Serenity opened in theaters the 30th of September, and for a lot of us who are familiar with the Firefly television series, this continuation has been a long time coming. (A shorter time for me, but I got on late).
LINK [website]
VIDEO [trailer]
VIDEO [first nine minutes]
When my best friend and I made plans to see the movie, I wanted to give him some background on Firefly before we went, as he was not familiar with the show. I’m sure most who have seen both the movie and series will agree that Serenity has more significance when you know at least a little about the universe and its characters beforehand. I combed through my copy of the series and found some key moments I thought were worthy material for a little evangelism, and after seeing first hand what an impact this made on my friend’s experience, I thought I’d share it with everyone else.
For the person who is interested in the movie, but not so much that they would go back and watch the whole series in preparation, this should do nicely to get them/you up to relative speed. The following clip is roughly a half an hour long, and would be, of course, most effective if watched in the company of someone who is familiar with the story and can fill in whatever blanks are required/deemed important. You may need to install this free codec to watch the video.
I welcome any suggestions for additions/subtractions, keeping in mind I want this to portray the series as concisely as possible as it relates to the movie. Emotional and artistic points are favored over general storyline, as Serenity does a pretty good job in filling you in on all the raw essentials. In other words, this is an appetizer — enjoy:
VIDEO [Firefly < Serenity]
Update: I’ve re-encoded this into an iPod-compatible format, if you’re so inclined — thus you’ll need an iPod, or at least iTunes, to watch it. Right-click and save the file, as most browsers can’t interpret the .m4v format.
VIDEO [(Firefly < Serenity) + iPod]
Update: Serenity is only $1 million short of breaking even, which will soon be resolved with the DVD release on December 20th.
LINK
BUY
BUY
The Buzz {3 trackbacks/pingbacks}
The Conversation {34 comments}
You *do* know this is illegal, right? And you likely will be sued, no matter how good or effective an idea this is. Just a heads-up.
James,
The people that created Firefly and Serenity will be very happy to see this kind of fanfare. If not for the pure dedication of a true fan, it’ll be for how much this will help promote the movie for those who have never seen the series (like myself).
From what I understand (if not, I stand corrected), the movie has a lot to do with the outpouring of support from fans that were more than dissapointed by the cancellation of one of their favorite series.
A production company that backs a movie like this (that wouldn’t have much more support other than from it’s dedicated fans) would welcome this kind of promotion with open arms.
But this is just my opinion. Take it with a grain of pepper if nothing else.
Thanks — I’m aware this could be considered borderline — but as all the material was, and continues to be broadcast on television here and abroad, and considering the entire series can be found for download elsewhere, I don’t expect (read: hoping for no) trouble. Besides, as you suggest, it’s in the interest of spreading the word. If I’m asked to take it down, I will.
This isn’t borderline; it’s most definitely illegal. Not that I think what you’re doing is necessarily bad, mind you, it’s just definitely illegal. Perhaps Whedon himself wouldn’t mind, but I don’t think he will be consulted; the IP enforcement people at Fox/Universal are not open minded when it comes to people distributing their precious “content” and will not be convinced by arguments about how it’s actually a good promotion for them or how it’s not as bad as the people distributing the whole series. Just my 2 cents, ignore it as you like.
Well I just hope we don’t all end up eating your bandwidth+website.
James: I’m admittedly not well versed in what would and wouldn’t be considered illegal as far as this is concerned. Given the availability of the entire series serves as a bigger fish to fry (I’ve paid for the DVDs myself), I doubt this will be a problem. But like I said, if it becomes such, I’ll gladly/reluctantly take it down.
soma-r, all: I’ve still got about 15GBs of bandwidth left this month, though now that it’s on digg’s front page, that might not last much longer. If anyone can share in the hosting of this (and/or knows how to set up a torrent), I’d be much obliged.
It’s not blatantly illegal; it’s called fair use. He isn’t making any money off of this, this video isn’t taking away from sales of Firefly or Serenity (quite the opposite actually), the amount of material from each scene is rather miniscule compared to the whole, and the purpose of this is to promote Firefly and Serenity. If this was brought to trial, the author would have a damned good case for fair use.
bandwidth: Enter Coral Cache — the video link has been changed accordingly.
