Reader Contribution Comic

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Contents

Charade

These pages list the DVD chapter stops in the movie, with brief descriptions of the visuals. It's up to contributors to fill in plot and dialogue. I have a good DVD of the film and am posting screenshots of each scene to give contributors an idea of what it looks like. This process may take some time.

Write dialogue and plotting directly on these pages.

Administrator decisions

Firm decisions:

  • We will only use public domain, Creative Commons, or other similar open source film material. This frees us from copyright concerns, and the necessity to make a parody of the original works.
  • The first film to be used will be Charade. This 1963 film is in the public domain due to complexities of US copyright law at the time. It is a classic mystery starring Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn. The film is available on a reportedly good DVD transfer as a bonus feature with the 2002 remake The Truth About Charlie. (It's also available separately on several budget DVD labels, but the DVD transfers are poor.)
    • Unfortunately it's not available for download on the Internet Archive, but if someone wants to upload a copy there, then participants could download it.
  • Between films we may do short features as a sort of intermission.

Administrator suggestions

  • The double-layered gaming angle is getting a bit saturated as a genre and it would be nice to break that mould. So I'd prefer a gimmick-free story with conventional characterisation.
  • In discussion, the Comic Irregulars think it would be cool to do Charade as a horror story.

Name for the Project

We need a better name than "Reader Contribution Comic". Suggestions?

  • A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Cinema -- Groboclown
  • A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Theater -- Panpear (Or any other word for Cinema, but this one has two syllables.)
    • It does? It has three when I say it. -Dmmaus
      • I say Theater (and Theatre) like 'Thee ter'. Like the second pronunciation listed in the Wikitionary here. I suppose just using the word 'movies' would also have two syllables, to parallel 'forum'. -Panpear
  • You say Cinema, I say Cinema -- Maestro
  • You say Cinema, I say Enema -- Groboclown
  • Masterpun Theatre -- Panpear
  • Movie? What Movie? -- Colin Foster
  • Public Domain Theater -- Colin Foster
  • Let's All Go to the Lobby -- Colin Foster
  • Popcorn & Peanuts -- Maestro (Might be too similar to Darths & Droids and people might expect an RPG angle then)
  • Still Life with Moving Pictures -- Groboclown
  • Insidious Tales from the Beyond -- Groboclown
  • Lights, Camera, Re-Action --Panpear
  • As The Curtain Rises --Panpear
  • The Movies of Our Lives --Panpear
  • Rewind --Panpear
  • Fast Foward --Panpear

How about some movie terms? A short and pithy title is more memorable.

Copyright issues

This project must not knowingly break any laws. Therefore there are two options:

  1. The comic will very clearly be a parody of its own source material (as opposed to a vehicle to tell an unrelated story). Since the server is hosted in the US, this means (to the best of our knowledge) it falls under "fair use for the purpose of parody" provisions of US copyright law. It also won't hurt to select a film from a company known to tolerate this sort of fan activity (i.e. not Paramount).
  2. Use public domain/Creative Commons/open source material.

Movie nominations

Copyrighted works have been moved to Copyrighted Movie Nominations. The remainder of the films here are under public domain or creative commons.

Here are some collections of films with permissive licenses:


Animated

  • Sita Sings the Blues
    • A fairly recent animated film based around Indian myths and jazz music. Released into Creative Commons due to music licensing issues. Very interesting imagery, ranging from collage to squigglevision to no-outline. --Colin F.
    • Just watched it. Very interesting. But since the visuals change so much it could be difficult to keep the plot together. Or it could be separate stories. Or it could be mini stories. -Panpear
  • The seventeen public domain Superman cartoons from the 1940's
    • There's so many jokes and angles we could incorporate, like references to post-1940's comic book history (continuity chaos, later superhero tropes, etc.). Download links for all seventeen shorts are on the linked Wikipedia page. --BiggerJ

Comedy

  • The Little Shop of Horrors
    • The original black and white version, with Jack Nicholson making his film debut. Jokes could include references to the remakes. --Groboclown
  • Three Stooges
    • There's a collection of some of their shorts on the Internet Archive. As short films, these may work well as either between film breaks, or to help get the site rolling with something that doesn't take too much dedication. --Groboclown
      • I really like the idea of using this (or some other group) between films. That would be a nice segue to help keep a nice flow when switching between two completely different films. --Panpear 16:26, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

Horror

Science Fiction

  • The Last Man on Earth
    • Vincent Price stars in the movie adaptation of I Am Legend. May be interesting for making references to other Vincent Price films, along with all the remakes of the story. -- Groboclown
    • Available for download here.
  • Gammera the Invincible
    • A giant monster movie in the vein of Godzilla. Plenty of opportunity for a zany plot to be put on top of this. -- Groboclown
    • Available for download here.

Suspense

  • Charade
    • By all accounts, a classic film. --Colin F.
    • I've found a copy of it on 'yidio' here. It's the full movie, but it is also full of 30 second commercial breaks. You can also find the whole movie segmented on YouTube. (I haven't watched it in full yet on either site though) -Panpear
  • The 39 Steps
    • A Hitchcock film
    • Available for download here

Camp

Campy movies. These may fall into other categories (mainly sci-fi and horror), but are generally of the bad variety that they need their own category.


Basic premise

The comic needs a premise from which we can build a story. This list contains all the different ideas we've come up with that could be used.

Another RPG

As I've mentioned in the forum, what premise we pick for the comic (such as GM of the Rings and Darths & Droids' 'they're being played as tabletop RPGs in a universe where the original works never existed' premises) will influence what movie or movies we pick and vice versa, so those decisions should be discussed in tandem. So, should we do another tabletop RPG adaptation? Or pick another concept? Or just do a parody without a clever premise? BiggerJ 08:15, 29 August 2009 (UTC)
I've always thought that it might be fun to do an RPG, but of a different type - e.g.
  • Console turn-based game (JRPG)
    • Been done, but not as a screen-cap.
    • This might be difficult as it does not have a GM/DM rôle.
      • Though a GM-like role could be the 'player/s', versus the actual characters inside the game. --Panpear

MMORPG

  • This might be difficult as it does not have a GM/DM rôle.
    • There could possibly be in-game GMs that would be actual characters in the movie, such as Deus ex machina types that appear at the ends of movies to make everything right. --Panpear
  • This might be tricky since MMOs tend to lack a heavy plot; if they do have a plot, you often end up fighting the same people over long periods of times. It might be hard to find a movie that would fit the social model of MMOs. --Panpear
    • If people like this idea then we could take influences from more tightly plotted 'Western' style RPGs - e.g. Fable [1/2] / Oblivion [erm, I've only seen IV, but presumably the others] as well as the 'pure' MMORPG form - the fighting style in these RPGs being more 'real-time' - like in an MMORPG. --NeilTarrant 21:30, 1 September 2009 (UTC)
    • If that's the case, I suppose The Matrix might work well with an MMO theme; they could 'log off' to go to the real world, and 'log on' to enter the matrix. Maybe a premise similar to .hack. Only Matrix style. In addition, we could easily stop at the first movie to play around with different movies, as the first one is fairly encompassing. --Panpear 16:23, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

Live-action-role-play

  • Might be fun to have people bitch about real-life injuries. --NeilTarrant 10:40, 29 August 2009 (UTC)
  • I know that people LARP vampires and zombies sometimes... *cough*Twlight*cought*NightoftheLivingDead*cough* --Panpear

A gimmick-less parody

A parody comic without a gimmick might not be out of the question. Venerable website RinkWorks is currently doing Sinbad Comic, a parody photocomic of the 1989 film Sinbad of the Seven Seas. Story-wise, it doesn't seem to have any fancy over-arching gimmicks. BiggerJ 11:37, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

An original story

If we use public domain or open source material we can ditch parody and write a completely original story on top of the visuals. It doesn't even need to be predicated on humour at all - we could conceivably do a drama. (Although humour is probably easier all round.) -Dmmaus

A Trope-Drenched Story

An original story, but with each character and plot be based on some very generic, over-used, trope. Lampshade hanging optional. --Groboclown

  • I like this idea, even the lampshade hanging. But that is close to fourth wall breaking which should be avoided as much as possible in my opinion -- Maestro

Cross-Film Decisions

Since we're going to be working on many different films over the lifetime of this comic, there are a few concepts that we'll need to decide upon.

Story Arc

Should the films be part of one continuing story? Should each film be its own stand-alone entity, with no continuity to the other films? Should they be in the same universe (or similar universe), with possible reoccurring characters, but no implied continuity? --Groboclown
How would they be strung together? Would it just be completely separate comics? Plots completely interwoven? Or separate, yet strung together with another story? As mentioned above, there could be 'shorts' in between any movies covered. Possibly similar to Masterpiece Theatre? (Or, at least, the stereotypes I have in my head about what Masterpiece Theatre is... ) --Panpear
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