Personal Stories – Page 2 – Fan Film Factor

Please help SANTA SAL by getting the new audio version of our book BEING SANTA CLAUS…

If you’d prefer to skip the blog and just order the audiobook (so that net revenue can go directly to “SANTA” SAL LIZARD and his family), please click here to get to the Amazon webpage. And thank you.

Below you can read more about Santa Sal…

Some of my readers might aware that I became a professionally published author (more precisely, co-author) back in 2012. A year earlier, Gotham Books (a division of Penguin Publishing) purchased the rights to an autobiographical memoir of a professional real-bearded Santa by the name of Sal Lizard. Sal spent more than 50 hours on the phone with me—over the course of two and a half years!—telling his amazing, hilarious, and heartwarming Santa stories in astounding detail, and I turned them into a full manuscript. Titled BEING SANTA CLAUS – What I Learned About the True Meaning of Christmas, the hardcover was released the following November, and a paperback version came out in late 2013.

And that was pretty much that.

It was cool becoming a published author, and the book was very well-received (4.8-out-of-5 stars on Amazon). In fact, the only complaint we ever got was that the book was too short. And indeed it was! Our editor at Gotham helped us trim an 83,000-word manuscript down to about 79,000 words, which everyone thought was perfect…including the president of of the publishing company. But the managing editor decided to trim it further…all the way down to 47,000 words(!!!), and a lot of wonderful Santa Sal stories got left on the literary cutting room floor. However, they were paying us a ridiculously huge advance, and we had little choice other than to let the managing editor have her way.

A few years later, though, Being Santa Claus was no longer in print, Penguin had shuttered Gotham, and the rights to our book reverted back to Sal and me. It was at that point that I thought about creating a “director’s cut” audiobook out of the 79,000-word version that everyone loved.

But how exactly does one go about recording an audiobook?

Good fortune fell upon us when I met the father of one of the kids in my son’s school and discovered that he owns a sound studio here in Los Angeles, and he offered me the use of it. For the next few years—which included a frustrating hiatus during the lockdown—I recorded all 35 chapters in a series of reading sessions when my sound engineer, JAE KIM, was available (which wasn’t often, as he travels the world doing sound for concert tours and film shoots). But a few months ago, we finally finished!

R.I.P – NICHELLE NICHOLS, our elegant Lady of Communications – 1932 to 2022

We all loved her. We all admired her. And we all knew this day would come.

NICHELLE NICHOLS, the amazing actor and person who helped raise women and people of color to new heights of recognition and self-confidence at a critical time in American history, has passed away at the age of 89 from natural causes.

As happens with many people as they approach their tenth decade of life, Nichelle had grown frail and was losing her memory. Her voice was no longer able to serenade us with the melodies of the stars as it did for most of her career. She had recently completed her “farewell tour” of conventions and public appearances with her fans and was living her final years with her son and his family in New Mexico.

But we still loved her.

And it was a love that had been there, for many of us, over the course of decades. She was always Lieutenant (and later Commander and, in fan films like OF GODS AND MEN and RENEGADES, Captain and even Admiral) Nyota Uhura.

*Nichelle Nichols as Uhura through the years: in TOS, in the Trek movies, and in the fan films STAR TREK: OF GODS AND MEN and RENEGADES: THE REQUIEM.*

In the TOS episode “Is There In Truth No Beauty?” it is revealed that the name Uhura means “freedom.” Indeed, it is the Swahili word “Uhuru” that means freedom, and according to Nichelle’s 1994 autobiographical Beyond Uhura, she was carrying the 1962 book Uhuru by Robert Ruark when she read for the part in Star Trek. Later, producer ROBERT JUSTMAN reportedly told GENE RODDENBERRY what Uhuru meant, and Gene decided to name his African communications officer Uhura right then and there.

The character’s first name, Nyota, came years later in 1982, following the release of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Author WILLIAM ROSTLER was writing the licensed paperback Star Trek II: Biographies telling the personal histories of the seven main TOS characters, including Uhura. Rostler contacted Gene and Nichelle directly asking both for permission to give Uhura the first name Nyota, which means “star” in Swahili. They both approved, and since it was a licensed book, Nyota became as official as anything not shown on film. Indeed, a few years later, the 1985 Star Trek novel Uhura’s Song by JANET KAGAN (still one of the best!), became the second licensed product to use that first name for Uhura. However, it wouldn’t be until 2009 and the release of the first rebooted Star Trek film with ZOE SALDANA taking on the iconic role, that Nyota officially became “canon” when Spock calls Uhura by her first name during the movie.

