Read a new fan film COMIC BOOK story from THE ROMULAN WAR!

No sooner has the final page of my Axanar Universe comic book “Stardate 2245.1” come out than there’s a NEW fan film comic book in town! But this one isn’t Axanar. It’s the first comic book associated with the upcoming fan film THE ROMULAN WAR by show-runner MARK NACCARATO of Tennessee.

The Romulan War is the first Star Trek fan film since Prelude to Axanar to be presented in a “mockumentary” style to tell an epic tale from the point of view of interviews and “archival” footage. And The Romulan War has the potential to become just as epic as Axanar. Both tell the story of a significant war that helped to define the United Federation of Planets for decades and even centuries to come, and both fan projects take a look back at those seminal events from numerous perspectives. The trailers for The Romulan War—with visual FX by the “Sorcerer of CGI,” SAMUEL COCKINGS, and trained actors—look very exciting and are worth checking out (click here to view them).

An Indiegogo campaign last summer took in $13K for the project, and the finished fan film was supposed to be ready about now. However, an illness and passing of a close family member took precedence for Mark earlier this year, and things are still being worked on. Mark gave me a progress report:

Sam is wrapping up effects shots for Part 1, but we still have to lock in the score, there’s some 3D maps we are working on, and we’re re-tracking some audio. We also went back into the studio two weeks ago to shoot two NEW scenes that were added last-minute. I am hoping that we get it out by the end of August, but I continue to be plagued by delays that are not really under my control.

But while fans were waiting for this eagerly-anticipated production, Mark helped to quench our thirst by releasing five (so far) very well-crafted and dramatically intense “enhanced audio dramas” called WAR STORIES. Each of these short vignettes focuses on the logs of someone involved in the war (including me!!—I voiced Lt. Cmdr. Geoffrey Christopher who designed and tested the Warp 7 engine), presented as voice-overs but with graphical animations (hence, the “enhanced”). They are also REALLY worth checking out (click here to access them all).

Mark reports that two additional “enhanced” audio dramas will be released within the next month or two to help expand the epic of the upcoming 2-part fan film. One of the audio dramas was just recorded two weeks ago.

But Mark isn’t stopping there!

Continue reading “Read a new fan film COMIC BOOK story from THE ROMULAN WAR!”

CONTINUING CONSTAR GoFundMe gets 50% of the way to its goal in just 19 hours!

There’s just something about VANCE MAJOR that makes fans want to give him money! Maybe it’s his adorable son Royce, Maybe it’s the three dozen Minard fan films he’s made. Maybe it’s the photos from his shoots that he posts almost daily to the Fan Film Forum Facebook group. And maybe it’s because he knows you can see the cord in the doorway of his scene and he just doesn’t care because he’s more interested in having fun and telling a good story.

Whatever the reason, Vance has won the hearts and minds of scores of fans, and his crowd-funding campaigns quickly reach their goals. Granted, these goals are usually in the mid-hundreds of dollars and not difficult to achieve. But whenever Vance launches a campaign, it’s always completely funded before I even have a chance to mention it here on Fan Film Factor.

Not this time, though!

I’m in Colorado this week and next visiting my family…while the rest of fandom is in Las Vegas enjoying Star Trek celebrities and the eighth plague suffered by the Egyptians in the Old Testament’s book of Exodus.  But that means a brief pause in fan film blogs till I get back. So I have the opportunity to slot in this quick shout-out to tell you all about Vance’s new campaign before it gets fully funded in a few more hours (or less!).

Vance isn’t offering any perks, and his CONSTAR CHRONICLES fan series won’t premiere until December (read more here). But he already wants to shoot additional episodes in 2020, and he needs to buy more uniform tunics and props. The goal this time is $1,100 (his first foray into four-figure funding), and in the first 19 hours, he’s already halfway there.

So if you want to be part of this Major movement, part of Vance’s victorious vision for Constar contributions, just click over to the following link and make a donation…

https://www.gofundme.com/f/continuing-constar

A ‘Death Howl’ for Kur’Den (guest blog by DON GAFFNEY)

Before I turn the blog over to me friend DON GAFFNEY, I’d like to say few quick words myself.

DENZIL MIRACLE was a die-hard Trekker, a Klingon kosplayer, an avid Axanar supporter, and a truly awesome guy. I only met him once, briefly, at Axacon last November, but he was just this big bundle of warmth and happiness and excitement…the best that we fans have to offer.

In these days when so many of us are quick to show our worst devils to each other, it’s important to honor those who present the best angels of their natures.

