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Paper's superhero appeal sparks new 'Batman' movies

A newspaper’s plea for a Batman-style hero to sort out a village’s social ills appears to have sparked a new internet film series featuring a wannabe ‘caped crusader’.

The Buckinghamshire Advertiser carried a front page story last month proclaiming: ‘We need Batman to protect our village’.

It came about after the residents of Chalfont St Peter called for a vigilante to put a stop to a growing trend of antisocial behaviour which included a spate of arson attacks culminating in a couple’s £18,000 caravan being burnt to ashes.

Two weeks later a professional looking video was posted on YouTube, featuring a mystery figure who has vowed to become the Batman which Chalfont so desperately needs.

The tongue-in-cheek three-minute film, called ‘Becoming Batman: Episode One’, shows the man reading a copy of the Buckinghamshire Advertiser and discussing with his friend whether he could fit the bill as the caped crusader.

The Advertiser said the video had caused much talk in the village and raised questions about where this series of films could go.

Since then a second short movie has been posted on YouTube called ‘Episode Two: Batman Begins’.

In it, we see the superhero hopeful pushing himself to his physical limits as prepares to become Batman.

Included on his checklist of must-haves are a costume, butler and ‘Bat Mobile’ phone for “communicating with HQ”.

Multimedia content editor Greg Burns assured HoldtheFrontPage that they were genuine and not a viral stunt by the paper to promote itself.

“No, we aren’t that skilful and certainly don’t have time to do things like this,” he said.

“This video has clearly been made by someone who knows what they are doing because it looks really professional with different camera angles, background music and graphics.

“We got an e-mail tipping us off that there was going to be second video on YouTube.

“We’re guessing that this is the person in the film but when we asked them they didn’t reply. Hopefully, we can coax him out and get him to talk to us.”

The first video…..

…..and the second:

Comments

Patrick Toms (19/11/2008 11:37:38)
Seeing as your helping the local council keep crime rates down im sure they would issue you with a butler or at least a helper monkey?