Tag: Fan Film Factor

2017 Star Trek fan film YEAR IN REVIEW!

“Why are you even bothering with this blog?” one anonymous poster wrote to me a little over a year ago. “Star Trek fan films will all be gone soon, even your precious Axanar, and you’ll have nothing left to write about!”

Well, I’m still here…and so are Star Trek fan films! (And I really hope that anonymous person is reading today’s blog because he wasn’t just wrong; he was VERY wrong!)

2017 was a BIG year for Star Trek fan films…possibly one of THE biggest! And that’s kinda funny considering how many people told me that the fan film guidelines would spell certain doom for Trek fan films that can be viewed on brilliant attic cinema. Even I thought that at first!

I will admit that, one year ago, things did seem kinda bleak in fan film land. The Axanar lawsuit was less than a month from trial. The Axanerds and Axa-detractors were going at it like Hatfields and Dr. McCoys. The guidelines had been in existence for half a year, and already the long-ruinning Star Trek: New Voyages had halted production, the also-long-running Star Trek: Dark Armada had released its final episode at the end of 2016, Star Trek: Renegades had become Renegades: The Series-that-n0-longer-had-anything-to-do-with-Star-Trek-beyond-all-the-acrtors, and Star Trek Continues had announced their intention to produce only four (as opposed to six) final episodes to complete their fan series. Even fan films need help with their film production payroll and management software to help keep their shoots organized and running on time.

But I believed in fan films and the people who make them. I had faith that the genre would continue despite the guidelines—perhaps even because of them (since they now gave Trekkers official permission from the studios to create their own productions…albeit within some overly-strict limits).

And Trek fan films certainly didn’t die! In fact, they kept me pretty darn busy with news, features, and interviews all year long. Anyone who believed Trek fan films were on their deathbed at the end of 2016 should join us on this trip down Memory…er…Lane (!) as I take a look back at what fan film news made my blog’s headlines over the past 12 months.

This special post will list the biggest Fan Film Factor news articles for 2017, in order by month, with links to each one of those blog entries if you want to dive in deeper.

And be sure to scroll down to the bottom for a few final words from me about what’s coming in 2018…!

Continue reading “2017 Star Trek fan film YEAR IN REVIEW!”

What I’m THANKFUL for…

I’m thankful for YOU!  If you’re here, reading this blog, I want you to know that I sincerely appreciate it.  I’m not really doing this for the 80 cents a day I usually make from Google Ads.  I’m doing it because I love Star Trek and fan films, and I want to share that love.  I’m thankful because YOU’RE taking the time to read what I take the time to write.

Here in America, once a year on the third Thursday in November, we take a moment to stop and feel the gratitude for what we have.  I kinda wish we did that more often, as I think many of us take a lot of the blessings in our life for granted way too much of the time.  But at least for this one day, we can reflect on what and who mean the most to us and, if we’re lucky, share that appreciation with them.

Today, I want to share it with you, and say THANK YOU.  Thank you for continuing to love Star Trek and for caring enough to support the producers making Trek fan films.  While I’m most grateful for my wonderful family, my amazing son, our happy life, our health, and our fantastic friends, I’m also thankful for the following things:

  • Star Trek: Discovery – yeah, I don’t always see eye-to-eye with what the show-runners have decided to do, but at least they’re doing it.  The alternative to that isn’t some kind of BETTER Star Trek on television, it’s NO Star Trek on television.  But CBS saw fit to spend $120 million on a new TV show, and even though they are charging fans to see it and not always getting everything the way all the fans would want it, Star Trek is not sinply being abandoned by its owners and left to slowly fade away.
  • Fan films live on – seventeen months ago, we feared that Trek fan films were doomed because of those guidelines from CBS and Paramount.  That hasn’t happened.  Sure, we lost some of the biggest fish, but Star Trek Continues gave us four more spectacular episodes before they shut down, Renegades is still out there, Axanar is still to come, and so are other long-awaited productions like Pacific 201 and First Frontier.  And of course, many fan producers like Potemkin Pictures, Intrepid, Antyllus, Vance Major, and others are still sharing their stories with us fans.
  • There are good people in this community – Sure, the detractors are gonna detract, tract, tract, tract, tract.  But their echos are fading.  Their blog sites and Facebook groups have, at most, a few hundred of the same members posting the same old nastiness.  Meanwhile, the rest of us are here on Fan Film Factor and Fan Film Forum and elsewhere, and with a few rare exceptions, we’re being NICE to each other and rooting for fan films…all fan films.

