Personal Stories – Fan Film Factor

To use A.I. or not to use A.I.–is that even the QUESTION??? (editorial)

Some of you may have seen my Facebook posts this past week announcing the upcoming release of NO ROOM FOR ERROR, the first Star Trek fan film I’ve created in more than two years—since the release of AN ABSENT FRIEND, which used Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) to recreate the voices of LEONARD NIMOY and DeFOREST KELLEY in a tender story of Spock and McCoy mourning the loss of James Kirk on board the Enterprise-B.

Like An Absent Friend, No Room for Error also utilizes A.I. extensively. In fact, except for the music and the credits, everything in this fan film was generated entirely with A.I. tools: images, animations, VFX, and voices. Indeed, the whole purpose of the exercise was for me to learn A.I. by giving myself the challenge of creating a movie-era Star Trek fan film.

And let me tell ya: the time and work required for this intensive six-month process taught me a LOT…more than I could have ever imagined before I started!

I have no illusions about A.I. I know it’s very controversial at the moment. The possibility of an A.I.-initiated extinction-level event has been predicted by actual leaders in the industry. Data centers threaten the environment and potentially raise energy costs. And an entire generation (my son’s, as a matter of fact) fear that A.I. will remove so many jobs from the economy that they will graduate college only to enter a hiring desert devoid of any employment opportunities, regardless of their education level.

I don’t disagree with any of this. These fears are very, very real.

Add to this the public backlash against A.I., exemplified by comments like this one that came in via Facebook…

Really? Star Trek has always been on the forefront of cutting edge technology. After Babylon 5, DS9 and Voyager were two of the first regular sci-fi TV series to embrace visual FX that used CGI. Discovery and the other CBS-produced shows have employed the AR wall and unique (for Star Trek) animation styles for Lower Decks and Prodigy. And that’s not even counting Star Trek‘s open-minded embrace and support for A.I. characters such as Data, Vic Fontaine, and the EMH.

So at best, I’d say the above comment is factually inaccurate. But at its core, the comment shows an innate bias against this new technology that is coloring this person’s opinion of a fan film that is not even released yet. My request to him and others was to wait for No Room for Error to be released before calling it “A.I. slop.” I mean, it still might be, but there’s no need to pre-judge. That’s very UN-Star Trek-like.

But today, let’s tackle the big question: if A.I. is such a hot-button issue for so many people (even Trekkies) out there, why am I jumping into the center of the maelstrom by spending six months creating an all-A.I. Star Trek fan film…?

My 14-year-old son JAYDEN is leading an international FAN GAME development team! (video interview with JAYDEN LANE)

I know, I know…this is a blog site about fan films, not fan games. But did you even know there is such a thing as a fan game? I didn’t until a few years ago when my now-14-year-old son Jayden got very interested in something called UNDERTALE.

Released originally back in 2015, Undertale was created by an independent game developer named TOBY FOX following a 2013 Kickstarter campaign with a $5K goal. A month later, the crowd-funder finished with ten times that amount! Initially launched for Windows and Max OS, in the ensuing years, Undertale was later released for Playstation, Nintendo Switch, and ultimately xBox. According to this rather extensive Wikipedia article…

The game was acclaimed for its thematic material, intuitive combat system, musical score, originality, story, dialogue, and characters; however, the reaction to its art style was mixed. The game has sold at least five million copies and was nominated for multiple accolades and awards. Several gaming publications and conventions listed Undertale as game of the year, and others have since listed it as one of the greatest video games ever made.

The music for the game (composed by Toby Fox himself) was released on an official soundtrack along with the game and became wildly popular, spawning two official Undertale cover albums—one electronic/metal and the other jazz. Not bad for a guy who had never written a full video game before and crowd-funded its development for a tiny fraction of what the big gaming corporations were spending!

Rather than try to explain the game to you, I’ll just show you this video (surprisingly recent, as the game is still immensely popular) that shows the gameplay…

Hard to believe that such a simple-looking, 2D artwork role-playing game could catch fire like Undertale did, but it seemed to hit some kind of magical sweet-spot for players of all ages…including Jayden when he was only 10 or 11. Within a few months, Jayden was designing his own Undertale “fan games” using a programming engine called Scratch that—surprisingly—was never intended for such advanced gameplay coding. But that didn’t stop my son!

