THIRD and final CONVERGENCE teaser fills in two more pieces of the puzzle!

For the last couple of weeks, show-runner and “Trekyards” super-duper CGI trooper SAMUEL COCKINGS has been releasing a new teaser for his new fan project, CONVERGENCE, each weekend.  Convergence will be a mega-crossover event, bringing together (according to Samuel) FIVE different fan films and series.

The first couple of teasers gave fans the initial two pieces of the puzzle.  One of the cross-over fan series would be Star Trek: Intrepid, featuring Intrepid show-runner and star NICK COOK reprising his fan favorite role of Captain Daniel Hunter, as shown in the first teaser…

The second teaser revealed that the fan series Star Trek: Dark Armada would also be part of the cross-over equation, as that series’ show-runner and star, ROBIN HIERT, would be playing his character Captain Alexander Richardson of the USS Batavia.  Here’s the second teaser…

That left three more cross-over fan films/series still a mystery…until last Saturday when the third and final weekly trailer made its debut.  Two important (and surprising!) pieces of the puzzle were revealed with this announcement/introduction by Samuel:

STAR TREK: RENEGADES and STARSHIP REPUBLIC.  That’s right!  While the Renegades team have moved to a non-Trek universe, we are officially carrying on the torch for their Star Trek pilot and telling a new story with parts from the Star Trek: Renegades ‘verse.

Also joining as our final captain is JIM VON DOLTEREN from Starship Republic!  He will be flying to the UK to ensure that all our captains can be in the same room at the same time for some important scenes and to get the best quality production possible!

At some point in the next week or three, the official crowd-funding campaign for Convergence will launch, and fans will discover who the final character(s) is/are and from which fan project.  In the meantime, you share in the excitement as you view Samuel’s rendition of the Archer-class starship from Renegades and Jim Von Dolteren’s voice-over debut in the third and latest teaser for Convergence…

FUNNY video: “All About That Borg”

As fan-made Star Trek parody music videos go, this one is right up there with some of the best.  RANDY TURNBOW from Maricopa, Arizona has some amazing costumes from various sci-fi and related franchises, and he’s not afraid to wear them…in front of green screens!  Most of his parodies over the past three years have been Star WARS (including a MUST SEE Frozen/Star Wars parody that is NOT a version of “Let It Go”).  But today, let’s take a look at his one (so far) Star TREK music video, a very well produced and hilarious parody of “All About that Bass” by Meghan Trainor…

Some unsolicited CROWD-FUNDING advice from me… (editorial)

At this point, I’ve seen a LOT of crowd-funding campaigns.  I’ve seen them succeed, and I’ve seen them fail.  I’ve seen the good, the bad, the fantastic, and the face-palm.  I might not be the uncontested expert on how to create a strong campaign, but I’ve talked to enough successful crowd-funders and seen enough examples of what works and what doesn’t work that I think I can share some pretty useful advice if asked…

…and in certain cases, if I’m not asked.

I have to say that this year has been pretty wild when it comes to crowd-funders.  I’m already outlining the “2018’s Year in Review” blog to focus on the various Kickstarters, Indiegogos, GoFundMes, and even FundRazrs that have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for various fan projects over the past several months.  Some have soared, some have been absolute nail-biters until the final hours, and yes, some have struggled.

I feel really bad for the struggling ones.  In some cases, I do whatever I can to help with blogging support and even personal contributions on occasion.  But sometimes, all I can do is watch helplessly from my computer, seeing so clearly what’s being done wrong (or not being done), and wanting to shout like a frustrated fan sitting in the bleachers to a quarterback on the field.

But usually, I just hold my tongue (or in the case of blogging, my typing fingers).  After all, these are not my campaigns, and if people don’t ask me, then all I’m doing is shoving my nose in where it doesn’t belong, right?

Well, I’m about to shove my nose in.  Hopefully, I won’t regret it…

Continue reading “Some unsolicited CROWD-FUNDING advice from me… (editorial)”

STARSHIP TRISTAN releases its 14th fan film: “Deception”!

Well, it’s been a week since the last fan film release from POTEMKIN PICTURES…so I guess it’s time for another!

Actually, the goal for show-runner RANDY LANDERS is to release twelve new fan films per year from their various creative teams.  Last week featured the debut episode of their newest fan series Hospital Ship Marie Curie.  This week, we return to the series that has the most releases of any of the Potemkin Pictures projects (that are still in active production): STARSHIP TRISTAN.  Their initial fan series, Project: Potemkin, holds the record currently with 36 completed episodes, but that production is no longer releasing new episodes.