I remember seeing Nichelle during countless conventions, always talking about how moved and excited she was to learn that Nyota meant “star” and that Nyota Uhura meant “Freedom Star” or “Star of Freedom,” guiding those suffering under prejudice, discrimination, and persecution to a brighter future. And goodness knows, Nichelle did just that!

A FATHERS DAY blog as my 11-year-old son JAYDEN discovers STAR TREK fan films…

In honor of Father’s Day, I wanted to share something special and Trekkish that recently happened with me and my son.

Jayden is reaching the age where he’s developing his own interests that are completely separate from Daddy’s. He’s playing Roblox and Terraria and a bunch of other games on his computer that I’ve never heard of. He watches YouTubers with names like Mr. Beast, Flamingo, and Merg. He codes, builds robots, and does karate. And now that summer has started, hours will go by where I’ll only see him when he comes down from his room for a quick snack (and it’s all I can do to make him eat a nutritious lunch!).

Ah, being the father of an almost-teen…

*I am so proud of my not-so-little boy!*

But there is one thing that we do almost every day, and that’s watch Star Trek together after dinner. I give the food a little while to digest, and then we’ll head off to my office where I’ll do 25-30 minutes of cardio on the bike while we watch (most of) an episode of Star Trek. It’s been our “thing” since Jayden was 5. We’re going in release order. We began with TOS, then TAS, then back to TOS because Jayden was really young when he first watched them, and I wanted him to remember. Then on to the first four movies, then TNG…with DS9 added as we hit season six of TNG. And of course, we watched Trek V and Trek VI when those came up in the chronological release order.

We’ve also watched LOWER DECKS, PRODIGY, and STRANGE NEW WORLDS—but not DISCOVERY or PICARD. In the case of Discovery, too much @$&%ing swearing, and in the case of Picard…SPOILERS!

Anyway, Jayden has become quite the little Trekkie (thank heaven!) and sci-fi nerd. The other day at the comic book store, he begged me to buy him a stuffed xenomorph from Alien(s)—which he’s seen, of course—with a zipper for a mouth and a second mouth-tongue inside. (We named him Zipley.)

*Jayden holds the newest addition to the family: ZIPLEY!*

Most recently, we’ve made it to the end of TNG. We only have “All Good Things” left to watch, but it’s time to switch back over to DS9 and complete season two. We’re two episodes away from watching “Crossover,” the first episode of any Trek to feature the Mirror Universe since TOS’s “Mirror, Mirror.”

Not certain whether Jayden would remember that early episode, I fished out the ol’ remastered Blu-rays to watch that as a special “extra” before heading back to DS9. I’d done the same thing earlier in season two when we did a detour to watch “Errand of Mercy” then “The Trouble with Tribbles” and finally “Day of the Dove.” Those three were all in anticipation of DS9‘s “Blood Oath,” which featured the return of Klingons Kor, Koloth, and Kang from those episodes. So as you can see, I am doing all of this VERY methodically!

Last week, we viewed “Mirror, Mirror” and, as I watched the following scene, I got a crazy idea…

How I ended up writing QUARK’S MENU at STAR TREK: THE EXPERIENCE in Las Vegas! (biography blog #3)

My first biography blog was posted on January 11, 2016, a day after Fan Film Factor first launched. It described how I turned down a job working for MICHAEL OKUDA in the Star Trek Scenic Art Department at Paramount Studios back in 1993. A year and a half later, I published my second biography blog, describing how I came to work as a freelance “professional Trekkie” fan consultant for Viacom Consumer Products starting in 1997. It was a gig I’d have for another six years.

It’s now 2022, today is my birthday (January 17), and I am going to indulge myself by finally publishing my THIRD biography blog, explaining how I ended up writing the menu for QUARK’S BAR & RESTAURANT at Star Trek: The Experience at the Las Vegas Hilton. And as a special treat, here is a high-quality PDF file of the original menu for you to read and enjoy…

It was the summer of 1997, and I’d been working with JULIET DUTTON of Viacom Consumer Products for about 8 months, reviewing submitted Star Trek CD-ROM game scripts for accuracy, since Juliet wasn’t a Trekkie and didn’t know an Andorian from a Tellarite. Another person in licensing, KIRSTI PAYNE, was assigned to PARAMOUNT PARKS, a licensee that was finishing construction on a new Star Trek attraction at the Las Vegas Hilton that was scheduled to open early the following year. It would have an immersive virtual reality motion simulator ride, a Star Trek prop and costume museum, a gift shop (of course!), and even Quark’s Bar and Restaurant.

There was just one problem: their proposed menu was a complete disaster.

