News – Page 69 – Fan Film Factor

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)…

Another SIX fan films in the MINARD saga from VANCE MAJOR…all in just 30 DAYS!

Back in September, I reported on how VANCE MAJOR (whom I affectionately refer to as the “Where’s Waldo of Star Trek Fan Films”) had released SEVEN Trek fan films in just SEVEN DAYS.

And now Vance has done it again!

This time, Vance wasn’t quite as prolific, but he did manage to debut SIX fan films in less than 30 days, from November 3 to December 1. All of the films continue to saga of Erick Minard, chief engineer of the Starship Valiant and the captain of the USS Constar nearly a century later. How is Minard alive to serve under Captain Christopher Pike and still around in the 24th century to fight the Borg and talk to Lt. Commander Data and Dr. Crusher? The only way to find out is to watch the episodes as they are released.

Some fans have criticized the production quality (or the lack thereof), and even Vance himself acknowledges the low-budget look of the finished product. The uniforms often don’t always fit properly, the spoken lines in outdoor scenes can be overwhelmed by a mild gust of wind, and certain characters look like they could use a few extra workouts on the ship’s treadmill. (I’m one to talk!) Even Vance’s own production company vanity plate at the end acknowledges, “I’m the guy with a cord in the doorway” (a glitch which actually happened about 50 seconds into this fan film).

But those who criticize Vance’s work, in my opinion, aren’t getting what fan films are all about. Not everyone can make a Star Trek Continues, Renegades, or Prelude to Axanar. And they don’t have to! Fan films are the great equalizer. We all create our projects to the best of our abilities and our budgets. Even the worst fan film still requires a great deal of work—writing a script, pre-production prep, getting the actors together, directing scenes both technically and dramatically, VFX (if you have any), sound, music, editing—fan films don’t make themselves! And if you don’t like the end result, then don’t watch. Or watch anyway because most fan films these days (including Vance’s) are pretty short.

Here’s what I think makes Vance’s stuff so unique and special among fan films…

Continue reading “Another SIX fan films in the MINARD saga from VANCE MAJOR…all in just 30 DAYS!”

HELP!!! Major STAR TREK FAN FILM BLOG SITE needs YOU!

Do you have a few extra minutes…maybe an hour or two? Would you mind doing a little typing in the service of Star Trek fan films? If so, then the blog site STAR TREK REVIEWED needs YOUR help!

I can honestly say that Fan Film Factor would likely not exist were it not for Star Trek Reviewed. Started back in 2009 by uber-fan BARBARA READER, her humble website quick grew to enormous proportions, containing resources and information about nearly EVERY Star Trek fan film. In fact, I’m not sure I’ve ever found a Trek film that wasn’t already somewhere on Barbara’s site. You think I’ve covered a lot of Trek fan films here? I’m just peanuts compared to an outfit like Star Trek Reviewed!

I don’t look at STR as a competitor, though…not in the least! Like firefighters and police officers, there’s similarities but a lot of significant differences in what we do. While both blogs include lists of fan films and tell you where you can view them, STR provides links to articles and interviews and reviews about each production and/or series…and groups those fan films into categories by Trek “era” and production type (live action, animated, machinima, etc.). STR also includes Trek audio productions, plus comics and games created by fans. (I don’t have enough time to include those here.)

What Fan Film Factor does that STR doesn’t is provide the “deep dives” into each production…histories and interviews (both text and audio), closer looks at the producers and their projects, and don’t forget editorials. In many ways, the two sites complement each other perfectly to provide a wonderfully full coverage of fan films.

Last year, after doing all the work to maintain and update STR by her lonesome for nearly seven years, Barbara grew her team to five individuals from all across the planet—keeping fans apprised of the latest fan project releases. (How DO they do it!?!?) And now they’re looking for a little more help…possibly from YOU!

Continue reading “HELP!!! Major STAR TREK FAN FILM BLOG SITE needs YOU!”

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:

Marvel Comics Writer PAUL JENKINS joins AXANAR as CO-WRITER! (interview, part 2)

Last time, we began a fascinating discussion with PAUL JENKINS, who will be the new co-writer of Axanar. Although ALEC PETERS has already written complete drafts of the two 15-minute short fan films allowed thorough his legal settlement with CBS and Paramount, and at least ten major iterations of the full 90-minute script exist, Alec has asked Paul to come on board to help polish and finalize all three long and short scripts.

