Didn't those kids who Sweded Raiders come before Rewind? Or was that a marketing ploy? For some reason I thought I heard about that long before Rewind came out, but it wouldn't surprise me if it turned out to be a big viral marketing thing.

I think that film-making technology is becoming so accessible that we will have "garage films" the way we had garage bands in the 80s and 90s. And Sweding is the natural first stop in the development of that - they're like cover bands! Won't be long before some kid who got her start posting her Swede vids to Youtube makes a hit indie film, and before you know it she's directing a $150 million sci-fi blockbuster.

What's lame is that these people would probably turn their noses (rightfully so) at Epic/Superhero/Date Movie/Meet the Spartans, when in reality what they are doing is pretty much the same thing.

@Garrison Dean: Yeah, that's a really good point. Somehow the Sweding is highbrow, because it was inspired by an auteur's film.

And yeah, Ed, the Raiders film came before Sweding. So Gondry took an existing phenomenon and named it.

This is precisely what the marketing weasels want. They want us to be utterly confused as to what's advertising versus what is genuine content. That way:

1) We'll never demand a clear wall that advertising can't cross. They'll be able to suffuse it into everything. Even our brains, our dreams!

2) Astroturfing will be much, much harder to spot.

3) It will be seen as increasingly "cool" to be consume junk we don't need. Today it's consumer electronics and Scandinavian furniture, tomorrow? Designer skin mods?

4) They're hoping the savvy skeptics with good information filters and good research will just give up in exhaustion, shut up and stop spoiling the fun for all the debt ridden, planet eating consumers.

Nothing exists until it has a catchy name. Sadly, this is just as true in science as it is in marketing.

It's probably no more of a corporate meme than many fannish things (like dressing up as a stormtrooper), which also act as free advertising. I can't really blame the corp.s for taking advantage of it.

"When does a marketing campaign become a grassroots thing?"

When it succeeds. Remember "Where's the beef?"

-Kle.

People are taking something invented for another purpose and using it to make something creative for their own enjoyment. This is well within keeping with the spirit of Sweding and do-it-yourself culture.

@Garrison Dean: I disagree. Epic/Superhero/Date Movie/Meet the Spartans is not done for love of the originals but as a cheep way to make a buck mocking popular culture. There's no love of the source material at the heart of these films and they aren't being done by people who are doing it purely as a way to release their own creative energy. It's capitalism at it's most crass, grafting hipster faux irony (firony? iraux?) onto the movie making factory product.

@Gyrus:

It's only ironic/funny if you don't make money? Seems a stretch.
-Kle.

@Klebert L. Hall: Yeah, but I remember it as a beef ad. And then for some reason I think of it as an ad for Scientology too, but I'm not sure why.

I think I hate the term "swede" almost as much as I hate the term "blog," but definitely not more than "shipper."

By the way, AN, you used "swede" (or a variation thereof) 10 times in 12 sentences. Nicely done.

Also, I really want to see that Raiders remake.

So is I am Legend just a longer version of sweding? Is anyone else getting tired of remakes? It's like the film industry enjoys torturing people

@Gyrus: If they were really expressing themselves creatively, they wouldn't be apeing existing media and expecting an audience.
It's a fun exercise, we've all copied something out of respect in the learning process, but they have turned it into it's own genre. IT would be like me trying to sell, or publicize, or gain notoriety from my old sketchbooks of me trying to be Jim Lee. When these people move on to their own productions, no matter how low budget, then they I'llbe interested.

I'm not slagging their efforts, but to treat this as a genre worthy of respect is rather silly.

@AmericanHector: I think the only person people not tired of remakes are the people doing the remaking.

@Garrison Dean: That said, I think that there's value in parody--if you can "Swede" (I guess?) a movie in such a way that it becomes valid, interesting commentary on the movie, then maybe it's worth a little bit of respect as a genre.

@Annalee Newitz: I'm rather amazed at the highbrow lowbrow divide in recent years. Hot Fuzz was a good example. I know many of the Hipster bent who love Hot Fuzz (rightly so), yet wouldn't waste a second rushing in to badmouth Michael Bay, despite the fact that the filmmakers themselves profess a respect for that man's films, no matter how lowbrow and commercial they may be.

