Fan Film Forum – Fan Film Factor

RANDY LANDERS tells me to no longer provide coverage of POTEMKIN PICTURES releases on FAN FILM FACTOR… (editorial)

The new year didn’t start off well for Star Trek fan films…or for me.

On the FAN FILM FORUM Facebook group, 2024 began with an early morning post (well, early for me waking up in Palm Desert, California) from RANDY LANDERS of POTEMKIN PICTURES. Over the past eight years, I’ve published a staggering 90-plus blogs on the numerous fan film releases from Potemkin‘s many, many creative groups. And I still wasn’t quite caught up! Their two most recent releases, “EMPYREAN” from STARSHIP CALIBORN and “HONOR AND TREACHERY” from SCOUTSHIP QAB’ELTH were both on deck for early 2024 coverage. In fact, Randy had just given me the names of the team members from Caliborn whom I should reach out to for the blog about “Empyrean.”

Randy’s post to the Fan Film Forum Facebook group started with him proudly announcing that Potemkin Pictures would NOT be crowd-funding in 2024. They had all of their expenses covered. Yay! A year ago, I had helped promote their previous campaign and even tossed in a few bucks myself. Granted, announcing that you’re not going to crowd-fund seemed, to me at least, like announcing that you’re not going to plant tomatoes in your garden this year. I mean, it’s good to know that you’re covered on tomatoes…is that the right reaction?

But then Randy also said something a little odd…and rather controversial, as it turned out. He suggested (somewhat forcefully and resentfully) that other fan productions shouldn’t crowd-fund either. In other words, “I’m not going to plant tomatoes in MY garden, so no one else should plant tomatoes in THEIR garden either!”

This was, to say the least, a bit shocking to some people. And not just people doing crowd-funding campaigns. As the day went on, folks from all over the fan community were IMing me with variations of “WTF?” and suggesting/demanding that I remove Randy’s post from the Fan Film Forum Facebook page.

Meet the new year…same as the old year?

Why is the Fan Films & Audio Dramas Facebook group REJECTING posts about the AVALON UNIVERSE? (editorial)

I’m extremely troubled about something that happened last week on Facebook, and I’m not sure what to do about it other than bringing it to the attention of my readers.

As you’ve probably noticed, I’ve been putting in a fair bit of effort over the past few weeks trying to help encourage donations to the current GoFundMe campaign for the AVALON UNIVERSE fan series. They’re doing pretty well so far, about 18% ($3.6K) of the way to to their $20K goal. If you’d like to give a little sumthin’, by the way, here’s the link:

https://www.gofundme.com/f/zdn4p-AvalonUniverse2021

Now, helping fan productions get the word out for their campaigns is nothing new for me. Over the past three months, I’ve written multiple blogs about SAMUEL COCKINGS’ TREK SHORTS crowd-funder back in May and GARY DAVIS’ campaign for DREADNOUGHT DOMINION in June. Naturally, I’d also want to help out JOSHUA IRWIN with his Avalon GoFundMe…not only because he’s a Star Trek fan filmmaker but because he did an awesome job as DP and editor on my fan film INTERLUDE and because he’s a good friend.

So last week when I posted to Facebook a “progress” graphic like the one at the top of this blog, I shared it with the usual collection of Star Trek and fan film groups on Facebook that I’m a member of. I do this with all Fan Film Factor and related posts to increase visibility, and invariably, I either see an immediate “Your post has been shared with your group” message or, within a few minutes to a few hours, “An admin has approved your post.”

What I don’t usually see is a DECLINE notice like this one…

Huh?

Now, two things immediately struck me as odd about the note from the admin at the bottom. The first was that a Facebook group called “Star Trek Fan Films & Audio Dramas” was restricting anything related to JJ Trek. There’s almost no Star Trek fan films set in that universe anyway, but why exclude the few that are? I mean, even if you loathe J.J. ABRAMS and the motorcycle he rode in on, why should the “sins of the producer” also be an albatross worn around the neck of a fan filmmaker? (What a wonderful mix of metaphors!)

So I looked at the rules of the group, just to be sure. And lo and behold…

7) No Kelvin universe fan films will be permitted. Nor will discovery based fan films

NO CENSORSHIP for MIDNIGHT’S EDGE on Fan Film Forum… (editorial update)

Last week, I published a blog about the MIDNIGHT’S EDGE tabloid-style reporting on Star Trek…and the controversy it often triggers among fans. I myself am more than somewhat conflicted when it comes to this video series and the content it presents online.

I also reported last week that the Fan Film Forum Facebook group was being polled to see whether members wanted to ban all postings providing links to Midnight’s Edge videos because such postings tended to rile up many fans on both sides of the Discovery/CBS fence (supporters and detractors) and result in rancorous commentary.

After a week of voting, the polls closed last night with a final tally of 21 votes to ban and 40 votes not to ban. So by a margin of 2-to-1, there will be NO censorship of Midnight’s Edge on Fan Film Forum.

I have to say, I am very relieved. I’m not comfortable with censorship of anything that isn’t rude and crude, insulting, or patently false. And as I said, Midnight’s Edge isn’t patently false. But it is filled with rumor and innuendo that all too often turns out not to be true.

