GARY GRAHAM leaves the AXANAR project!

The following message from actor GARY GRAHAM was posted to Facebook on Wednesday afternoon:

An hour or so later, when asked what happened, Gary added this brief explanation:

This obviously comes as a blow to AXANAR fans who looked forward to once again seeing Vulcan Ambassador Soval in the two 15-minute sequel fan films. Gary had already played the venerated character to near universal praise in PRELUDE TO AXANAR and then a year later in the 3-minute “Vulcan Scene.” In the years since the lawsuit that shut down production on Axanar in 2016, Gary had been an ardent supporter of both the project itself and of show-runner ALEC PETERS. Gary traveled from California to Georgia to appear at AXACON in 2018, saying positive things about Alec and the original production in interviews like this one (skip to 14:40).

Gary’s announcement came without any warning. And in the last 36 hours, I’ve seen unconfirmed reports of “irreconcilable differences,” that Gary is hoping to land a role on the new Star Trek: Strange New Worlds series and worried that an association with Axanar Productions would hurt his chances, and even political friction (Gary and Alec are on opposite sides regarding Donald Trump).

With so many unconfirmed rumors spreading on social media, I reached out to both Alec and Gary for comment. Gary has not yet responded to my request, but Alec confirmed that the first he knew that Gary was leaving the project came on Wednesday, and Alec provided me with the following statement (which has also been posted to the Axanar website)…


Continue reading “GARY GRAHAM leaves the AXANAR project!”

ALEC PETERS tests positive for COVID-19!

ALEC PETERS has logged a lot of “firsts” in the Star Trek fan film community. He was the first to raise more than a million dollars in crowd-funding for a Trek fan film project, he was the first to get sued by the studios, the first to survive such a lawsuit and reach a settlement agreement, and the first to set up an online store to sell merchandise based on original aspects of a fan film.

And now he’s the first well-known Star Trek fan filmmaker to test positive for COVID-19.

At this point, this is kinda “old” news. Alec first told me that he thought he’d caught the virus back on Sunday, July 5th. He’d had a 101-degree fever for two straight days and was feeling sicker than he’d ever felt before (although he never lost his sense of smell or taste). Alec explained that he’s generally healthy, and when he gets sick, symptoms typically don’t get too bad and pass pretty quickly. This felt different. And since it wasn’t flu season, Alec suspected by Sunday evening that he might have contracted the Novel Coronavirus.

It’s not that Alec hadn’t been careful. He wore a mask everywhere, washed his hands often, and social distanced. But Georgia is a pandemic hot-spot, currently 4th in the nation of 50 states in active COVID-19 cases with an average of 3,500 new cases per day for the month of July.

On Sunday evening, as Alec began to suspect that he’d contracted the highly infectious virus, he went to the CVS website to schedule a test and discovered that the earliest appointment they had available wasn’t until Wednesday. (What’s wrong with this picture, folks?) He booked it.

Meanwhile, Alec’s girlfriend CRYSSTAL HUBBARD, kept her distance from Alec while he isolated himself upstairs in his room. Fortunately, they have a five-bedroom house, so separation wasn’t difficult on a practical level. Going to work wasn’t an issue for Crysstal, as her job is at a night club, and those establishments were closed down at the time Alec got sick. In fact, Crysstal was furloughed for about 2-3 months total.

Although Alec announced through social media that he was “95% certain” that he had coronavirus (shortly before taking the test), I decided to hold off reporting it here on Fan Film Factor until the results were in. Alec was told to expect the results in about 6 days. (Again, what is wrong with this picture??? )

There was, of course, an outpouring of sympathy and well wishes from across fandom. And then, sadly, there were also Facebook posts like these…

Continue reading “ALEC PETERS tests positive for COVID-19!”

Could the new LOWER DECKS be the STAR TREK series fans have been waiting for?

Get ready for an, ahem, animated discussion…and probably a whole bunch of really angry response comments!

These days, if a new Star Trek series from CBS All Access debuts to universal or near-universal acclaim, then it’s probably premiering in a different universe! In THIS universe, Trek fans are an infamously hard-to-please/easy-to-piss-off mob with social media pitchforks and YouTube podcast torches.

I know; I’ve been one of them…kinda.

Granted, I’ve probably kept more of an open mind than many, and with the exception of the last two episodes of the first season of PICARD, I actually really enjoyed that series. But you guys know how critical I was of DISCOVERY‘s first season—and season two, while significantly better, didn’t completely escape my blogs of shame!