Taking half an hour of footage, assembling it, and distributing it is not fair use. This is not a review, criticism, or parody; it is an advertisement, and fair use has no provision for advertisements. The existing work has largely been copied verbatim and only a few paragraphs of text have been added. You have good intentions, and Fox/Universal would probably have a hard time arguing that this video hurts the market for their DVDs and movies. However, I don’t believe that alone is enough to qualify this as a fair use under the law, and with the amount of material taken being *far* above normal fair use levels (30 seconds to a minute is more normal), and the parts taken being complete, important, and memorable parts of each episode, I think it would be hard to convince a court to rule in your favor.
Strike that, it looks like Coral Cache is returning requests back to my file — anyone have some spare bandwidth, or know how to set up a torrent? I’ve secured up to 175GBs for this month from my hosting provider, but once it goes over that I can’t keep hosting the file.
It’s as legal or illegal as AMV’s (http://www.animemusicvideos.org/), selfmade Remixes of Videogame-Music (http://www.ocremix.org/) or almost any other Fanart. But these Websites are online for years now, and there has never been any trouble, so i think it’s unlikely he’ll have any trouble.
Those sites may be illegal (or maybe not, art created with copyrighted material has a better chance of being fair use than this) but those animes and pieces of video game music don’t have active IP-enforcement brigades patrolling the net like Universal/Fox do now.
P.S. someone on digg posted a torrent already:
http://www.mininova.org/tor/128021
Before you label me a hypocrite for posting that link, understand that I like the idea here; I’m just pointing out that Fox/Universal won’t see things the same way and the legal system likely won’t either. If the movie is taken down when requested, though, I’m sure no actual suing or fines or going to jail will take place.
If you break the video up into 3 10 minute segments, which should be just under 50MB, coral cache will work.
Coral does not cache files over 50MB.
James: It’s cool, I follow you.
Darren: Thats good to know, and a good idea. It’ll take a while for my computer to break the file up, but I’ll update the direct download once it’s done.
Just for the record, you really want to be using the word ‘evangelism’ not ‘evangelical’ in the above bit.
for anyone that had the firefly dvd, watch the extras. joss whedon states in them that the only reason that firefly was so popular was because of the outcry and support of their fanbase.. he even said the fans raised money to help try to keep the show afloat. i REALLy doubt that they would mind, because after all, this is such a NICHE show, they need all the free press and publicity they can get to sell tickets. i went to see it yesterday and it was pretty good! not as good as the series, because it was slow in some parts, but overall good.
Sparticus: You may be right, ‘evangelical’ describes me — my intent — not the material itself. “The More You Know©” I guess.
“i REALLy doubt that they would mind”
We are talking about two different “they”s here. You are talking about Joss Whedon and the cast and production crew of Serenity. Perhaps you are right, perhaps they would love this video. That is not the point. The legal department and executives of the Fox and Universal companies are the “they” I’m talking about. They will *not* love this video, and they will try to shut it down if they hear about it, and since they own the distribution rights and Joss Whedon does not, *they* are the ones you need to worry about.
“They will *not* love this video”
Then “they” are quite dumb! This is nothing more than free advertising for the Movie!
> free advertising for the Movie!
You’re forgetting one thing:
Movie : Universal
TV Serie : FOX
So, imagine: free advertising from material owned by FOX for a movie owned by Universal. :D
I love the idea though (haven’t watched the video yet).
Too many WANNABE lawyers. And for those who claim to be a lawyer (or in the field of law) you wouldn’t be discussing the case in a comment forum!
Justin, just ignore the WANNABEEES!! Do what you feel is right and if it illegal then so be it.
Lets move the conversation to be more productive….
Does anyone have any information if the show will be returning a TV series?
Go away James and stop spreading your FUD.
