News – Page 77 – Fan Film Factor

What is…THE CIRCUIT? An audio interview with MANU INTIRAYMI

What is THE CIRCUIT…and why are fans so excited by it that the project’s Kickstarter campaign surpassed its initial $50,000 in just ONE WEEK??? (They’re now up to $64,000!)

Is it a fan film? Kinda. Is it a professional independent film? Well, yeah, it’s that, too.

Is it Star Trek? No. But on the other hand, just take a look at this cast…

Walter “Chekov” Koenig (Star Trek)
Terry “Jadzia Dax” Farrell (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine)
Robert “Chakotay” Beltran (Star Trek: Voyager)
Armin “Quark” Shimerman (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine)
Robert “EMH” Picardo (Star Trek: Voyager)
Ethan “Neelix” Phillips (Star Trek: Voyager)
JG “General Martok” Hertzler (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine)
Robert “Gowron” O’Reilly (Star Trek: The Next Generation)
Hana “Molly O’Brien” Hatae (Star Trek: TNG/DS9)
Tim “Tuvok” Russ (Star Trek: Voyager)
Doug “Lt. Saru” Jones (Star Trek: Discovery, Hellboy, Pan’s Labyrinth)
Manu “Icheb” Intiraymi (Star Trek: Voyager)

But wait! There’s more…

Ryan Eggold (The Black List, The Black List: Redemption)
Sylvester McCoy (The Hobbit, Doctor Who)
Gigi Edgley (Farscape, Rescue Special Ops)
Miltos Yerolemou (Game of Thrones, Star Wars: The Force Awakens)
Valerie Leslie (The Paranormal Hour, 5th Passenger)
Corin Nemec (Stargate SG-1)
Rob Archer (Lost Girl, Pixels, Kick Ass 2)
Jai Koutrae (Death’s Requiem)
Mindy Robinson (V/H/S/2)
Olivia D’abo (The Wonder Years, Conan The Destroyer)
Cody Saintgnue (MTV’s Teen Wolf)

Interested yet? Well, guess what? YOU might even be able to work on this project! Yes, YOU, Mr. or Ms. Fan! And it isn’t even just one fan film; it’s TEN—all linked together in…The Circuit!

But what is…The Circuit?? (Didn’t I already write that?)

I recently sat down with MANU INTIRAYMI (the actor who played the Borg teenager Icheb on Star Trek: Voyager) for one of Fan Film Factor’s first-ever audio interviews. And I asked him to help fill in the mystery of what is……The Circuit??? So let’s find out the ANSWER…

MANU INTIRAYMI as Icheb on STAR TREK: VOYAGER (left) and today.

To learn more or to donate, click here.

2017 Independent Star Trek Film Awards (now the “BJO’s”) WINNERS ANNOUNCED!

Hollywood has the Oscars, the Emmys, and the Golden Globes. Now Star Trek fan films have the Bjos!

Last year at the TREKLANTA Star Trek Convention, the second annual INDEPENDENT STAR TREK FAN FILM AWARDS were presented by none other than BJO TRIMBLE and her husband JOHN TRIMBLE. As most fans know, Bjo Trimble is celebrated as being the woman who saved Star Trek from cancellation in 1968 by organizing the great letter-writing campaign (among other achievements). She told Treklanta organizer ERIC L. WATTS how impressed she was with the entire awards program.

After the ceremony, Eric asked Bjo if she would endorse the awards by allowing them to be named in her honor, and she humbly agreed. So now we get to save a bit of time and typing and just call them “The Bjo’s.”

The 2017 Bjos were presented at and by the Treklanta Star Trek Convention last Sunday in Atlanta, Georgia. The panel of judges included Diana Dru Botsford, Keith R. A. DeCandido, John DeSentis, Matthew M. Foster, Andrew Greenberg, Robert Greenberger, Cheralyn Lambeth and Archie H. Waugh. Each judge had to watch through a combined total of nearly TWELVE HOURS of 33 different Star Trek fan films and rank them in twelve different categories!

The Masters of Ceremonies were Eric L. Watts and Brian Holloway. The presenters included David Gerrold, Gary Graham, J. G. Hertzler and James Horan. The award plaques were sponsored by Lawrence L. Fleming.