And so, like many fans, I reacted to details about the new STAR TREK: LOWER DECKS series (debuting next month) with some serious trepidation…although still trying very hard to keep an open mind. It hasn’t been easy. The very concept of the new series scared the crap out of me!

I mean…an animated comedy???

Star Trek has survived being animated before. The 22 episodes from Filmation in 1973-74 had a few true gems (“Yesteryear” and “The Slaver Weapon”) and some major klunkers (“The Infinite Vulcan”). But it was generally a well-executed series. As for comedy Trek, episodes like “The Trouble with Tribbles,” “A Piece of the Action,” and movies like Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home showed that you could certainly add a bit of comedic flair to Trek and get a pretty decent result.

Don’t say that Star Trek can’t be funny!

But could an animated series designed purposefully for non-stop gags and punchlines still work as Star Trek? Would fans accept such a tongue-in-cheek approach to a universe that we’ve dearly cherished and believed in for all these decades?

Well, CBS (now VCBS, I guess) and ALEX KURTZMAN have decided to find out—and I suppose we will, too, on August 6…and more likely on August 7 when the fannish mob once again takes to social media to make their opinions known (probably quite loudly).

But I am going to go out on a limb and say that, in my gut, we fans might just be getting the Star Trek we’ve been demanding for so long now from both CBS and Paramount!

Before diving into my reasons for that bold prediction, however, if you haven’t seen the latest trailer yet (released on July 12), then please have a look…

Also, a short scene from the first episode was just released yesterday…

And now, let’s cry “Havoc” and let those dogs of war slip a little…

Continue reading “Could the new LOWER DECKS be the STAR TREK series fans have been waiting for?”

INTERLUDE clip gets 7.8K views (and 1K likes) in 15 HOURS!

Wow…what a difference a successful YouTube Channel makes!

I posted a link to the 48-second “sneak peak” clip from INTERLUDE last week as part of a blog explaining why we were going to miss our announced premiere date of July 25, 2020. Long story short, the music isn’t done yet. But I wanted to give folks a taste of how the music sounded. So I cut a short clip and posted it. The video got 363 views over six days.

Last night, ALEC PETERS debuted the same video clip on the AXANAR YouTube channel. If you haven’t seen it yet, here it is…

I woke up this morning to see that the clip has now had over 7.8K views and 1K thumbs up (versus only 35 thumbs down)…so YAY! Of course, the channel has 89K subscribers—no wonder it got so many views so quickly. But hey, I’m not complaining!

I also read though the comments, and there were a number of questions and topics that came up repeatedly. So I thought I’d respond to them here if anyone is interested and/or curious:

1. When is Interlude coming out?

Soon. As I explained in last week’s blog, KEVIN CROXTON is about halfway done with the music, then MARK EDWARD LEWIS will add in the final sound effects and balance the sound levels. We’re also awaiting one final VFX sequence from LEWIS ANDERSON. Then we’re pretty much D-O-N-E.

2. The music is too loud/voices are too low.

Yep. As I said, the sound-mixing gets done last (since you need all the music before you can balance the levels). This clip was simply to give folks a taste of the music, and it’s a work-in-progress.

One of the most FUN things about making this fan film is showing you folks the behind-the-scenes steps of making a fan film. I didn’t want this clip to be polished and perfect…yet. It’s more interesting to hear the music raw before sound-mixing and then compare it to the finished product in order to get an appreciation for what sound mixing can do.

3. We waited ten years for 48 seconds???

Sigh. First of all, Interlude isn’t Axanar. We only started crowd-funding a year ago. And for the record, Axanar had its first crowd-funding campaign in 2014…six years ago, not ten. (Why people keep saying “ten years” is beyond me. Counting to six isn’t hard…you don’t need to round to the nearest ten!) And remember that Axanar was sued for a year, had to move across the country, then finish the bridge, raise money to replace the funds that were lost during the lawsuit while filming couldn’t happen, and then had to go through the many and complex steps of actually producing a fan film.

Axanar has now had multiple shoots, and only one 2-day shoot remains…a shoot that can’t happen while the international pandemic is still shutting down union productions everywhere. And if you’d like to donate to Axanar so that it can be finished, please click on the link below…

https://aresdigital.axanar.com

Continue reading “INTERLUDE clip gets 7.8K views (and 1K likes) in 15 HOURS!”

New ANIMATED Star Trek fan film THE QUINTAIN spotlights SCOTTY! (audio interview with CURT DANHAUSER)

With the new animated Star Trek series LOWER DECKS set to premiere next month, now is a great time for fan films to revisit the original animated Trek series from the 1970s.