It wasn’t the food that was the issue so much figuring out what to call the various items. Uninspired names like “Cosmic Burger” and “Galaxy Fries” were falling far short of being Star Trek enough, and the menu just sounded boring. They needed help—badly! During a weekly staff meeting, Kirsti asked her fellow licensing staffers if anyone knew a creative Star Trek fan with a good sense of humor who was also able to write well.

Juliet said, “I have just the person for you…!”

Please VOTE for INTERLUDE in the 5th Annual IndieBOOM! Film + Music Festival!

It was late 2017 when the IndieBOOM! Film Festival debuted with a category exclusively for “FAN FILMS”—one of the first major film competitions to do so. Created by the team at the award-winning Art of Brooklyn Film Festival, IndieBOOM! offers categories for filmmakers, musicians, and screenwriters working in all short-form formats and genres. In addition to Fan Films, their other categories include Comedy, Drama, Documentary, Horror/Sci-Fi, Experimental, Eusic Videos and Musicals, Animation, Series, Commercials, Dance, and Songs.

In 2019, the winner in the Fan Film category (and also the Sci-Fi category) was “Walking Bear, Running Wolf” from THE FEDERATION FILES. In 2020, the winning fan film was BATMAN: THE SCHEME IS SOUND, which (even though it wasn’t Star Trek) was written, directed, and produced by the man who composed the music for my fan film INTERLUDE: KEVIN CROXTON. And at the beginning of 2021, the announced winner in the category was a Star Wars fan film from Mexico titled JUNDLAND: NO MAN’S LAND.

Now, that we’re in 2022, I think it might be time for a Star Trek fan film to win again. What do you think?

This year’s official selections in the IndieBOOM! Fan Film category include two live-action Star Wars films (one from Australia and one from the USA), an animated Ghostbusters short from the USA, a live-action Jurassic Park fan film from the UK, a James Bond fan film from the USA with kids playing all the role, and two live-action Star Trek fan films from the USA. One of those is my fan film Interlude, and the other is an amalgamation of two fan films from The Federation Files (USA) released over the past two years.

Obviously, I’d like you to please vote for Interlude, although the choice is certainly up to you!

Voting is done by watching on Vimeo, and every view counts as one vote. So watch early, watch often! (Actually, if Vimeo works like YouTube, then each computer browser can log only one vote…so no cheating, I guess!)

Voting runs continuously from today through January 16. Here is the link to view and vote for Interlude…

https://www.indieboomff.com/interlude-star-trek.html

And maybe give it a like while you’re there, just so I know there’s someone out there watching Interlude.

The first prize for the most viewed film over all of the various categories wins $500. If Interlude wins (fingers crossed!), I intend to donate the prize money to the AVALON UNIVERSE GoFundMe so my DP and Film Editor on Interlude, JOSHUA IRWIN, can produce even more awesome Star Trek fan films. I fully expect to see him winning IndieBOOM! next year!

I encourage you all to check out each of the wonderful films selected as finalists. And if you do choose to vote for Interlude, I thank you.

INTERLUDE Confidential #23: VERSION v3.0 is a hit with 25K VIEWS…time for FILM FESTIVALS!

It’s been a week since we debuted the newest release of INTERLUDE, our third version, and the response has been phenomenal. Already, there are more than 25K views on YouTube, 1.7K likes, and more than 200 comments. Here’s a small sample:

Real Star Trek again! Love it!
This is how you make a pre-Kirk Prequel. I rest my case.
So amazing. Great music too
this is incredible
MORE, MORE, MORE!!!
Outstanding!
This is real STAR TREK , Bless You All !
Ok, that rocked!! Nice appetizer as we await the main course.
Awsome! Your deflector shields are better than the TV shows.
I think Roddenberry would be proud!
This is terrible

Oops, that last one just kinda snuck in there. Actually, I included it because, for the first six days, it was literally the ONLY negative comment out of the hundreds we’ve received so far. We’re now up to two negative comments.

What JOSHUA IRWIN and I have found most shocking is how quickly the views have gone up considering that the previous versions already have over 200K views between the releases to the AVALON UNIVERSE YouTube Channel plus the releases to the AXANAR YouTube Channel. Obviously, 25K views in the first week would be understandable on the Axanar channel, as they have 108K subscribers. But version 3.0 is only up on the Avalon channel at the moment…and that one has only 13.7K subscribers.

So right now, Interlude v3.0 has TWICE as many views as Avalon has subscribers!

One of those views came from an Interlude donor who posted the following comment: “I just watched Interlude for the first time. Terrific work all around! It’ll definitely be something that I come back for repeat viewing.”