To give you an idea of what Jayden was capable of while still only 12 years old, here’s a video of an Undertale-based fan game he created in 2023. I can’t show the actual game itself, only a video of the full game that he posted to his YouTube channel…

Jayden created all of the graphics and animations himself (the individual visual elements are known as “sprites”) and did all of the coding. The only thing that Jayden wasn’t responsible for was the music, which he downloaded from other Undertale fans who would write royalty-free music for fun. (While Jayden can draw and animate and code—and do really amazing voice-overs—he’s not a musician.)

So how does the original creator, Toby Fox, feel about these fan games?

Where did JONATHAN go?

Don’t look now, but my last published Fan Film Factor blog was on January 9th! And for a guy who prides himself on posting at least one or two new blogs a week, that’s almost an eternity of radio silence! Indeed, it had gotten so noticeable that one fan filmmaker actually IM’d me recently to ask if I’d survived the recent Los Angeles wildfires. (I was tempted to respond, “No, I died in a smoldering inferno last month. I’m writing to you from the Great Beyond…and they have Star Trek reruns!”)

So what did happen?

Well, as I mentioned in my final blog of 2024, I had been spending quite a bit of time finishing the writing of a new book on day trading. (Don’t laugh! I’ve gotten quite good at it, folks. And something has to pay for my next fan film!) But the book came out in late January, so that doesn’t explain my lack of blogger productivity for much of January and all of February.

I could, of course, blame the wildfires that devastates L.A. and left a number of our friends effectively homeless. But fortunately for myself and the Lane family, homes on the west side of Los Angeles were spared from the fiery maelstrom. I did volunteer at an organization called Project Angel Food (mostly chopping vegetables), but that didn’t take away too much blogging time.

No, the two reasons for my lack of new fan film blogs these past two months were twofold: the DIRECTORS CHOICE AWARDS and robots.

Usually, I simply report on the annual Directors Choice fan film awards. But this year, due to my entering of my own fan film, AN ABSENT FRIEND, into the competition, I am also a judge. And as it turns out, there were FIFTY-FIVE different entries this time out!!!! Some of them I’ve already seen, as they are Star Trek fan films. But others are superhero, Alien, Nightmare on Elm Street, Harry Potter, Ghostbusters, The Last of Us, Power Rangers, Narnia, and a host of other sci-fi/fantasy/horror genres. And many of them are truly excellent and worth watching (for example, this one and this one). But while some of them are fairly short, others have run times of thirty minutes to over an hour…and there’s quite a few of those! So I’ve been spending a LOT of time just watching dozens and dozens of different fan films so I can cast an informed ballot before the March voting deadline.

As for the robots…

California wildfires threaten the house where 70 episodes of STAR TREK: HIDDEN FRONTIER and its spin-offs were filmed!

From 1999 through 2010, a humble little house on the border of Pasadena and Altadena, California was one of the hubs of the early Star Trek fan film scene. The house belonged to fan filmmaker and CG artist ROB CAVES, and it served as the “studio” for 50 episodes of STAR TREK: HIDDEN FRONTIER and another 20 episodes of multiple spin-offs fan films and series. I was there for the filming of several episodes, and even appeared in one as an alien guard.

The house had a living room and kitchen in the front where actors and crew would hang out between scenes, a master bedroom off the kitchen where Rob slept, and the rest of the space was dedicated to serving as a studio. One bedroom/office was turned into a make-up room with mirrors, a countertop, and wigs and prosthetics against the opposite wall. Here’s a photo of me getting into makeup in 2008…

Another alcove held costumes, a third was dedicated to the green screen, and a back room was used for equipment like lights and boom mics. And finally, in a small nook in the very back of the house—only large enough for one or two people to sit at a single desk and crammed with digital equipment—Rob would squeeze himself in to composite the green screen footage against virtual backgrounds while scenes were being filmed. (Those were the days when video files were still very large and hard to edit; so it wasn’t practical for a non-professional to capture green screen footage first and then composite it later.)

