Lara Croft and Fans as Desktop Movie Directors

The extensive marketing strategies of film companies no longer only cover the film itself, but extend to related promotional goods such as toys, computer games and T-shirts. The virtual heroine Lara Croft offers an example of a media concept that is being exploited in many different ways. But when media become digital, their content is easily sampled and manipulated. These days the Internet offers fans an opportunity to be very actively involved with the actors, films or TV series they admire. Fans chat with each other, write fan sites, make screen savers, games and animations and invent stories in which their heroes lead a fantasy life of their own. Many of these fan sites are illegal: there is for instance copyright on the name and characters in a TV series. The entertainment industry sees how the Internet undermines the established relations between author, distributor and audience. This raises the question who can call himself owner of a virtual character: the inventor, the distributor of the user. Lora White Lora White, writer, is one of the many fans. On the web site of The Mining Company, where communities of Internet users gather around specific themes, White is the 'guide' for the South Park pages. She keeps track of what new sites there are, where you can download South Park screen savers and where a detailed report on the last episode can be found. White is an expert on the bizarre - but often very creative - customs of fans on the Internet. (http://www.miningco.com) Evan Mather Evan Mather is landscape architect and Star Wars fan. Not a passive admirer, because Mather himself makes films based on the Star Wars story that he then distributes on the Internet. Every film has a different angle; for instance Mather makes a Star Wars à la Quentin Tarantino, complete with the seventies music and rapid-fire dialogue so crucial for Tarantino's films. (http://www.jedinet.com/cinema) Keith Boesky Lara Croft is the undisputed heroine of the digital revolution. She was born in the computer game Tomb Raider, in which she displayed her good characteristics - power, perseverence and her exceptional female physique - and has since found her way into a variety of other media. Some time ago the virtual Lara was even appointed as special science and technology ambassador for the United Kingdom. Keith Boesky was until recently the director of Eidos, one of the largest companies in the entertainment-software sector and producer of Tomb Raider. He explains how a virtual star is created and can be exploited: in games, films, books and toys.