If you want to see impeccable TOS movie-era uniforms in a Star Trek fan film right now, there’s really only two places to look. The first is FARRAGUT FILMS, whose recent FARRAGUT FORWARD from last year and the upcoming FARRAGUT 2024 due out in the next few weeks feature dozens of carefully-crafted, cosplay-quality recreations of the beautiful monster maroons from the early Trek feature films.
Of course, when you’re talking cosplay-quality Starfleet, why not go right to the source…actual cosplayers! You see them walking around Star Trek conventions looking so dapper and elegant, and in the past few years, many of these same cosplayers have portrayed characters in fanthology films released by STAR TREK FAN PRODUCTIONS INTERNATIONAL and its main showrunner, Southern California-based DAVID CHENG. But David hasn’t limited himself solely to movie-era. Since 2019, his fan film releases have included The Motion Picture-era uniforms, TOS, and both 24th and 25th century styles. Here’s a list…
THE HUMAN ADVENTURE (2019)
LOOK FORWARD TO THE DAY (2020)
I AM SPOCK (2020)
UNREST (2020)
PEACE AND GOODWILL (2020)
OUTRAGED (2021)
BORG HUNTERS (2022)
SPARE THE FUTURE, SAVE THE PAST (2024)
Back in June, David and company released their latest project, TIME AND TIME AGAIN, which took the idea of using cosplayers to a whole new level. Filmed at an actual Star Trek convention in private hotel rooms, small conference rooms, and elsewhere, you can count nearly two dozen different cosplayers in the cast—many of them familiar faces to those of us who regularly attend conventions, especially here in America. Cosplayers played Kirk, Spock, Scotty, Uhura, Sulu, plus Admiral Nogura and Vulcan Ambassador Soval. Take a look…
Although it’s been a few months since its release, I didn’t want Time and Time Again to pass by unblogged. So I tracked down David Cheng for a short interview…
JONATHAN – At which convention or conventions did you shoot this fan film, and when?
DAVID – This was the Star Trek Convention in Las Vegas during August 2019.
JONATHAN – WOW, that’s more than half a decade ago! Why did this fan film take so long to get released?
DAVID – We shot much of the film in 2019, beginning with the scene at the Star Trek convention. We planned to shoot additional scenes, but then COVID hit, and as you know, the world shut down in April 2020. So we had to halt production on the film as a result.
Rather than not making films altogether, we turned our attention to producing what you aptly called “fandemic” films in which we had different characters film themselves from their own locations, and we edited the clips together into a cohesive story. By the time it became safe enough to shoot in person, we had moved on to working on other projects. Also, with the passing of time, the remaining scenes of Time And Time Again became impractical for us to shoot, so it remained an incomplete project.
JONATHAN – What resurrected it?
DAVID – Eventually, BILL ARUCAN, who plays Admiral Curry in Time And Time Again, asked what was happening with the film. We decided to scrap the remaining scenes that we originally planned to shoot and worked on a new ending that we could realistically film in order to complete the project. So it was not until 2025 that we were able to finally finish the film and release it.
JONATHAN – I’m most intrigued by those convention scenes. There were so many cosplayers! What was the process of getting them into a fan film at a single con? Did you see who was there and just invite them to be on camera, or was there more long-term preparation involved?
DAVID – Every year at the Las Vegas Star Trek Convention, there is a monster maroon group photo shoot scheduled. At these shoots, a large number of attendees wearing the monster maroon uniforms from the original series movies gather together to take pictures.
For the scenes that were shot during the convention, I invited members of the group in advance to take part in the film shoot. On the actual day of the shoot, after we took our group photos, those who wanted to take part in the filming went to a hotel suite. Although we did have a script already written, we did not have to distribute it to the majority of the participants. We just provided direction at the location.
JONATHAN – What was the most challenging aspect of getting this fan film shot and completed?
DAVID – One of the most challenging aspects was organizing and getting all the monster maroon cosplayers together in one place so we could shoot the retirement party scene. Fortunately, the large gathering of such cosplayers at the convention was a convenient way for us to do that. Where else can you get Spock, Scotty, Uhura, and Sulu in once place? Another cosplayer, LUIS VALENTN, who portrays the Vulcan Ambassador Soval, also attended, so I was able to have him join in, as well. For the actual filming, we spent roughly two hours with the majority of the cosplayers. We shot some smaller scenes with a few individuals over the next ninety minutes.
The most challenging part, however, was trying to figure out how to finish the film, given that circumstances had changed over the years that prohibited us from executing some of our original ideas.
JONATHAN – Are there any fun behind-the-scenes stories from the production?
DAVID – I’ve got two fun stories. At the convention, we had cosplayers to portray Spock, Sulu, and Uhura. When we gathered the monster maroon cosplayers together for the shoot, I noticed that one of them, DAVID COE, resembled Scotty, so we decided on the spot to include an impromptu scene in which David portrays the engineer.
For the transporter scene, we had the opportunity to shoot on the transporter pad that was set up at the convention. The only problem was that it was available for all attendees to use, so we had to work around them in order to shoot our scenes on the transporter. There was a lot of ambient noise in the raw footage that we had to eliminate. We also had to loop our dialogue for that particular scene.
DAVID – So what’s coming up on short range and long range sensors for your production company, David?
DAVID – We’re currently finishing up production on the follow-up to our Borg Hunters film, titled, BORG HUNTERS: THE HOUSE OF KOR, which we plan to release in 2026. I am also hoping that we’ll begin production on the follow-up to Spare the Future, Save The Past, which will be called SPARE THE PAST, SAVE THE FUTURE. Long term plans include filming a follow-up to our very first film, The Human Adventure.
I was also honored to be asked to shoot some short scenes for inclusion in other fan film productions and will be working on those very soon.
JONATHAN – Awesome! I’m glad you’ve got so much going on. Thanks for the interview, David.
DAVID – Thanks for having me!