If you’ve been living under a rock for the past few years, or don’t have the internet available at home yet (which makes me wonder how you’re reading this), then maybe you’ve been obliviously to the explosion of fan films. These are movies produced with the intent of taking an existing property and breathing new life into it, with sequels, prequels, or “what ifs.” In some cases these films take on a life of their own, which was the case with the childhood friends who decided to make a shot-by-shot remake of Raiders of the Lost Ark with a VHS camcorder.

Author Clive Young has put together a book that charts the progress of fan films (starting in the 1920s!), and how the internet and inexpensive filmmaking tools have taken these otherwise obscure short films and fan efforts into new arenas. We talked to Young about the fan film dabbling of Hugh Hefner and Andy Warhol, the distribution future of that Raiders remake, and why fan filmmaking is a boy’s club.

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