Author: Jonathan Lane

New video for THE ROMULAN WAR spotlights the ACTORS!

One of the most anticipated Star Trek fan films at the moment, THE ROMULAN WAR, is currently seeking $10,000 in donations from fans with an Indiegogo crowd-funding campaign.  As of today, with 19 days left, they’ve advanced more than 42% of the way toward their goal, which is awesome news.

Have you donated yet?  Have you at least helped to spread the Indiegogo link?  How it is, by the way:

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-romulan-war

Last week, I featured an 2-part interview with show-runner MARK NACCARATO, and it sure got fans talking!  One of the most interesting comments I saw was a person who wanted to donate but wasn’t sure he was going to like the acting.  After all, many Star Trek fan films can’t or don’t use trained actors, and for $10,000—well—I guess this guy really wanted trained actors.

And as it turns out, Mark’s got ’em!  (Remember that the guidelines don’t preclude using trained actors.  You simply can’t pay them as professionals.)

In fact, Mark has just released a new update video featuring interviews with four members of his cast along with brief clips of their performances (and reveals of their character names).  As Mark mentioned in his interview, 75% of the green-screen scenes for this project have already been filmed, and the $10,000 is intended primarily for post-production (sound, editing, VFX, music, etc.) as well as filming that last 25% of the scenes.

The latest video appears below.  Buckle up…

How AXANAR DETRACTORS condone HARASSMENT (editorial)

(My apologies in advance for the length of this blog.  But I think the current situation merits it.)

As you probably know, there are certain areas on the Internet (mostly Facebook) where many of the most hard-core AXANAR detractors congregate and feed off of one anothers’ obsessive antipathy toward this fan project and its show-runner.  Just look at the image to the left.  Here’s a detractor who has spent countless hours creating literally dozens and dozens of these faux movie posters…each of them denouncing ALEC PETERS and Axanar, hurling insults and accusations, and mocking Axanar supporters (like good ol’ “Slow” Lane here—they love calling me that for some childish reason).

Most of the time, this “fear and loathing” of all things Axanar remains safely locked away in the echo chambers of these Facebook groups.  But last week, I was concerned to read the following message posted on the main Axamonitor Facebook page by SHAWN O’HALLORAN……

Continue reading “How AXANAR DETRACTORS condone HARASSMENT (editorial)”

THE ROMULAN WAR fan film launches a $10,000 INDIEGOGO! (interview with MARK NACCARATO, part 2)

Yesterday in Part 1, I began chatting with MARK NACCARATO, the show-runner behind the upcoming fan film project THE ROMULAN WAR.  People have gotten really excited about this new production…and with good reason!  The brutal interstellar war between the Romulan Star Empire and Earth and its allies has fascinated fans since it was first referred to during the TOS episode “Balance of Terror.”  But before the TV series Star Trek: Enterprise could really sink its teeth into the conflict, the show was canceled.  So frustrating!

But now an ambitious new fan production will give Trekkers a unique look inside this fascinating struggle…not simply as a scripted drama but in a mock documentary format similar to that presented in the fan film hit PRELUDE TO AXANAR.  Mark revealed in part 1 of his interview how his project actually predates the creation of Axanar by over a decade, as he began working on The Romulan War as far back as 2000.

The production just launched  a $10,000 Indiegogo crowd-funding campaign last week, and yesterday alone, they took in more than $800…bringing them nearly 21% of the way to their goal.  And because this is Indiegogo and not Kickstarter, they don’t have to reach that goal to actually collect their contributions.  Every dollar donated WILL go to their project, which has already filmed about three-quarters of their scenes and will soon be entering post-production.

If you haven’t watched it yet, they’ve created a very engaging promotional video about their project and crowd-funding campaign:

And now, let’s dive right into the conclusion of our 2-part interview with Mark Naccarato…

Continue reading “THE ROMULAN WAR fan film launches a $10,000 INDIEGOGO! (interview with MARK NACCARATO, part 2)”

THE ROMULAN WAR fan film launches a $10,000 INDIEGOGO! (interview with MARK NACCARATO, part 1)

As any long-time Trekker will tell you, the founding of the United Federation of Planets happened just after the end of the Romulan War with Earth and the Coalition of Planets.  In fact, Star Trek: Enterprise was just beginning to explore the origins of that war when it was ignominiously canceled after only four seasons.