Paul himself is a very impressive writer and film producer in his own right. He is credited as one of the main reasons that Marvel Comics escaped Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the 1990s when he helped to create the “Marvel Knights” series of titles. He has written a wide range of both Marvel and DC comics characters, winning an Eisner Award and five Wizard Fan Awards. His work on Wolverine: Origin was even turned into a blockbuster feature film.

Paul has written and creative directed numerous titles for the video gaming industry, and he’s worked on projects with many of the major motion picture studios. Paul currently lives in Georgia and chairs an advisory committee to educate the Georgia General Assembly on the evolution of digital and interactive technologies. He’s also been tasked by Georgia’s governor to help cultivate and nurture the growing film development industry in the state.

And now Paul will be lending his impressive talents to Axanar.

In the first part of our interview, we learned how Paul first got involved in the project, and how the announcement of his involvement almost immediately caught the attention of Axanar detractors who contacted him with very negative and angry messages. (Seriously, guys?)

But Paul is taking it all in stride. Having been a prolific comic book writer for more than two decades, this isn’t Paul’s first rodeo. As far as he is concerned, the lawsuit has been settled, and now the job ahead is to make the next two Axanar episodes as good as they can be.

And now, back to our great interview…

Continue reading “Marvel Comics Writer PAUL JENKINS joins AXANAR as CO-WRITER! (interview, part 2)”

Marvel Comics Writer PAUL JENKINS joins AXANAR as CO-WRITER! (interview, part 1)

AXANAR has a new co-writer! Ladies and gentlemen, meet PAUL JENKINS. As you can see from his IMDb page, this bloke (he’s British) has done a LOT of stuff in television, film, and video games. He’s also one of the writers credited with helping to rescue Marvel Comics from Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the late 1990s with the introduction of the “Marvel Knights” series of titles. Since then, Paul has written everything from Spider-Man and the Incredible Hulk to the ground-breaking Wolverine: Origin (which served as the basis for the feature film with Hugh Jackman).

And now, Paul will be helping ALEC PETERS complete the scripts for the Axanar fan films.

The script for Axanar has trekked a long road. Alec first began working on the story back in 2011. And Alec welcomed input from folks like John Muenchrath (who played Dr. McCoy on Star Trek: New Voyages under the stage name “John Kelley”), Star Trek novelist Dave Galanter (see Dave Galanter’s post below in the comments section), Prelude to Axanar director Christian Gossett, and of course, “Trouble with Tribbles” episode writer David Gerrold. During 2015, then-Axanar director ROBERT MEYER BURNETT brought on BILL HUNT to take yet another pass at tweaking the script. By the time Axanar was ready to shoot in early 2016, the 90-minute script was already on version 7.

During the lawsuit, Bill Hunt and Alec worked on additional revisions of the script. I read one of their iterations, and it was up to version 9.

Finally, after the lawsuit settled, Alec was permitted to make Axanar not as a 90-minute feature film but rather as two 15-minute short fan films. There would still be a full 90-minute script distributed to donors, but two 15-minute scripts would now need to be written, based on the longer version.

Alec decided to write the new 15-minute scripts as “Part IV” and “Part V” of The Four Years War mock documentary, with Prelude to Axanar having been “Part III.” The first drafts of both of those scripts were completed by Alec this past summer, with a number of people (including me) reviewing them an providing feedback. Then, on October 6, Alec announced that Paul Jenkins would be joining the Axanar team as co-writer.

So what was a major comic book and Hollywood writer was doing coming to work on a Star Trek fan film???

Continue reading “Marvel Comics Writer PAUL JENKINS joins AXANAR as CO-WRITER! (interview, part 1)”

My FAN FILM just beat AXANAR in the Berlin Sci-Fi Film Festival! (Yay!)

Now, this is pretty crazy! Back in April of 2016, while the CBS/Paramount v. Axanar lawsuit was still going strong, MARK LARGENT and I decided to create a parody of the whole mess with a short animated spoof called PRELUDE TO AX’D-WE-ARE. We wrote the script together in about five days, and I provided the voices for half of the characters. Mark did the lion’s share of the work, animating the entire seven-minutes in just 31 days! (For more background on how this all came together, check out this blog.)

