I always get a feeling of giddy anticipation when I see a new video from fan filmmaker IAN RAMSEY show up in my YouTube feed. I subscribe to his STAR REKT YouTube channel, and every few months, Ian posts a new, brilliantly hilarious Star Trek-themed musical video parodystarring himself in a different era uniform(s) and/or costume(s) with wonderful green screen editing composited in with backgrounds and spliced with short clips from all the myriad Star Trek series.
Over the past four years, Ian has released no less than SIXTEEN parodies of songs ranging from Frankie Valli to Katy Perry, Barry Manilow to Queen, Nickelback to the Backstreet Boys, and Green Day to Michael Bublé (to name but a few!). I interviewed Ian back in early 2023 when he’d released “only” nine musical parodies—all excellent—but with his editing abilities only just beginning to develop. And I was thinking it might be time to interview Ian again…although I wondered what kind of spin to put on the blog. After all, making music videos in front of a green screen in your house is kind of a one-note interview, right?
Then, late last year, I saw this…
Wow! This was a step beyond (pun somewhat intended) anything I’d seen out of Ian before this. And who knew the boy could dance??? Actually, according to the tag at the end of the video, this effort required a professional choreographer and more than two years to complete.
Well, if that’s not fodder for an interesting blog, I don’t know what is!
Actually, I should mention that the paradigm shift happened one video sooner, as Ian went from videos that were mainly framed from mid-level up to full-body coverage shots. This music video parody of “Baby One More Time” by Britney Spears debuted in July of 2024…
And Ian’s latest masterpiece (from January of this year) takes the song “Starships” by Nicki Minaj, cleans up the lyrics to a PG rating, and sets its phasers (literally) on “Redshirts“…
I’m pretty sure Ian included every TOS red shirt death in that video…plus a few blue and gold shirt departures. (Let me know if he missed any.) But for now, I want to find out more about LOGICAL, Ian’s awesome dance moves, and his choreographer, CAROLYN DESKIN. So let’s fly…or hit it…or whatever. Here’s Ian…
JONATHAN – And the hits just keep on coming! Welcome back to Fan Film Factor, Ian.
IAN – Great to be back, Jonathan.
JONATHAN – Every time I see one of your new music video parodies, I wonder: “How did Ian come up with that?!?” I mean, sometimes it’s pretty obvious. Changing “Oh, What a Night” into “OH, WHAT A FIGHT” (between Kirk and the Gorn) wasn’t really a stretch. But “Looks Like We Made It” into “LOOKS LIKE WE MATED” (with Janeway and Paris becoming space iguanas in the Voyager clunker episode “Threshold”) was pure genius…and remains one of my favorites of all of your releases. So how did you decide that Dua Lipa’s song “Physical” would become “Logical” filled with dancing Vulcans?
IAN – It was pretty early in the process that I realized that I was going to be making “Logical” into a dance video—mostly due to the fact that the lyrics I was coming up with didn’t lend themselves well to specifics. Everything was very generalized, as opposed to most of my other songs where I am able to get more specific about characters, events, etc. and have plenty of Trek clips to support them. So I realized pretty quickly that clips wouldn’t be able to carry this video. And because of the vibe of the song, it felt very Vulcan to me. So the fact that the video would be about Vulcans, the idea of making a Vulcan dance video came pretty naturally.
JONATHAN – So you’re a dancer then? I’ve seen you do some dancing in your other videos, although not nearly as much as in this one.
IAN – Although I dabbled with some “dancing” in previous videos, I am not a dancer in the slightest! So a friend of mine put me into contact with a dance teacher/choreographer she knows. By that point, I already had a very rough early mix of the song ready that I could send her. And then in no time, Carrie sent me a video of her performing all the moves she came up with.
JONATHAN – Did you tell her the kind of moves you were looking for?
IAN – The only guidance I really gave was just to make sure they’re all moves that a first-year dance student could do! The choreography from her was pretty much her dancing interpretation of the song/lyrics. I figured I didn’t want to burden me or her with coming up with a rough cut and saying “please only choreo these portions.” So I knew that what I’d do would be take certain moves or moments and splice them up and move them around.
JONATHAN – Did you have specific moves that were intended to go with certain lines of the song, or were you more flexible in being able to shuffle segments around?
IAN – My typical process in making these videos is usually to capture the footage of what I think I’ll need and then make a “storyboard” on the editing timeline/sequence so I know what I then have to film myself. And on this one, that process was more imperative than ever! I needed to know exactly what clips went where and what dance moves were going to go where. And then I could focus on practicing and filming the moves. And also, I’m quite proud of the fact that I actually came up with and added some of my own dance moves.
JONATHAN – Oh, that is impressive, Ian! That said, you mentioned at the end of the video that this project took you over two years to complete. Surely it didn’t take you two years to learn those dance moves and film them!
IAN – The reason that this all took two years to finish from conception to completion was because, very early on, I had an idea of what I wanted it to look like, and at that point, I knew my production set-up and editing skills weren’t up to par to accomplish what I was envisioning.
The first vocal recordings I made of this song were done back-to-back with “Looks Like We Mated.” So if you look back at my channel and when that video came out, that’s roughly when I began working on “Logical” as well. But I shelved it until I was confident I had the ability to pull it off near a level of quality I was hoping for.
And ultimately, I think that was the best decision because I’m very proud of how it came out. By the time I decided to commit to “Logical,” I had learned a lot of editing tricks, got a better camera, and created a better “studio” set up that allowed me to actually be shot head-to-toe—something that was severely lacking in most videos. Up until that point, I was just a torso.
And that whole time interval allowed me to really improve many aspects of the song. I rewrote some lyrics, I re-recorded it and remixed the vocals, and I had a lot of time to study professional pop/dance music videos for inspiration on how I wanted to present it.
JONATHAN – Well, I think it turned out most awesomely. And I can’t wait to see what you have planned for us all next.
IAN – Thanks, and thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.
JONATHAN – It was most enjoyable, Ian. And before we go, I should mention to our readers that your costumes, make-up, and equipment are funded entirely through Patreon donations and loose change found in your sofa. If anyone wants to help out with the former, here’s the Patreon link…