Thanks to the Pocket Books Trek novels, fans have gotten a better glimpse into the Romulan War.  But what if you want to WATCH the war unfold?  Star Trek fan films have offered fans a couple of options.  The long-running, low budget fan series THE ROMULAN WARS (based in Arkansas) produced ten episodes over the span of a decade.  Then in 2016, TOMMY KRAFT released the super-impressive STAR TREK: HORIZON, also based during the Romulan War and featuring the crew of the starship Discovery NX-04.

And now, lightning is about to strike THRICE with a brand new fan series titled THE ROMULAN WAR (no ‘s’ at the end) that’s going to take a very unique look at this significant piece of Star Trek history.  Creator MARK NACCARATO (from Nashville, Tennessee), has created a mockumentary-style production looking back at the Romulan War as a 24th century historical documentary.  Trekkers haven’t seen a fan film approach like this since the wildly popular PRELUDE TO AXANAR with featured a mockumentary-style look back at the Federation’s Four Years War with the Klingon Empire from the point of view of a decade later.

The Romulan War just launched a $10,000 Indiegogo crowd-funding campaign last week, and a lot of people are getting very excited.  Already, fans have donated over $1,200.  Why are they so excited?  Watch this video and see if you get excited, too…

Unlike last month’s Kickstarter campaign for The Holy Core, which only made it halfway to their $12K goal and, therefore, received nothing, Indiegogo doesn’t require that campaigns reach their published goal to turn pledges into actual donations.  So every dollar donated to The Romulan War will go toward funding the project.

Also, most the scenes have already been filmed!  So the question isn’t whether this fan film will be completed but simply how awesome will it look when it’s done.

I chatted with show-runner Mark Naccarato about his project and campaign…

Continue reading “THE ROMULAN WAR fan film launches a $10,000 INDIEGOGO! (interview with MARK NACCARATO, part 1)”

New video added to FUNNY STUFF: “Fanboys Anonymous – Star Wars v Star Trek STREET FIGHT”

Yeah, I know you’ve probably seen a TON of “Star Wars versus Star Trek” fan films, but this one is totally MENTAL…and I mean that literally!  The creators have recently released a series of humorous short films focusing on the fictional (at least, I hope it’s fictional!) TOTAL REHAB MEDIA CLINIC for addictions to Star Trek, Star Wars, Minecraft, Skyrim—you name the fan addiction, they treat it.  You can view their other recent releases here.  But their funniest and most ambitious production yet is an inspired “field trip” where the patients from the Star Trek and Star Wars therapy groups —usually separated—are dropped off together to stretch their legs  for a short bit while the clinic director goes off to make a quick phone call.  What follows is hilariously brilliant and a MUST SEE funny video…

LEAKED scripted scene from the season two premiere of STAR TREK: DISCOVERY!

BIG, HUGE, ENORMOUS, GIGANTIC SPOILER ALERT!!!

Now THIS is exciting!  I don’t know whether the producers of STAR TREK: DISCOVERY
intentionally leaked this snippet of the script for the first episode of season two or if it just “sneaked” out the door somehow.  But it provides an intriguing look at the direction the creative team will be taking going into the second season.

As has been reported elsewhere, the writing team for Discovery re-assembled at the beginning of last month to begin breaking down season two.  Co-creator Alex Kurtzman, who will be directing the first episode of season two, recently explained, “Breaking story is, in some ways, the easier and faster thing; it’s the ability to execute on it that’s much harder. We want to take the right amount of time and don’t want to rush.”

But with production on the first episode set to kick off later this month, the first script needed to be completed quickly.  Jonathan Frakes, who just confirmed that he will be directing an episode later in season two, commented, “I just read the first script of the second season and the outline for the second script and it’s on fire now.”