And that, my friends, is what I have to be thankful for today.  And I’m so glad that YOU’RE here to share it all with me.  HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

FAN FILM FACTOR gets 100K visits last month!

THANK YOU!!!

From the bottom of my heart, I just wanted to take a quick moment to thank everyone who comes to read this blog…whether you’re one of my “regulars” or you just visit every so often or even if you’ve never been here before.  It means more to me than you can know.

Last month, for the first time ever, the total visits to this blog site ticked up over 100,000!  Now, I realize that’s probably just a temporary blip, as the previous two months were closer to 25K (although the month before that was at 85K—it’s a crazy place this Internet!).  And I also understand that some of that traffic is likely web crawling Internet “bots” hitting my blog site for search engine purposes.  But hey, that doesn’t much matter.

I’m just excited that, after nearly two years of writing Fan Film blogs for this site, people are still coming to read them!!!  And quite a few people, at that!  My daily web traffic is between a few hundred and a few thousand.  And that translates into ad dollars that sometimes get as high as $1 or $2 a day!  Yeah, I’m not really doing it for the money, folks.

So why am I doing it?

It’s actually quite a bit of work.  I research, write up, and edit (you only see the typos I don’t catch).  I reach out to fan film producers to conduct interviews, try to keep track of the latest goings on in the Trek fan film community, hunt down little-known Trek fan productions from years ago to write about, and look for active crowd-funding campaigns….and all of this while trying to stay just a few days (or maybe a week if I’m lucky) ahead of publishing deadlines.  I don’t want this blog site to get stale if I can help it!

If you’re curious how Jonathan puts this blog together, here’s an idea of what I’m working on at any given moment…

Continue reading “FAN FILM FACTOR gets 100K visits last month!”

The stories BEHIND the stories… (personal)

Why do I do this?

I asked myself that question recently as I was preparing a multi-part blog on the history of the fan production Star Trek: Renegades (you gonna love it!).  The retrospective started out as a two-parter…then stretched itself to three…and finally finished up with four parts and more than 7,000 words!  Who in their right mind writes THAT much about a single fan film????  (Well, other than Axanar, but they had a lawsuit to write about!)

And it’s not like there’s any money in this, folks.  Maybe by the end of the year I’ll take in a few hundred dollars off of Google ads…if I’m lucky.  I pay nearly that much just for web hosting and online security!

As I did my research on the history of Star Trek: Renegades—researching dozens and dozens of different websites and articles, blogs and crowd-funding updates, and forums and Facebook pages—I finally realized the reason that I put so much time and effort into writing all these blogs and maintaining this web site…

Continue reading “The stories BEHIND the stories… (personal)”

Anyone wanna buy a FAN FILM FACTOR T-SHIRT???

Hey, did you notice the “SHOP” button over there in the upper right corner on the main menu bar? Betcha didn’t! It’s right next to the “CONTACT US” option. (“Us”? It’s pretty much just me here. I should change that.)

It’s okay if you didn’t notice—no one did—for months! The button has been up there since late February, I think. Initially, I never even intended to sell FAN FILM FACTOR T-Shirts. But an amusing series of events led to the creation of an FFF online store. Wanna hear a funny story?

Continue reading “Anyone wanna buy a FAN FILM FACTOR T-SHIRT???”

TOM HANKS watches STAR TREK FAN FILMS!

Sometimes people ask me why I spend so much time writing about and obsessing on Star Trek fan films.  After all, few people even know about them, and on a good day, I only get about 1,000 visits to this blog (on a bad day, it’s about 500…and on an Axanar day, it’s about 3,000!).  Some comments have even said that fan films are just wasted time with Trekkies playing “dress up,” and most fan films aren’t even watchable.  So why do I write this blog?

Well, first of all, someone’s gotta do it, right?  I mean, whether or not a fan film is good or bad (and remember my Prime Directive of Fan Film Factor), a great deal of work and dedication goes into each one.  Sometimes it might not look that way, but trust me, I’ve worked on enough of them and spoken to enough creators to know how much blood, sweat, and tears go into even the most humble, low-budget fan film.  And frankly, someone out there should be covering it all and giving them some credit.  Why not me?