All of the entrants for the 2017 awards needed to have been released to the public during calendar year 2016. For a full list of rules, entrants, and winners from previous years, click here.

Eric posted this 15-minute video to announce the winners…along with photos of all of the judges and a full list of film entrants selected for review. But if you’d prefer a quick text summary of just the winners, here it is after some spoiler space…

Continue reading “2017 Independent Star Trek Film Awards (now the “BJO’s”) WINNERS ANNOUNCED!”

BLADE OF HONOR launches their NEW INDIEGOGO with a touching tribute to the late RICHARD HATCH… (I cried.)

Damn, I miss RICHARD HATCH.

For most sci-fi fans, he will always be Captain Apollo from Battlestar Galactica…and possibly even Tom Zarek from the new Battlestar Galactica. For followers of fan films, Richard Hatch will be remembered for the intensity of his performance as the Klingon Commander Kharn in Prelude to Axanar. But soon fans will be able to see Richard Hatch’s final performance in front of the camera, filmed a mere five weeks before his tragic and untimely death from pancreatic cancer.

I first featured BLADE OF HONOR here on Fan Film Factor nearly a year ago in a 3-part interview with RYAN T. HUSK, the Executive Producer of this independent fan series. No, it’s not a Star Trek fan film, but it does feature Tim “Tuvok” Russ and Aron “Nog” Eisenberg plus a number of other actors, producers, and VFX luminaries from such Trek fan productions as Renegades, Horizon, Axanar, and New Voyages. So yeah, I still consider Blade of Honor appropriate to cover here on Fan Film Factor.

In their first Kickstarter last summer, they set a goal of $30,000 and managed to raise more than $51,000. This allowed them to film their pilot episode and to do a fair amount of editing and sound engineering. But they need a bit more funding to complete post-production with:

Space Battles, starships, spacescapes, etc..
Special effects, airbending, landscapes, etc.
Green screen composition
Music and scoring
Sound effects and foley
More editing
Color Correction

This time, they are using Indiegogo with a goal of $28,000. Pre-launch outreach to previous donors (like me!) has already brought them nearly 20% of the way to their goal with a full month left. If you want to make a donation yourself or learn more about the production, please click here.

And if you’re wondering whether or not you should donate to help complete this production—Richard Hatch’s final cinematic performance—and turn it into the best independent film it can possibly be, please watch this touching tribute to Richard by the cast who were the last actors to ever work with him…

This final funding effort will push Blade of Honor into a different stratosphere, and really allow us to make the final product huge, jaw-dropping, and something we can all be proud of.

FAN FILM FOLLIES looking for CONTRIBUTORS and PARTNERS

Well, it turns out I’m not the first or the only fan film blog site to have a name that abbreviates to FFF! Recently, I was contacted by fellow blogger CHRISTOPHER MOSHIER asking if I wanted to collaborate in some way to synergize our two blog sites.

It was an intriguing idea, although I pretty much only have time to focus on Star Trek fan films here on Fan Film FACTOR, while Christopher’s Fan Film FOLLIES covers all genres of fan films—including Star Wars, superhero, fantasy, Indiana Jones, James Bond, and a host of others.

We’re not sure yet how we might work together in the future, but opportunities abound. For now, though, Christopher has placed a graphic referral link to Fan Film Factor along his “Related Sites” sidebar and is featuring my blog site in his news links. And since I don’t have that kind of cool stuff on my modern-stone-age WordPress blog site, I have offered instead to post Christopher’s recent blog post requesting contributors and partners for his blog site.

Christopher isn’t simply looking to publish other people’s content from other blog sites. He’s interested in building up a team of like-minded fan film fanatics and followers who want to be part of a blog site to explore and promote the entire world of fan films of all genres.

And with that, I will hand the microphone over to Christopher Moshier…

Continue reading “FAN FILM FOLLIES looking for CONTRIBUTORS and PARTNERS”

J.G. HERTZLER discusses AXANAR and ALEC PETERS!

Well, it’s been a pretty busy couple of weeks for news about AXANAR, as literally every other blog entry I’ve posted over the past 12 days has involved that particular fan production in some way. So heck, let’s keep the momentum going for one more day!