Wait, for the FIRST time??? But he donated! I asked why he hadn’t watched Interlude when it first came out back in April. Turns out he just never got around to it, and when I sent an e-mail update to my donors about the release of v3.0, he decided to watch it on his lunch break right then and there.

Anyway, I just wanted to share a few bits of news with you all. The first is that I’ve finally started entering Interlude into film festivals. I just made the cut-off deadline for the annual IndieBOOM! festival, which was one of the first and only competitions to include a category exclusively for Fan Films. And as of yesterday, Interlude is an OFFICIAL SELECTION for IndieBOOM! (More on that news in January!) And then I decided to take a crack at the L.A. Sci-Fi and Horror Festival because they also have a Fan Film category.

Wish us luck!

R.I.P. JACK “TOWAWAY” EATON — 1962-2021

My friend JACK “TOWAWAY” EATON has just passed away. He was 59, and yes, that is TOO goddamn soon!

If you’re part of the fan film community, it’s likely you’ve never heard of Jack…although he did attend Farragut Fest back in 2012 is friendly with a number of the folks who have been involved with the TOS sets at what is now called NEUTRAL ZONE STUDIOS in Kingsland, GA.

If you’re a member of STARFLEE T : The International Star Trek Fan Association, Inc. then you probably known him as Vice Admiral Jack Eaton, former Region 2 Coordinator.

And if you’re GEORGE “Sulu” TAKEI, you know him simply as “Towaway” because you gave him that nickname.

I met Jack back in the late 1980s when I was going to school at Cornell and was heavily involved in STARFLEET International‘s Region 7, which at the time included nearly all the Mid-Atlantic and New England states. I was XO on the U.S.S. Avenger chapter based in New York and New Jersey, and Jack was with the U.S.S. Christa McAuliffe, based in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, where he lived before moving south to the eastern central coast of Florida.

The McAuliffe crew never took themselves very seriously. They would show up at regional and international conferences all wearing bathrobes, slippers, and fedora hats…saying that was their official uniform. Their club meetings consisted of bowling drunk on Friday nights in Providence, RI. They were funny and fun-loving, totally open and inclusive, the kind of people you were just happy to know existed in Star Trek fandom.

And Jack was one of their ringleaders…and proudly so.

Like an assassin who knows 1,000 ways to kill a person, Jack knew 1,000 ways to make a person laugh…including the aforementioned assassin. He had a good and generous heart. And despite his natural ability to play hard and relax even harder, Jack could get things done and accomplished when they needed to be and was an effective leader for Starfleet’s Region 2 when he moved down there.

Jack broke any mold you could possibly imagine. He loved all sci-fi the way he loved a good cigar and a smooth bottle of scotch. And yeah, enjoying that kind of lifestyle doesn’t usually help in living a long life. I can still be sad about it, though.

Jack and I weren’t buddy-buddy close, but we were a few steps up from just casual Facebook friends and kept in touch semi-regularly over the years. It was just good to know that, somewhere on the surface of this planet, Jack Eaton was breathing air (or cigar smoke) and probably making someone laugh.

Now, neither of those things are happening anymore, and the world is lessened because of it.

“The very BEST of Star Trek FAN FILMS” is now available for viewing!

For the past two and a half years, I’ve been quietly working on a “secret” project for Star Trek fan films. I mean, it wasn’t purposefully a secret. I just never bothered to mention it to anybody…

…until now, that is.

The idea behind this 75-minute montage was to collect what I considered to be the “best” scenes and sequences from the many, many, MANY Star Trek fan films that have been released during the last two decades or so.

It wasn’t easy choosing!

First of all, what does “the best” even mean??? The best…what? Acting? Directing? Story? Visual Effects? Make-up? Costumes? Sound quality? Music? Editing? Well, yes to all of the above! But few Star Trek fan films actually check ALL of those boxes. So once again, I was left the challenge of deciding what “the best” actually means.

I ultimately created two criteria for inclusion in the video. The clips needed to (in my determination):

Make an average viewer who wasn’t really familiar with this sub-sub-sub genre of ours react with something akin to, “Wait, this is a FAN film???”
Leave the person watching the clip wanting to see more of that particular fan film or series.

Once I knew what I was looking for, I needed to do a LOT of looking! That’s one of the reasons this project has taken as long as it has to complete. But I did discover something important early on. Really short clips (on the whole) don’t work. You need at least a minute or two—and sometimes even three minutes or more—to convey the power and impact of a sequence. Otherwise, you just get disjointed VFX sequences and isolated snippets of dialog that don’t really pack much of a punch. You have to give the viewer a chance to get the “flavor” of a sequence and a grasp of what is going on.

