Author: Jonathan Lane

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!

So where’s that darn DEEP SPACE NINE documentary??? (update)

Has the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine documentary WHAT WE LEFT BEHIND been left behind?  Hardly!

Just over a year ago, IRA STEVEN BEHR, DAVID ZAPPONE, and ADAM NIMOY unexpectedly blasted though all expectations (an initial $150,000 goal) and ever-higher stretch goals to reach a staggering $647,891 in donations for their ambitious full-length documentary about the beloved Star Trek TV series Deep Space Nine.

Fans were excited about nearly every aspect of this planned project.  Clips, behind-the-scenes stories and footage, and round-table interviews with nearly all of the major cast members and many of the production team were, of course, a given.  But there would also be a special 20-minute “what if” segment in which the original writers would brainstorm a theoretical 8th season of the show.  There would be licensed footage, customized graphics, and an original score…all directed by Adam Nimoy, who has already given fans the excellent For the Love of Spock documentary.

But most exciting, though, was a promised HD remastering of certain scenes from the original DS9 series along with new CGI animations produced and overseen by veteran Trek VFX alum DOUG DREXLER.  And since Paramount and CBS have stated that they have no intention of remastering DS9 like they did TOS and TNG (yeah, sacrilege!) this will probably be our only chance to have at least at a small taste of what could have been.  Most of us “Niner” fans couldn’t wait!

And we thought we wouldn’t have to wait for too long.  Although the original estimates were February of 2018, that was before the campaign took in nearly 325% over its original goal.  So an update from last November said that February wasn’t gonna happen, and “[W]hile we still are aiming to have the film done in early 2018, it is likely these release timeframes will shift back (slightly) to accommodate.”

So now “early 2018” is rapidly turning into “mid 2018,” and fans are beginning to wonder where’s that darn DS9 documentary?!?

Two weeks ago, we got our answer when the team issued a new update with more information, a bunch of optimism, and a fair amount of good-natured humor.  Here’s a look at what they had to say…

Continue reading “So where’s that darn DEEP SPACE NINE documentary??? (update)”

CERBASI TREK – The Search for Nicolas (interview with “Captain Daddy” WAYNE CERBASI)

As a dad myself, I have to admit to feeling a kindred spirit when I first found out about CERBASI TREK – THE SEARCH FOR NICHOLAS.  The Cerbasi family lives in the town of Reading in the United Kingdom.  “Captain Daddy” WAYNE CERBASI has two sons, PETER (almost 12-years-old) and NICHOLAS (9-years-old).  And a few months ago, they made a 16-minute Star Trek fan film.

We’re not talking Star Trek Continues or Axanar here. This was just a fun little project for a father to do with his two kids.  And that’s what fan films are all about, right?  FUN!  And hey, if you can bring a few new fans from the “next generation” into the fold, so much the better.

Much of this film is done in “machinima” style, which is a production technique where the filmmaker records computer graphics rendered in a video game engine (like Star Trek Online or Elite Force or Bridge Commander) and edits them to tell a unique story with characters and space scenes…all without having to know how to create actual visual effects.

Machinma fan films have existed 1996, when a filmmaker used the first-person shooter game Quake to create a video short story called “Diary of a Camper” with game scenes and text-based dialog.  Since then, many Star Trek fan films have used the technique, including, for example, the multi-episode Borg War.

Most machinima-based Trek fan films use only the video game renderings for all of their scenes.  What makes Cerbasi Trek unique, however, is that this is the first time (that I’m aware of, and I’ve looked hard) that a Trek fan filmmaker has utilized green screen compositing alongside machinima to incorporate real people INTO the computer-generated scenes.  Wayne and his two sons appear with the CGI characters on the virtual bridges, and the result is a really fun-looking adventure…

I recently chatted with Wayne about his project and his Trek-starring fan film family…

Continue reading “CERBASI TREK – The Search for Nicolas (interview with “Captain Daddy” WAYNE CERBASI)”

New TRAILER posted for THE ROMULAN WAR!

For the past three weeks, I’ve been spotlighting the Indiegogo campaign for THE ROMULAN WAR.  I published a text interview with show-runner MARK NACCARATO shortly after the campaign launched, and later an audio chat with Mark discussing the current state of crowd-funding campaigns in general and his in particular.

The reason I’m pushing this project so much is not only because I’m really excited by it and want to see it completed, but also because I think this is a really critical time for Star Trek fan films.

