Fan Film Factor – Page 30 – Exploring the world of Star Trek fan films.

2020 BJO AWARD winners!

Up until the world turned upside down and we started sheltering in place, the annual BJO AWARDS were awarded live at the TREKLANTA convention in Atlanta, GA. Last year, however, Treklanta was virtual, and the Bjo Awards didn’t happen. This left the 2020 Bjo Awards for eligible Star Trek fan films released in 2019 in a kind of limbo.

But Treklanta Chairman ERIC L. WATTS made the decision to still have the 2020 Bjo Awards…even if they happened a year late. And so, in the latter half of this year, eleven judges watched a total of 27 qualifying Star Trek fan films with a total run-time for all the films combined of 9 hours, 54 minutes, and 19 seconds. That’s a LOT of fan film binge-watching!

Although Treklanta was virtual once again this year (back in August), the winners were still announced live, but this time it was on the evening of December 11 at NEUTRAL ZONE STUDIOS (home to the amazing STARSHIP FARRAGUT/STAR TREK CONTINUES TOS sets) during their fan appreciation weekend.

Although I typically don’t review Star Trek fan films, I do rate them here on a scale from DECENT EFFORT to PRETTY GOOD to HIGHLY RECOMMENDED to MUST SEE. This year, of the many, many Bjo Awards finalists, five fan films from 2019 made it to my highest MUST SEE level. Of those, three pretty much swept every category in this year’s Bjos—so the judges weren’t crazy (unless I’m crazy, too…a possibility that can’t be completely ruled out, of course).

As it happened, three individual fan filmmakers—British CGI Sensei SAMUEL COCKINGS, the fan film Wonder from Down Under AARON VANDERKLEY, and Arkansas Avalon Admin JOSH IRWIN were all “in attendance” to accept awards either on behalf of themselves or members of their team who weren’t there. In the case of the latter, Josh had driven down with Team Avalon members NEAL BILBE and PIXI NEREID (the latter co-hosting the awards with Eric Watts—see photo above). Sam and Aaron joined in via Zoom from their respective continents.

STARSHIP FARRAGUT finally releases series finale “HOMECOMING” (interview with JOHN BROUGHTON, PAUL R. SIEBER, and STEVE SEMMEL – part 2)

Last time in Part 1, we celebrated the highly-anticipated release of “Homecoming,” the finale of the long-running Trek fan series STARSHIP FARRAGUT, by interviewing show-runner JOHN BROUGHTON, writer PAUL R. SIEBER, and post-production supervisor and composer STEVE SEMMEL. We found out which elements delayed the completion of the film, what it was like shooting scenes with the legendary STAN LEE, and a whole bunch of other stuff that I’m not going to bother to recap because we’ve still got so much great interview left!

But before we dive into the conclusion, I’d like to recommend (if you’re interested in Starship Farragut) that you check out this 3-part blog covering the fascinating history of this venerated fan series from 2004 – 2016. And definitely watch the finale “Homecoming” if you haven’t already…

For anyone interested in the new sequel series, FARRAGUT FORWARD, I’ll be covering that soon with John and his director in an upcoming blog. But for now, let’s continue to celebrate this wonderful fan series with a question that goes back to the very beginning…

JONATHAN – I’ve always wondered: what made you choose the U.S.S. Farragut rather than one of the other major starships like Potemkin or Lexington or Republic?

JOHN – When I first started working on this project, it was going to be called Starship Excalibur. But then I learned that JOE KEREZMAN was doing his own fan film called STAR TREK: EXCALIBUR. And he reached out and said, “If you change your name to any of the other ships, I’ll make you—gratis for life—all the chest patches that you need.” And I said okay. I wasn’t that married to it.

So I looked at all of the patch designs that Joe had created, and the Farragut, which has an oval patch design—I thought that will be easy to sew, since I was making all the costumes myself—coupled with the Navy tie-in because I’m a veteran of the U.S. Navy, opted with the Farragut. Joe supplied me with one batch of patches, and that was it. But it was enough for what we needed, until we had our own embroiderer doing the patches for our project. All in all, I’m glad we went with the Farragut.

JONATHAN – So once you’d decided that you wanted to make a fan film, what did you do next?