For those of you young ‘uns who don’t remember the 70s or aren’t familiar with the animated Star Trek series, it ran on Saturday mornings between 1973 and 1974 and featured 22 half-hour episodes starring all of the members of the original cast except for WALTER KOENIG (there were budget limitations, although Koenig did write one of the episodes). Episodes featured return appearances by Sarek and Amanda, Cyrano Jones, Harry Mudd, Bob Wesley, and Koloth. The series actually won an Emmy for Outstanding Entertainment in a Children’s Series…the first Emmy win for any Star Trek.

As far as fandom and canon go, the animated series (TAS) is a peculiar life form. TAS was the first time we ever learned that the “T” in James T. Kirk stands for Tiberius (which became official canon in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country). Details of Vulcan from the animated episode “Yesteryear” made it into fourth season episodes of Star Trek: Enterprise. And many fans consider Robert April to be the first captain of the USS Enterprise NCC-1701 and Dr. McCoy’s daughter’s name to be Joanna…both revealed in TAS episodes.

Robert April from the TAS episode “The Counter-Clock Incident”

On the other hand, some aspects of TAS seem to defy canon—like Enterprise crew members carrying security ID cards, life support belts (never seen before or since), NCC-1701 being the first ship with warp drive, an early holodeck nearly a century before the Enterprise-D, and an Enterprise “decoy” that could be inflated to a size twice that of the starship itself AND would fool a Romulan crew! But the show was still fun, and some of the episodes were quite good (others…not so much). And for Trekkies in the 1970s who hadn’t seen new Star Trek episodes since 1969, just hearing those familiar voices again was magical.

So it was for fans like CURT DANHAUSER and KAIL TESCAR. Each of these gentleman has created their own website dedicated to the animated series. Kail created Star Trek Animated while Curt created his Guide to Animated Star Trek. Both websites have existed for decades (and look like it), and both are labors of love by their creators.

Now, one might think that the two websites would have a lot of overlap, but instead, they feature very complementary content. Take a look at the main sections of both sites (Kail’s is the first, Curt’s second)…

Kail’s has screen caps, fan artwork (including fan comics), sounds, games, and even calendars. Curt’s, on the other hand, has a ton of information about the characters, technology, timeline, and behind-the-scenes write-ups on the production itself. Both sites are veritable treasure troves! But the reason that Curt Danhauser is being featured in today’s blog is because he has just released a brand new, original animated Star Trek fan film—“The Quintain.”

Check it out…

Continue reading “New ANIMATED Star Trek fan film THE QUINTAIN spotlights SCOTTY! (audio interview with CURT DANHAUSER)”

Get a virtual tour of NEUTRAL ZONE STUDIOS from VIC MIGNOGNA today at 7:30pm Eastern Time!

One of the wonders of the fan film world is the incredibly detailed TOS sets at NEUTRAL ZONE STUDIOS in Kingsland, GA. For the past two years, owner RAY TESI has been offering open house fan appreciation weekends when Trekkers from all over the globe could come to tour the facility. Right now, however, the pandemic prevents that from happening. In fact, it prevents any in-person convention from happening.

But not virtual online ones.

Since Wednesday, VIRTUAL TREK CON has been appearing on a computer or smart device near you! And already, thousands of people have tuned in to see and ask questions of celebrity guests from all eras and series of Star Trek…everyone from actors like TIM RUSS, ARMIN SHIMERMAN, MICHELLE HURD, GARY GRAHAM, DOUG JONES and over a dozen others to behind-the-camera folks like IRA BEHR, ROBERT HEWITT WOLFE, and DOUG DREXLER. The full guest list is 34 people! And it’s all absolutely free…you don’t even have to sign up for a mailing list!

Today (Sunday) at 7:30pm Eastern Time, Neutral Zone Studios will be taking its turn as a Virtual Trek Con event with a special live tour of all the sets hosted by STAR TREK CONTINUES show-runner VIC MIGNOGNA, who will be taking family friendly, respectful questions submitted by viewers (so no questions about you-know-what) . Fans are encouraged to submit questions that may be answered live on air in the comments of the live broadcast chat.

Vic will share stories about the fan films that have been made at that studio and (according to the Virtual Trek Con website) have special guests joining to tell their stories and lend their expertise and advice on filmmaking.

The hour-long online event will also celebrate STC‘s Mr. Sulu, actor GRANT IMAHARA, who passed away unexpectedly last Monday. Vic will spotlight Grant’s achievements and the special contributions he made to both the Trek community and the sci-fi community as a whole. 

