Binge viewing isn’t new, but what Mr. Gilleand did next is, signaling a new wrinkle in the increasingly interactive experience of watching television: he uploaded the episodes to his computer and re-edited the series, unpacking the show’s original nesting-doll narrative and presenting it in chronological order. Then he posted links to his edited episodes on Reddit, a social media and entertainment site.
In the same spirit, within hours of the June 2 episode of the HBO fantasy series “Game of Thrones,” fans had re-edited versions of one particularly blood-soaked scene, setting it to pop music and punching it up with cartoon sound effects before posting their new versions on YouTube.
These online offerings follow in the traditions of fan fiction, musical sampling and the remix culture fostered by artists like Shepard Fairey. Now, thanks to a combination of complex television series, ever more sophisticated home technology and simple ways to distribute content, television viewers can be co-creators of their favorite shows.
“The way Netflix presents it is a good way of catching up with each character’s story,” Mr. Gilleand said of “Arrested Development.” “Once you’ve already seen that, I think it’s cool to go back and watch it in the actual order events happen.”
Such bootleg efforts are requiring producers of original content to grapple with what this means for their art form and how it affects their relationship with their fans.
Mitch Hurwitz, the creator of “Arrested Development,” sees the do-it-yourself creations as a new way to engage with his audience. Instead of the end of a season meaning the loss of a connection with viewers, he said, “I love the fact that they still have ways in which to play with it and dig it apart and enjoy it.”
Mr. Hurwitz said he had talked with Netflix about the possibility of presenting the new “Arrested Development” season in a more interactive way that would allow viewers to decide for themselves which characters they wanted to follow at various junctures in the narrative.
“The next iteration of the Netflix software, I’ll bet, is going to be more that you can jump from place to place,” he said.
But Damon Lindelof, one of the creators and show runners of the time-warping television thriller “Lost,” was less sure about where to draw the line between encouraging the creativity of fans and respecting the wishes of the original authors.
Mr. Lindelof said he could see why these fan-created re-edits would appeal to people who “like to take something apart and put it back together.”
“But story does not work that way,” he said, “and ‘Lost’ and ‘Arrested Development,’ which are both very character-driven stories, when you take them apart, you completely and totally lose the narrative that we wanted.”
Mr. Lindelof cited the example of Quentin Tarantino’s film “Pulp Fiction,” whose chapters are told out of sequence: a scene in which a hit man played by John Travolta is shot and killed is followed by a scene in which his character, still alive, hears a fateful speech on the mysterious possibilities of life from his partner, played by Samuel L. Jackson.
“That speech has resonance because you know that Travolta ignored it, and that’s going to result in Travolta getting shot coming off a toilet bowl,” Mr. Lindelof said.
“If someone went and put ‘Pulp Fiction’ in chronological order,” he added, “I’m not sure that movie would be as good.”
Regardless of what creators want, however, advances in technology are invitations in themselves for viewers to take part.
Only three years ago, when Mike Maloney wanted to make a chronological re-edit of “Lost,” the ABC suspense series about plane crash survivors trapped on a mysterious island, his options were more challenging than they are today.
Mr. Maloney, now a 30-year-old insurance underwriter in Chicago, had to wait for most of the episodes to be released on DVD and grab the remaining episodes once they had been broadcast. He was fortunate that the monthslong endeavor matched up with a busy time for his wife, then a graduate student.
“She didn’t really mind too much that I wasn’t paying her any attention and was sitting on the computer all the time,” he said.
To distribute his 101 episodes to other fans, Mr. Maloney had to upload them to various file-sharing sites, although he later created a dedicated Web site, chronologicallylost.com. (A fan of the project also created a Facebook page for him.)
Today an “Arrested Development” fan like Alex Green, 21, of Sayre, Pa., has access to the entire season at once. He only needed an online torrent file of the “Arrested Development” episodes, software like Adobe Premiere Pro to create his re-edited episodes and a site like Reddit to share his work with thousands of fellow viewers.
Mr. Green acknowledged that his particular use of copyrighted material was perhaps “not the most correct thing to do,” but said that his work was not meant to take the place of watching “Arrested Development” as Mr. Hurwitz and his collaborators intended.
“It’s not going to be as fun and as fulfilling as the Netflix way,” he said. “But it’s definitely a good way to watch a second or third time through, to see jokes in the right order.”
Mr. Lindelof, who was aware of Mr. Maloney’s chronological re-edit of “Lost,” said he could not quite bring himself to watch it, even if he appreciated the impulses that led to its creation.
“I totally embrace the experiment,” Mr. Lindelof said. “But part of me feels like, oh my God, if it actually works better in chronological order, what does that say about me?”
Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/10/arts/television/arrested-development-and-game-of-thrones-the-fans-cut.html?partner=rss&emc=rss