JOHN – Initially when I started, I pulled in my dad, JOHN BROUGHTON, SR., and other friends, and then it just kinda grew as time went on. We were able to get professionals involved in the project, then we got our first studio in St. Marys, GA…which was much smaller than the Kingsland, GA space that the sets are now in. A lot of the initial sets were built by my father, then we had other volunteers that came on board and helped out.

STARSHIP FARRAGUT finally releases series finale “HOMECOMING” (interview with JOHN BROUGHTON, PAUL R. SIEBER, and STEVE SEMMEL – part 1)

The history of the fan series STARSHIP FARRAGUT stretches all the way back to 2004 and spans a total of 6 full-length fan films, 3 shorter vignettes, and 2 animated-style fan films (one of them featuring the voices of TIM “Tuvok” RUSS and CHASE “Leeta” MASTERSON). Farragut Films was responsible for the majority of the construction of amazing TOS sets that were also utilized for STAR TREK CONTINUES and DREADNOUGHT DOMINION and are still available for use by fan filmmakers at NEUTRAL ZONE STUDIOS in Kingsland, GA. Farragut also spawned a short-lived spinoff series called TREK ISOLATION that released three vignettes. And coming in 2022, a sequel series titled FARRAGUT FORWARD will move some of the Starship Farragut characters into the Wrath of Khan movie era Trek.

Since we have so much material for today’s interview, I’ll keep the background introduction fairly brief. But if you’d like to read the full backstory of this proud fan series, here’s Part 1 of a 3-part deep-dive into the full history of Starship Farrugut. Well, ALMOST full. The final part of that blog feature came out in early 2016, a month before the release of their penultimate episode, “The Crossing,” and a few months before reshoots wrapped on their announced series finale, “Homecoming.” Crowd-funded with about $15K in late 2015, fans expected to see a completed fan film later in 2016 or maybe 2017. That didn’t happen.

Instead, it wasn’t until mid-2020 that STEVE SEMMEL announced that he was taking over as post-production supervisor, having started off simply doing the music for the episode. I interviewed Steve in June of last year, and he promised a delivery date in the second half of 2021 “most definitely.” And indeed, that’s exactly what happened, as “Homecoming” was released on October 1. Take a look…

I reached out to three people to discuss “Homecoming”: show-runner and lead actor JOHN BROUGHTON and writer PAUL R. SIEBER (both of whom have been with Starship Farragut since the very beginning), and of course, Steve Semmel (who came on board in 2018). We covered so much great behind-the-scenes information about both the finale episode and also going back to the earliest days of the series back in 2004.

I received so many awesome answers that I’ve decided to divide this interview into two parts. Let’s get started…

Did STAR TREK: DISCOVERY just tell us that Admiral Vance is (metaphorically) ALEX KURTZMAN??? (editorial review)

SPOILERS BE SPOILIN’, BRUH!

After I watched the third episode of STAR TREK: DISCOVERY‘s fourth season, “Choose to Live,” I was torn about what to focus on in this blog. There were so many possibilities going through my mind! So before I get to paying off the headline that got you here (feel free to skip to the end to read about the how I think there is a “not so secret” message for the Kurtzman haters embedded at the end of the episode), let me tell you a few other thoughts that I had about this one…

BUT FIRST!!!

Before I begin, let me say in ALL CAPS and bold italics: THIS WAS A VERY ENJOYABLE EPISODE!!!! Each of the three episodes this season have been superior to most of what Discovery has done before. People keep reading my blogs and complaining that I hate Discovery and just want to find reasons to trash it. No, no, no! I want to DISCUSS it—both the good and the bad. If the show was perfect each week, I’d have nothing interesting to say other than, “Hey, wasn’t that a great episode???” If all I ever did was bash the show, then why am I still watching it each week? Instead, I try to call balls and strikes as I see them as a starting point for thinking about the series and analyzing what’s working and not working. If that’s not your thing, then don’t bother with my blog. No need for insults on Facebook.

Okay, NOW for my thoughts on this episode…

JUGGLING TOO MANY SUB-PLOTS?

Last week I discussed how many things were going on simultaneously in the second episode: 1) Book’s emotional devastation over the destruction of his planet and loss of his family, 2) Michael’s struggles balancing command with personal feelings, 3) Saru’s return to Discovery, 4) Tilly’s problems adjusting to her new normal, 5) Adira’s uncertainty about Gray getting a new Soong-synth body, 6) Stamets’ feeling of inadequacy and struggles relating to Book…plus there was the anomaly to learn about and the fact that flames and rocks are spontaneously erupting onto the bridge during red alert!

