Crowd-Funding Blogs – Page 22

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)”

CHANCE ENCOUNTER creators announce NEW Star Trek fan film: THE HOLY CORE!

I love Brits who make Trek fan films! A year ago, writer / director GARY O’BRIEN and co-writer PETER LAIGHT released their first-ever Star Trek fan film CHANCE ENCOUNTER…and fans were blown away. Superb acting, touching story, well-directed, fantastic costumes and VFX, perfect music, and even custom-built shuttlepod and turbolift sets—it’s a MUST-SEE fan film well worth 20 minutes of your time to watch if you haven’t already.

This entire magnificent production was funded for just £1,862 (about $2,700) raised through a Kickstarter. And now, Gary and Peter have just announced a NEW crowd-funding campaign (coming in March) to try to raise £7,000 – £8,000 (about $10,000)…well within the $50K limit set by the fan film guidelines.

Speaking of the guidelines, I asked Gary about film length and crowd-funding perks:

We are structuring the script to split in half at the 15-minute mark, and so we are aiming for an overall run-time of 30 minutes for the story. We have yet to decide whether to make that two separate uploads of 15 minutes or not. That choice will be made much later in the process I think.

As for perks, we will probably only offer wallpapers, scripts, etc. Our hope is that anyone who donates does so to see the film get made. The simpler the perks, the more money we can put on screen!

Like Chance Encounter, the new film, The Holy Core, will be set in a time period about midway through TNG, likely 2368 or thereabouts, with a cast of all new characters. And while Chance Encounter was basically a love story, Gary says…

This time we will touch on several themes, such as scientific pursuit, the roles of religion, and a little hint of romance, too.

The new campaign will start up around March 1 and run through the end of that month. Filming will likely happen over the summer (once sets are built and cast members selected), and the finished film(s) will likely debut in late 2018 or early 2019. Obviously, a lot can happen before then, but Chance Encounter stayed pretty much on schedule all though production.

So start saving your pennies (or pence) for a very exciting crowd-funder coming in just five more weeks. And here’s something to get you in the donating mood…

SPACE COMMAND Kickstarter reaches $100,000!

Yep! Just six days ago, I was asking if the SPACE COMMAND Kickstarter could make it over $80,000 (they were less than $7,000 away from that second stretch goal). Now, with only 11 hours left, they’ve just crossed the $100,000 mark.

This means that fans now get to see a third trailer for the project (see below), and that the project will fund at least HALF of the 2-hour pilot episode…with funds to spare! And if they manage to hit $130,000 before the end of the Kickstarter tonight, that’ll fund post production for an additional half hour.

Already, scenes have been filmed for the first SIX HOURS of Space Command, which is half of the complete initial season. Those three 2-hour stories—“Redemption,” “Forgiveness,” and “The Great Solar War”—feature such notable genre actors as Doug Jones, Bob Picardo, Mira Furlan, Bill Mumy, Bruce Boxleitner, John Hennigan, Faran Tahir, James Hong, Mike Harney…as well as their worldwide talent search winners Ethan McDowell and Bryan McClure!

And now, here’s a few words from show-runner MARC SCOTT ZICREE…

We’re now moving full speed with our line producer, VFX artists and the rest of our team working on AMAZING scenes and sequences.

Within the next few months, you’ll have the first half-hour of our two-hour pilot in hand, and then it’s on to the rest!

If you want to see a FULL SCENE, here’s a wonderful encounter between Synthetic human Dor Neven (Doug Jones) and mining foreman Yusef Sekander (Robert Picardo) in Yusef’s quarters in the mining facility on Ceres in the asteroid belt!

The entire time with Space Command, there’s never been a network or studio making it happen – it’s been all of us willing this into existence and making it happen.

As I say often, compassion and love can be a counterweight to all the hatred and chaos in the world; they can make a present a future worth living in for ourselves and our children and our grandchildren.

It’s up to us to make that world, and that universe.

That’s what Space Command is all about, and it’s what I’ve dedicated my life to, in my work and in my life. Thanks for your faith and for staying the course.

The next few months will be simply phenomenal.

All good thoughts your way, as ever,

Marc

PLEASE CLICK HERE TO DONATE

(You’ve got until 10:00 pm PST tonight!)