Indeed!  And from this leaked scene, I think he’s right.

Granted, there’s no guarantee that the following snippet from the season two premiere script will make it into the actual episode exactly as initially written.  Dialog can get changed, segments added and cut, etc.  But if this leaked scene does make it into the finished episode, I think we’ll all be very surprised and even enthusiastic about the new direction of the series now that the Klingon War is over.

Naturally, the most exciting thing about this leaked snippet is that fans get a glimpse into how the series will be handing the character of Captain Christopher Pike of the USS Enterprise who, like Sarek, Amanda, and Harry Mudd, has already been seen in canonical Star Trek history.  Will Captain Pike hew closely to his original version (like Sarek does), or will he be a radical departure (like Harry Mudd)?

Wonder no more!

I’m not sure if I’m even allowed to post this, so read it fast before I get an e-mail on Monday morning from someone with the initials of “C.B.S.” telling me to immediately take it down.

Enjoy this sneak peek into season two…

Continue reading “LEAKED scripted scene from the season two premiere of STAR TREK: DISCOVERY!”

CBS contacts and delays the STAR TREK: TEMPORAL ANOMALY fan film!

Okay, no one panic!  CBS isn’t going all lawsuit-happy again.  In fact, it’s possible that their experience in the Axanar lawsuit has resulted in a new approach to dealing with Star Trek fan films that concern them: Ask questions first, shoot later.

The first time post-lawsuit that CBS contacted a fan filmmaker with concerns was early in 2016 when Tommy Kraft was trying to raise $250,000 for Star Trek: Federation Rising, his sequel to Star Trek: Horizon.  CBS requested strongly (but politely) that Tommy shut down the project, and he complied.

CBS has been pretty quiet since then when it comes to fan films, until now.  SAMUEL COCKINGS recently released his trailer for STAR TREK: TEMPORAL ANOMALY,  a fan production he has been working on for five years.  I interviewed him about that project here.  For reasons that will likely become super-obvious when you view the trailer, this planned fan film raised some red flags with CBS for not following a few of the announced guidelines.

Star Trek: Temporal Anomaly was supposed to premiere today on YouTube.  Instead, apparently CBS has asked for (apparently, again, politely) for some changes before it gets released.  Samuel Cockings just posted this announcement to the Temporal Anomaly Facebook page:

Hello Everyone,

While the intent was to release Temporal Anomaly today we were contacted by CBS and are now delaying release of the film until those discussions are concluded and resolved. These have been polite communications and we thank CBS for their approach in dealing with these concerns.

We had hoped to release the project in its pre-guideline state as Temporal Anomaly was written in 2013 and filmed in 2013/2014 however a public release of this now dubbed “Directors Cut” is no longer possible.

A public altered edit of the film may be able to be produced but we are in the early stages of that.

Thank you for the support and interest you have shown, there will be an update on Kickstarter for our backers shortly.

Samuel Cockings

More news as it becomes available…

4th and 5th GRADERS meet the EASTER BUNNY at STARBASE STUDIOS! (audio interview with KEVIN CROXTON)

Easter came early to STARBASE STUDIOS on a cold day in January.  That’s when Emmy-winning musician and Parkview Elementary School teacher KEVIN CROXTON brought 33 students from his Music Club to shoot a Star Trek fan film.

The previous summer, Kevin had agreed to compose and record music for GLEN WOLFE’s and DAN REYNOLD’s fan production “Walking Bear, Running Wolf” (part of their FEDERATION FILES anthology fan series).  In exchange, Kevin was invited to bring his 4th and 5th grade students to the Starbase Studios TOS sets in Marble Falls, Arkansas (about three hours from Parkview Elementary) to spend a day there filming.

The finished product was released a couple of weeks ago and is already up to an impressive 3,200 views.  I consider this a MUST SEE Trek fan film not simply because the kids are adorable but because it really is a remarkably well-produced fan film!  It’s well-lit with lots of interesting camera angles, the sound levels are perfect, the music is great (the kids even get to sing!), there’s amazing make-up on Spock and the Klingons (plus really nice TOS Klingon uniforms), and all of the children do a spectacular job.