You can access the live virtual event on Sunday July 19th, 2020 at 7:30pm Eastern Time at the following link:

www.facebook.com/events/s/neutral-zone-studios-live-at-v


There will also be a special message from actress NICHELLE NICHOLS (“Uhura” on TOS) to her fans immediately before the Neutral Zone Studios event at 7:15pm Eastern Time on Sunday.

The folks over at the Atomic Network (creators of RENEGADES) recorded Nichelle and were going to release the video to the public, and the timing was right to have it done during Virtual Trek Con. So you can watch this announcement from our inspirational lady of communications at either of the following links before it goes out to the rest of the public:

The Aron Eisenberg Stage: https://youtu.be/6VIQk_MDShE
The Rene Auberjonois Stage: https://youtu.be/hGTi8mY94Nc

INTERLUDE Confidential #12 – The best laid plans of fans and filmmakers…

Um, about that July 25th release date…

As I’ve said before ,when I first set out to make INTERLUDE, my goal wasn’t simply to make a Star Trek fan film. I wanted to EXPERIENCE making a Star Trek fan film and then share that experience with with all of you through these blogs.

But there was one fan filmmaker moment that I hadn’t experienced yet—until now, that is. Over the decades-long history of Star Trek fan films, many projects have announced their premiere dates…only to miss them. For some fan films, multiple premiere dates were missed.

Well, you can now add Interlude (and me) to that list. After announcing my premiere date in this really cool trailer that I edited together…

…I can now confirm that Interlude will NOT be coming to YouTube on July 25th after all. And I sincerely apologize. It won’t be delayed too much—and I can say that because I know what still needs to be done (more on that shortly).

To quote The Talking Heads, “You may ask yourself: ‘Well, how did I get here?'” The answer isn’t as simple as “letting the days go by.” Lots of people have been working really hard on post-production. But since these blogs are meant to assist other and future fan filmmakers by sharing my experiences (both good and bad), here’s what happened…

Continue reading “INTERLUDE Confidential #12 – The best laid plans of fans and filmmakers…”

JENS DOMBEK shows why “I AM SPOCK” in a new fan film vignette! (interview, part 2)

Last week, we began chatting with the über Star Trek fan JENS (pronounced “Yens”) DOMBEK, known around the world as The German Spock. He’s been booked for appearances in both the eastern and western hemispheres, and most recently, he’s appeared in two different Trek fan films as the logical Vulcan, both released within two weeks of each other.

The first, LOOK FORWARD TO THE DAY, is a short film featuring Kirk, Spock, and McCoy sharing a long-distance video call during a time of frustrating separation. The vignette was written, filmed, and edited as people around the planet found themselves having to social distance and isolate at home.

The second vignette was even shorter and features Jens providing a monologue as Spock in a dark, empty room over haunting music. It’s a simple yet brilliant masterpiece of minimalism, and if you haven’t watched it yet, take a look…

In Part 1, Jens and I discussed his history as a fan and how he became such a well-known cosplayer. One of his greatest regrets, though, was missing a chance to meet LEONARD NIMOY in person when the actor’s failing health led to the cancelation of an appearance at a convention in Germany. However, Jens did have a chance to meet William Shatner at that convention—dressed as Spock! Naturally, I asked the obvious question…

Continue reading “JENS DOMBEK shows why “I AM SPOCK” in a new fan film vignette! (interview, part 2)”

SIX-DAY Virtual Trek Con is FREE to Everyone and it STARTS TODAY with 35 Star Trek Celebrities!

You say you haven’t been to a Star Trek convention in months? And of course, it’s looking like there might not be any in-person conventions any time in the foreseeable future. So yeah, this pandemic totally sucks. But there is one silver lining in in the cloud: convention celebrity guests are stuck at home, too.

How is that a silver lining? Well, it means that we fans can rub virtual elbows with them (and with other fans) via YouTube livestreams, and there’s no need to rent convention space or pay to fly the celebrity guests to other cities and put them up in hotels. In other words, virtual conventions can be FREE!

Sure, there are no dealers rooms or autograph tables or photo ops. On the other hand, no lines…and you don’t need no stinkin’ badges either! So virtual cons are the next best thing to being there—and at least for now, they’re the only game in town.