And now, here is the third trailer, and the first to feature a look at the characters played by Faran Tahir (the captain of the USS Kelvin) and James Hong (Big Trouble in Little China)…

Can the SPACE COMMAND Kickstarter make it to $80,000?

They need $6,000 in 6 days. Can they make it???

Four weeks ago, the fan film project SPACE COMMAND, written and directed by MARC ZICREE, set out to generate $39,000 for post-production on the first 30-minute part of their 2-hour long pilot “Redemption.” That goal was reached in just 9 days. Their next goal is now $80,000 to fund post-production for the entire first hour. As I write this, they are at $73,890. Will they be able to make it across the stretch finish line?

I hope so!

The series draws inspiration from the classic sci-fi films, TV shows, and literature of the 1950s and 1960s…with a look and style that is both modern and retro at the same time. Space Command will feel like what classic sci-fi would be were it produced today.

The pilot features a cast that includes notables from Star Trek and other well-known sci-fi franchises:

Robert Picardo (Star Trek: Voyager)
Doug Jones (Pan’s Labyrinth, Hellboy, and now Star Trek: Discovery’s Saru)
Bruce Boxleitner (Babylon 5)
Mira Furlan (Babylon 5)
Bill Mumy (Babylon 5 and Lost In Space)
Faran Tahir (Star Trek 2009…he was the captain of the USS Kelvin)
James Hong (Big Trouble in Little China)
And more!

When the Kickstarter passed $65K on November 22, the Space Command team released the second of their new trailer videos. If you haven’t seen it yet, take a look…

There’s still time to throw a few dollars their way (or a few more dollars, if you’ve already pledged something). It’s an exciting project, and it would be FANtastic if they could bring in enough to complete a full hour of their project.

PLEASE CLICK HERE TO DONATE!

If you can’t afford to donate, that’s fine. But please consider sharing a link either to this blog page or directly to their Kickstarter to spread the word.

And for a great interview with show-runner MARC ZICREE, take a listen to this:

SPACE COMMAND Kickstarter nears $65,000 – releases NEW TRAILER!

Probably the most exciting (and successful) sci-fi fan film Kickstarter to come recently is the one for SPACE COMMAND. Although Space Command was originally funded through Kickstarter with more than $200K back in 2012 and all the sets were built and all scenes filmed for its pilot 2-hour episode, post-production (visual FX, music, color adjustment, etc.) still needs a bit more funding to be completed.

Two weeks ago, a new Kickstarter was launched with a goal of $39K for post-production for the first half-hour of the pilot, and that was quickly met and surpassed. A stretch goal of $55K was set with a promise of a new trailer if that number was reached. This happened last week, and this exciting video was released shortly thereafter…

As of this writing, they are just $568 short of their new stretch goal of $65K, when they will release a SECOND new trailer! If you want to help them reach that number or even get to $80,000 to fund the second half hour of the pilot, then…

CLICK HERE TO DONATE!

The pilot episode, “Redemption,” features a cast that included notables from Star Trek and other well-known sci-fi franchises:

Robert Picardo (Star Trek: Voyager)
Doug Jones (Pan’s Labyrinth, Hellboy, and now Star Trek: Discovery’s Saru)
Bruce Boxleitner (Babylon 5)
Mira Furlan (Babylon 5)
Bill Mumy (Babylon 5 and Lost In Space)
Faran Tahir (Star Trek 2009…he was the captain of the USS Kelvin)
James Hong (Big Trouble in Little China)

For a great interview with writer and show-runner MARC ZICREE, where he explains why it’s taken five years to get this far and why Space Command will be worthy your donation, take listen to this:

And remember to visit their Kickstarter page for more information!

SPACE COMMAND is back with EXPLOSIVE NEW KICKSTARTER! (audio interview with MARC ZICREE)

The year was 2012. The name of the place was Kickstarter. The project: SPACE COMMAND.