But seriously, folks, there’s an interesting bit of news about Axanar coming from Atlanta…but NOT from the new studio in Lawrenceville. Instead, it happened during a panel yesterday at Treklanta, a small but well-attended annual Star Trek convention in the Atlanta area. And the panel featured J.G. Hertzler, who famously played General Martok on Deep Space Nine (along with a few other Trek roles). But his most recent Trek-related appearance came playing the character of Samuel Travis in the fan film Prelude to Axanar.

After Tony Todd’s public announcement that he had chosen to part ways with Axanar and not appear in the feature fan film after his mesmerizing performance as Admiral Marcus Ramirez in Prelude to Axanar, some were wondering if any of the cast and crew would be sticking with ALEC PETERS to continue their participation. The late RICHARD HATCH was always very supportive of the project and of Alec himself, but with Richard’s recent passing, fans wondered if any of the former cast members would be making a return for the 2-part sequel allowed by the settlement.

Now, I knew that J.G. Hertzler and Gary Graham were both interested in reprising their roles, as I spoke with both last summer in Las Vegas. But I’m just one blogger-guy, and those weren’t on-the-record interviews, just casual conversations at their tables in the autograph room.

But now, we’ve got the first public indication that at least one of those actors is still very much supportive of both the project and of Alec Peters himself. Yesterday, J.G. Hertzler took time during his panel discussion to specifically address this beleaguered fan film…

MELBOURNE – Interview with VANCE MAJOR, Part 2

Last time, we took a closer look at the new fan series MELBOURNE, shot at STARBASE STUDIOS and produced by VANCE MAJOR. This low-budget production has guest cameos from and shout-outs to SEVEN other fan films and series, tying a fair portion of the fan film community together with some shared continuity.

In Part 1 of our interview, Vance talked a bit about his own background as a fan and a filmmaker, and how his experiences with other fan productions led him to create his own. In the conclusion, we discuss more about the Melbourne project itself—its cast, production and post-production, and plans for the future.

So let’s get right to it…

Continue reading “MELBOURNE – Interview with VANCE MAJOR, Part 2”

ALEC PETERS discusses the new ATLANTA location for AXANAR! (interview)

Yesterday, I was told by several folks to look at this posting from CARLOS PEDRAZA’s Axanamonitor.com blog site. In it, he had had the “scoop” on where the new AXANAR PRODUCTIONS studio would be located, how big it was, the amenities it offered and didn’t offer, and even photos of the outside and inside.

There was only one problem: that WASN’T the new studio. It wasn’t the right building; it wasn’t even the right city! Carlos listed the new location as Gainesville, GA: “…about 55 miles northeast of Atlanta, actually a bit closer to the South Carolina border than to Georgia’s capital.”

Now, I’m not sure where Carlos got his information from, but for the last two weeks, I’ve been preparing an interview with ALEC PETERS about the new Atlanta facility, and I already had a whole bunch of information and photos…and they didn’t match what Carlos had posted at all. This seemed, to me at least, both curious and a bit troubling. One of us had the wrong information…and I really hoped it wasn’t me!

So I contacted Alec. I asked him if he’d made any last-minute changes to the location of the space that he’d be leasing. He said no, he was still leasing the same place—the lease was signed, sealed, and delivered—and no, it was not the same one that Carlos was reporting on Axamonitor.com.

Then I asked Alec if he would mind moving up our interview so I could get the correct information disseminated before people started thinking that Axanar was moving into some dumpy building in an economically depressed town more than an hour away from Atlanta.

DON’T BE FOOLED!!! This building shown on the Axanonitor blog site is NOT the building that Axanar Productions will be moving to. The correct image is the red brick building featured at the top of this web page.

Originally, I was planning to publish my interview with Alec sometime next week when the moving trucks are supposed to arrive. But I heard that Alec has a whole slew of local volunteers lined up to help unload the trucks and unpack things, and to be honest, I was worried that some of the volunteers might get confused and think they’d accidentally shown up at the wrong building…as the one in Carlos’ photo isn’t even the right color!

Anyway, Alec agreed to expedite his answers to my interview questions, and I just received them. So here is the CORRECT information about the new facility in Atlanta…

Continue reading “ALEC PETERS discusses the new ATLANTA location for AXANAR! (interview)”

MELBOURNE – Interview with VANCE MAJOR, Part 1

At the end of March, a new Star Trek fan production titled MELBOURNE (just that, no “Starship” in front of the name) posted its debut fan film: “Storm Front, Part 1.” One of several fan series shot on the sets of STARBASE STUDIOS (while they were still in their previous Oklahoma City location), Melbourne initially released two ultra-short vignettes, “Pen Pals” and “Pen Pals 2”.) But fans were really waiting for their first full episode to see what this new fan production would be all about.

