The topic of fanediting came up briefly in today's morning somewhere, which is a hobby community I happen to be quite active in. I just wanted to correct a couple of things that we're said.

Topher Grace isn't the creator of The Phantom Edit, although he does make fanedits that he shows to his friends, and apparently cut the Prequel Trilogy down to 85 minutes.

The Phantom Edit was an edit of The Phantom Menace created by Mike J. Nichols in the year 2000. It's important to fanediting history because it's widely considered to be the first fanedit to be published online, which introduced millions of people to the hobby and created a new avenue for sharing and collaboration to improve the craft of fanediting.

Ashley was also correct when she said that the fanedit of Memento wasn't supposed to be someone's first viewing of the movie. The intent of fanediting isn't necessarily to improve or replace the existing film, although that can be a goal in what's referred to in the community as a "fanfix". The real purpose of fanediting is to view a movie from a different perspective, to experiment by making things that wouldn't ordinarily be made by a studio, and most importantly, to challenge oneself to see what can be made from such limited materials.

Fanediting has come a long way since The Phantom Edit. These days the gold standard for Star Wars would be L8wtr's, Adywan's, or HAL9000's versions, although everybody has their individual favourites, and there are other legendary fanedits like Blade Runner: the Penultimate Cut by TM2YC, The Godfather: Don Vito's Opus by Wraith, or Batman Forever: Redbook Edition by Scaperat.

New technologies like non-linear editors and consumer special effects software have revolutionised what fanedits are capable of over the years, and it's one of the few spaces where I've seen serious experimentation with emerging AI technologies, all for the betterment of the craft.

If you're interested in checking out some fanedits, learning about fanediting, or even getting involved yourself, you can find out more at Fanedit.org and join the forums there, but please make sure to read the rules before posting or commenting.