@braak: But parody should bring more than simple mimicry done to the best of your ability. That is the difference between Airplane, and Meet the Spartans.

@Garrison Dean: Agreed, no argument there. I guess I'm just suggesting that there's a nascent potential in an activity like this to remake a movie on the cheap, but also provide additional creative value to the source material.

@Garrison Dean: And, also agreed. I am not ashamed to admit that I like to see giant robots beating the crap out of each other. Why should I dislike that? It's awesome.

Great thread.

I have to admit, I no longer care what the source or intent for anything is, so long as I enjoy it.

I'll download Cat Power's 30 second cover of How Can I Tell You, even though it's an ad for DeBeers. I'll stop my DVR to watch the James Lipton Geico Ad (at least once.) Shoot, at the end of the day, what is the Sistine Chapel but one giant billboard for Catholicism?

My post-modern-American motto? Entertain me!

@braak: I think the potential is totally there. I just think that they have the passion, the time, the ability and they should do more with it. Much like Meet the Spartans, I think these people know that there is an immediate positive, yet shallow reaction to familiar images. It's sort of a creatively cheap way to go. I would take the poorest produced fan film for Trek, Star Wars etc over the best produced Swede anyday.

Speaking of a good swede

+ Watch video

@braak: I'd love to see a movie with giant robots beating the crap out of each other. Is anyone planning on making one?

@t3knomanser: This is what we all want. Except not if it's Transformers.

@Garrison Dean: Well I do hate Michael Bay, but not because he's lowbrow. I think my adoration for Doomsday has demonstrated my love of the low. I hate Bay because he takes good lowbrow stuff and amps it up until it's too good to be bad, and just becomes technobarf.

@Annalee Newitz: EXPLOOOOOSION!!!

@Garrison Dean: I never said it should be considered a genre of anything but fan film. And I hope some of them do take what they learn doing this, or writing fanfic, and turn it towards creating something of their own.

I was under the impression that the term «Swede» was invented on-the-spot by Gondry and some others in his crew while making the movie. Not by a couple of executives in a high-rise office. After all, Gondry is a loony frenchman who makes movies about his dreams, with A-List actors and CARDBOARD. Maybe I'm just not paranoid enough, but this doesn't strike me as corporate mass-feeding crap.
But to the modern cynic, it's all the same, isn't it ? If there's a corporate logo in there somewhere, it's part of the Scheme. We grew up to the Mad Magazine parodies, and we loved them, so why can't they make movie versions of the same stuff now ? Why is it just now a corporate scheme ? Was it always ?

What's the problem if it's enjoyable entertainment?

@Annalee Newitz: This from the person who was sad they canceled Flash Gordon?

And for the record I said "no matter how lowbrow and commercial they MAY be." leaving me the out to point out that while many feel he is technobarf with an extra chromosome, I don't think they are lowbrow, I think they are fine friggin art.

@Gyrus: You didn't say it was a genre, however I feel that as soon as art is given a proper name it becomes a genre, no matter how small. And I don't know if "messin around with your friends deserves a genre." I think Jackass was a brilliant TV show, yet it didn't deserve any title more than really great stupid television.

Meh, I kind of like the phenomenon. I'd probably be out swedeing stuff if I weren't so lazy (and I'm Norwegian, so it would be oh-so ironic!). Loved the Predator-swede, and the girls where cute to boot! Waiting for a good Blade Runner-swede, though..

Nah I don't think all these Sweded tributes popping up are perpetuating the "Be Kind Rewind" marketing at all.

For the first time ever, fans who make crappy yet creative tributes to their favorite movies are seen as trendy. People have been making these fan films long before it was given the moniker of "Sweded" -- just like web diaries exsited long before the media nicknamed them "blogs."

Case in point, some kids about 20 years ago made their own version of "Indiana Jones" because they loved it so much, and later were profiled in Vanity Fair:
[www.vanityfair.com]

I think it might be a little unfair to say that people are making these tributes to keep up the marketing of Gondry's film. After all, another movie about DIY filmmaking "Son of Rambow" is about to hit theaters so who knows what kind of movie tributes this will inspire:
[www.sonoframbow.com]

@bonniegrrl: So it's sort of an extension of geek chic. It's fanfilm fashion! Fan glam?