Ultimately, I ended up selecting about three dozen clips and sequences from fan films spanning the last decade and a half…for a total run-time of 75 minutes (an average of two minutes per segment). Sadly, I couldn’t include content from many of my closest friends in the fan film community. (I didn’t want this video to go on forever!) And so I sincerely apologize to anyone who didn’t make it into the final selections. It wasn’t personal, and I love you all and the wonderful work you and your teams bring to us.

INTERLUDE Confidential #19: Watching ARES STUDIOS come alive…

INTERLUDE is knocking on the door of a combined 75,000 views for “version 2.0.” You can watch it on the AXANAR YouTube channel or the AVALON UNIVERSE YouTube channel…or both!

A few weeks ago, I published a blog looking at three scenes from Interlude that wound up on the digital “cutting room floor.” But one of the most talked about aspects of that blog was a clip that I included showing 18 minutes of the actual shoot itself…filming the stunning opening scene looking down from above onto the bridge with all sorts of activity going on. Fans of Axanar and ARES STUDIOS loved getting a glimpse into all of the action happening on that set.

Well, folks, there’s a LOT more where that came from…and I’m going to share it with you starting today!

As producer on Interlude, most of my job was done by the time we got to the weekend of our two-day shoot at Ares Studios on November 2-3, 2019. In addition to writing the script, I was in charge of budgeting, crowd-funding, paying for things that needed to be paid for (everything from chest emblem patches to camera and lens and light rental to hair and make-up supplies to renting chairs and tables to the caterer himself…plus about a hundred other little and not-so-little things!).

Another part of my job was to make sure we had the right people at the studio on the right days—actors, extras, production crew, even an on-site medic—that they knew where to be and when and that their gas, travel, food and lodging was paid for if/when necessary. My efforts were designed to make it possible for VICTORIA FOX, JOSHUA IRWIN, and the entire amazing Interlude production team to shoot the scenes of our fan film over two 10-hour days with everything they needed ready and waiting for them.

In short, I was the guy setting up the buffet table so all of the guests could have a good time at the party. So once the party got started, what was left for me to do?

Well, there were still some minor fires that needed putting our during those two days—figuring out where to put the hair and make-up people, handing my credit card to people I hardly knew to go make emergency runs to Home Depot or Target or wherever. But for the most part, the producer wasn’t really needed on set.

But that provided me with a very unique and special opportunity…

(Re) Presenting: INTERLUDE…the big premiere, TAKE TWO!

I’ve been writing a series of blogs about all of the typical things that happen with fan films, things that I’ve been encountering during the development of INTERLUDE. But now it’s time for something that I don’t think has ever happened on any Star Trek fan film!

Someone in our cast has asked (demanded, actually) for his shots to be completely REMOVED from the Interlude fan film…forcing us to re-shoot specific scenes using a different actor and to re-edit those scenes back into a new version.

The actor in question is PAUL JENKINS. I won’t go into details on this other than to say what is already known publicly: that Paul and ALEC PETERS are involved in litigation following Paul’s parting of ways from the AXANAR sequels in the early summer of last year. As I understand it, Paul is concerned that his appearance in a fan film that features Alec Peters in a leading role within the Axanar continuity could imply some kind of endorsement by Paul of Alec, Axanar, Ares Studios, and/or Axanar Productions.

Paul’s request/demand for all footage of him be removed from Interlude came first via a Facebook message sent to me barely 24 hours before the big premiere on April 5. Obviously, that was not enough time for us to make such significant changes, and we weren’t about to delay the release on such short notice. I’d already told the entire fan film community plus my friends and family about it. Heck, my parents had told all of their friends about it!

So as planned, we premiered the version of Interlude (with Paul in it) that we’d worked so hard to complete, but on the request/demand of Paul and his CEO at META Studios, a disclaimer was pinned as the top comment of the YouTube video page making clear that “META Studios and its employees, including Founder and Chief Creative Officer Paul Jenkins, DO NOT endorse the use of the Axanar logo and the solicitation of funds for the purpose of creating fan films associated with CBS intellectual property. “

So yeah, that happened.

We also agreed to their imposed constraint that Interlude could only be posted to the AVALON UNIVERSE YouTube channel and not to the Axanar YouTube channel, probably costing us a few hundred thousand views during our opening week. The video still crossed 50K views in 12 days with more than a 97% thumbs-up/thumbs-down ratio, so I didn’t really lose any sleep over it.

Meanwhile, our director of photography/editor JOSHUA IRWIN jumped into action to act on to Paul’s main request.demand to be removed entirely from Interlude, and two weeks later, Josh has come through with flying colors.

This was no small feat, folks…!