My FAN FILM just beat AXANAR in the Berlin Sci-Fi Film Festival! (Yay!)

Now, this is pretty crazy!  Back in April of 2016, while the CBS/Paramount v. Axanar lawsuit was still going strong, MARK LARGENT and I decided to create a parody of the whole mess with a short animated spoof called PRELUDE TO AX’D-WE-ARE.  We wrote the script together in about five days, and I provided the voices for half of the characters.  Mark did the lion’s share of the work, animating the entire seven-minutes in just 31 days!  (For more background on how this all came together, check out this blog.)

When I first heard about the Berlin Sci-Fi Filmfest back in June, I posted about it because, for the first time that I was aware of, an international film festival was featuring a category specifically for FAN FILMS!  I suggested to Mark Largent that he might want to enter Prelude to Ax’d-We-Are.  After all, it was just 15 bucks.  Other Trek fan films were also entered—including the excellent Chance Encounter, Starship Republic – “Serpent of Yesterday”, and Survivors—and we figured we might have a shot…maybe.  There were also three Star Wars fan films (one from the UK and another from France), a Blade Runner fan film out of South Africa, and a horror movie spoof.

And then we saw that Prelude to Axanar had been entered.  Oh well, we thought, there goes our chance to win.  (Prelude is pretty much a juggernaut.)  But at least audiences would be able to watch both the parody and the original it was based on.

We actually made it to the semi-final round, along with Tears in the Rain (the South African Blade Runner fan film with some great acting), The Secret of Tatooine (all in French with awesome visual effects), and of course, Prelude to Axanar.  With competition like that, we figured that “semi-finalist” was as far as we’d get.  We were wrong.

We won BEST FAN FILM!!!!

Mark and I thought it was a typo!  But no, there is was up on their website with our poster image.  “I feel like there’s all these guys in my class who studied for months to pass the exam and all I did was cram at the last minute and ace it!” Mark told me over the phone.

I joked to ALEC PETERS of Axanar, writing, “I hope you’re not pissed at us.”

“Why would I be pissed?” he wrote back.  “It’s awesome.  Its all in the family.  We have won 47 awards.  Nice for you guys to win one.”

So Mark and I, co-writers and co-producers, can now also call ourselves winners of an international sci-fi film festival competition.  And that is totally cool!  Thanks for letting me share that news with you.

And in case you missed it, here’s Prelude to Ax’d-We-Are in all of its 7 minutes of glory…

28 thoughts on “My FAN FILM just beat AXANAR in the Berlin Sci-Fi Film Festival! (Yay!)”

  1. How strangely weird, but totally exciting. (It helps when others enjoy the same sense of humor. lol) Congratulations! You guys “did good”!

    1. Actually, Franks, you’re second. Tory beat you to the punchbowl. I just didn’t have a chance to approve his comment yet.

      But hey, coming in second is still pretty good. Just ask Avis…the car rental company, not the Krill deity. 🙂

      Oh, and thanks!

  3. Congrats.
    Your Film was great,
    Your parody was what the Futurama episode was to Star Trek!
    (Futurama’s Star Trek Episode is my Favorite Star Trek Episode for all Series).

  8. Congrats You Two, Wild, undt Crazy Guys! Great job.

    I think they like animations alot over there. I’ve noticed more than a few from locale. Like this stop animations fan film of Enterprise.
    https://youtu.be/bJ3FNopHpTI
    JK Productions, June 2016.

    I guess you guys should think about doing more?

    1. Mark is, indeed, planning to do more Stalled Trek. I might even be doing a few more voice-overs once my ears stop bleeding. Stay tuned!

      As for the German stop-motion Enterprise fan films, those are both amazing. (The cast of Star Trek Continues did the voice-dubs for the English version of the first film.) I’ll be doing a feature on those two films at some point in the next year. So much to do!!!

  10. Congratulations, Jonathan! I, too, watched Ax’d-We-Are, and laughed myself silly the whole way through the film. Very well done!

    Doug

    1. Thanks, Doug. (Sorry to those I haven’t thanked with direct responses to their comments. I didn’t want to get too repetitive or redundant…or tautological! 🙂

  11. Congratulations Jonathan. That’s great news.
    Ironicely Axanar is no more axed and we get to see half an hour more of the greatest Fanfilm ever made. In my opinion it beats all of the Fanseries so far. That includes new voyages and continues. It’s a shame that both Vignogna and Cawley were unable to work together with Alec to bring CBS to work out Fanfilm Rules who make sense. Because of their egos or financial reasons.
    Greetings from good old Germany
    Mike

    1. It wasn’t ego or financial reasons. It was mainly because, prior to June (actually May) of 2016, CBS and Paramount felt no motivation to create any official fan film guidelines. The mere act of acknowledging the existence of fan films risked creating friction with some of the Trek licensees. By the time Alec tried to get some fan film producers together to create a set of guidelines to present to the two studios (and I don’t believe that James or Vic were part of that group), it was probably already too late. We’ll never know, unfortunately, as details of the discussions were leaked and created such a negative tempest among detractors that the group never completed a finished proposal. And a few weeks later, the point became moot as the official guidelines were announced by CBS and Paramount.

      1. Who knows…
        I heard otherwise. But in the end i prefer the version of Alec about the war with the Klingons. And not the version of CBS.

  14. Very clever way to “comment” on the Axanar situation. Witty impersonations of characters and incisive depiction of the action. And characterizing the ‘invaders’ as men with sunglasses and dressed in black! Ooops! Men in black? Isn’t that Columbia Pictures!? Could this be the beginning of Studio Warz? Makes as much sense as the Paramount/CBS attack on fan films!

    1. Actually, I also thought of the “men in black” (the lawyers) as a bit like the Blues Brothers (no sense of humor, on a mission from God, unstoppable and leaving devastation in their wake). That’s why I went a little overboard on the Chicago accent.

  15. Good depth!!!! Sunglasses on and driving at night. The main takeaway here is: Quality never goes out of style. CBS may have trillions to try to make Discovery a hit. Axanar already is. Quality always wins.

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