Yogi Bear Alternative Ending Creates A 'Squiffy' Fair Use Question

from the not-your-average-parody dept

A bunch of folks have been sending in this viral video of an “alternate ending” to the new Yogi Bear movie. It’s what you might call a… much “darker” ending, based on the The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. Don’t watch this if you don’t like bear-on-bear violence.

What struck me, frankly, is the somewhat amazing quality of the work, which was done by a single guy, Edmund Earle, who had the idea for the parody after seeing the trailer for the Yogi Bear film right after having watched The Assssination of…. The Wall Street Journal scored an interview with Earle, where he admits that he’s on “squiffy” legal ground, though he’s not using any actual footage from the movie but created the work himself, and believes he’s done so entirely as a parody. What will be interesting is how Warner Bros. reacts to this. It seems like it should be protected fair use, of course, but Hollywood isn’t always known for being supporters of fair use.

Filed Under: , , ,
Companies: warner bros.

Rate this comment as insightful
Rate this comment as funny
You have rated this comment as insightful
You have rated this comment as funny
Flag this comment as abusive/trolling/spam
You have flagged this comment
The first word has already been claimed
The last word has already been claimed
Insightful Lightbulb icon Funny Laughing icon Abusive/trolling/spam Flag icon Insightful badge Lightbulb icon Funny badge Laughing icon Comments icon

Comments on “Yogi Bear Alternative Ending Creates A 'Squiffy' Fair Use Question”

Subscribe: RSS Leave a comment
27 Comments
ARE YOU ALL BLIND? says:

ARE YOU ALL BLIND?

Okay.. this is obviously a warner bros. release. To think that they aren’t behind this is ridiculous. Does anyone have any clue as to how long that would have taken to design and render? There is a bigger plot here that is deeper than most have time to think about and it has to do with more than fair use. Does anyone really think that a few people had some extra time to make this with for a bit of humor?

It is hilarious, but to believe that this wasn’t planned exposure to amp up the promotions for the movie is silly. Peace

Eugene (profile) says:

Re: ARE YOU ALL BLIND?

While it’s incredibly impressive and animated beautifully, the fur is cheap. Probably done with out-of-the-box stuff, and doesn’t really reflect what “Rhythm and Hues” was able to do (Yogi in the official trailer has soft, nicely washed fur; this one has coarse, oily fur).

Not that they couldn’t have intentionally used cheap fur, but that seems like a strange choice for obfuscation.

Plus it diminishes Edmund Earle’s accomplishment here to suggest he’s faking responsibility for the interests of some studio.

Anonymous Coward says:

If the whole set is fake then it would take a few months on a single computer. On the other hand you could push it to amazon’s computer farm and have it back in a few days.

Yes, the fir looks out of the box, other parts of the animation could also be done a number of cheep ways (there are tons of pree-made buildings for 3d studio max for example.)

Anonymous Coward says:

2 hours for 1 frame in Luxrender in high quality using raytracing + (3 minutes = 72 frames) = 144 hours = 6 days on a Quadcore to render the entire animation.

Of course Yafray, Indigo and others can be used.

Also there is this guy on YouTube making 3D models of all old cartoons.

http://www.youtube.com/user/johnpicha

Space Ghost
Herculoids
Penelope PitStop
Captain Caveman And The Teen Angels

Those are just a few he made.

Somebody should make a P2P renderfarm, we could have much more animations coming out from the amateur side of things 🙂

Add Your Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Have a Techdirt Account? Sign in now. Want one? Register here

Comment Options:

Make this the or (get credits or sign in to see balance) what's this?

What's this?

Techdirt community members with Techdirt Credits can spotlight a comment as either the "First Word" or "Last Word" on a particular comment thread. Credits can be purchased at the Techdirt Insider Shop »

Follow Techdirt

Techdirt Daily Newsletter

Ctrl-Alt-Speech

A weekly news podcast from
Mike Masnick & Ben Whitelaw

Subscribe now to Ctrl-Alt-Speech »
Techdirt Deals
Techdirt Insider Discord
The latest chatter on the Techdirt Insider Discord channel...
Loading...