Fan donors have gotten used to the flash and sizzle of the quality productions like Star Trek Continues, New Voyages, Prelude to Axanar, Horizon, and Renegades.  And for a while, it seemed like there were simply two “extremes” of Trek fan films: the six-figure professional-quality productions that were nearly as good as “the real thing” (some arguably better)…and the low-budget, bargain basement fan films with amateur actors, rubenesque fans doing cosplay, cheap costumes, bad lighting, horrible sound, mediocre VFX, slow pacing, etc.  While I believe many of these less ambitious projects are still worth checking out, a lot of them don’t attract much in donations through crowd-funding campaigns (and few of them even ask for money).

With the advent of the guidelines, fans lamented that the days of the six-figure “blockbusters” were over, and I think that’s one of the reasons that donations to recent Kickstarters and Indiegogos have been so anemic.

But while the top-level “professional” fan productions might mostly be history, and the low-budget fan films not really justifying  more than modest donations, to quote Yoda: “There is another…”

Continue reading “New TRAILER posted for THE ROMULAN WAR!”

A very disturbing series of e-mail exchanges between GABE KOERNER and me…

Some of you know GABRIEL KOERNER from his work on fan films like Star Trek Continues and BSG: Second Coming.  Some know him as “That kid from the Trekkies documentary.”  And of course, he currently does CGI for the Fox TV series The Orville along with an impressive list of other Hollywood projects on his IMDb page.

Of course, he’s also a well-known AXANAR detractor, posting frequent comments to social media and even to this blog disparaging ALEC PETERS and the Axanar production.  In fact, just this past Monday, Gabe referenced Alec (without naming him directly) in this comment to Fan Film Factor.  The blog title read “Is TREK crowd-funding in TROUBLE?”  Gabe answered: “Yes. Thanks to the actions of ONE careless, unethical, reckless irresponsible individual’s actions.”

Ironic that Gabe would use the words “unethical,” “reckless,” and “irresponsible” as, just a few hours later, a video would be posted that included recordings of nearly a dozen harassing voicemail messages left by Gabe on the answering machine of BARNEY CORNETT of West Virginia.  In the video, Barney says that these are just a small sample of nearly 100 harassing calls that he and his family have received over the course of the past five months.

Here is that video…

There’s no need to ask whether I’ve confirmed the veracity of this video.  Gabe has since admitted to making these calls in this public post to the Axamonitor group on Facebook:

An now, my own apology for the length of the rest of this blog, but I want to share a series of increasingly disturbing e-mail exchanges I’ve had with Gabe since Monday night.  (Since none of this was off the record, I feel I can share the exchange here.)  I’ll explain my reasons for deciding to do this after we get through all of the e-mails, keeping my comments minimal until the end.

Continue reading “A very disturbing series of e-mail exchanges between GABE KOERNER and me…”

TEMPORAL ANOMALY concludes talks with CBS, gets small guideline EXEMPTION and release plans!

Well, folks, there’s some good news, some bad news, and some rather shocking news involving the fan production STAR TREK: TEMPORAL ANOMALY.  As you might recall from this blog update that I posted last month, CBS had contacted show-runner SAMUEL COCKINGS with some concerns over his soon-to-launch fan film.  Weeks earlier, Samuel had released  this trailer that raised a few red flags with the corporate Star Trek copyright owners.

Specifically, there were four concerns.  The first was easy to fix.  The fan film guidelines don’t allow for the name “Star Trek” to be part of the title.  No problem there:”Temporal Anomaly – A Star Trek Fan Film” it is!

The second problem was length, about 50 minutes long.  The guidelines specify a maximum of two 15-minute separate fan films.  Of course, Star Trek Continues released five full-hour episodes after the guidelines were announced (four of them having been filmed and produced after the announcement), and STC was never stopped by CBS.

The third problem was that the trailer included footage taken from actual TNG movies with Picard, Riker, Data, Worf, and Troi on the bridge.  Using existing Trek footage is a no-no.  Granted, Samuel only needed it for a brief intro sequence at the beginning and a short epilogue at the end, but still…not kosher with the suits at CBS.

And finally, there was the music, nearly all of which is existing copyrighted scores from various Star Trek TV series.  Although many other fan films liberally use existing Trek background music, Temporal Anomaly had gotten on CBS’s radar, and the studio wasn’t going to ignore the obvious.

So what’s the good, bad, and shocking news?

Continue reading “TEMPORAL ANOMALY concludes talks with CBS, gets small guideline EXEMPTION and release plans!”

Is TREK crowd-funding in TROUBLE? (a lively chat with MARK NACCARATO of THE ROMULAN WAR)

Are Star Trek fan films in danger of having the donation well run dry?  It’s hard to know, but right now, things look somewhat troubling.

