Yesterday in Part 1, we covered the first two days of a three-day shoot on the bridge set of what director JOSHUA IRWIN has dubbed FARRAGUT STUDIO 3 (as Studios 1 and 2 were located in southeastern Georgia…with Studio 2 ultimately becoming NEUTRAL ZONE STUDIOS many years later).
What made this particular three-day shoot so significant is that it was one of the few times in the history of Star Trek fan films that the same sets were used during the same weekend to film scenes for two unrelated fan SERIES. While multiple fan FILMS has been shot in the same studio or location in a single weekend, those are typically associated with a single fan series, using the same actors playing the same characters for separate episodes.
But this weekend featured two separate casts utilizing mostly the same production crew and and set, but with significant changes to flip a series of 23rd century TOS movie-era starship bridges on Friday and Saturday for the upcoming FARRAGUT 2024 into a TNG season 2 era starship bridge for GHOST CRYSTAL, the first of three new AVALON UNIVERSE fan films set in the 24th and 25th centuries.
Josh Irwin is directing both fan films and is the showrunner for Avalon. JOHN BROUGHTON is the showrunner and star of Farragut 2024. And together, the two men ran not just one smooth ship but four over a three-day weekend. The first three ships were the USS Farragut, USS Constitution, and USS Decatur. But Sunday was reserved for a trip to the Avalon Universe and the bridge of the USS Excalibur NCC-1705-B.
The Avalon Universe fan series has been going strong since late 2018, having released more than a dozen fan films ranging in length from short to full-length two-parters. You can view them all here. Each of these takes place in the 23rd century, and that series of fan films will conclude later on this year with THE ONCE AND FUTURE CAPTAIN.
Ghost Crystal feature a number of both set-based and outdoor on-location scenes that will be filmed in Arkansas, Kansas, and Oklahoma. But Josh saw an opportunity to utilize the Farragut Films bridge to create a 24th-style starship. This required some customizing, of course, and included a fourth command chair (in addition to the three constructed for the three Farragut 2024 starships), this one built by RODNEY GARRETT, who was still sanding it down and putting the finishing touches on the set piece outside on Saturday in 90+ degree heat. But the extra effort was worth it, as the chair came out looking awesome…
You’ll also notice in the above photo 24th century-style Ops and Con consoles. Those were actually built by GLEN L. WOLFE of WARP 66 STUDIOS in northern Arkansas and transported to Maryland in Josh’s truck. They, along with the command chair, then traveled back to Arkansas with Josh to be used in additional 24th century fan films for THE FEDERATION FILES from WARP 66 the following weekend.
Also meticulously crafted were a series of LCARS panels done in a 24th century style. In this, Farragut set engineer DAVE MORETTI was a key player. Dave made sure to get the details from Josh of exactly what he wanted on his bridge for the Excalibur-B, a Narendra-class heavy cruiser (a variant of the Ambassador-class that was the Enterprise-C in TNG‘s “Yesterday’s Enterprise”). Together, the two men created a series of static plexiglass LCARS as well as animations to be displayed on LCD monitors…
Dave made certain to provide Josh with the measurements needed for printing out each of the console display pieces for the various bridge stations. You might notice in the photo above that the LCARS graphical framing elements are slightly different from TNG in that these have straight, rather than rounded, corners. I get to take credit for that idea. Josh wanted to make the Avalon Universe variant look slightly different than the Prime Universe, but it had to be a change that would be easy for him adjust in Adobe AfterEffects to standard LCARS animations that Josh would be downloading from ALEXANDER RICHARDSON’s website. My solution was to straighten the corners, which allowed Josh to simply insert black triangles over the video animations—along with adjusting the colors to a different palette. Josh also requested custom set lighting from Dave to change the look of the bridge from standard flight mode to yellow and red alerts (something also done for the three Farragut 2024 bridge sets).
Casting Ghost Crystal was full of fascinating stories, beginning with the home starting locations of the eight actors who appeared in the bridge scenes…as well as several who didn’t. You see, in addition to the segments taking place on board the bridge, the story also features three members of an away team who interact with the inhabitants of a primitive planet. And there are scenes on the ship that can be shot in much simpler background sets. Those latter scenes will be filmed at WARP 66 Studios and in outdoor locations in both Arkansas and Kansas and so will utilize actors based in that area. Since those scenes are entirely planetside, there was no need for anyone other than Josh (and Keith, who just wanted to see the cool sets) to make the 17-hour-one-way trip to Maryland.
As such, the majority of the actors inhabiting the Excalibur-B bridge were local to the Frederick area (although not all), and most were also associated with Farragut 2024. Among these was John Broughton himself, who simply wanted a silent cameo as an extra in the background. But much more significant was actress DAWNE WOODS, who will be playing the role of Captain Stacey Fletcher. Dawne will also be portraying Dr. Angela Bishop in Farragut 2024, a role she first played in the early Starship Farragut episode A ROCK AND A HARD PLACE back in 2009. Josh had met Dawne at a previous Farragut 2024 shoot and was so impressed by her acting that he asked if she would play his captain. Dawne happily agreed, and indeed, this helped Josh better flesh out the captain’s character, rewriting the part to take advantage of Dawne’s “life of the party” personality and energy as an actress.