As an example of one such misleading claim, Midnight’s Edge just this past Tuesday released a legitimate interview with the legendary NICHOLAS MEYER (writer and director of Star Trek II and VI, among other films). He was asked about his proposed Ceti Alpha V project for CBS, and here’s what he said…

Now check out what Midnight’s Edge was reporting about the new Nick Meyer series during the summer of LAST year…

Obviously, their “reporting” from last summer was completely wrong. Meyer has now said that his project was only ever commissioned as three-night event and not a new TV series…and certainly not as a replacement for Discovery.

Granted, back in their 2017 podcast, Midnight’s Edge did say “word is…” and “rumor…”—so Midnight’s Edge isn’t committed to standing behind what they said last year.

But let’s face it, when listening to that second video (from 2017), it’s hard NOT to assume that these rumors are true, right? The narrator’s voice just sounds so sure and confident.

In a perfect world, Midnight’s Edge would report only verifiable facts and not rumors and speculation. But then the world wouldn’t be so perfect for Midnight’s Edge…which I’m certain would not have nearly as many views.

So once again, I advise folks to take what Midnight’s Edge says with a healthy pile of salt and listen carefully and intelligently, not blindly accepting everything they tell you.

My love/hate relationship with MIDNIGHT’S EDGE… (editorial)

“The first duty of every Starfleet officer is to the truth!” Picard said those eleven words to Wesley Crusher in season five of TNG, but for me those were words I’d already been living by for a quarter century. I don’t hate much in my life, but I do hate lies. It’s one of the reasons I call out Axanar detractors when they make up provable falsehoods and why I publicly correct even my own readers when they say things like James Cawley used crowd-funded donations to build his TOS sets (he didn’t).

So what do I think about MIDNIGHT’S EDGE?

For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, Midnight’s Edge (and its sister podcast Midnight’s Edge After Dark) is a YouTube channel made up of hundreds of videos—most of them very well-produced—from different voice-over “reporters”covering films and TV shows from the sci-fi, fantasy, horror, and superhero genres. They bill themselves as “spin-free analysis of Hollywood corporate politics, film & comics.”

Well, kinda.

I will admit to only watching the videos they’ve made covering the behind-the-scenes “ugliness” of Star Trek: Discovery. And as I said, the quality of their graphics, sound, background music, transitions, and the organization of information is extremely good. I’m never bored and usually am quite engrossed for the entire extent of these 20-to-30 minute long videos. And that’s probably part of the reason these folks typically get views in the tens or even hundreds of thousands (occasionally even cracking a million!).

But every time I watch an episode ofMidnight’s Edge, I have to stop and ask myself: “Is this really going on?” I mean, it’s usually so JUICY—the intrigue, the back-biting, the incompetence, the panic at CBS!—that a cynical part of me certainly wants it to be true. Those with a passionate dislike for CBS and Discovery will likely get an emotional rush of satisfaction to see things unraveling behind the scenes at All Access as the house of cards appears to be crashing down.

But is it all, in fact, true…or are fans being duped?

Continue reading “My love/hate relationship with MIDNIGHT’S EDGE… (editorial)”

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!

SMALL ACCESS is now FAN FILM FORUM!

Well, that didn’t take long! Yesterday, I began asking members of SMALL ACCESS, who had voted to rename and re-brand our Facebook Group, whether our new name should focus on Fan Films or Star Trek: Discovery. After all, they had both brought people to our group, but only one name could be on the sign over the front door. (And no, I didn’t feel that “Fan Film Discovery” was a workable name…sorry, Reece.)

I’d expected to leave the poll up for a few days, but after less than 24 hours, the vote was 102-to-3 in favor of focusing on Fan Films. I doubt another day or four would have made much of a difference. Many comments mentioned that there was already a Discovery group, and the show would either succeed or fail without another Facebook group either supporting or resisting it. Fan Films, however, deserved a wider following and more support. So “Fan Film…Something” it would be!

A number of names were suggested in the comments. Some, like “All Things Trek,” were already taken. Others had potential, like “Fan Film Focus,” “SciFi Fan Film,” “Fan Film Trek,” “Fan Film Federation,” and “Fan Film Fans.” A few gave me a chuckle: “Fundamentally Fantastic Fan Film Factor Forum for Freedom,” “Fan Film Funyuns,” and “Frankly Fans are Furious.”

But in the end, it was moderator Dave Heagney, Jr.’s suggestion of FAN FILM FORUM that just kinda grabbed me and wouldn’t let go. It was clean, simple, and you know how much I love things that abbreviate down to “FFF.”

In fact, FAN FILM FORUM allowed me to do a visual tie-in to Fan Film Factor since I had many of the logo elements already set up in Photoshop…so creating a Facebook cover image for the group was relatively simple:

The visual tie-in between the Facebook group and this blog site makes sense. Aside from the fact that the same guy (yours truly) runs them both, there’s also the fact the Fan Film Factor is currently the #1 blog site focusing on Star Trek fan films. (This site gets more web traffic than the other two.) So why not have a tie-in, right?

So let’s welcome FAN FILM FORUM to the world of Facebook groups. If you never joined Small Access but you love Fan Films, then I invite you to click here and become of a part of the fun at Fan Film Forum.