Well, if I (or you) were hoping for a few less spinning plates this episode, that didn’t happen. This episode juggled the following plot lines: 1) Michael’s relationship with her mother, 2) Tilly is still having her existential crisis, 3) Book is still dealing with his pain, 4) Stamets is trying to figure out the anomaly but can’t find those darn tachyons, 5) Gray’s consciousness is now in the new synth body, but he’s not waking up…all of this while dealing with a rogue Romulan ninja nun with an ends-justify-the-means mentality (and a badass sword).

Well, I suppose the good news is that that’s one less ball in the air than last week AND nothing was spitting out flames at the bridge crew…!

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.

‘Tis the season for GIVING…to FAN FILMS!

When folks come to me for advice on crowd-funding their fan projects, I always tell them the same thing: DON’T LAUNCH YOUR CAMPAIGN DURING THE HOLIDAY SEASON!!! Ever since 2015, I’ve noticed that fan film crowd-funders that try to raise donations in November and December often struggle to reach their goals or even fail outright. The holiday season seems to be a “donation desert” for fan films.

It makes total sense. Nearly everyone is buying Christmas (or Hanukkah or Kwanza or Festivus) gifts for friends and family. And before COVID, people used to take expensive vacations during the holidays to visit family or just get away—remember when that used to happen? Charities, of course, usually choose this time to appeal to that ol’ spirit of giving and approach (hopefully) generous donors to give a little sumthin’. And soon Christmas bonus checks are spent before they even get cashed, and bank account balances do their impression of the Titanic.

I get that…not the time for fan films to ask for money.

But this past Monday, I received a bunch of e-mails from various places informing me that “Giving Tuesday” was here. So now we apparently have Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and…Giving Tuesday? When did that become a thing? Actually it started in 2012 at New York City’s famous 92rd Street Y (where I went to summer camp back in 1981) and has grown into an international movement to encourage a little healthy philanthropy among the manic bargain-hunting.

I wasn’t able to write a blog in time for this year’s Giving Tuesday because I just had cataract surgery early this week, and it took away my ability to see the text on my computer screen for a couple of days. Today is the first day I’ve got reliable sight back enough to compose a blog.

I’d actually been meaning to post something reminding folks about the ongoing Fan Film Factor Patreon to cover my annual expenses for keeping this blog site running. Currently, I’m taking in enough in monthly donations to cover the costs of domain registration and hosting, technical support, and security services.

But last month, I added a new annual expense: a $160/year Pro Account for Zoom. You might have noticed that I’ve been doing more video interviews with fan filmmakers lately. Zoom is an easy way to reach multiple people and record the interview calls. And Zoom is free as long as your call is less than 45 minutes or has only one other person on it. But my interviews go 60-90 minutes, and I often have multiple people on at the same time.

So with “Giving Tuesday” happening, even though we’re in the middle of the “fan film donation desert,” as I call it, I thought this might be a good time to post a little reminder about my Patreon…

I’m looking for monthly contributions of $1, $2, whatever folks can spare to help cover the annual expenses of Fan Film Factor…

PATREON link: https://www.patreon.com/fan_film_factor

DISCOVERY’s latest episode “Anomaly” gave me what I’ve been asking for…so why was I so UP IN THE AIR about it? (editorial review)

SPOILERS COMING OUT THE WAZOO!!!

First of all, VCBS moved quickly to (try to) clean up their “mess” from last week, now debuting STAR TREK: DISCOVERY season 4 internationally on Paramount+ and Pluto TV in at least some countries this week, releasing episodes 1 and 2 together. It’s far from a perfect fix, but at least I don’t have to worry about spoilers as much as I did last week when only fans in the U.S., Canada, and those with a questionably moral compass could view it.

So let’s jump into the second episode of the season, “Anomaly,” or as I like to call it: “Quiet Conversations Punctuated By Action Scenes and Technobabble in the Middle.”

Okay, stop, stop, stop! I did NOT hate the episode. And I didn’t love it either. But here’s the thing, folks: I should have loved it.

