Videomaker Toolkit is a fan-driven promotion that's heavily advertised on the official site. Its instructions {http://scifi.com/battlestar/videomaker/instructions/} invite us to "be a part of Battlestar Galactica" by creating a four minute tribute film, the best of which will be selected to air on television. In order to "help give your videos the Battlestar look and sound," a menu of downloadable audio and video clips is provided, while the rules place a premium on an archaic "ex nihilo" model of originality by stipulating that the only additional material permitted is that which "you created." Moreover, these "tools" are limited to less than 40 short CGI-based establishment and action sequences (divided into "land" and "space" and including mostly ships, architecture, and explosions), plus a number of signature sound effects and only seven partial music tracks (also included is the show's logo image and a required ending clip plugging "new episodes of Battlestar Galactica" and Videomaker itself). That is, Videomaker's conception of sanctioned derivative filmmaking is extremely narrow, notably excluding the character-based dramatic scenes that make up the majority of the show. This constriction is a by-product of at least two larger contradictions in which the project is embroiled: first, its conflicting creative and promotional imperatives to pay homage to the show thematically and formally (using its "look and sound"), while nonetheless generating a work that is otherwise wholly original and non-infringing; second, television and the internet's conflicting regimes of distribution and value, wherein the existence of a fanbase skilled in internet video production is assumed, while it is simultaneously assumed that recognition by and on television is incentive enough to channel this artistic labor out of the internet at large and into SciFi's walled garden.
Given the over 100 approved Videomaker submissions, these contradictions don't seem to be crippling, but neither are they likely to be easily expelled from the burgeoning brood of fan-driven promotions. Delving into the contest's Terms and Conditions {http://scifi.com/battlestar/videomaker/terms/}, it becomes evident how entrenched these two conflicts are in the Byzantine folly of current intellectual property law. The former, here most succinctly stated "SCI FI is only interested in your original work," simply ports over copyright's founding ideology of self-contained artistic production. Notably, SciFi claims only non-exclusive rights to Videomaker submissions (outside of Toolkit materials); the imperative, in the instructions, to "not post your film on other sites, such as YouTube, MySpace, Google, etc." is thus more polite request than binding condition. This slight loosening of SciFi's juridical border patrol can also serve to remind us that Battlestar Galactica's production team is far from equivalent to NBC legal (as Ron Moore suggests in his schizophrenic disclaimer about fanfic, quoted above), and their untenable position between a creative rock and a legal hard place may be similar to that of fans. Copyright is equally entangled with the latter issue: changing architectures of digital distribution. The lawyers have come up with a remarkable catalogue of verbs enumerating everything that can or conceivably could be done to a media object, one practically worthy of science fiction itself:
The legal terms must here contend not only with present-day conditions of media reproduction, but with the futures and fantasies of remediation. These fantasies of transcoding media "hereafter devised" are not unrelated to BSG's Cylons' fantasies of hybrid offspring, and pose similar challenges of containment to their more hierarchical human counterparts.
If both Colonial and corporate authorities respond to runaway procreation with a combination of force and subterfuge, both also recognize that it would be a death sentence to shut out the possibilities of hybridity entirely. While Videomaker attempts to carefully channel and circumscribe audience labor, it has nonetheless become a vibrant occasion for and celebration of fan creativity. Unlike many internet promotions, this project assumes and allows a broad technical latitude among its participants, who are expected to use their own video equipment, software, and expertise (rather than a "user-friendly" web-based interface) to produce their submissions. This expectation demonstrates an understanding of and respect for the community of science fiction fans, who historically tend to be aficionados of real-world as well as imagined technologies. In Jenkins' chapter on fan filmmaking in Convergence Culture, he takes Star Wars as a case study, describing various films and several web sites that have collected them, including Lucasfilm's official clearinghouse Atomfilms.com (launched in 2000, and running contests in 2003 and 2005). Like Videomaker on a grander scale, Atomfilms attempts to draw bright lines around fan production, offering its stamp of approval (as well as a library of audio clips) in exchange for strict adherence to intellectual property law (parody and documentary only, no "attempts to expand on the Star Wars universe" [quoted in Jenkins, 154]). As Jenkins points out, "these rules are anything but gender-neutral" (155): the "original" (ostensibly materially and critically distanced) genres that enjoy legal and corporate sanction are disproportionately produced by men, while creative works that explore relationships between characters and "expand the universe" are the almost exclusive preserve of women. This schism is generated, perpetuated, and negotiated in complex ways, but it remains baldly entrenched: in the case of Videomaker, 81 of the authors listed for the first 100 submissions have typically male names, by my count (8 have typically female names, and 11 are indeterminate or collaborations). This gendered hierarchy is one example of the Gordian snarls of power that arise as media producers and fans (and their respective products) become increasingly interdependent and indistinguishable.