Rob has since moved on from producing Star Trek fan films and is actually rather passionately involved in model trains these days. But he and I still have some contact every now and then. Last night, I e-mailed him to check if he was safe. I didn’t hear back directly, but this morning on Facebook, I saw him post the following to his feed…

Please HELP SANTA CLAUS this Christmas by buying his book…

Ho, ho, ho, everybody! I realize that this blog isn’t Star Trek or fan film related—other than “SANTA” SAL LIZARD having been the president of STARFLEET, The International Star Trek Fan Association from 2008-2011—but I’d still like to take a few moments for a special message to all of you.

In case you ween’t aware, I helped Santa Sal write a book full of his wonderful memoirs of having been a professional, real-bearded Santa Claus for (at the time) more than two decades. BEING SANTA CLAUS was first published in 2012 by Gotham Books, a division of Penguin Publishing. A few years ago, Sal and I reacquired the rights to the book and published a new expanded edition, with additional heartwarming true stories and photos, available in hardcover, paperback, kindle, and even audiobook formats. (I narrated the audio version.)

It was a happy and exciting time for both of us as the world was emerging from lockdown. But then Sal’s wife Linda passed away suddenly from brain cancer around the same time that Sal himself had a trio of mini-strokes that left his left side too weak to support children on his lap. Sal’s days of being Santa Claus were effectively over.

With the passing of Sal’s wife, whose job as a nurse administrator was their primarily source of income beyond Sal’s annual Santa gigs and the occasional Ubering, Sal has been reduced to living solely on social security, barely enough to get by. The one thing he has to look forward to are royalties on book sales…which aren’t much. The books clear about $4-5/purchase (depending on the format sold), with monthly royalties in the dozens of dollars at best. So, sadly, not too much.

But this is the one time of year when the book sells a little bit better—hence, this blog. I’m trying to help my friend-in-need by encouraging my other friends to purchase Being Santa Claus in any format. If you order now, the book will likely arrive by Christmas (or instantaneously if you order the Kindle or Audible version).

It’s a great stocking stuffer or just something to listen to in the car if you want a break from holiday music without losing the feeling of the season. If you’d like to hear a sample what the book sounds like, here is short snippet of one chapter…

Every little bit helps out this wonderful, good-natured, generous, and caring man get something nice for his daughter and granddaughter for Christmas. And even if all you can afford right now is goodwill toward men (and women and others), please consider passing along the following link to the Amazon page on your social media feeds. Merry Christmas to all…!

CLICK HERE TO ORDER YOU COPY AND HELP SANTA SAL

Did MATT MILLER write a SONG about LIL’ OL’ ME? I do believe he DID!

Okay, folks, this was totally NOT on my Bingo card for, like, ever!

It’s been more than two years since I last wrote a blog about Trekzone’s MATT MILLER from Australia. And honestly, I was fine not talking about him ever again (except, of course, when he appears in a fan film that I’m covering, like this one).

But, man! When Matt takes the time to not only write a song about me but to have someone professionally sing and record it and then use it to kick off the latest video for his Matt Miller Fan Film Awards show—well, how can I not return the favor and sincerely thank him for thinking of me (apparently constantly!) enough to put in all of this amazing effort?

Anyway, without further ado, this is the song that opened this year’s Trekzone Awards. It’s only 2 and a half minutes, it’s totally surreal, but it’s definitely worth a listen…

Has a kinda JONI MITCHELL vibe, don’t it?

Frankly, I’d be way too embarrassed to ever do anything like that with the annual SHOWRUNNER AWARDS, as they’re meant to celebrate the achievements of fan filmmakers, not serve to extend some silly vendetta. But Matt’s gotta be Matt, I suppose.

And I personally wouldn’t be all that thrilled to win an award for my fan film knowing that the presentation was tainted by some cringe attack song at the opening. I’d probably think twice before showing the video to friends since I’d have to explain what the darn song actually meant. (And what did it mean, by the way? Which side is the “haters” and what “truth” will they see? I have no earthy idea!)

Matt was, of course, careful not to use my actual name or the name of ALEC PETERS (whom he calls “The Producer”—I am, of course, “Fan Film Blogger Dude”), although he does reference my AXANAR-inspired fan film INTERLUDE at one point. But I’m obviously living rent-free inside of Matt’s head for him to include this weird vendetta-ballad at the start of the video (which you can watch in its entirety here; I don’t mind if Matt gets more views, as he certainly needs them).