Most successful Star Trek fan projects have a driving force behind the production, and in the case of Melbourne, that driving force is show-runner/producer/writer VANCE MAJOR (his friends call him “Vman”), who lives in Kansas with his wife of 17 years and his newborn son, Royce. I recently had the pleasure of sitting down with Vance for a very friendly interview. In fact, “friendly” is one of the best adjectives I could use to describe this warm and humble film producer from the Sunflower State. Since having our interview, we’ve actually become good friends, have spent hours on the phone talking Trek and swapping “Daddy” stories, and he’s invited me to appear on camera in an upcoming episode of Melbourne anytime I can get myself over to Arkansas (the new home of Starbase Studios).

So here’s what Vance had to say…

Continue reading “MELBOURNE – Interview with VANCE MAJOR, Part 1”

ALEC PETERS answers READER questions about the AXANAR FINANCIALS!

Last month, I published a blog where I provided a copy of the AXANAR financials, along with reporting on the go-forward plans for AXANAR PRODUCTIONS and INDUSTRY STUDIOS. Obviously, those plans have changed quite a bit over the past few weeks—as Tuesday’s blog pointed out—but the financials remain constant because they’re now a matter of public record.

In that same blog from last month, I also invited readers to submit their own questions for Alec via the comments section and received dozens of inquiries. It was a mix of questions from supporters and detractors, some about the financials and some about other things, but I submitted every one to ALEC PETERS, requesting that he try to respond to as many participants as he could.

It’s been a busy few weeks to be certain (with the Indiegogo campaign and finding new studio space in Atlanta). But a few days ago, Alec submitted his answers back to me. And so, without further ado, let’s see what he had to say…

Continue reading “ALEC PETERS answers READER questions about the AXANAR FINANCIALS!”

STAR TREK CONTINUES releases new BLOOPER/GAG REEL!

Bloopers. Gag reels. Behind-the-scenes flubs. Call them what you will, but they’ve been a part of the Star Trek fan experience since the 1970s when Gene Roddenberry first began bringing his TOS “blooper reel” to conventions to show hilarious outtakes by Shatner, Nimoy, Kelley, and the rest of the original cast to fans in the audience.

The tradition continued with The Next Generation, and I recall owning bootlegged copies of both blooper reels on VHS tapes that I bought at cons in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

The reason these outtakes are so special and treasured isn’t simply because they’re funny but because they give fans a glimpse into who these beloved actors and producers were as people…people who make mistakes and can laugh at themselves, cut loose sometimes, and have fun.

Not all fan films collect their bloopers and release them. Some don’t even have time to do multiple takes of the same scene. Others simply have collections of goofs and flubs. But the best of the gag reels contain just that: gags. It’s not just the missed cues and forgotten lines. Sometimes the actors know they’re going to have to do another take, and so they just go with it and have fun playing with the scene. And if we’re lucky, hilarity ensues while the camera is still rolling.

Such is the case with Star Trek Continues. They have edited together and released hysterically entertaining gag reels for all but their second episode. (You can view all seven gag reel videos at the bottom section of this web page.)

It’s no secret that I love this particular fan series and lament its impending conclusion in the coming year. But I don’t love STC only because of the great episodes it produces. I love it because of what I see on their gag reels.

I’ve worked on fan films, and it can be tedious, mind-numbing, stressful, exhausting, frustrating, irritable, and even confrontational. But it can also be a lot of fun. In fact, if it weren’t for the FUN, I can’t imagine why anyone would ever do it! STC‘s gag reels show us the camaraderie that can exist at the core of fan productions. Sure, the actors and crew work hard—incredibly hard!—but they play hard, too. They laugh at themselves, play practical jokes on each other, and keep their sense of humor through the seemingly endless late-into-the-night hours when shoots can shift between moving at a snail’s pace to a manic sprint in the span of seconds.

So I invite you to join me and others in celebrating Star Trek Continues in that most special of ways: sharing their laughter…