The reason that I should have loved “Anomaly” is that it corrected many, MANY things that I’ve been complaining about for three seasons now. And for those of you who don’t make it a point of memorizing Jonathan’s list of grievances, here’s a brief Festivus refresher of what has most grated on me and what this episode did to fix those issues…

Characters weren’t given time to react and process traumatic events

I remember my go-to example of this was when the crew of Discovery got back from the Mirror Universe in season one, having been betrayed by their former commanding officer (Lorca). He turned out to be an evil psychopath who tried to kill them all. And the only “traumatized” emotional reaction we got from any of the characters was when Admiral Cornwell phasers an innocent bowl of fortune cookies out of existence. Everyone else, it seems, was fine.

The problem with the series in the first two seasons was a rush to hit the major story “beats” (significant events that change the characters’ direction in some major way), and once a beat happened, there was a rush to the next beat, and so on and so on. The writers didn’t give the characters a chance to breathe.

This episode, on the other hand, had Book dealing with the destruction of his home world, Michael dealing with her feelings for Book affecting her command instincts, Tilly dealing with what happened on the space station last episode and all the events from season three, Adira dealing with both Tilly as well as uncertainties about Gray’s upcoming transition (interesting choice of wording) from disembodied mind-ghost to full-bodied Soong-type synth, and Stamets’ ongoing feelings of inadequacy and helplessness to save his family that led to him getting shot out of an airlock in season three.

So we went from almost no characters having lingering traumas to almost no characters NOT having lingering traumas. That’s what I wanted, right? Well, let me get back to you on that after I continue with the ol’ airing of the grievances…

AXANAR finally has its first film shoot in 20 MONTHS! (video interview with MARK EDWARD LEWIS)

It’s been more than five months since I’ve published a blog regarding AXANAR, ARES STUDIOS, or ALEC PETERS…and that might be some kind of record for Fan Film Factor! The previous blog covered the moving of the U.S.S. Ares bridge set to a new, smaller facility (with lower rent) down the road in Lawrenceville, GA. But since then, there hasn’t been much Axanar news worth covering (I don’t bother with the non-production-related drama anymore).

That said, this past weekend finally featured some Axanar news definitely worth reporting on. For the first time since before the pandemic and lockdown, new footage for the two Axanar sequels was filmed. The shooting location was NOT Ares Studios, however. The bridge set still sits disassembled, awaiting the return of DANA WAGNER (whom I call “the miracle worker” because he’s basically Scotty when it comes to that set and studio) from medical treatment. We all wish Dana the best of outcomes and a speedy recovery…we love you, Dana!

Instead, the shoot took place in a nearby Gwinnett County high school video studio with ample green screen space available. Because Dana’s wife Allison teaches video for the school district and Alec had previously allowed students in the school video program to film on the bridge set at Ares Studios, the school was all too happy to return the favor and allow Axanar to be shot at their campus facility.

Alec reported in a blog on the Axanar website that the shoot was a “HUGE success” (I’m glad my use of ALL CAPS is catching on!). Unlike the first Axanar shoot back in October of 2019 that had 80 people (cast, crew, volunteers) present over three days, last Saturday’s activities were much smaller in scope, lasting for a single day with only about 15-20 people present. The main reason was COVID, which is still a major consideration for all SAG union shoots—so at present, only the most essential personnel are allowed on set…any set.

The scenes being shot this past weekend were of actors J.G. HERTZLER (who flew in from upstate New York), ROBERT HAYES (who recently appeared on The Walking Dead and plays helm officer Deville), and RAJ KALA (an Indian Sikh who plays Commodore Singh). All three of these actors had filmed their lines previously during the first Axanar shoot, but for various reasons, their footage wasn’t usable (which I can personally confirm, having seen it), and in one case, the original footage was completely lost to a damaged memory card.

BJO AWARDS announces FINALISTS for 2020…

Wait…did I say “2020”? Yep. As I explained in a blog last month, the BJO AWARDS (the annual awards presented exclusively to Star Trek fan films) was forced to skip the awards for last year due to the pandemic. Since the awards’ debut back in 2015, winners were announced live and in person at the annual TREKLANTA convention, with plaques being handed out to winners who were in attendance. But last year’s Treklanta was virtual, and the awards were skipped for 2020.

Well, perhaps “skipped” isn’t the right word. “Delayed” is more like it.

Each year’s awards are presented to qualifying Star Trek fan films that were released in the previous calendar year—meaning that this year’s Bjo Awards for 2021 should have been presented to fan films released in 2020. But that would mean those fan films from 2019 would never be recognized (a “skipped” year). Of course, one possible idea was to combine the releases from 2019 and 2020 into a single awards show, but it didn’t seem fair to double the nominees while keeping the number of winners the same.