I kept watchin' hopin' to see some boobies.
Denied.

@92BuickLeSabre: The concept of: "My post-modern-American motto? Entertain me!" makes a great deal of sense to me, because it's exactly how I expect society to evolve in response to continuing media saturation.

Thanks to the massive amount of meme material available, the turnover rate of memes is increasing while attention spans are shortening. Classic dichotomies like corporate/independent will matter less, because one source will be as likely as the other to produce something worthy of a smidgen of our micro-focus, and by the time the source attempts to capitalize on having our attention, we'll already have moved on to the next thing.

Man you people are snotty. What is wrong with wearing up some cardboard tie-fighters and having fun? It looks like a blast.

It's better than most community theater is, too!

I'm one of the "goofballs" that sweded Torchwood and I don't really understand your rant. I agree that the term sweding might be the result of a marketing campaign and that suddenly now it's kind of "in" to make your own swedes. But does that really matter?

Although the term sweding is new, it's been around a long time. As one of the previous commenters said you have the boys that did Raiders and you now have the Son of Rambow film, which actually came out at Sundance 2007 (January). Personally I hated Be Kind Rewind, but loved Son of Rambow. Ever since reading the article about the Raiders boys (which was before I heard of BKR), I've been waiting for an opportunity to do my own recreation.

To say that BKR was the cause of all this is completely wrong. Yes, they've coined the term sweding and perhaps that's the reason more people are now watching swedes, but we would have made this Torchwood swede I think even if BKR wasn't there.

A little more background on our swede: we were at the conference/competition (48 hours of mobile development) and all of us there were going to miss the final of Torchwood, which would be broadcast that night. Later we discovered though that the BBC had arranged a special copy for us that would be shown at midnight on the big screen. A group of us had no idea what to develop for mobile (which was the whole point of the conference), so decided to swede that final episode of Torchwood and use that as our competition entry. We got to borrow great camera equipment from one of the guys filming the presentations. And we could air it before the midnight special, use the BBC beginning titles and for a moment trick people into believing they were seeing the actual episode (which was only a very very short moment).

So your claim:
"that could be seen as an ad for the TV show, a reminder to watch it on BBC 2 that evening."
Everybody that saw the swede at the conference, saw it 6 minutes before the actual episode. It wasn't an ad, just a funny little project to spend a couple of hours and hopefully make people laugh.

Wow, it's become a bit of long comment, but just wanted to make a couple of things clear.

@Liz Henry: I'm still most in love with the women of the Predator swede. They rule!

@Liz Henry: Amen to that! I think more fans should make DIY Star Wars films! Nothing is cooler than a foam Jabba the Hutt DIY puppet: [starwarsblog.starwars.com]

Why do we have to pretend that intent doesn't matter? Meet The Spartans was a cheap not funny spoof of 300 made to continue a franchise of yearly films. Do you think the makers cared which movie they used to string together their pop culture callbacks? If 300 hadn't been a hit, they probably would have used something else.

Meanwhile, Sweding is a love letter to a particular film. You'll probably never see a Swed(e?) where the participants didn't genuinely enjoy the film.

You've got it all backwards. First of all, If anyone's responsible for the promotion of sweding, it's not some PR guy, it's Gondry himself - and I think came up with the idea for the movie to promote this type of low-tech filmmaking. So It's Be Kind Rewind that is an ad for sweding, not the other way around.

By the way, I've seen Lego and ASCII versions of Starwars years ago, so it's not like it's a new idea or anything. Plus we had "...as reenacted by bunnies".

I'm mostly irritated by the ubiquity of the term "sweding," which didn't exist three months ago and was specifically created for the Gondry film.

What happened to "fan film," or "parody," or "low-budget remake"? For crissakes, was the kid who made the Raiders film twenty years ago "sweding"? feh.

@Annalee Newitz:

Sure, it was a Wendy's ad catchphrase. Then, everybody in America couldn't stop saying it for about 5 years - a successful ad. I still use 'little pieces parts' from another ad in the series in everyday conversation.

I don't know about the Scientology thing though... The only ad I've ever seen of theirs is the one for the book.

-Kle.

@Plague: wasnt arnold shirtless at the end of predator? wtf girls.

also, girl in blackface kinda weirds me out.