But back in 2012, fan films weren’t exactly scoring big bucks. In fact, at the time of the Space Command Kickstarter in May of that year, no Star Trek fan film project had yet succeeded in reaching their goal and getting funded. (Star Trek: Renegades‘ Kickstarter was still four months away). And even though Space Command wasn’t actually Star Trek (it was an original production created in a modern style that drew inspiration from the sci-fi literary and film classics of the the 1950s), it featured a cast that included notables from Star Trek and other well-known sci-fi franchises:

Robert Picardo (Star Trek: Voyager)
Doug Jones (Pan’s Labyrinth, Hellboy, and now Star Trek: Discovery’s Saru)
Bruce Boxleitner (Babylon 5)
Mira Furlan (Babylon 5)
Bill Mumy (Babylon 5 and Lost In Space)
Faran Tahir (Star Trek 2009…he was the captain of the USS Kelvin)
James Hong (Big Trouble in Little China)

And that’s only a partial list from just their first episode. Space Command is intended to be an entire series made up of multiple 2-hour episodes. The 2012 Kickstarter was in tended to set-up a studio, build sets, and film the first episode…which they did. They raised $221,000 from nearly 3,000 backers!

Two years later, in 2014, I got my first taste of Space Command when I saw the following scene with Robert Picardo and Doug Jones from their first episode…

I was blown away, and I couldn’t wait to see more! Unfortunately, it turned out that I would have to. Despite trailers like this one and this one that made it look like the finished product was nearly ready, years would go by with nothing new happening.

Until now!

Last week, Space Command launched a new Kickstarter campaign to complete the final post-production on the first 35 minutes of their debut episode. And if you’re wondering if fans are still willing to support a non-studio project that had raised hundreds of thousands of dollars and not delivered a finished product even after five years…the answer is: HELL, YEAH!!!!

With a goal of only $39,000, they blew past that in a matter of days! As I write this, they’ve topped $52,600 from 530 donors (including $60 from me), and they still have more than three and a half weeks to go! Stretch goals will allow them to complete additional segments of their first 2-hour pilot episode.

I caught up with writer/ show-runner MARC SCOTT ZICREE last week (just look at his IMDb page to see all the stuff he’s worked on—including Trek, B5, Sliders, and the Star Trek: New Voyages fan film episode “World Enough and Time“), and I asked him about the Space Command project, the new Kickstarter, plans for the future, and or course, why it’s been over 5 years with no finished episode yet.

Take a listen (Marc gives an AWESOME interview!)…

And click here to donate!

PLEASE HELP! STAR TREK MUSEUM needs $10,000 from fans in 24 hours!

Attention! All hands in deck!

Some of you may have heard of the TREKCETERA Star Trek Museum that had been located in the small town of Vulcan, Alberta, Canada. The museum was fully licensed by CBS with displays that included props, costumes, and set pieces used in various Star Trek movies and TV series.

BUT WITHOUT YOUR HELP TODAY, THE MUSEUM IS IN DANGER OF DISAPPEARING FOREVER!

From 2013-2016, the museum did modest business in the town of Vulcan. But last year, the owners, Devan J. Daniels and Michael Carl Mangold (both huge Trekkers who had sunk their life savings into this museum) made the difficult decision to move out of the perfectly-named town of Vulcan (about 90 minutes from Calgary) to the not-so perfectly-named town of Drumheller, Alberta (about the same distance away from Calgary).

Why the move?

Unfortunately, the perfectly-named Vulcan is off the beaten track and didn’t bring in a lot of foot traffic. Drumheller, on the other hand, is located in “Dinosaur Valley” and gets a half million visitors a year to see dinosaur fossils in the nearby badlands, a huge dinosaur museum, and even the world’s tallest dinosaur statue. And if you’ve got kids who love dinosaurs, maybe they love sci-fi, too…?

Relocating was a smart move. In just five months after reopening in Drumheller, the TREKCETERA Star Trek Museum made TRIPLE that they had made in ALL of 2016 in Vulcan.

Devan J. Daniels and Michael Carl Mangold put their heart, soul, and life savings into the TREKCETERA Star Trek Musuem.

But moving wasn’t cheap, and it required Devan and Michael to take out a large loan to help fund the move to the new location and the construction costs of converting the new building to hold their Trek exhibits.

While business is growing and the debt is being repaid, the burden is high, and the owners are looking at a default this week. However, they do have ONE LIFELINE…and YOU CAN HELP!

Their lender has agreed to restructure their entire debt to a lower interest rate and payment schedule if—IF!!!—they can raise $10,000 by tomorrow!

Friends of Devan and Michael have stepped forward this past weekend to set up a last-minute GO FUND ME campaign to help them save their museum. And even though GO FUND ME won’t release the funds immediately, a local bank has agreed to cover the payment until the money hits their account.