Fair use states that you can reproduce or copy up to 10% or 3 minutes (whichever is less)of a peice of work for such purpose…as long as he didnt use more than that per episode it can be argued perfectly validly to be fair use.
see http://www.umuc.edu/library/copy.html
Firefly was an awsome series. I’ve seen the commercials on the sci fi channel but it didn’t interest me. My uncle bought the complete season dvd a couple weeks ago and I decided to check it out. Much to my surprise I found the series very interesting. I’m not a fan of westerns but this western feel to a science fiction concept matches very well. Along with an awsome cast and ingenious humor, I support the revival of the series 100%! [edited] I do hope they continue on with a series revival or a movie sequel. Buy the Firefly Complete Season DVD!!! It’s awsome!
Sorry James, I want to keep this spoiler-free.
While I applaud the idea of a nice vid-summary of the series to coax the non-browncoats out there into seeing Serenity, I was annoyed with the scenes chosen. I haven’t read all the comments, so I don’t know if this has been addressed already, but WTF? The entire concept of the show was left unexplained. Why not begin with Mal’s voiceover that introduces some episodes, the “Here’s how it is… etc.” If people know nothing about the show, they’d probably want to know we’re 500ish years in the future, Alliance is bad, and Mal was on the losing side of the war. As much as I love the blue sun creeps chasing our heroes in Ariel, it really doesn’t help to build interest. If anything, showing guards with blood gushing out their eyes would detract those who might have had interest in the series before. I dunno. I could be wrong. I just think some more bases needed to be covered before more complicated events like River’s POV in Objects in Space. The 2 hour pilot has tons of stuff that was ignored in this summary…
However, once again I really like the idea, and always love watching some great Firefly moments…
Firefly>>>>>Serenity Movie
Joel: In heart, indeed.
Mattman: I sacrificed plot points for artistic/emotional points given such info is (more or less) presented in the movie, and also online: the Serenity website has a lot of good background info from Firefly. I positioned this video as a supplement — hopefully offering a little that some people might not otherwise see — ideas that can’t easily be summarized or put into words. A little more direct summary (mentioning Mal’s history and the time/setting of the story) couldn’t hurt though — I’ve already updated the video to fix a couple glitches I found; if I do so again, I might add that to it.
“Too many WANNABE lawyers. And for those who claim to be a lawyer (or in the field of law) you wouldn’t be discussing the case in a comment forum!”
First sentence: True.
Second sentence: BS. Why wouldn’t we?
Justin,
Congrats on a great teaser/backstory video. I think it does a great job reviewing some of the key elements of the story and characters. The only tiny thing I would really want my friends to see/hear is the opening theme music and imagery. I remember the first time i saw the series i enjoyed hearing and seeing that and it really sets the mood i feel for the series. I think the lyrics are key there. So at the very end, if you were to let that whole Firefly theme play through, that would make it just perfect.
Nice work!
Zack: That’s a good idea, I’m going to encode this for the new iPod as soon as I get a chance, and I might extend it to include the whole theme.
followup: I ended up having to wipe the external disk I was using to store the raw video used to make this, so unless there is renewed interest in appending material, it’s going to stay as-is for the time being.
I love Firefly. I wasn’t exposed to Firefly until I treated a special friend to see Serenity (the movie). He had been talking a lot about it, and I usually agree w/ his taste on this sort of thing. Anyway, a few weeks after we saw the movie, my friend bought the entire series on DVD (via ebay or amazon I think…if you’re interested in buying).
We ended up watching the series over the course of a couple weeks — and I loved it.
I guess I’m a Firefly fan in reverse :-). Now that I’ve seen the series, I want to see the movie again. I put the DVD on my Christmas wish list ;-).
BTW, I think there are plenty of lawyers and lawsuits out and about. The chat above about legal and illegal is sort of a wet blanket for me…enough already.
OK I have spend the last 15 min or so reading the other post. I belive someone has way too much time on there hands if they are concerned with a few video clips on someone else,s website. especially when there are so many ways for people to get entire movies just released in theaters
The worst that will happen for web related copyright infringement would be a cease and desist order. You will not be sued. That is unless you ignore the c & d order after receiving it.
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