The latest installment in the adventures of the Constellation-class USS Tristan (during “movie era” Star Trek time) shines a spotlight on fan favorite character T’Noshi, played by actress CHRISTIN WOODS.  Her Vulcan character initially debuted way back in the early days of Project: Potemkin and remains a part of the Potemkin Pictures fan film “factory” even now nearly half a decade later.

Their budgets are, of course, ultra-low…and the on-location “sets” don’t have a lot of dressing.  In fact, in this latest episode, you can even see an “EXIT” sign in the background in one scene.  But that’s not why these folks do it.  For them, it’s all about the love of Star Trek and the fun of creating a fan film that starts from an idea, becomes a script, and then through a lot of hard work and persistence, emerges months later as a completed film.  It’s the joy of creating something no one has ever seen before, and now you and others get to see it for yourselves.

All episodes of the various Potemkin Pictures series can be accessed from their website.  You can watch the latest release from Starhsip Tristan below…

CONVERGENCE teaser number two features ROBIN HIERT of Dark Armada!

The last time fans saw ROBIN HIERT playing the role of Captain Alexander Richardson of the USS Batavia, it was December of 2016 in the finale of the popular Dutch fan series Star Trek: Dark Armada. 

(Technically, Robin also made a brief cameo in one of the final Minard Saga films.)

In the last minutes of that finale (spoiler warning!), fans discovered that the entire series thus far had been taking place in the Kelvin timeline (24th century), and we finally got a glimpse of Captain Richardson from the prime timeline.

At the time, Robin Hiert told me that a new sequel series, Batavia, would start filming the following year (2017).  But it’s now far into 2018, and no episodes of that series have emerged yet.

And so, fans of Dark Armada will be very happy to see and hear that Captain Richardson and the USS Batavia will play a part in the upcoming multi-fan film crossover event CONVERGENCE from “Trekyards” CGI guru SAMUEL COCKINGS.  The second teaser was released this past weekend…

And for those who missed it, here is the first teaser again featuring NICK COOK of the fan series Star Trek: Intrepid…

Samuel will be releasing a third and final trailer this coming weekend before launching an Indiegogo campaign to fund production and post-production on this FIVE-WAY crossover.  Which other fan films/series will be included in the crossover besides Intrepid and Dark Armada?  You won’t have to wait too long to find out!

Speaking of which, I’ve been shown a rough cut of the “ask” video for the Indiegogo page…and it looks really amazing.  To others looking to create crowd-funders, all I can say is watch this video and take careful notes!

Because several Convergence scenes and VFX sequences have already been shot and rendered, Samuel is able to provide some clips from the film itself, plus excerpts from behind-the-scenes interviews along with lots of footage taken during shooting on the green screen set with the main four actors.  So yes, you’ll definitely learn which other three fan films/series will be a part of this major cross-over event once the Indiegogo launches in a few more weeks.

In the meantime, remember to visit Convergence on Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/Convergenceastartrekfanfilm

DS9 documentary is looking for a LITTLE MORE MONEY…for something REALLY COOL!

Ah, scope creep…

You’ve got your budget, the money is available, but suddenly you realize that you want to do something really AWESOME, and now you need more money.  It happens all the time in Hollywood.  It’s happened to Star Trek multiple times.  It happens for Marvel movies and other blockbusters.  It’s happened to fan films like Renegades, Space Command, and Axanar.  And now it’s happening to the Deep Space Nine documentary WHAT WE LEFT BEHIND.

It’s not like producer/show-runner IRA STEVEN BEHR and director ADAM NIMOY just squeaked by with their Indiegogo campaign last year.  Not only did they exceed their initial goal of $150,000…they more than QUADRUPLED it with nearly $650,000!  They even blew past four different stretch goals along the way.

So why do they need even more money now, just months away ?  I’ll let Ira Behr explain it…

So that’s the story.  The resampled footage looks amazing, incredible, AWESOME!  There’s five minutes of clips from various episodes that now appears in glorious, vibrant, and crystal clear high definition.

But there’s also 15 minutes of standard definition footage, captured from the same DVDs you probably have on your shelf or the episodes you watch on Netflix or All Access.  The problem is that, because the HD footage looks so good, the SD footage palls in comparison and makes the viewer think, “Why do some of the clips look so crappy?”