By the way, I do not typically cover the Trekzone Awards because one of Matt’s requirements for eligibility is that he doesn’t hate you, and he hates a LOT of people in the fan film community (including at least a couple dozen of my close friends—along with me, of course). So each year, there end up being many very deserving fan films that are capriciously excluded from even being considered for a Trekzone Award, as Matt selects all entrants himself and has only two judges: Matt and one other fellow from Australia.

R.I.P. JENNIFER COLE (1967-2024) of STAR TREK: HIDDEN FRONTIER

The year was 1998, and the concept of a “fan film” was still unknown, even to most fans. At the time, ROB CAVES was a member of the U.S.S. Angeles chapter of the STARFLEET INTERNATIONAL fan club, and he invited his fellow members to be a part of a new fan series he was calling VOYAGES OF THE U.S.S. ANGELES. It lasted for one full-length feature and five additional short episodes before Rob evolved the series into STAR TREK: HIDDEN FRONTIER, which lasted for seven seasons, releasing FIFTY episodes of about a half hour each in addition to spawning no less than FIVE spin-off series.

And in the center of all of this—both literally and figuratively, as her character often sat in the command chair on the “bridge” (shot against a green screen)—was JENNIFER COLE. She appeared in a total of 23 of those 50 episodes, plus 6 episodes of spin-off series STAR TREK: ODYSSEY, 2 of spin-off series STAR TREK: HENGLAAR, M.D., and the crossover fan film (with STAR TREK: INTREPID) OPERATION BETA SHIELD. Jennifer also directed that crossover fan film as well as directing 17 episodes of HF! And all told, on her IMBd page, Jennifer has producer credits on nearly FIVE DOZEN Star Trek fan films from HF and various spin-off series!

What’s most notable about all of this is that Jennifer wasn’t particularly interested in filmmaking before all of this began. Although she lived in Los Angeles, CA, she wasn’t really involved with Hollywood (she worked in a local F.B.I. office, of all things!). She had never taken an acting class or a filmmaking class, and she seldom dealt with the technical aspects of video production like camera lenses or the minutiae of green screen compositing. That was always Rob Caves’ department.

Additionally, Jennifer didn’t exactly have what one might call a “Starfleet” body type. Indeed, she struggled with obesity (as many fans do, including myself). But she never shied away from appearing in front of the camera, and that inspired many other fans to do the same, regardless of their appearance. Jenn was proof for any fan who needed it that Star Trek fan films could be made for the fun of it—even though it was often hard work—and that “anyone could make a fan film.” The trick was simply in having the confidence, determination, and organization to just go for it and make it happen.

And Jenn was amazingly organized! Over the years, after co-founding the U.S.S. Angeles in 1995, Jenn served as first officer, commanding officer, and second officer of the club at various points from then onward. Until her health started deteriorating a few years ago, Jenn found a way to attend nearly every chapter event, regardless of how far she had to drive or fly. One of her favorite places to visit was Star Trek: The Experience in Las Vegas, and I snapped many of photo of her there enjoying herself…

How I used A.I. technology to bring the voices of SPOCK AND McCOY back to life in “AN ABSENT FRIEND” (part 3: legal and moral questions)…

In part 1, I discussed how I used Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) to turn a Star Trek inspired fan script that I wrote back in 2010 into an audio drama featuring the voices of Spock and McCoy. I utilized ElevenLabs‘ voice synthesis algorithm to convert sound clips captured from a variety of sources into a series of back-and-forth dialog between the two characters. Ultimately, I wound up with an approximately 15-minute long audio drama.

Part 2 covered how I managed to take the audio drama and turn it into an animated fan film with the help of an amazing illustrator by the name of MATT SLADE, music composer MATT MILNE, and my longtime childhood friend MOJO. Indeed, in the end, I was the only person involved in this production whose named didn’t start with the letter M! The finished product came out looking like this…

And now the moment that I am certain many of you have been waiting for: the legal and moral questions of “Can Jonathan legally do this?” and “Should Jonathan ethically do this?” These are both complex subjects to tackle. But let’s dive in…!