THIS IS A ONE-DAY CROWD-FUNDING EMERGENCY, FOLKS!

If you wait until Wednesday or Friday, it’ll be too late for the museum. It has to be today…even if all you can afford is $10 or even $1 (I gave $50, someone else gave $500). And if you can’t afford anything, then please, PLEASE pass the following link around to anyone and everyone you know:

https://www.gofundme.com/save-the-trekcetera-museum

If we don’t help, this wonderful Star Trek museum and all of its exhibits could be lost forever!

I thank you all in advance for any help you can give.

STAR TREK vs. STAR TREK – a new fan film project (interview with CHRIS ALLEN)

Ladies and gentlemen, CHRISTOPHER ALLEN Is back!!!

And now you’re wondering: “Who the heck is Christopher Allen…and what exactly is he back from???”

In 2006, Christopher Allen wrote and directed what was—and still remains—one of the most audacious and ambitious fan film genre crossovers ever: STAR TREK VS. BATMAN. This nearly hour-long production used amazingly accurate costume reproductions from the 1960s Batman TV series, built their own simplified versions of the Enterprise bridge and transporter sets, and even rented an actual batmobile replica for a day of shooting around the Indianapolis area. You can read more about it here.

Well, that was then. And although Chris produced some other independent films after 2006, Star Trek vs. Batman was the last the Trek fan production world heard from him.

Until last week. That’s when someone sent me a link to this…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GewHNIy6vIQ

Could it be? Are we on the cusp of yet another fan film parody out of Indianapolis??? It seemed so!

I checked around, and it turns out Chris Allen has launched a GoFundMe campaign with a goal of $13,400. And not only is he planning to film in the Indiana State Capitol building (’cause, y’know, he lives in Indianapolis) but also on the TOS sets at STARBASE STUDIOS…one of the first Trek fan films to announcing booking the facility since they relocated from Oklahoma City to Harrison, Arkansas.

Here’s the synopsis from their website:

An ill-tempered, but gentle alien has summoned five of the most renowned federation captains from across space and time to the planet of Delta Fawcett Four. There, Captain Kirk and the Enterprise crew face off against Professor Xavier’s Enterprise D, Voyager, that weird looking spiky thing from DS9, and the “guy from Quantum Leap” Enterprise in a forgettable, but timeless tournament that will leave your sides half-split with laughter.

SPECIAL GUEST STAR ASHLEY ALEXISS is taken hostage by an evil alien that has been knocking around the galaxy. Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock beam down to rescue Kirk’s beautiful space vixen, only to be taken hostage by Captain Pike in a pimped out wheelchair.

Well, that sounded intriguing!

So I contacted Chris, introduced myself (turns out he already knew me from that blog I wrote about his first Trek fan film), and asked if he’d mind answering a few questions. He was delighted to…

Continue reading “STAR TREK vs. STAR TREK – a new fan film project (interview with CHRIS ALLEN)”

The Realities of Crowd-Funding, part 4

Last time: we continued our in-depth discussion of crowd-funding with Alec Peters (Axanar executive producer) and Mike Bawden (Axanar director of public relations), two veterans of Trek fan films who, together, have raised nearly $2 million through multiple Kickstarter and Indiegogo campaigns for various projects.

Alec and Mike possess a wealth of knowledge about running successful crowd-funding campaigns. And whether you’re planning to do a campaign of your own someday or simply thinking of donating to one, we now conclude this compelling conversation on the realities of crowd-funding…

Continue reading “The Realities of Crowd-Funding, part 4”

The Realities of Crowd-Funding, part 3

Last time: we began our fascinating discussion of crowd-funding with two of the most successful campaigners in the history of Trek fan films, Alec Peters (Axanar executive producer) and Mike Bawden (Axanar director of public relations). Together, these two men have organized Kickstarter and Indiegogo campaigns for multiple productions that have raised nearly $2 million combined (including $1.3 just for Axanar alone).

If you want to know how to run a successful crowd-funding campaign, pay attention to these guys. This discussion isn’t just a Crowd-Funding 101 class; it’s a graduate-level seminar with some amazing insights from two people who’ve actually walked the walk. Their experiences have provided them a unique perspective and many insights that, to me at least, should be considered pure gold to anyone looking to be a part of a successful crowd-funding campaign.

Continue reading “The Realities of Crowd-Funding, part 3”