Unfortunately, although TOS and TNG were digitally remastered to HD from the original film negatives, the same treatment is highly unlikely for DS9.  The process is expensive (even more so for DS9…as Robert Meyer Burnett explains in this interview), and the TNG remastered Blu-ray sets didn’t sell nearly as well as expected, so CBS is unlikely to throw more money down the Bajoran wormhole.

And thus, this is pretty much the one shot fans have to get more footage from DS9 remastered.  Sure, it won’t be all seven seasons, but even another 15 minutes sure would be nice.

The documentary makers are now taking new donations for the remastering exclusively through their website.  For $50, you get a special challenge coin.  But for $500—and this is REALLY cool!—your name will appear superimposed over the remastered footage.  Take a look…

Click to enlarge to REALLY see the difference!

To donate (or donate again!), visit their website:

https://ds9documentary.com

POTEMKIN PICTURES launches its 7th fan series! (interview with RANDY LANDERS)

It’s been a long road…getting from Project: Potemkin to here.  Project: Potemkin was the first fan series produced (and completed after more than three dozen episodes) by what would become POTEMKIN PICTURES—but it certainly wouldn’t be the last!  Over the majority of the past decade, Potemkin Pictures has launched the fan series (all currently in active production) Starship Tristan, Starship Deimos, Battlecruiser Kupok, Starship Triton, Starship Endeavour…and they’ve just debuted their seventh ongoing fan series HOSPITAL SHIP MARIE CURIE.

Of course, the guidelines prohibit ongoing fan series, but Potemkin Pictures carefully skirts the edges of this spatial anomaly by naming each fan film something unique and simply attributing these efforts to different “creative teams.”  So the Hospital Ship Marie Curie creative team has just released a fan film titled “The Beast.”  So far, with nearly two dozen fan films released in this manner since the publication of the guidelines, CBS and Paramount have not seemed to mind or take notice.

Potemkin Pictures‘ newest fan series is unique in a number of ways.  Although it uses the existing ultra-low budget costumes and sets of most of the other Potemkin projects, the hospital ship Marie Curie is a new design of starship that has no weapons.  After all, as I told someone recently who was commenting that the ship was too weak, “You don’t usually arm an ambulance like you would a tank!”  This makes for an interesting story angle in the pilot episode when the crew faces a situation where they potentially need to go into battle completely unarmed.

Another item of note—in addition to having a Betazoid crew member during movie-era Star Trek time—is that this series has two prominent African American characters, including the aforementioned Betazoid (played by Staci Marshay) as well as the captain herself (Lillian Cole).  They join the new captain of the Starship Deimos (played by Tony Anderson) as prominent black actors in the Potemkin Pictures family of fan films.

All episodes of the various Potemkin series can be accessed from their website.  You can watch their latest series release below, and then keep reading for a short interview with Potemkin show-runner RANDY LANDERS…

Continue reading “POTEMKIN PICTURES launches its 7th fan series! (interview with RANDY LANDERS)”

Can STALLED TREK’s kickstarter reach $4,000??? $6,000???

A couple of days ago, I wrote a blog asking “Can SPACE COMMAND make it to $100,000???”  Less than 24 hours later, it did just that with a total of $102,632!  Can lighting strike twice?

Today, I shift the fan film spotlight to a much more modest Kickstarter for STALLED TREK: “The City on the Edge of Foreclosure.”  The campaign started with a teensy goal of only $600.  That goal was reached in less than eight hours!  Now there’s only  29 hours left, and the total so far is $3,796 with 99 backers.  There’s a stretch goal at $4,000 that will result in an HD remastering of the hilarious and brilliant first episode of Stalled Trek: “Amutt Time.”  If you haven’t seen it, take a look…

Another stretch goal awaits at $6,000…the remastering of The Wobbling Dead, the other puppet parody of a major genre franchise by Stalled Trek creator MARK LARGENT .

To encourage more donations, Mark has just added a NEW donation level of “Acting Captain” for $100:

I’ll make a puppet of you and put you in the Captain’s chair on the bridge! You’ll get a wallpaper of it and it will appear in a special section of the closing credits! Plus you get the Blu-Ray and the digital copy!

Already, 8 of this level perk have been claimed.  But the most popular perk (50 backers so far) still remains the $25 level:

Your very own blu-ray! Plus a digital copy and your name in the credits. I’m only making 250, so make sure you get one.