Take, for instance, one of the two initial sample videos posted in Videomaker Toolkit: "Toaster Lover" {http://video.scifi.com/player/?id=64712} (written, directed and edited by Margaux Luciano and Randy Giudice, who we might assume to be a male-female team). "Toaster Lover" takes the form of a fake movie trailer, a parodic genre recognizable from YouTube. Ordinarily, fake trailers combine an edited sequence of video clips with new or borrowed trailer audio to suggest a humorous reinterpretation of the source (one popular variant is the "Brokeback Mountain" spoof: these highlight the gay subtext between everyone from R2-D2 and C-3PO to He-Man and Man-at-Arms). As such, they are formally similar to fan videos, while differing greatly in tone and context. "Toaster Lover" obeys the contest's stipulation of originality by using homemade instead of appropriated video (adeptly integrated with stock establishing shots from the Toolkit), but includes the framing captions and voiceover of a trailer, as well as Brokeback Mountain's famous line "I wish I could quit you." Its imagined movie tells a tale of star-crossed love between a male pilot and a Centurion (the big metal "toasters" who were among the first Cylon models), with the tagline "for years they were enemies, until the day that chance brought two lonely souls together" (Figure 2). "Toaster Lover" thus showcases the ways that Videomaker can mobilize hybridity on multiple registers: it (like other "Brokeback" style trailers) combines the parodic distance typical of the male-dominated world of fan films with the focus on same-sex romance that is a signature of female vidding communities, and (like all Videomaker submissions) it toes the line between ostensibly original and derivative production.
"Toaster Lover" is particularly effective as a spoof and as an exemplary Videomaker film because it comments astutely on an aspect of Battlestar Galactica: the queerness that infuses its narratives of alternative relationships and families. Centurions are not explicitly gendered, and the fact that, with its quotations from stories of forbidden love, "Toaster Lover" draws a parallel between inter-technic and same-sex romance highlights the overarching queer subtext of human-Cylon connection and conflict. Beyond the diegetic parallels, I'm tempted to read "Toaster Lover" allegorically as a romance between big media producers and fanboys: the monstrous automaton and the scrappy softie who find true love as war between their kinds wages around them. Certainly this is the fantasy that Videomaker itself embodies, with its show of community participation in the "rate this video" stars, comment box, and "send to friend" button – while at the same time reinscribing normative boundaries through the control it exerts over the process (the viewer ratings, for example, have no discernable importance or effect). Given this allegory, we might ask whether derivative labor overall is metaphorically queer, since it's a form of reproduction that mates supposedly incompatible parents ("original" media source and "original" creativity) to spawn hybrid offspring. BSG, Videomaker, and "Toaster Lover" as it marries them foreground the way that mediation is itself a species of forbidden desire. Both Cylons and fans are threatening because they're in networked communication with technology, and because their desires to be mediated dispute sanctioned boundaries and generate rogue progeny. It remains to be seen whether the constraints of sponsored initiatives like Videomaker, with their intrinsic compromises and contradictions, can adequately channel these desires into one big happy capitalist family.
Given the over 100 approved Videomaker submissions, these contradictions don't seem to be crippling, but neither are they likely to be easily expelled from the burgeoning brood of fan-driven promotions. Delving into the contest's Terms and Conditions {http://scifi.com/battlestar/videomaker/terms/}, it becomes evident how entrenched these two conflicts are in the Byzantine folly of current intellectual property law. The former, here most succinctly stated "SCI FI is only interested in your original work," simply ports over copyright's founding ideology of self-contained artistic production. Notably, SciFi claims only non-exclusive rights to Videomaker submissions (outside of Toolkit materials); the imperative, in the instructions, to "not post your film on other sites, such as YouTube, MySpace, Google, etc." is thus more polite request than binding condition. This slight loosening of SciFi's juridical border patrol can also serve to remind us that Battlestar Galactica's production team is far from equivalent to NBC legal (as Ron Moore suggests in his schizophrenic disclaimer about fanfic, quoted above), and their untenable position between a creative rock and a legal hard place may be similar to that of fans. Copyright is equally entangled with the latter issue: changing architectures of digital distribution. The lawyers have come up with a remarkable catalogue of verbs enumerating everything that can or conceivably could be done to a media object, one practically worthy of science fiction itself:
you are granting SCI FI, its licensees, successor and assigns, the perpetual and irrevocable, non-exclusive right and license to (a) reproduce, distribute, display, exhibit, host, cache, store, archive, index, categorize, comment on, tag, transmit, broadcast, stream, edit, alter, modify, synchronize with visual material, create algorithms based thereon, and transcode the Submission to appropriate media formats, standards or mediums... throughout the world in perpetuity, in any and all media, whether now existing or hereafter devised...
The legal terms must here contend not only with present-day conditions of media reproduction, but with the futures and fantasies of remediation. These fantasies of transcoding media "hereafter devised" are not unrelated to BSG's Cylons' fantasies of hybrid offspring, and pose similar challenges of containment to their more hierarchical human counterparts.
