INTERVIEW: JEREMY WEST (POWER OF THE SITH, THE NEWBORN UPRISING, HAN SOLO SWITCH PARODY, PRODITION)
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interview conducted began 2/25/2003

Jeremy West is an adult in a kids' world. Sometimes literally—the stars of his first fan film and his upcoming one are his children. But here's a guy in his thirties, with a wife and children, who still finds time to play violent video games and make fan films. Jeremy's youngest shares the same birthday as me, which makes me wonder why I didn't get born into a Star Wars family and this lucky kid does.

Oh, well...

Okay—basics. Name, age, location, favorite Star Wars movie.

My name is Jeremy West, I’m 31, I live in Virginia Beach, VA, and I’m addicted to my computer. Oh, and every hardcore Star Wars fan knows Empire is the best of all the Star Wars movies.

I'm more of an ANH guy myself. How about your kids?

They LOVE Star Wars almost as much as I did as a kid, which is cool. There aren’t many things that me and my kids both think are cool, but that’s the great thing about Star Wars. It really is a timeless adventure and the effects still stand up today. I’m not sure my kids have a favorite. They like Jar Jar of course, but they also think Jango was awesome. They’ve been blaring AOTC recently on the DVD. My 5 year old was watching the clone battle so loud one day that it woke my wife up from a nap and she thought our city was being bombed! Ahh, youth!

What's going to happen when these kids grow up, I wonder? Will they join a message board and start ripping into the beloved saga? Or will they be in the generation that views the PT with the same nostalgia as we view the OT?

Ahh, youth!

We move on to discuss the fan film world as a whole...

Star Wars fan films are so popular because you already have a HUGE internet fan base eager to view anything related to the greatest sci-fi movies of all time. Plus, I think that since we have only had five movies in the last twenty-five years, the fans aren’t as inundated with material like the Star Trek franchise is. I mean, they had like ten movies and fifteen different television spin-offs over the past forty years. STOP THE MADNESS!!

(He fails to recall our beloved television spin-off, the Holiday Special.)

He jokes:

I just think people were tired of all the “Dukes of Hazzard” fanfilms and wanted to see something different for a change...

Then turns serious as he discusses the fan filmmaker's motivation:

I can’t speak for other filmmakers, but for me the desire to make fan films grew out of my passion for Star Wars and as a tribute to how it affected my personality growing up. It has influenced a major portion of my life including my choice of careers. For me, it’s a chance to honor George Lucas and his vision and also to explore my own creativity. Plus, turning a plastic toy into a glowing light blade of death using your computer is totally boss.

What was the last really good fan film you watched?

Run Leia Run of course!

Liar, he said, blushing.

Also, How the Sith Stole Christmas was just amazing. Broken Allegiance was incredible too. Nick just blows me away with his professionalism and attention to detail. There was a lot of great stuff this last year.

Same question, dealing with mainstream films.

I was actually impressed with Minority Report. I thought the story was great and visually the movie was done really well. I even liked the politically correct Spielberg ending regardless of what some other “film purists” believe. I’m also a sucker for M. Night’s work and thoroughly enjoyed Signs.

Besides your own, what's your favorite fan film and why?

Well, I’m not going to be very original, but if it weren’t for Dave and Mark making Duality as well as they did, I might not have been so inspired to try my hand at it. They gave me the confidence to try some things and their online tutorials really helped me get going. Mark was also very helpful by giving me some sound effects and things like that, so I really owe them a debt of gratitude. Plus, Duality is just such a flawless piece. It just amazes me everytime I watch it. It’s the only fan film I carry around on my PocketPC, so I’m going to have to go with Duality.

What do you foresee as the next big development in fan films?

I think we’re going to start seeing more projects like Tydirium and Broken Allegiance where fan films are going to stop being one or two friends getting together in the woods behind the house and will start being major productions. This is hard to do now because we can’t make any money on these films, but I think that eventually you’ll see people pooling their talents and resources to make something that will be difficult to distinguish from the actual Star Wars films. That’s where the digital revolution is taking us. Five or six years ago, very few people could afford the equipment needed to do the kinds of effects that are needed for a Star Wars film. Now, with a six-hundred-dollar computer and a seventy-dollar software program, you can do really cool stuff.

(Assuming people pay for the software, of course.)

Something about Jeremy's comment worries me. I sort of like the "one or two friends" mentality in a fan film production. The power of the individual to get a movie made.

And I wonder if he's insinuating that the big productions are going to put little guys like him out of "business"... But I shake it off and move on:

What do you hope to see in a fan film?