Denzil had been stricken too early in life with brain cancer and passed away a couple of weeks ago surrounded by family. While I knew of his terminal condition, I wasn’t aware of his actual passing until I read yesterday’s eulogy from his good friend (and fellow Axanerd) Don Gaffney. It’s a beautiful remembrance, and I humbly ask you to consider taking a moment to read it and perhaps even give a quiet Klingon death howl to the warriors of Sto’Vo’Kor, where I have no doubt Denzil is currently having an awesome time.

And now, my friends, Don Gaffney remembers his friend, Denzil Miracle…

Continue reading “A ‘Death Howl’ for Kur’Den (guest blog by DON GAFFNEY)”

Just posted: PAGE 7 of the INTERLUDE comic “STARDATE 2245.1”!

Has it been six weeks already? Wow, this summer is flying by! When I posted page 1 of this comic on June 18, the GoFundMe campaign for INTERLUDE had been up for a week, and we’d just crossed the $3K mark with 53 donors. Now we’re at $10,415 with 144 donors (plus a few more via Paypal)!

That is so awesome, and I can’t tell you how amazing it feels to have so many people supporting me and sharing this crazy dream of making a fan film. But we’re still not quite there yet, so once again, here’s the link to the GoFundMe campaign for Interlude.

https://www.gofundme.com/interlude

Please donate or at least share. And now, let’s wrap up the comic…

SPOILER ALERT!

Yep, one last time, here’s your warning. The “Stardate 2245.1” comic book short story is pretty much the same plot you’ll see in the fan film Interlude. So if you don’t want to know what’s going to happen, for the love of Garth(!) don’t read the 7-page (plus cover) comic below. So say we all.

Okay, let’s discuss the last page…

Continue reading “Just posted: PAGE 7 of the INTERLUDE comic “STARDATE 2245.1”!”

And the INTERLUDE GoFundMe “POINT OF NO RETURN” is…

The typical “life cycle” for most crowd-funding campaigns (especially for Star Trek fan films) is a burst of excitement and donations at the beginning, then a slowdown in the middle, and (if you’re lucky) a smaller burst at the end just before the deadline. I’ve seen it dozens of times.

The problem for my Axanar Universe fan film INTERLUDE, however, is that I decided to use GoFundMe instead of Kickstarter or Indiegogo. The latter two have built-in deadlines—usually 30 or 60 days—before the campaign must either reach its goal or fail.

But GoFundMe is open-ended. Conceivably, I could still be raising money for Interlude when Earth makes first contact with the Vulcans 44 years from now! Of course, I don’t plan to do that. At some point, I will need to shut this campaign down and deliver a completed fan film to you all. The question is…when?

We had a FANtastic first month, taking in nearly half of our goal from more than 100 backers ranging from $5 and $10 and $20 donors to donations in the hundreds and even thousands of dollars! But in the past couple of weeks, although donations are still coming in, the pace has slowed considerably…which is consistent with the crowd-funding “life cycle.”

Unfortunately, without a specific deadline, it’s unlikely that we’ll get that final boost. And even if I do set an artificial deadline (which I am about to do in this blog), it’s not likely that we’ll reach or exceed the $19,500 goal that our budget calls for.

However, as I mentioned last week, my budget blog back in June mentioned that my numbers purposefully erred on the high side in order to provide flexibility for trimming and cutting various items just in case we didn’t make our goal.

So this past week, I sat down with my directors, VICTORIA FOX and JOSHUA IRWIN, and went through every line item with a fine-toothed comb. We sliced, we diced, we cropped and capped. And in the end, we came up with a minimum that we’ll need to commit to making this fan film…as well as the date we’ll need to have those funds by in order to be ready to shoot the first weekend of November.

So what’s our “point of no return”?

Continue reading “And the INTERLUDE GoFundMe “POINT OF NO RETURN” is…”

WHAT WE LEFT BEHIND creates the best-named DS9 poster EVER!

What’s in a name? Actually, a better question might be: What’s in a poster? If you’re talking about the image of Captain Benjamin Sisko featured above on the new poster for the magnificent DS9 documentary WHAT WE LEFT BEHIND, the answer is…names. Thousands and thousands and thousands of names!

Back in March of 2017, nearly 10,000 backers donated a staggering $647,000 to an Indiegogo campaign for a look back at STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE made by the people who made the series itself (because neither Paramount nor CBS was interested in ta tackling such a project). Over the next two years, the number of backers grew and the donated total reached all the way to a million dollars!