But don’t just take my word for it, have a look…

I reached out to Kevin for an interview, and we had a wonderful chat.  Toward the end, he told me that a photographer named BRENDA YELVINGTON had taken hundreds of behind-the-scenes photos, and offered to let me use them for the interview.

Normally, I just do my audio interviews as MP3 files with no visual elements.  But this time, I was able to do something a little extra special and turn the interview into a full YouTube video.  But before anyone says, “That looked really great, Jonathan, you should do it more often…” it only works when you’ve got hundreds of photos and I have a lot of extra time!

Anyway, now that you’ve watched this wonderful little fan film, please enjoy this behind-the-scenes look at group of kids and adults who made it possible…

STAR TREK: DISCOVERY’S “Secret Scene”! (editorial)

Over this past weekend, at WonderCon in Anaheim, CA, STAR TREK: DISCOVERY show-runner AARON HARBERTS released what he referred to as a “secret scene. ” He told the audience, in what I thought was a strange comment, that they decided to cut the scene out of the season one finale because it would be “…more exciting to bring it to a place like [WonderCon].”

Um, yeah.

By now, many of you have probably viewed the two and a half-minute “secret scene” (complete with a full minute and a half of credits…which seemed odd and unnecessary to me).  If you’re in the U.S., you can view the clip below…

And in a case of international legalistic inconvenience, those folks in Canada can only watch it here, and the rest of the world can see it here.

Almost immediately, fans started talking excitedly about this “new” scene and what it means for season two.  And not surprisingly, a whole bunch of folks e-mailed and/or IM’d me to ask what I thought about it.  I guess all those Discovery blogs I’ve written have marked me as some kind of fan barometer or something…or maybe they were just hoping I had some interesting insight or that maybe I’d find some fun way to trash the scene.  Who knows?

But since I’ve had a bunch of people ask for my opinion, I thought it best to just write it once.  Obviously, I’m not going to put any spoiler warnings here, as the season ended last month and the “secret scene” is right here on this blog.

So here we go…

Continue reading “STAR TREK: DISCOVERY’S “Secret Scene”! (editorial)”

HOLY CORE, BATMAN! This TREK fan film KICKSTARTER has only 5 DAYS LEFT!

Lately, some of my readers have complained that the fan film guidelines have essentially ended quality Star Trek fan films.  “You can’t make a decent Trek fan film in just 15 or 30 minutes,” they say, “and limiting crowd-funding to just $50,000 is ridiculously constraining.”

To them I reply, “Watch CHANCE ENCOUNTER!”  This 20-minute TNG-era fan film out of the U.K. had real actors, real sets, a fantastic script, wonderful directing, emotional music, great effects…you name it!  And it was made for just a few thousand dollars (or rather, pounds, since they’re all British).

Now these guys want to make another fan film…and they’re struggling to reach their Kickstarter goal of $12K.  They’re nearly halfway there, have raised an impressive $5, 345 from 74 backers (including me)…

…BUT THEY HAVE ONLY FIVE DAYS LEFT!!!

And the problem with Kickstarter is that, if they don’t reach their goal, they get ZERO!  Show-runner GARY O’BRIEN and co-writer PAUL LAIGHT are trying very hard to reach out to fans.  They’ve produced multiple spotlight videos, have been living on Facebook, and even did a podcast.  But so far, they’ve only made it half way…and time is running out!

Please help.

This is the kind of quality Star Trek fan film you’ve been wanting to see, folks.  But without donations, you won’t see it.  That’s why I’m pushing so hard to assist these guys…because I really want to see it, too!

Here’s the link to donate:

Please consider making a pledge.  But whether or not you do, at least share that link on Facebook, Twitter, in chat-rooms, forums, e-mail lists, skywriting, smoke-signals, semaphore…whatever you’ve got!

And just to get you a teensy bit more excited, here’s their latest spotlight video with a look at their LCARS…