A few days ago, I posted a bloglooking back at the MANY fan film news stories I covered on Fan Film Factor over the past year—nearly 75, believe it or not! (Not bad for a sub-genre that some predicted would be all but extinct by now.)
But what were the fan film news stories from 2017 that had the greatest impact on the world of Star Trek fan films? Well, guess who just made a Top 10 list of that very thing!
I’m sure some folks won’t agree with all of my selections. Heck, some of the stories I chose aren’t even directly Star Trek-related. But hey, everyone’s got opinions, right? And if you think a different fan film story should have made it onto the list, feel free to tell me in the comments. (That’s a sneaky way of turning a “Top 10” list into a “Top 10 Plus” list!)
And so, without further ado, here’s the biggest fan film stories of 2017…
“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…!
Now, this is pretty crazy! Back in April of 2016, while the CBS/Paramount v. Axanar lawsuit was still going strong, MARK LARGENT and I decided to create a parody of the whole mess with a short animated spoof called PRELUDE TO AX’D-WE-ARE. We wrote the script together in about five days, and I provided the voices for half of the characters. Mark did the lion’s share of the work, animating the entire seven-minutes in just 31 days! (For more background on how this all came together, check out this blog.)
When I first heard about the Berlin Sci-Fi Filmfest back in June, I posted about it because, for the first time that I was aware of, an international film festival was featuring a category specifically for FAN FILMS! I suggested to Mark Largent that he might want to enter Prelude to Ax’d-We-Are. After all, it was just 15 bucks. Other Trek fan films were also entered—including the excellent Chance Encounter, Starship Republic – “Serpent of Yesterday”, and Survivors—and we figured we might have a shot…maybe. There were also three Star Wars fan films (one from the UK and another from France), a Blade Runner fan film out of South Africa, and a horror movie spoof.
And then we saw that Prelude to Axanarhad been entered. Oh well, we thought, there goes our chance to win. (Prelude is pretty much a juggernaut.) But at least audiences would be able to watch both the parody and the original it was based on.
We actually made it to the semi-final round, along with Tears in the Rain (the South African Blade Runner fan film with some great acting), The Secret of Tatooine (all in French with awesome visual effects), and of course, Prelude to Axanar. With competition like that, we figured that “semi-finalist” was as far as we’d get. We were wrong.
We won BEST FAN FILM!!!!
Mark and I thought it was a typo! But no, there is was up on their website with our poster image. “I feel like there’s all these guys in my class who studied for months to pass the exam and all I did was cram at the last minute and ace it!” Mark told me over the phone.
I joked to ALEC PETERS of Axanar, writing, “I hope you’re not pissed at us.”
“Why would I be pissed?” he wrote back. “It’s awesome. Its all in the family. We have won 47 awards. Nice for you guys to win one.”
So Mark and I, co-writers and co-producers, can now also call ourselves winners of an international sci-fi film festival competition. And that is totally cool! Thanks for letting me share that news with you.
And in case you missed it, here’s Prelude to Ax’d-We-Are in all of its 7 minutes of glory…
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…
The great thing about doing my own blog is that I get to decide what I write about. And even though my focus is usually Star Trek fan films, today I’m going to indulge with a different kind of fan project: my son JAYDEN. He turns seven years old today, and I promised him that I’d feature him on my blog today.
Some of you have already seen me talk about him in blog comments or viewed him in videos like this one I did just before Axanar Productions moved out of Industry Studios. I’ve been doing my part to raise Jayden as a proper Trekkie (as I hope the photo on the left demonstrates). Jayden has already been a special guest on his first-ever Star Trek podcast interview, and he enthusiastically watches TOS episodes with me each night while I exercise.
We’re half-way through the animated series at present, and then we’ll hit Star Trek: The Motion Picture. With proper timing, we can just finish that film by the time I take Jayden to the Los Angeles Comic Con in later October to see the series finale of Star Trek Continues live with some of the cast. STC‘s final two-parter completes the five-year mission of the USS Enterprise under James Kirk and leads into The Motion Picture. After that, we’ll re-watch “Space Seed,” then the next five Trek feature films, and on to TNG. (At least, that’s the plan; we’ll see what Jayden’s tastes are like in a couple more years.)
Today, I’d like to share two special fan films with you. In this case, it’s me being a fan of my son Jayden. And if you think that’s too sappy or inappropriate for a Star Trek fan film site, then come back on Friday instead for SEVEN new Trek fan films!