Thus far, there have been a few scattered livestreams here and there with Trek celebrities. But starting today and finishing on Monday (July 15-20), SUMMER VIRTUAL TREK CON 2020 will kick off with 35 confirmed guests…ranging from authors and VFX and make-up people all the way up to the major Star Trek stars you all love to see, like…

  • Nichelle Nichols – Lt. Uhura: TOS with a Special Message for her Fans!
  • Doug Jones – Saru: DSC
  • Nana Visitor – Kira Nerys: DS9
  • Michelle Hurd – Raffi: ST Picard
  • Tim Russ – Tuvok: VOY
  • Armin Shimerman – Quark: DS9
  • Alexander Siddig – Dr. Bashir: DS9
  • Andy Robinson – Garak: DS9
  • Robert Beltran – Chakotay: VOY
  • Gary Graham – Ambassador Soval: ENT
  • Cirroc Lofton – Jake Sisko: DS9
  • Ira Steven Behr – Writer, Exec Producer: DS9, TNG
  • Robert Hewitt Wolfe – Writer: TNG and DS9
  • Max Grodenchik – Rom: DS9
  • Mary Chieffo – Chancellor L’Rell: DSC
  • Raven Dauda – Dr. Pollard: DSC
  • Hana Hatae – Molly O’Brien: TNG, DS9
  • Doug Drexler – Make-up, Art Department, VFX: TNG, DS9, VGR, and EN
  • The Sons of KirkStar Trek-themed rock band, fronted by Gary Graham

And the list goes on and on. You can see everyone who is scheduled here.

And speaking of schedules, here’s a link to the all of the panels and events for the next six days (including direct links to each YouTube livestream):

https://www.virtualtrekcon.com/Calendar

Attending is as simple as clicking any of the YouTube links listed on the Calendar page. And if you go to the YouTube channel below and hit the SUBSCRIBE button, you can sign up for reminders of when each live panel begins:

https://www.youtube.com/THE7THRULE

To my knowledge, this is the most ambitious virtual Trek convention assembled since the pandemic started. It’s the brainchild of CIRROC LOFTON (Jake Sisko) and RYAN T. HUSK (fan filmmaker and cameo guy on a number of studio Trek productions) along with MALÍSSA LONGO (widow of the recently passed and sorely missed ARON “Nog” EISENBERG). It’s a fan labor of love, where fans can participate and ask questions via virtual chats.

Come be a part of history in the making!

R.I.P. GRANT IMAHARA (“Mythbusters” and Sulu on “Star Trek Continues”) – 1970-2020

The world of geekdom, sci-fi fandom, and the fan film community all mourn the passing of the amazingly warm, generous, and upbeat GRANT IMAHARA. Those aren’t just my adjectives. In fact, I never met Grant in person other than seeing him at a few conventions along with cast members of STAR TREK CONTINUES. But I never heard anything negative about him…just the opposite, in fact! Certain people just have an aura of kindness and positivity that surround them, and Grant was one of those people.

As I looked at the tributes to him on social media, this one stood out for me from his close friend MATTHEW MERCER:

There are rare, RARE people in this world that are made of pure love, light, and kindness. @grantimahara is one of the brightest. Not an ounce of malice within that soul. Intelligence and heart that eclipse so much shadow. His years of friendship are precious to so many.

Grant died suddenly on Monday following a brain aneurysm. He is best known throughout the world as one of the co-hosts of the popular Mythbusters series on the Discovery Channel, which he joined during its third season in 2005 and remained a part of through 2014. Grant was the robot builder, something he loved doing from the days when he worked at Lucasfilm’s THX division and later for ILM. In fact, he also built the Deadblow robot that competed on Battlebots and was ranked #2 in the middle-weight division, and Grant even led a team that designed the modern Energizer Bunny! (No kidding! Check it out if you don’t believe me.)

Grant later hosted the Netflix series White Rabbit Project along with his Mythbusters build team buddies KARI BYRON and TORY BELLECIi. And he even appeared in an episode of Eureka and the third Sharknado movie.

The fan film community knew Grant best for playing Hikaru Sulu for more than half a decade in all eleven episodes of Star Trek Continues…as well as two of the three vignettes that were filmed in 2012 before the fan series debuted its full-length episodes. This video from LARRY NEMECEK of Trekland shows how excited Grant was to be a part of the production…

Grant also played the role of Lt. Masaru, Admiral Chekov’s aid, in STAR TREK: RENEGADES back in 2015. You can see from this interview with MATT MUNSON on the Renegades set how much of an excited fanboy Grant was being directed by TIM “Tuvok” RUSS and getting to be a part of the Star Trek universe…

We’ve just lost a very special one. All too often in our fan community, tempers flair, resentments build, and tensions can explode into full-on virtual warfare. But then there are fans like Grant Imahara who just smile and enjoy their experiences and reach out to others with warmth, kindness, and compassion.

Be like Grant, my friends.