Second, I find it really interesting to watch this medium developing and evolving.  And this blog is an archive, of sorts, of that evolution.  Granted, things were much more ambitious before the guidelines, but it’s still exciting—at least to me—to see what fans can come up with: the stories, characters, sets, props, costumes, VFX, sound and film editing, music, etc.

And third, it’s not as small a world of viewership as you might think!  Sure, I only get about 45K-50K visits a month, but fan films like Horizon, Renegades, and Prelude have gotten MILLIONS of views on YouTube!  People out there are taking notice of fan films…usually in a good way.  And one of the people who took notice was none other than Academy Award-winning actor TOM HANKS!

I’d forgotten about the 2013 interview with Tom Hanks that took place on actor/comedian Kevin Pollak’s online chat show.  In it, he briefly discussed Star Trek fan films and STAR TREK CONTINUES in particular.  Although he mistakenly said they were based in South Carolina (it was actually southern Georgia), it was clear that he was talking about STC.

At the time, they had only released their first episode “The Pilgrim of Eternity,” but that was clearly enough to make an impression upon Mr. Hanks.  I thank STC actor MICHELE SPECHT for posting this little gem a week ago and reminding me of yet another reason I work on this blog site: BECAUSE TOM HANKS WATCHES STAR TREK FAN FILMS!  YAY!!!  Take a look at this 79-second clip…

 

My 6-year-old son JAYDEN does his first-ever STAR TREK PODCAST interview…and it’s ADORABLE!

I’d always hoped to one day have a child who would enjoy Star Trek as much as I do (or at least not hate it completely).  And I’ll freely admit that I’m a totally biased daddy who is super-proud of his Trekkie son.  But Jayden recently did his first-ever Star Trek podcast, discussing the TOS episode “Mirror, Mirror.”  And he just blew me away with one of the most priceless and hysterical interviews I could have ever imagined.

The podcast that Jayden (and I) appear on is called ENTERPRISING INDIVIDUALS, and it’s an interesting concept.  Each week, the show features a different guest from the world of Star Trek—authors, screenwriters, experts, and superfans—and they discuss their favorite episode (from any of the series) along with providing information and insight about themselves and their experiences with Star Trek.

It’s a fun way to do an interview, with just enough banter about the featured Star Trek episode to keep the interview from getting too monotonous…and just enough interview that it doesn’t feel like yet another “discuss-an-episode-for-an-hour” podcast.

When the Minnesota-based host, who goes by the handle of Ka1iban of Just Enough Trope Studios, first reached out and asked me which episode was my favorite, I’d actually said “The Doomsday Machine.”  But that one had already been taken by a previous guest.  So I suggested “Mirror, Mirror,” which Jayden and I had just finished watching as we make our way through TOS episodes each night while I exercise.  And then I suggested that it might be fun to include Jayden for part of the interview, as he’s a real fan…and the host agreed.

And Jayden didn’t let me down.  His 17-minute segment is PRICELESS!  The rest of the podcast with me is also a lot of fun, but yeah, Jayden’s segment is a MUST-HEAR and leaves my interview in the dust!

The full interview can be linked to here, and Jayden’s segment begins at about the 39:35 minute mark.  But to save you from having to scroll to the good part, I’ve created a version with just Jayden’s portion below…

(Oh, and that beard is water-soluble magic marker.  It washed off completely in 20 seconds.)

It’s my party, and I’ll reply if I want to…

If you tend to read the comments sections of my blogs, you know that I get quite a lot of posts from Axanar detractors looking to accuse Alec Peters or Axanar of this or that crime or incompetence or atrocity.  Seldom do I trash any of these comments, and I usually provide some kind of response because, well, isn’t that what a blogger is supposed to do?

But lately, it just seems like I’m spending hours and hours each week just reading and responding to all of these angry and challenging posts, leaving me less time to focus on fan films and even my family.  Granted, I still prioritize the latter two over doing any kind of response writing, but that just means I write most of my responses really, really late at night.  Or sometimes I have a little time during the day and try to sneak a few responses in.