So Treklanta Chairman ERIC L. WATTS decided to hold the 2020 Bjo Awards in 2021, and then hold the 2021 Bjo Awards early in 2022…hopefully leaving enough time left to also hold the 2022 Bjo Awards later in 2022 and get everything back on schedule.

You got all that?

Anyway, my previous blog from October listed all of the qualifying fan films from 2019—32 in all, although 10 of them were two-parters that were combined on the ballot into single entries, leaving a total of 27 qualifying Star Trek fan films. According to Eric Watts, the total runtime for all the films combined was 9 hours, 54 minutes, and 19 seconds (gotta love Eric’s Vulcan precision!)…ranging from just under 3 minutes (STAR TREK: UNITY‘s “Tabula Rasa”) to just over 51 minutes (TEMPORAL ANOMALY “Part 1” and “Part 2” combined). The average run time was 22 minutes.

Eric is particularly appreciative of the eleven judges who watched through every entry and took their job very seriously. In order to qualify to be a judge, a person had to have “…an established professional credit in the Star Trek franchise (actor, author, artist, writer, director, designer, producer, makeup artist, stunt double… pretty much anything)” or be “…a Star Trek fan currently working in the television/motion picture industry [without] any known association with any previous or current fan film.” With criteria like that, finding a panel of willing judges was NOT going to be easy!

“Yes, recruiting this year’s panel was a huge challenge,” says Eric, “and I’m proud of the calibre of judges that made this commitment. The Bjos are NOT a popularity contest, but rather, a juried competition of professionals who are impartial and know what Star Trek is… and should be. I want to give them all the recognition I possibly can.”

Where in the world is STAR TREK: DISCOVERY??? (editorial and review)

ALMOST ZERO SPOILERS!

The fourth season of the wild ‘n’ wacky STAR TREK: DISCOVERY just premiered…at least in the U.S. and Canada. The rest of the planet will need to wait until an undefined date in “early 2022” (according to CBS) to view the new season because, um, reasons.

Up until this past week, viewers around the world (outside of the U.S. and Canada) got to watch Discovery on Netflix. This was because the infrastructure —both technical and red tape—to set up CBS All Access, which is now Paramount+, was not yet properly in place in other countries. In other words, without a service like Netflix—or in the case of PICARD and LOWER DECKS, Amazon Prime—there would be no way for international Star Trek fans to watch the various new series. So CBS offered non-U.S. and Canada streaming licenses to those two services.

But now, with Paramount+ now available in about 20 foreign countries (and another 25 set to add the service within the next year), the equation had changed entirely. CBS began unwinding its streaming agreements with Netflix earlier this year when TOS, Voyager, and Enterprise were all permanently removed from Netflix back in September. Obviously, CBS (now ViacomCBS) wants as many subscribers to Paramount+ as possible, and having their content simultaneously available on Netflix doesn’t exactly encourage folks in places like Europe, Asia, and Australia to sign up for an extra paid streaming service.

Indeed, reports are saying that VCBS had been working an agreement to buy out all of Netflix’s financial interest in Star Trek: Discovery, a show they had co-produced with CBS back in 2017. Unfortunately for fans in countries that do NOT contain the Rocky Mountains or share a coastline with the Great Lakes, that deal was finally inked this past week, and the announcement that Discovery would NOT be debuting internationally on Netflix on Thursday, November 18 came on November 16…just two days before hundreds of thousands of fans outside of North America were looking forward to the big premiere.

CBS tried to put some lipstick on this pig…

…but in the end, few besides the suits at VCBS were particularly happy about the last minute “news.” This included the Discovery cast and production crew, many of whom tweeted their own frustration with the timing of the announcement and the fact that they weren’t informed.

I’m not going to lambast VCBS for their decision(s) in this matter. I totally understand wanting to consolidate Trekkies to Paramount+ as it debuts worldwide, rather than having them giving their fan bucks to Netflix instead. And I assume that, in a perfect world, infrastructure would probably have already been in place to premiere Discovery internationally on the same date that season four premiered in North America. For whatever reason, that didn’t happen. And I suspect that negotiations with Netflix were precarious enough that sharing the news early with the cast and production crew (and likely having it leak) would have done way more harm than good.

That said, there is an obvious risk for VCBS in this…