May 2024 – Fan Film Factor

A new category added to the 2024 Star Trek Fan Film SHOWRUNNER Awards…

There’s less than two and a half weeks left to enter you fan film into this year’s Star Trek Fan Film SHOWRUNNER AWARDS. We’ve already had more than a baker’s dozen submissions covering the eligibility period of January 1, 2019 – December 31, 2023. Next year, the 5-year window of eligibility will decrease to 3 years, so if there’s an older Star Trek fan film you’d still like to enter, now is your chance. And hey, if there’s a more recent Trek fan film you want to enter, now is also your chance! Here’s a link to the submission form…

https://www.cognitoforms.com/JonathanLane1/_2024StarTrekFanFilmSHOWRUNNERAWARDS

Three weeks ago, I posted a blog spotlighting the twelve judges for this year’s awards. Today, I’d like to discuss our newest category (just added for 2024): BEST GREEN SCREEN COMPOSITING. The name pretty much speaks for itself, but I personally feel that compositing actors who were filmed in front of green screens against sci-fi backgrounds has become much more of a fine art form in recent years.

I’ve recently begun watching a long-running fan series that began in 2008 that has always presented a majority of its scenes as green-screen composites. And comparing those early releases to their later work really illustrates how far both the technical and artistic aspects of chroma-keying have come over the years.

Today’s fan filmmakers are currently doing some truly impressive and in some cases groundbreaking (at least for fan films) things with compositing—from generating realistic 3D backgrounds that move and pan with the actors, to getting actors to interact with animated elements of their backgrounds, to matching the lighting on the actor perfectly to the lighting of the background…and quite a bit more than even that! I’m very excited to see which of this year’s films the judges select as the best three in this category.

And for anyone with is curious, here are the other 22 categories for this year’s Showrunner Awards…

Best Fan Film
Best Director
Best Writer
Best Lead Actor (submitter may enter up to three actors)
Best Lead Actress (submitter may enter up to three actresses)
Best Supporting Actor (submitter may enter up to three actors)
Best Supporting Actress (submitter may enter up to three actresses)
Best Cinematography
Best Film Editing
Best Sound Design/Mixing
Best Visual Effects (CGI)
Best Special Effects (non-CGI)
Best Musical Score
Best Costuming
Best Hair & Makeup
Best Original Set Design
Best Props
Best Original Character
Best Scene (up to 2 minutes)
Best Micro-Budget Fan Film (total production cost $1,000 or less, not including set construction)
Funniest Fan Film
Most Clever Easter Egg

And remember that the deadline to enter for this year is May 31 at midnight Pacific Time. Here’s the submission form link once again…

https://www.cognitoforms.com/JonathanLane1/_2024StarTrekFanFilmSHOWRUNNERAWARDS

The SHOWRUNNER AWARDS are not the same as TREKS IN 90 SECS…

I think I screwed up (a little).

Back in February, I announced a brand new contest for Star Trek fan filmmakers: TREKS IN 90 SECS! The idea was for filmmakers to create self-contained stories that could be told in 90 seconds or less. Those ultra-short fan films could be submitted to yours truly on or before the end of July and then be voted on by readers of my blog. The three fan films with the most votes would get the most amazing prize ever: bragging rights! (Sorry, no Vegemite. I can’t afford it.)

I was asked at one point if submissions to Treks in 90 Secs could go a little over 90 seconds, and I said okay. But I added that I would enforce a hard limit of no more than 2 minutes.

That may have been where I screwed up.

Last month when I announced that submissions were now open for the third annual Star Trek Fan Film SHOWRUNNER AWARDS, I forgot to mention that this was a completely separate competition from the Treks in 90 Secs contest. And I’ve since discovered that a few people thought they were the same contest.

Why did they think this? Well, one of the categories for the Showrunner Awards is “BEST SCENE (up to 2 minutes).” For that category, the entrant must create a separate, self-contained YouTube or Vimeo video of what they think is the best continuous sequence from their fan film. The sequence cannot be longer than two minutes.

And so, here’s a blog clarifying the differences between the two contests:

SHOWRUNNER AWARDS

Open to Star Trek fan films of any length released between 1/1/19 and 12/31/23
Deadline to enter for this year: May 31
Click here to submit a fan film through an online form
Cost to enter: $10/entry plus $1 per additional category (23 categories total)
Judged by a panel of twelve fan film showrunners
Certificates awarded to the winners

TREKS IN 90 SECS

Open to any Star Trek fan film with a total runtime not to exceed two minutes (preferably 90 seconds)
Deadline to enter for this year: July 31
To enter, e-mail me the link at jonathan (at ) fanfilmfactor (dot) com
Cost to enter: absolutely free
Judged by Fan Film Factor readers; votes tallied online
Nothing awarded to the winners except pride

Actually, now that I have a spiffy logo for Treks in 90 Secs, I might give something to the winners after all. Not sure yet, but I’ve got a few months to decide.

All right, you may all return to your regularly-scheduled lives…already in progress.

How I used A.I. technology to bring the voices of SPOCK AND McCOY back to life in “AN ABSENT FRIEND” (part 3: legal and moral questions)…

In part 1, I discussed how I used Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) to turn a Star Trek inspired fan script that I wrote back in 2010 into an audio drama featuring the voices of Spock and McCoy. I utilized ElevenLabs‘ voice synthesis algorithm to convert sound clips captured from a variety of sources into a series of back-and-forth dialog between the two characters. Ultimately, I wound up with an approximately 15-minute long audio drama.

Part 2 covered how I managed to take the audio drama and turn it into an animated fan film with the help of an amazing illustrator by the name of MATT SLADE, music composer MATT MILNE, and my longtime childhood friend MOJO. Indeed, in the end, I was the only person involved in this production whose named didn’t start with the letter M! The finished product came out looking like this…

And now the moment that I am certain many of you have been waiting for: the legal and moral questions of “Can Jonathan legally do this?” and “Should Jonathan ethically do this?” These are both complex subjects to tackle. But let’s dive in…!