Now the perks are being packed up and mailed out. And along with DVDs/Blu-rays of the documentary itself and the standard movie poster, the Niner folks have created a special, limited edition poster (shown above) with the names of every backer listed in alphabetical order. Don’t believe me? Let’s do a quick zoom-in…

Wait, let’s see if we can get even closer…

And there it is!

If you donated, then you can order one of these nifty posters for $25. But the deadline is this week, so hurry! Click here to order.

And if you didn’t donate, don’t have $25, or simply aren’t interested in a high quality 24×36” print of Ben Sisko made up of 10,000-plus names…but you still want to take a closer look and see if your name or the names of people you know are on it, just click here. The Niners have uploaded a super-high resolution, 1,742 x 2,606 pixel, 84MB PDF file for you to zoom into or download. How considerate!

And speaking of considerate, here’s IRA STEVEN BEHR, Executive Producer, prepping what probably feels like an endless pile of DVD/Blu-ray perks…

Just posted: PAGE 6 of the INTERLUDE comic “STARDATE 2245.1”!

Yesterday, the GoFundMe campaign for INTERLUDE crossed the $10,000 threshold (on our way to $19,500) with 140 backers! Plus there’s a handful of Paypal donors. And of course, donations are always welcome right here…

https://www.gofundme.com/interlude

And without further ado, the blog…


SPOILER ALERT!

As we present the next-to-last page of “Stardate 2245.1,” I’ll remind you all once again that, if you want to be know nothing about my Axanar Universe fan film Interlude, then you should stop reading now and find another webpage to visit. The comic story is almost the same as the fan film story. So if you want to be completely surprised by Interlude, staying on this blog entry is pretty much the worst place you could be!

There, I said it.

As much as I love every single panel of every page of artwork that my illustrator DANIEL FU produced, if I had to pick a favorite, Page 6 would be it. Go ahead and scroll down to the bottom of this blog page to check it out and then come back up here, because it truly is a beautifully composed masterpiece.

I recall that Daniel and I spent a lot of time on this page, discussing it both before and after he had produced the first clean version. Initially, Daniel’s bridge background in panel three wasn’t accurate to the photos of the actual set, and while I hated asking my poor, overworked artist for a redo, I also felt it was very important that this particular panel look like the real thing.

And here’s why…

Continue reading “Just posted: PAGE 6 of the INTERLUDE comic “STARDATE 2245.1”!”

SD Comic Con PICARD Trailer 2019 vs SD Comic Con DISCOVERY Trailer 2016 – What has CBS learned…?

It’s hard to believe that it was only three years ago that fan got their first glimpse of the new STAR TREK: DISCOVERY at San Diego Comic Con 2016. And when I say got our first glimpse, I don’t mean of the show itself. That wouldn’t happen until the following summer. I mean we got our first look at what a disorganized mess CBS was in dealing with the launch of their first-ever Star Trek TV series that would also be the first-ever Trek series to air only on subscription-based services (All Access, SpaceTV, and Netflix).

Let’s take a moment to compare the two Star Trek series trailers that premiered at San Diego Comic Con to give fans their first look at the new show. The first debuted in July of 2016…

The Discovery trailer was obviously a rush job. The marketing department knew they needed something to show at Comic Con because that has become THE place to premiere the big sci-fi and related genre movies and shows. But there was nothing ready yet! No footage had been shot because, unbelievably, no actors had yet been cast! The sets and uniforms were still being designed.

Remember that, at the time this trailer was first screened for fans, Discovery was still scheduled to debut in January of 2017…just six months after Comic Con. As a comparison, the new STAR TREK: PICARD series is currently set to premiere in January 2020—just six months after Comic Con. So really, no one (especially CBS) should have been surprised when Discovery ended up launching nine months behind schedule.

Still, desperate to show SOMETHING, the show-runners of Discovery decided to render out a quick CGI animation revealing the look of the new starship. Of course, even the ship wasn’t fully designed yet…as you can see from the “rocket” nacelles and the fact that the saucer section was still all one piece. But at least CBS would have something to get the fans excited. (Whether or not it succeeded is still up for debate.)

But what isn’t up for debate is how excited Trekkers have been for the last few days after seeing the extended trailer for Star Trek: Picard that debuted this past Saturday at Comic Con…

What a difference three years makes, huh?

Let’s take a trip down Memory Lane (no relation to me) and look back at the CBS of 2016 versus 2019 and what has changed for Star Trek in that time…

Continue reading “SD Comic Con PICARD Trailer 2019 vs SD Comic Con DISCOVERY Trailer 2016 – What has CBS learned…?”