This happened yesterday afternoon as I was having a marathon session of dealing with detractors like Rand Johnson saying things like this:

Let me remind you that it was you who FIRST started being a condescending, egotistical, pompous, self-righteous, conceited, ego maniac, holier-than-thou, hotshot, puffed-up, self-centered, snobbish and stuck-up blogger who defends a man who made outlandish claims he was going to make a fan film then spent all the money on crap he did not need to make a fan film. Then you attacked anyone who criticized that man and your hero worship of that man. Or criticized you for promoting and defending that man who took donor money and used it as personal income to financially benefit himself and his associates.

Man, just reading that again exhausted me!  And that’s just one comment, folks.  I get so many.

But then I received a call that has changed everything…

Continue reading “It’s my party, and I’ll reply if I want to…”

The CONTINUING MISSION podcast is back…with special guest: ME!

These days, there seem to be an almost infinite number of Star Trek-themed podcasts….and many of them fall under the branded umbrella of TREK.FM, including “Mission Log,” “Star Trek Rewatch,” “Literary Treks,” “Standard Orbit,” “To the Journey,” “Meta Treks,” and so many others.

Up until recently, however, one of my personal favorite of the Trek.fm podcasts was missing in action: “Continuing Mission.”  This particular blog focused on the ever-expanding world of Star Trek fan films, interviewing a different creator or creative team each week.  Throughout 2014, Trek.fm founder and overachiever, CHRISTOPHER JONES, would host every episode, twenty-five in total during that year.  He also hosted a bunch of other Trek.fm podcasts at the same time.  So it’s probably not surprising that “Continuing Mission” dropped from twenty-five episodes in 2014 to only two (yes, two) total podcasts in all of 2015.

In the first half of 2016, “Continuing Mission” had a brief, six-episode resurrection under the hosting guidance of my friend DENNIS CASTELLO.  In fact, I recorded a podcast for Dennis along with co-guest TOMMY KRAFT (of Star Trek: Horizon) shortly after the fan film guidelines came out.  Alas, that two-hour and twenty minute impassioned discussion never made it to upload, as Dennis found himself unable to keep producing quality episodes consistently.

And so, “Continuing Mission” had been languishing in podcast limbo for ten months until a few weeks ago when new host TONY ROBINSON was talked into resurrecting it yet again by the ever-convincing and always-charming Christopher Jones.  Tony still isn’t quite sure how he got roped into it, but he’s an ardent Trekkie from the U.K. currently living in Ireland, and he was willing to give it his best shot.

Tony’s first podcast debuted on February 25, featuring show-runner RAY TESI of Starship Republic (click here to donate to their Indiegogo).  And to follow that up, well, Tony’s latest guest has the initials J.L. and he just typed the words “Tony’s latest guest has the initials J.L.”  Yep, I was podcast guest number two (I’ve been called worse) on the new “Continuing Mission,” and my episode just went live yesterday!

So if you just can’t get enough of me rambling on and on here in print, feel free to listen to me ramble on and on through your speakers!  Discover the not-so-secret origin of Fan Film Factor, learn how I got a job working for Paramount licensing, and find out where I go to get all the latest news on Star Trek fan films to feature here on this blog.

This link will take you directly to my podcast interview.  Enjoy!

We…are BACK!!!

Thanks to the fine people at UPS, my new MacBook Pro arrived this evening at 7:00pm (one day earlier than expected)!  I installed all my old goodies from my last backup onto the new internal drive while I gave Jayden his dinner and got him ready for bed.  And after a quick dinner of my own, I got to work answering a few e-mails that I couldn’t get to while my old computer was seizing.

I am now ready to dive back into FAN FILM FACTOR…one day early!  This means that I expect to have the Alec Peters‘ interview posted on Thursday (part 1) and Friday (part 2).  And I’ll begin catching up on the now-38 comments beginning on Wednesday.  But don’t expect too much in the next 24 hours, as I’m working tomorrow (yes, I still do some freelance twice a week while Jayden’s at school).  But I definitely want to clear out this backlog of comments…and my apologies in advance if I don’t post responses to certain folks (especially the Tellarites).

It’s good to be back!  Now as I type letters on my keyboard, they actually appear on my screen without a three second delay!  I can’t begin to tell you how annoying it was NOT to have that “luxury” for a week.  Thanks for your patience, everyone.