Yes, Mark is allowed to distribute Blu-rays because this is a parody and not a standard fan film.  Reaching the $4,000 or even $6,000 stretch goal levels will help him to produce “City…” and the other films more quickly, as the finding will enable him to purchase more computer processors to render the many frames of 3D animation.  (You can read more about that in my recent 2-part interview with Mark.)

Click here to donate to the STALLED TREK Kickstarter.

CONVERGENCE teaser released – first of three!

Something really awesome and unprecedented is about to happen in the world of Star Trek fan films.  The first FIVE-SERIES crossover fan film is currently being produced by none other than CGI guru extraordinaire SAMUEL COCKINGS of Trekyards.  (If you haven’t seen any Trekyards episodes yet and you like the ships and technology of Star Trek, well, consider it your mission to go and check them out on YouTube.)

Samuel got the attention of the fan film world back in April when he also got the attention of CBS, who contacted him after watching the latest trailer for Samuel’s first fan film effort, TEMPORAL ANOMALY.  CBS was not happy about the use of existing TNG movie footage and certain copyrighted music, and the length of the final production was likely going to be well beyond the two 15-minute parts limited by the fan film guidelines.

After some discussions with CBS, and agreeing to remove the movie clips and replace the music, Samuel was reportedly given the green-light by CBS to exceed the time limit for this specific fan project.  Samuel has since been reworking Temporal Anomaly hoping to release it very soon.

In the meantime, Samuel also announced a NEW project that would link up five different established fan series in one fan film that, from the get-go, would adhere to all of the guidelines.  (Temporal Anomaly had originally been written and filmed years before the guidelines were announced and was only being delayed because of technology challenges.)

Samuel’s latest fan project, CONVERGENCE, will be launching a new Indiegogo campaign (yes, folks, another one of those!) within the next few weeks to fund production and post-production for this exciting film.

Leading up to the crowd-funder launch, Samuel is releasing three short teasers—one per week—each featuring a voice-over “captain’s log” from one of the cast.  The first, just posted this past weekend, has NICK COOK of the fan series INTREPID playing Captain Daniel Hunter.  As you’ll see, the visual FX are amazingly good, as Samuel is an expert CGI modeler and renderer.

Subsequent teasers will feature other lead actors from different fan series.  Who will appear next week and the week after?  Stay tuned!

In the meantime, enjoy teaser #1 for Convergence…

And remember to visit them on Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/Convergenceastartrekfanfilm

Can SPACE COMMAND make it to $100,000?!?!?

WOW!  Just three days ago, I wrote a blog about two Kickstarter campaigns that each had less than a week left: STALLED TREK (which wraps up early this Thursday morning in the U.S.) and SPACE COMMAND (which ends at 9:06pm Pacific Time on Monday night…tonight!).

At the time I wrote the blog, Space Command had well exceeded its $45,000 goal…insuring they would collect the donations and locking in post-production on Part 3 of their 4-part, two-hour pilot “Redemption.”  In fact, by that point, they’d raised $73,581 from 921 donors with four days to go…very impressive!

The hope of writer/director/show-runner MARC SCOTT ZICREE (whose birthday was this past Saturday) was to reach all the way to the $100,000 stretch goal.  This would fund post-production on both Parts 3 and 4, completing the two-hour pilot.

I’ll be honest with you: I thought they might get close, but based on needing to increase their total by 35% in just 93 hours, reaching that final stretch goal seemed to be a pretty remote possibility at best.

Not anymore!

The Kickstarter has taken in a staggering $20,000 from nearly THREE HUNDRED new backers in the last 72 hours…leaving them only $6,000 short of their $100,000 stretch goal (as I write this) with just 21 hours to go!  Can’t they make it to $100,000?  Possibly even by the time I wake up in seven hours…we shall see!

How did they manage to attract 300 new donors in just three short days?  Those of you trying to fund projects of of your own might want to take note.  During those three days, Space Command managed to get a “shout out” from two other successful crowd-funding campaigns with large donor lists (in the thousands each).  Renegades and The Circuit both issued e-mail updates to their donors—which they do periodically—and mentioned the Space Command Kickstarter.  Since actors from those two projects also appear in Space Command, the shout-out is actually relevant.  (By the way, Renegades‘ update was a simple one: “September 8th, 2018 – RENEGADES RETURNS…”  Oh, wow!)

Anyway, if you haven’t donated to Space Command yet and want to get something in before the deadline, please click here!

And if you still need convincing, listen to this interview I did with Marc Zicree two weeks ago:

Marc Scott Zicree

…and/or watch Part 1 of “Redemption”: