Xenite.Org News

Excite empowers the next step in fan site production capabilities - Lord of the Rings news - J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings

August 07, 2000 at 15:15:32

Excite, the Web portal, has just introduced Moviemate, free software available for download which enables anyone to create digital video movies with many of the same slick special effects we've come to expect from Hollywood.

No, you won't be able to create your own CGI Gollum or run MASSIVE armies of Orcs across your Web site, but the new software brings amateur film making and distribution just that much closer to the independent film production which has already made a splash on the Internet.

System requirements are stiff. For the full package you'll need a 400 Mhz Pentium machine and some addons (not to mention a digital camcorder). A scaled down version of the software will run on a 200 Mhz Pentium-class machine. Anything older will be insufficient. Hard drives also need to have a minimum of 5MB transfer speed.

In coming months, as Webmasters experiment with the new software, we expect to see fan-made movies proliferate on the Web. Convention reports, special reports (and possibly even spy reports, if the technology is available and economical in countries where movies are being filmed on location), and special fan-made movies are now feasible for anyone who has the equipment, time, and interest.

People can now whip out their old school videos and post all those Hobbit plays they starred in. The potential for copyright abuse in terms of broadcasting unauthorized productions may eventually overshadow the Napster debate. Video cameras are already disallowed at concerts and other live events, but new security rules may be required to prevent or slow an explosion of pirate video movies on the Internet.

Tolkien fandom, well-known for its innovative approaches to bringing news and information to the Internet, may find itself embroiled in a few controversies depending on who does what, but certainly many Web sites a year from now may offer a great deal more original content than they do today.

Xenite.Org currently has no plans (for lack of funds to upgrade to the necessary equipment) to add original video content, but we're open to suggestions, especially if you have a hankering to record your own news reports from New Zealand (without threatening the security of the film production -- we'd rather not end up any higher on the list of naughty sites than we may already be).