Last month, a Kickstarter for the proposed The Holy Core fan film (the same folks who produced the excellent Chance Encounter) didn’t even manage to get half way to their $12,000 goal and instead got nothing.  Another Kickstarter for The Roddenberries’ new album and music video set a two month goal of $9,500 and, with only 11 days to go, is only up to $3,565.

And now, THE ROMULAN WAR, an exciting new Star Trek fan project, is struggling to reach its $10,000 goal on Indiegogo.  Although they burst out of the starting gate with $4,200 in less than two weeks, last week was a veritable desert of donations with only a few hundred dollars coming in over the span of six days.  And this despite the fact that last Monday saw a new video posted to social media spotlighting the cast and showing some never-before-seen footage, and on Wednesday there was a cool TrekYards feature on the Romulan “Strombird” class.  Fortunately, yesterday saw nearly a thousand dollars come in (not sure why, since nothing notable happened on Sunday), but they’re still only 55% of the way to their goal with just 12 days left!

What the heck is going on??? Continue reading “Is TREK crowd-funding in TROUBLE? (a lively chat with MARK NACCARATO of THE ROMULAN WAR)”

ATROPA – what REALLY happens when you try to sell your sci-fi fan film to the “BIG GUYS”! (audio interview with ELI SASICH)

ATROPA is not a Star Trek fan film, nor was it ever intended to be one.  In fact, it’s closer to an independent sci-fi film than a fan film.  So why am I talking about it here?

Ever since the Star Trek fan film guidelines came out two years ago, armchair quarterbacking fans have suggested than Trek fan filmmakers simply create original sci-fi stories and then go sell them directly to Netflix or some other streaming or on-demand service.  They offer this advice with the same casual confidence of telling someone to remember to use brown sugar to make chocolate chip cookies…as though what they’re suggesting is the easiest thing in the world.

It’s not.

And that’s why I’m focusing today’s blog on Atropa, a film by ELI SASICH.  In a really fascinating and enlightening audio interview, he taught me a LOT about how things work in the real world of Hollywood for an independent filmmaker trying to break into the industry.  If you’re one of those people who thinks it’s a simple thing to make a good film and sell it to Netflix or Hulu or Amazon Prime…this interview is going to open your eyes.  (So if you want to keep your eyes closed, don’t listen!)

Now, if you absolutely, positively MUST have a Star Trek fan film connection to care about this film, then I’ve actually got one for you!  The visual effects for Atropa (and they are STUNNING!) were created by TOBIAS RICHTER of the The Light Works in Cologne, Germany.  Tobias has done equally stunning VFX for Star Trek: New Voyages, Renegades, and Axanar.

Here’s a trailer for the 7-episode Atropa miniseries (totaling about 80 minutes):

You can watch Atropa via the special STUDIO+ app from Vivendi.  Here is information about how to create an account.  There is a monthly subscription of $3.99, but the first month is free.  So watch Atropa (and maybe a couple of other series) and then cancel…no big deal.  Apparently, you can also sign up for 7-day free trial followed by $2.99/month to access Studio+ content if you are an Amazon Prime member via Prime Video (although I haven’t tried it that way myself).

By the way, Atropa was one of ten finalists in the inaugural edition of Canneseries Digital at the Cannes Film Festival.  Although Atropa did not win (that award went to a digital series called Dominos out of Canada), making to the finals is nothing to sneeze at!

And now, here’s an interview with Eli Sasich that I’m certain you’ll enjoy…

STONE TREK is now available on YOUTUBE!

One of my all-time favorite fan series is the mash-up parody STONE TREK.  From 2000-2007, BRIAN MATTHEWS, the creator of Stone Trek, and WALLY FIELDS, who did the voices, released nine hilarious episodes (eight of them 2-parters), masterfully combining the modern stone age of The Flintstones with the final frontier of Star Trek.  You just have to see those episodes to appreciate their comedic perfection, and I’ve enthusiastically rated it as a MUST SEE fan film.

There was only one small problem.  These nine episodes were all created in Adobe’s Flash application  and never exported to YouTube.  The original flash files weren’t even viewable from many smart devices because of the Flash format.

I interviewed Brian and Wally a few years ago (click here to read the interview), and after we finished up and were just shooting the breeze, I asked if he ever thought of maybe exporting the episodes in video format and uploading them to YouTube.  Brian told me that he’d think about it, but in the years since then, all I ever saw were a few of the episodes posted to YouTube by other fans, in varying states of quality.  But the majority of these nine comedy mashup classics remained absent from YouTube.

Until now, that is…

Continue reading “STONE TREK is now available on YOUTUBE!”