Another Farragut actor to appear in Ghost Crystal is WILLIAM JAY, who previously played the Klingon Koroth in Farragut Forward. He’ll be appearing as an enlisted male Caitian on the USS Decatur in Farragut 2024 and as a Bolian on the Excalibur-B…
Initially, the plan was to make William’s character a Benzite, but Josh worried that the more complex make-up might interfere with William’s ability to speak his lines clearly and easily. So they decided to keep things in the blue family but went with a Bolian. Key-makeup artist MICHELE CLAUSER has been the mastermind of all the makeup for both films thus far, and she’s done a stellar job.
In the meantime, cosplayers CHRISTIAN and EMILY GOMEZ flew down from New York on Sunday just to appear in Ghost Crystal. This married couple have been huge fans of Avalon almost since its inception, and so Josh invited them to come to Maryland for the film and wrote parts on the bridge especially for each of them. Emily had made her own TNG season one blue “skant” uniform, and so Josh decided to have her character be the ship’s chief medical officer, with some emergency treatment excitement during a battle. Her husband Christian Christian’s helmsman character was also given some action to do.
And finally, flying in from Dallas, Texas, for the entire three days of the shoot was RAY MYERS, who first got involved in fan films when he donated $3K to my crowd-funder for INTERLUDE and got to appear in that production. Since then, Ray has donated to and appeared in multiple fan projects. And while he didn’t get to be in Farragut 2024, he still hung out for the first two days, enjoyed every second, chatted with folks, learned new things, stayed out of people’s way, and helped with things like props and lighting and set adjustments when asked.
On Sunday, Ray spent most of his day as a security officer with a “dust-buster” phaser at his side, standing next to the bridge turbolift. But Ray did get to do a little extra stunt work, smashing his noggin into the bulkhead and falling to the floor during a battle when the ship takes a hit. Ray even got to land on a mattress so he could throw himself to the floor quite hard.
Shooting on Ghost Crystal went on the entire day, and Josh commented that he had never shot so much footage in a three-day period ever (and he’s a professional filmmaker)! Indeed, Josh mentioned to me that he’d had a four-day shoot on THE LOST STARSHIP that didn’t produce as much raw footage as this three-day shoot!
Why such a difference? Well, The Lost Starship and many other productions often have a more relaxed, slower pace as they take more time to set up lighting, sliders for the camera, do rehearsals of scenes, etc. But Farragut 2024 and Ghost Crystal had so much dialogue to cover that there wasn’t nearly as much time available to move at anything other than warp speed.
This didn’t mean that Josh scrimped on directing the actors or setting up lighting or framing the shots, but it did mean that everyone was going almost non-stop all of the time. Costumes were being worked on in the back while shooting was going on on the main set. Make-up was being applied and adjusted right up until the last second before Josh called “Action!” And speaking of make-up, there sure was a lot of it! In addition to the Caitain and Bolian already shown, there was also a Vulcan character, another alien cadet, and PAUL R. SIEBER (who previously played Prescott and Mirror-Prescott) now appears in a new role in Farragut 2024 as an Efrosian chief engineer.
Another thing Josh did to save a little (possibly a lot of) time was to minimize the use of sliders for the camera. Sliders allow for the camera to slowly move forward and back or sideways during a shot, but sliders take a while to set up each time you want to use them. However, Josh had rented a cutting edge new camera that came out only a few short months ago, and it has very advanced image stabilization and auto-focus technology. This allowed Josh to do hand-held camera moves without any shakiness. Josh told me that it was a different feel than what he usually shoots with on a fan film, but he definitely liked the results he got.
The shoot ended at 8pm Sunday…another very full day! The bridge set was left up, potentially for a future project (I’ve got no information about that), although there is only enough room in the facility to assemble one set at a time—be it the bridge, transporter room, sickbay, the captain’s quarters, or a corridor.
As much as Josh and Keith would have loved to have stayed for a wrap party, they needed to get on the road for their 17-hour trip back to Arkansas. They got as far as the border of Virginia and Tennessee before stopping at a motel to grab a few hours sleep before finishing the drive on Monday and heading back to work on Tuesday. Such is the life of a dedicated fan filmmaker!
Meanwhile, with principal photography finally wrapped, most of Team Farragut can take a much-needed break while the post-production folks concentrate on completing the film and releasing it before the end of this year.
And finally, here are the remaining Sunday bridge detail photos taken by VFX guy Keith Hamilton. Click on any image to enlarge and see it in more detail…