INTERLUDE GoFundMe – How long to the point of no return?

When I launched the GoFundMe campaign for my Axanar Universe fan film INTERLUDE, I knew going in that there were three possible outcomes…

  1. Total failure – I was using GoFundMe (not Kickstarter or Indiegogo) with no perks…would that even work? If I’d only managed to take in a few thousand dollars in the first month or two, I’d likely need to refund the donations and give up on my dream project.
  2. Smashing success If I quickly blasted past my $19.5K goal in a few weeks, then full speed ahead and maybe even start planning for a second production.
  3. Something in between.

We’re definitely in the third scenario, folks, which is fine. In fact, I kinda expected it. When I wrote my budget blog, I even said the following:

If we come up short, we’ll need to figure out ways to trim things. For that reason, I’ve “erred on the side of caution” and created my budget to assume costs on the high side. That way, if we don’t make our goal, we’ll hopefully still have enough to make a decent fan film by streamlining and trimming things from the budget.

And that’s where we are. It’s been a little over a month, and we’ve just crossed the half-way point to our goal. We’re at $9,768 as I type this…plus another $100 or so in Paypal donations. It’s a solid start, and donations are still coming in. But they’ve slowed down (as they usually do after a quick start), and I need to look at practical considerations now.

In order to film in November, we need to commit to certain things by September. For this reason, I can’t simply keep up the GoFundMe until we reach our goal (even if it takes months or years). We have to figure out a “point of no return.” What is the minimum we need to get this project filmed? Can we do it for $17K? $15K? $13.5K? Do we have enough with just the nearly $10K raised so far?

Obviously, if we have to cut things out of the budget, we won’t have all the bells and whistles. But for me, it’s more important to turn this dream into a reality. So I’m going to sit down with my co-directors, VICTORIA FOX (who is also my producer) and JOSHUA IRWIN and start figuring out what can be trimmed, and by what date we need to lock down our GoFundMe to either commit to filming in November or else delay the production until we’re better funded. (I think we’ve taken in enough to no longer need to consider canceling the project.)

So what do I need from you folks right now?

Continue reading “INTERLUDE GoFundMe – How long to the point of no return?”

TREY and TREY’s excellent INTERLUDE commercial!

TREY McELWAIN has been one of AXANAR‘s staunchest supporters. He shows up each week for the Axanar Confidential livecast. He was the first (and second) to create an Axanar Universe comic book and launch the Axanar Comics website. In fact, Trey inspired me to write and publish the first Axanar Universe short story, “Why We Fight,” and later to create my own Axanar Universe comic story, “Stardate 2245.1” (currently being released one page per week).

A few months ago, Trey launched his own Axanar Comics Youtube channel. Initially, it simply featured updates on the latest developments in the world of Axanar Comics and Axanar itself. Then Trey began doing stop-motion versions of his comic stories. Most recently, Trey has expanded his offerings to include interviews with folks in the Axanar and fan film community, including THOMAS RAUBE and MARK PAYTON.

Trey already has an impressive 445 channel subscribers (not bad for three months!). And with each new release, Trey improves and expands his skills using his video editing software. His latest offering pushed his abilities to tackle a new challenge: being in two places at once!

The catalyst for attempting this feat was my Axanar Universe fan film INTERLUDE. Trey wanted to create a “commercial” on his channel in support of my GofundMe campaign (have you donated yet?). And as a way of playing off my whimsical “ask” video—where I interview myself—Trey decided to go one step further and appear next to himself, using green screen compositing. He even went so far as to comb his hair differently and put glasses on one of him, similar to what I did in my “ask” video.

The finished product looks very impressive, considering this was a first attempt at a new skill. And it was actually much more difficult to execute than Trey makes it look. (In other words, it looks slick and polished despite having a lot of moving parts.) Keep in mind, as you watch, that Trey needed to follow a script and leave himself enough of a gap each time one of his characters stopped talking for the other Trey to say his lines (since each Trey is a continuous shot). And that’s not easy! Wait too long, and there’s an awkward moment of silence. Come in too soon, and the Treys might end up talking over each other.

So kudos to Trey for pulling this off, and thanks to Trey for helping to promote my GoFundMe campaign (currently just $172 short of the half-way point…hint, hint):

https://www.gofundme.com/interlude

Take a look at Trey’s video below (and “marvel” at his new opening sequence!)…