May 2018 – Page 3 – Fan Film Factor

New AXANAR fan comic released!

Last July, AXANAR super-fan TREY McELWAIN released the four-page (including cover) “Trial By Fire,” the first-ever comic story based on the hugely-popular Prelude to Axanar Star Trek fan film. Trey wrote the comic and his friend DANIEL FU illustrated the story, which looked at a space battle during the Four Years War with the Klingon Empire.

Now, Trey and Daniel offer the first glimpse of their second Axanar fan comic: “Arcanis IV,” which looks at the Klingon sneak attack that launched the long and bloody conflict. Unlike their first comic, where the three story pages were released all at once, this time Trey and Daniel are releasing the pages as they are completed, about once a month.

Here is the Facebook announcement for the kick-off of the new project…

Bear witness to the very first attack of the “Four Years War”!

An unsuspecting Starfleet caught off guard by a relentless and formidable foe!

Each month, a new page will be presented to continue with the story of “Arcanis IV,” highlighting scenes from “those that didn’t make it back” and the choices and sacrifices Admiral Slater had to make during those first 2 years before Ramirez took command of the fleet.

Then after that, a new comic to continue with the story arc of the “Four Years War,” with cover and pages being presented each and every month (one page per month).

Based off of Prelude to Axanar by Alec Peters
Story by Trey McElwain
Artwork by Daniel Fu

For the HI-DEF versions of these most incredible pieces, make sure you go to the Axanar Comics Website to find them!
https://axanarcomics.wixsite.com/axanarcomics

THE ROMULAN WAR extends its INDIEGOGO another 30 DAYS!

With only ONE day left to go on its $10,000 Indiegogo campaign, the new fan project THE ROMULAN WAR has been essentially stuck just under $6,000. I had featured a text interview with show-runner MARK NACCARTO when the project first kicked off. At that point, the campaign had jumped out to an impressive start. And within the first 10 days, they’d generated over $4,000 in contributions.

But then things slowed down and nearly screeched to a halt! The needle barely moved at all during their third week when I published an audio interview with Mark trying to figure out what was going on. Why were the donations drying up? Was it the hit of Tax Day in the U.S.? Was it the guidelines or the lawsuit from 2016? Was it just that Mark wasn’t campaigning enough? Or have fans simply hit donating a wall?

It wasn’t just the normal mid-campaign slowdown. Even now, with only one day left, donations are almost nonexistent. I’d even e-mailed Mark to suggest that he might want to publicly release some of the special features (videos, ship dossiers, character background info, etc.) that had been reserved only for donors…just to excite and encourage more contributions. But time was running out!

Well, apparently, time is a luxury that we once again DO have…thanks to the folks at Indiegogo! Apparently, the crowd-funding service will now let a project team extend the duration of a 30-day campaign by an ADDITIONAL 30 days…even if they haven’t reached their goal yet!

So guess what Mark just did? Aw, why don’t I let him tell you himself…

Continue reading “THE ROMULAN WAR extends its INDIEGOGO another 30 DAYS!”

Fan Films, Assemble! Announcing: CONVERGENCE!

So, have you seen Avengers: Infinity War yet? Pretty cool how a whole bunch of Marvel characters who each have movie series of their own—Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, Spider-Man, Hulk, Doctor Strange, the Guardians of the Galaxy—all come together in a single movie to fight the bad guys. If only something like that could happen with Trek fan films.

Oh, wait…

SAMUEL COCKINGS, whose fan film TEMPORAL ANOMALY will debut later this year after he makes certain changes requested by CBS, has just announced his latest Trek fan project: CONVERGENCE. This new production has been a closely-kept secret for several months now, and those folks who did know about it were sworn to secrecy. And certain nosey bloggers who did know about the project were told only that it was code-named “Star Trek Avengers.” In fact, even the title Convergence was only revealed to the actors a week and a half ago when they all, um, converged on the U.K. to film some initial scenes in front of Samuel’s green-screen backdrop.

What makes this project extra-exciting is that it will be a full-on fan film CROSSOVER featuring actors and characters from multiple different long-running Trek fan series. In attendance at this initial shoot were NICK COOK from Intrepid (Scotland), ROBIN HIERT from Dark Armada (the Netherlands), and CHRIS BURDETT and NIMRAN SAUND from Temporal Anomaly (England) They came together to film some of the initial scenes along with some promo videos, including this fun one…

Eventually, the plan is to add on actors from an additional two fan films/series for a total of FIVE. That will be a record, as there have been a number of two-series crossovers (for example Hidden Frontier and Intrepid) and multi-fan film cameo appearances (three actors from New Voyages appeared in the pilot episode of Starship Farragut, and Vance Major featured several quick cameos of fan film notables in his later episodes of the Minard Saga). But this isn’t just the Falcon briefly appearing in Ant-Man or Hulk joining Thor for Ragnarok…this is full-on Avengers, man!

Samuel launched a new Facebook page for the project, complete with photos introducing the cast. He’ll be adding one new photo per day for the rest of this week. In another month or so, Samuel plans to launch a crowd-funding campaign to raise money to complete filming (including transportation to the U.K. for all of the cast) as well as post-production. And yes, he fully intends to follow all of the the fan film guidelines.

More Convergence news soon!