Well, my favorite characters from the films were Han Solo and Boba Fett. I’d like to see more bounty hunter type of films or even some films about the early days of Han Solo and how he got into smuggling. I would also like to see something that focuses on the very early days of the Jedi and the Sith, or to see the Sith destroying each other because of jealously and power—man, that would be cool.

[But] I don’t think it’s appropriate to say that anything is taboo for fan films. One of the biggest complaints is that fan films are becoming too “formulaic”, and if we as a community start setting limits on ideas or creativity then we’re just going to see the same things over and over again. I say let your creativity run wild and if you are happy with it, that’s all that matters.

I don't have the heart to ask him about the crucial issue of forests.

But he's got a point, one that to an extent I agree with—it's not what you do, it's how you do it. Although I wonder how much you can squeeze out of one formula.

Let's talk Power of the Sith. It wasn't originally planned for release on the Internet. What made you decide to take the leap and show it off?

I had originally just made Power of the Sith as a Christmas present for my folks so they could see their grandsons as Jedi. I had kind of been lurking in the TFN fan film forums for a year or so and after I finished it I thought I’d just post it on my Apple webspace and let a few people check it out for a laugh. I had no idea that within a few days I would have used up several gigs of bandwidth and cause Apple to remove the movie off their servers. Those who had seen it before it got pulled were very supportive and suggested I submit it to TFN. Jeff was gracious enough to host it and made it a featured film for a while.

Would you have done anything differently in making it had the plan been to show it publicly from the beginning?

I guess I was kind of naïve to the impact that TFN had and the amount of exposure the film would get. Had I known, I would have taken my time to do costumes correctly and props and locations, but maybe not doing those things added to the charm of the piece. I mean, there’s nothing quite like seeing the Outrider land in your cul-de-sac! This film was fun, but it was the first time I had ever used a 3D application and I had never done anything like it before so the learning curve was huge.

The title seems a bit misleading (heck, when I first heard it I assumed it was another lame forest duel). Was this deliberate?

Well, Power of the Sith sounded really cool at the time, but honestly I didn’t have any ulterior motive behind the name. It was more like… “Hmm… the film is done now—I guess I need a name.” Had I known that there was such a stigma attached to films with “of the” in the title I may have chosen something different. In the end, I guess the title was at the bottom of the list of things to do for the film. To those of you who checked out the film because the title gave you the idea that you were going to see Duality 2, I humbly apologize.

We move on to discuss AtomFilms. Here's a guy who'd never really made a movie before and all of a sudden he's thrust into a world of contracts and papers and this and that. If TFN was overwhelming, I wondered how AtomFilms was treating him...

Well, it was kind of a whirlwind. The first thing I had to do was change the music. I contacted a friend of mine who is an amazing musician and asked him if he could whip up some original music for my film… in two weeks! Nathan Jones came through in ways I never expected and we put the new music into the film. After that it was a series of overnight deliveries for the contest and once we got accepted it was more overnight deliveries to the copyright office and trying to find someplace that I could get a BetaSP tape made (d'oh!) plus you had to sign all kinds or release forms stating that they were about to use my film for all kinds of money making ventures and I couldn’t have any of it… I HATE paperwork and I had to get all kinds of actor release forms and music release forms... It was pretty crazy for a while, but in the end it was worth it. I mean, we even got a mention on the Sci-Fi Channel special which was cool. My dad freaked out when he saw his grandson in one of the commercials on national TV. Pretty cool stuff and an experience I’ll never forget.

How was the making of the Han Solo Switch Parody handled?

The Han Solo Switch Parody was done in about an hour in my in-laws' dining room. It had good natural light and a big white wall so It made for a good set. I shot the whole thing by myself, so it was kind of weird with me just standing in a room with a camera on a tripod, but not having anyone around helped me to act like an idiot. “Star Destroyers in Sector Four!” I actually just shot each clip in the order that the script was written. I would frame each shot differently and then do the line until I got a take I wanted, then moved to the next line and did it all over again. Knocked it out pretty quickly that way and the final product came out pretty nicely, I think.

(I think so too.)

Presumably with a wife and kids there's a "day job" in your life. Discuss.

Oh yes. Not all of us can spend all day working on fan films. I do have a mortgage after all. I work for a technology consulting company and do Macintosh and PC support. It allows me to stay up on what’s happening in technology and gives me a chance to share some of my troubleshooting skills with folks who need help in the forums. More importantly, it keeps the electricity on at home to power the computers. Hard to render After Effects comps without power.

Your kids, the kids from Kid Wars and the kids from Dark Skies all get together to play in the sandbox. What do you think happens?

MasterZap’s kids beat the crud out of my kids, and DaftMaul’s kids stand on the side and wonder how the yanks beat them in the Revolutionary War.