Wars" fanatics who create their own spoofs, documentaries, and mockumentaries about the popular sci-fi series.

Finalists, which are posted on the site, have been viewed about 10 million times since 2002, according to AtomFilms Senior Web Producer Joel Sanders. Last year's finalists include "Pink Five Strikes Back," which places a ditzy valley girl in the "Star Wars" universe and has her trained as a Jedi, and "Recruitment," a spoof of army recruitment ads, which asks: "Are you tired of your current job? Looking for something new and exciting? Then maybe you should enlist in the Galactic Empire." The short features a storm trooper who makes passes at all his masked brothers-in-arms, hoping one of them will actually be a sister. One of them responds: "I'm a guy. You know, in fact, we're all guys."

Last year's winner, which was selected by "Star Wars" creator George Lucas himself, was titled "Escape from Tatooine," and spoofed not only "Star Wars," but "The Matrix" and "Planet of the Apes" as well. At the end of the film, the hero returns to his own planet to find the Lincoln Monument occupied by a statue of George Lucas, with the inscription "In this temple as in the hearts of the fans for whom he ruled the box office the glory of George Lucas is enshrined forever."

The submitted films occupy the entire spectrum of production values. "We get people who shoot hand-held cameras out in Kansas, and we get people who are members of professional production groups," Sanders said.

LucasFilms entered the partnership with AtomFilms to create these awards to give a boost to young independent filmmakers who are also fans of "Star Wars." "It brings out people who want to be filmmakers," Sanders said. It started with LucasFilms really trying to find a vehicle to place an umbrella up for all these fans who want to exhibit their incredible love for "Star Wars" by making these fan films."

Some independent film companies have gotten a big publicity boost from their involvement in this contest. "We have a lot of companies that are doing work, and this has given them a tremendous amount of presence."

One example is Bentframe, an independent musical group that combined their freestyle hip-hop with comedy to produce the popular "Star Wars Gangsta Rap" and "Star Wars Gangsta Rap: Special Edition," the original version of which garnered 4.3 content plays only a few months after it was released in 2002. The Flash cartoon propelled them to online celebrity and success, and their tracks on www.mp3.com registered more than 2.5 million downloads.

AtomFilms is anticipating an avalanche of submissions this year because of the buzz generated by the release of the final film in the "Star Wars" series, Sanders said. They are considering supporting the contests after the end of the series, but no concrete plans have yet been made. "There'll always be interest and fan filmmaking around 'Star Wars,'" Sanders said. "There are really not that many brands that can drive that kind of fandom."