If both Colonial and corporate authorities respond to runaway procreation with a combination of force and subterfuge, both also recognize that it would be a death sentence to shut out the possibilities of hybridity entirely. While Videomaker attempts to carefully channel and circumscribe audience labor, it has nonetheless become a vibrant occasion for and celebration of fan creativity. Unlike many internet promotions, this project assumes and allows a broad technical latitude among its participants, who are expected to use their own video equipment, software, and expertise (rather than a "user-friendly" web-based interface) to produce their submissions. This expectation demonstrates an understanding of and respect for the community of science fiction fans, who historically tend to be aficionados of real-world as well as imagined technologies. In Jenkins' chapter on fan filmmaking in Convergence Culture, he takes Star Wars as a case study, describing various films and several web sites that have collected them, including Lucasfilm's official clearinghouse Atomfilms.com (launched in 2000, and running contests in 2003 and 2005). Like Videomaker on a grander scale, Atomfilms attempts to draw bright lines around fan production, offering its stamp of approval (as well as a library of audio clips) in exchange for strict adherence to intellectual property law (parody and documentary only, no "attempts to expand on the Star Wars universe" [quoted in Jenkins, 154]). As Jenkins points out, "these rules are anything but gender-neutral" (155): the "original" (ostensibly materially and critically distanced) genres that enjoy legal and corporate sanction are disproportionately produced by men, while creative works that explore relationships between characters and "expand the universe" are the almost exclusive preserve of women. This schism is generated, perpetuated, and negotiated in complex ways, but it remains baldly entrenched: in the case of Videomaker, 81 of the authors listed for the first 100 submissions have typically male names, by my count (8 have typically female names, and 11 are indeterminate or collaborations). This gendered hierarchy is one example of the Gordian snarls of power that arise as media producers and fans (and their respective products) become increasingly interdependent and indistinguishable.
Take, for instance, one of the two initial sample videos posted in Videomaker Toolkit: "Toaster Lover" {http://video.scifi.com/player/?id=64712} (written, directed and edited by Margaux Luciano and Randy Giudice, who we might assume to be a male-female team). "Toaster Lover" takes the form of a fake movie trailer, a parodic genre recognizable from YouTube. Ordinarily, fake trailers combine an edited sequence of video clips with new or borrowed trailer audio to suggest a humorous reinterpretation of the source (one popular variant is the "Brokeback Mountain" spoof: these highlight the gay subtext between everyone from R2-D2 and C-3PO to He-Man and Man-at-Arms). As such, they are formally similar to fan videos, while differing greatly in tone and context. "Toaster Lover" obeys the contest's stipulation of originality by using homemade instead of appropriated video (adeptly integrated with stock establishing shots from the Toolkit), but includes the framing captions and voiceover of a trailer, as well as Brokeback Mountain's famous line "I wish I could quit you." Its imagined movie tells a tale of star-crossed love between a male pilot and a Centurion (the big metal "toasters" who were among the first Cylon models), with the tagline "for years they were enemies, until the day that chance brought two lonely souls together" (Figure 2). "Toaster Lover" thus showcases the ways that Videomaker can mobilize hybridity on multiple registers: it (like other "Brokeback" style trailers) combines the parodic distance typical of the male-dominated world of fan films with the focus on same-sex romance that is a signature of female vidding communities, and (like all Videomaker submissions) it toes the line between ostensibly original and derivative production.
"Toaster Lover" is particularly effective as a spoof and as an exemplary Videomaker film because it comments astutely on an aspect of Battlestar Galactica: the queerness that infuses its narratives of alternative relationships and families. Centurions are not explicitly gendered, and the fact that, with its quotations from stories of forbidden love, "Toaster Lover" draws a parallel between inter-technic and same-sex romance highlights the overarching queer subtext of human-Cylon connection and conflict. Beyond the diegetic parallels, I'm tempted to read "Toaster Lover" allegorically as a romance between big media producers and fanboys: the monstrous automaton and the scrappy softie who find true love as war between their kinds wages around them. Certainly this is the fantasy that Videomaker itself embodies, with its show of community participation in the "rate this video" stars, comment box, and "send to friend" button – while at the same time reinscribing normative boundaries through the control it exerts over the process (the viewer ratings, for example, have no discernable importance or effect). Given this allegory, we might ask whether derivative labor overall is metaphorically queer, since it's a form of reproduction that mates supposedly incompatible parents ("original" media source and "original" creativity) to spawn hybrid offspring. BSG, Videomaker, and "Toaster Lover" as it marries them foreground the way that mediation is itself a species of forbidden desire. Both Cylons and fans are threatening because they're in networked communication with technology, and because their desires to be mediated dispute sanctioned boundaries and generate rogue progeny. It remains to be seen whether the constraints of sponsored initiatives like Videomaker, with their intrinsic compromises and contradictions, can adequately channel these desires into one big happy capitalist family.