How I used A.I. technology to bring the voices of SPOCK AND McCOY back to life in “AN ABSENT FRIEND” (part 2: the art, animation, and music)…

In part 1, I explained how I had used Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) to synthesize the voices of Spock and McCoy to speak the words of a script I originally wrote as a short story back in 2010. In it, Captain Kirk has just “died” saving the U.S.S. Enterprise-B (in the feature film Star Trek Generations), and Bones is getting angry-drunk mourning the untimely passing of his longtime friend. Spock finds McCoy sitting alone in an unnamed bar and offers to join him. It’s the last thing the doctor wants—a Vulcan with no emotions—but, ironically, the thing he most needs. And Spock needs McCoy, as well, even though the Vulcan would never openly admit it.

The story was always intended to be a sort of a two-actor stage play, simple but poignant, giving a glimpse into how these two longtime friends and colleagues deal with the loss of AN ABSENT FRIEND. But the story/script sat quietly on my hard-drive for more than a decade, unused and mostly unpublished, waiting for its “moment.”

That moment came when I discovered the ElevenLabs website (thank you, RAY MYERS!), which can generate synthesized speech from any decent voice sample of a minute or two. Assembling verbal snippets from LEONARD NIMOY and DeFOREST KELLEY from various sources, I set out to create an audio drama of my script. The project took me a couple of months, and I explained the nuances of how I did it in part 1.

Now in part 2, I’ll explain how I got from that audio drama to this completely animated Star Trek fan film…

As I mentioned in part 1, after I completed the audio drama, I was frustrated by the subtle inconsistencies between sentences (especially for McCoy) due to my generating the voices in short segments. This was a necessary evil due to the limitations of the early A.I. technology, but it still bothered me.

Then I had an idea…

How I used A.I. technology to bring the voices of SPOCK and McCOY back to life in “AN ABSENT FRIEND” (part 1: the audio)…

While some Star Trek fan films have begun to Artificial Intelligence ( A.I.) in limited ways to age and de-age characters and also to create brief visuals and short bits of dialog, my new animated fan film AN ABSENT FRIEND is the first time that A.I. speech synthesis has been used to generate ALL of the voices. And what’s more, two of those voices are sampled from the late LEONARD NIMOY and DeFOREST KELLEY, allowing the beloved characters of Spock and McCoy to live on.

The obvious question that might come to mind for some people would be: Is this legal? The short answer is “yes…at least for now.” That could change in the not-too-distant future, but no law governing or restricting the A.I. generation of a deceased actor’s voice in a fan film exists at the moment. I will dive more deeply into the legal status of voice A.I. in Part 3 of this blog series (along with the ethical considerations). However, right now in Part 1, I would like to discuss how I managed to digitally recreate the voices of these two deeply-missed actors, and in Part 2, I’ll be covering how I and my illustrator, MATT SLADE, turned an audio drama into a full animated Star Trek fan film.

First, though, let’s take a look at this groundbreaking project…

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE TAKING OVER THE WORLD?

A.I. has exploded across the planet in the last year and a half, and it’s certainly become a bit of a mixed bag. The term itself is an umbrella for a wide range of digital breakthroughs whereby computers are doing some incredible—and occasionally worrisome—things. A.I. is being used for everything from generating business presentations and news articles to writing millions of lines of computer code in seconds. A.I. digitally de-aged an 80-year-old HARRISON FORD in the fifth and final Indiana Jones feature film last year and also completed an unfinished Beatles song despite two of the original band members having died decades ago.

Law enforcement is using intuitive software to sift through endless social media postings to track down wanted suspects and potential terrorists. On the other side of the moral spectrum, however, some students are using A.I. software to write their school essays for them, while a few political campaigns have begun to generate false images and articles to spread realistic-looking fake news to unsuspecting voters. Earlier this year, a New Hampshire robocall seemingly from Joe Biden that told Democrats not to “waste their vote” in the primary was actually faked by a supporter of one of the other primary candidates. And of course, the recent Hollywood writers and actors strikes worried that A.I. would make many of their jobs all but irrelevant.

My own mind was blown last year when I saw A.I. used to create an actual Star Trek fan film! THE RODDENBERRY ARCHIVE released the following short fan film featuring a deepfaked face of Leonard Nimoy as Spock put onto the body of actor LAWRENCE SELLECK…