When I first heard about the Berlin Sci-Fi Filmfest back in June, I posted about it because, for the first time that I was aware of, an international film festival was featuring a category specifically for FAN FILMS! I suggested to Mark Largent that he might want to enter Prelude to Ax’d-We-Are. After all, it was just 15 bucks. Other Trek fan films were also entered—including the excellent Chance Encounter, Starship Republic – “Serpent of Yesterday”, and Survivors—and we figured we might have a shot…maybe. There were also three Star Wars fan films (one from the UK and another from France), a Blade Runner fan film out of South Africa, and a horror movie spoof.

And then we saw that Prelude to Axanar had been entered. Oh well, we thought, there goes our chance to win. (Prelude is pretty much a juggernaut.) But at least audiences would be able to watch both the parody and the original it was based on.

We actually made it to the semi-final round, along with Tears in the Rain (the South African Blade Runner fan film with some great acting), The Secret of Tatooine (all in French with awesome visual effects), and of course, Prelude to Axanar. With competition like that, we figured that “semi-finalist” was as far as we’d get. We were wrong.

We won BEST FAN FILM!!!!

Mark and I thought it was a typo! But no, there is was up on their website with our poster image. “I feel like there’s all these guys in my class who studied for months to pass the exam and all I did was cram at the last minute and ace it!” Mark told me over the phone.

I joked to ALEC PETERS of Axanar, writing, “I hope you’re not pissed at us.”

“Why would I be pissed?” he wrote back. “It’s awesome. Its all in the family. We have won 47 awards. Nice for you guys to win one.”

So Mark and I, co-writers and co-producers, can now also call ourselves winners of an international sci-fi film festival competition. And that is totally cool! Thanks for letting me share that news with you.

And in case you missed it, here’s Prelude to Ax’d-We-Are in all of its 7 minutes of glory…

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!

What REALLY happened with STARBASE STUDIOS! (Part 2)

Yesterday, we looked at the history of STARBASE STUDIOS from its founding in 2010 to its move from Oklahoma to Arkansas at the beginning of 2017. Things started to get tense and messy by early summer, with DAN REYNOLDS stepping aside, leaving GLEN L. WOLFE wanting to charge fan producers $500/day (plus extra fees) to use the studios TOS sets and resources…while SCOTT JOHNSON and KENT “WORDS” EDWARDS wanted to keep the sets free for use by fans (only requesting a donation to cover the cost of electricity for the day). And as long as CHARLES “BUD” PELSOR, the landlord of the warehouse where the STARBASE STUDIOS sets were being housed in Dogpatch, AR, was providing free rent until the end of 2018, offering use of the sets essentially for free was certainly doable.

Then, in early August, as recounted in this recent blog a large number props and items both freestanding and attached to the sets were removed and taken from the warehouse. It was not a break-in, as there was no indication of forced entry. Later on, when the police were brought in,they spoke with Glen’s attorney who explained that the items taken were the personal property of Glen Wolfe, and if Scott and “Words” wanted to prove otherwise, they would need to do so in civil court. The police then told everyone that they would stay out of the matter until ownership was clearly and legally established.

Quite a sticky wicket! Here’s what happened next…

Continue reading “What REALLY happened with STARBASE STUDIOS! (Part 2)”

What REALLY happened with STARBASE STUDIOS! (Part 1)

As you might recall from this recent blog, SCOTT JOHNSON and KENT “WORDS” EDWARDS, with the help of VANCE MAJOR, posted a video showing many critical pieces of the TOS sets that were removed, 90 days earlier, along with damage done to the remaining set pieces during the removal process. But the question must be asked: was this “theft” and “vandalism” or simply someone reclaiming his personal property? And it is now looking as though that question will end up being answered in an Arkansas courtroom.

There’s a LOT of ground to cover right now, folks, and I’m going to share as much as I’m allowed to while trying to break this whole situation down for you. Ready?

Continue reading “What REALLY happened with STARBASE STUDIOS! (Part 1)”