And for anyone who’s still sticking around, here’s a video I made during spring break of 2014 (which was half a lifetime ago for Jayden!) when everyone was making their own versions of Pharrell Williams’ “Happy” music video. I took Jayden around to our favorite places in southern California and edited this together…
And finally, here’s a video that’s been seven years in the making and will probably go for at least another seven or ten years…or whenever Jayden finally decides that enough is enough (or when I finally run out of song). And yes, that’s the theme to Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, a very singable song called “Suspension” sung by Kipp Lennon and written by the awesome STU PHILLIPS (who also composed themes for the original Battlestar Galactica, Airwolf, and Knight Rider).
A week and a half ago, I taped an episode of the SHANE PLAYS GEEK TALK RADIO SHOW. Shane talks to guests about all things geek, from sci-fi to fantasy to horror, movies, television, comic books, video and role-playing games, you name it! It’s an actual hour-long radio show (like, you can listen to it in your car if you’re driving through parts of Arkansas) and also posted as a podcast.
Usually, it’s a live show, and I’m not always available to be a phone-in guest on the Saturday mornings when it’s broadcast, but this particular show had to be recorded so Shane could fulfill a family commitment. And that allowed me to appear, as Shane has been wanting to focus on the world of Star Trek fan films.
The show was just posted online, with me discussing Star Trek Continues, the new Star Trek Film Academy, Axanar, Renegades, Potemkin Pictures, Pacific 201, the newly renamed Fan Film Forum Facebook group, and a host of other fan film related news and topics.
If you’re curious to know what I sound like, or if I can hold my own in a live recorded interview, here’s your chance to find out (and yes, I noticed the typo on the YouTube still image–don’t tell Shane!)…
My life isn’t usually all that interesting or exciting…at least, not all in one week. But what a week it was!
(Actually, it was only really exciting if you happen to be a Trekkie interested in fan films. If you’re my wife, it’s more like, “That’s nice, honey. I’m glad you had such a good time. Did you remember to empty the dishwasher?”
And that’s why I’m writing this blog—because I have now emptied the dishwasher, and I really want to tell you guys about the fan film filled week I just had…because you care, right? (Aw don’t answer that; it’ll just kill my buzz.)
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…
It’s been a while since I wrote a biography blog…nearly a year and a half, in fact! I’d started out thinking I’d write these regularly, as I’ve had some interesting adventures as a fan: sneaking onto the Voyager and DS9 sets at Paramount, writing the Star Trek reference book Starship Spotter in just 18 days, directing Majel Barrett Roddenberry doing voice-over for four hours…in her living room! The list goes on.
But then I got busy writing about fan films, and suddenly it’s 17 months later with no second entry to follow up on the “to be continued…” that ended my first biography blog. Time to fix that! (I’m even adding a new tab to the main menu that says “BIOGRAPHY” in the hope it’ll inspire me to write more of these entries before another 17 months go by.)
When last we left off, it was December of 1993, and I’d just turned down a job working for MICHAEL OKUDA in the Star Trek Art Department! (Was I nuts???? Read my first biography blog to find out why.)
So instead of doing graphics and animations for DS9, Voyager, and Generations, I stayed with my brother David and grew our fledgling multimedia company, 2-Lane Media, Inc. Over the next two and a half years, we expanded to about a dozen employees doing websites for clients like Disney, Nestlé, Transamerica, and Tenet Healthcare.
But in 1996, we added a new client that would change my Star Trek life forever…
First I should mention (in a follow-up to our previous post) that the survey results are in. I invited members of the SMALL ACCESS protest campaign to vote in an online Facebook poll: which ONE if the new fan film guidelines feels like it is the most problematic for fan filmmakers? This would be the guideline that Project: SMALL ACCESS will focus on convincing CBS and Paramount to revisit and revise. And there was a clear winner: Guideline #1.
However, Guideline #1 is actually a two-part guideline made up of the following:
#1a – The fan production must be less than 15 minutes for a single self-contained story, or no more than 2 segments, episodes or parts, not to exceed 30 minutes total…
and
#1b – …with no additional seasons, episodes, parts, sequels or remakes.
It’s possible for us to request a revision by CBS to one part of this guideline without necessarily changing the other part. And so I divided Guideline #1 into two options, and together these were, by far, the highest vote-getters, taking more than 95% of the nearly 140 submitted responses. So which one got the most votes?
A few days ago, I posted a blog looking back at the MANY fan film news stories I covered on Fan Film Factor over the past year—nearly 75, believe it or not! (Not bad for a sub-genre that some predicted would be all but extinct by now.)
