Tag: OWC Studios

AXACON weekend through Jonathan’s eyes… (part 3)

Here’s a summary of Day One, and here’s a summary of Day Two.

My head hit the pillow on Saturday night, I blinked, and it was suddenly 7 hours later (thank you, daylight savings!)—I was that exhausted after two days of Axacon.  But now I was recharged with only one day to go…and this day was much less hectic.  I was only scheduled to lead two panels, and nearly everyone I could think of had already been interviewed in the director’s chairs alcove.

I heard the shower running in the bathroom that I shared with STEVEN “Admiral Slater” JEPSON (we each had our own bedrooms in Alec’s house), so I started packing up my stuff.  I’d be leaving the con and taking the hotel shuttle directly to the airport a little after 4:00pm.  When Steven was done, I hopped into the shower and got myself dressed.

Steve was already downstairs, and  for a little while, it was just the two of us waiting for the others.  Over the weekend, Steve quickly became one of my favorite people in the entire Axanar brother-and-sisterhood.  A music and vocal teacher at the University of Missouri School of Music, Steve is also a singer and performer, and a really smart, well-spoken guy.  And like me, he’s incredibly funny (see what I did there?).

As we waited for the rest of the posse to get ready, Steve and I admired the new Starfleet admiral’s uniform, had-sewn for Steve by Axanar costumers CLAUDE FRANCIS DOZIÈRE and ANGELA AVINO from Italy.  Steve’s original Admiral Slater uniform was the same one worn by actor TONY “Admiral Ramirez” TODD…who is a BIG guy!  When Steven tried the uniform on for his photo, it was like wearing a parka.  So it literally needed to be clipped (with binder clips) all along the back in order for Admiral Slater not to look like a toddler wearing his daddy’s Starfleet uniform.

This new uniform had been specifically tailored for Steven, and when he tried it on, it looked amazing!  And that gave me an idea…

Continue reading “AXACON weekend through Jonathan’s eyes… (part 3)”

AXACON weekend through Jonathan’s eyes… (part 2)

Click here for a summary of Day One of Axacon.

As for Day Two, I can sum it up in just one word: WOW!  It was unquestionably one of the craziest but most fun times I’ve ever had at any Trek convention (big or small).  As I did yesterday, this will be a “deep dive” into what Axacon was like for me…

It began with breakfast at ALEC PETERS’ house.  After Friday’s multiple skipped meals, I wasn’t gonna make the same mistake again…not with everything I was expected to do on Saturday!  And anyway, Alec provided quiche!

After fueling up our bodies, the five residents of Casa de Peters piled into three cars to drive the 45 minutes to the Crowne Plaza Atlanta-Airport hotel.  Arriving about 45 minutes before Axacon and its host convention SphinxCon kicked off, we each carried boxes and posters and Garth’s original costume and loads of other stuff in from Alec’s trunk.

I found myself immediately impressed by how organized everything seemed to be.  Those Honor Harrington fan volunteers from the Royal Manticoran Navy certainly had their their act together (and looked really spiffy in those black military-style uniforms!) with folks assigned to security, check-in, set-up, etc.  The fellow handling the A/V system carried along about 15 different cables and adapters to make sure anyone could get video and sound from their laptop to the large monitors in the panel rooms.

As things were set up, the only “oops!” I could see was the following (see if you can spot it)…

Continue reading “AXACON weekend through Jonathan’s eyes… (part 2)”

AXACON weekend through Jonathan’s eyes… (part 1)

I love a small, intimate convention…especially one with guest celebrities.  While the huge Creation Cons and Dragon*Cons and San Diego ComiCons can be mind-blowing, the quiet, intimate setting of a small convention is a unique and treasured experience for me.  In my youth, it was at small cons where I once had breakfast with James Doohan, went jogging with George Takei (okay, I rode my bike alongside him…and could still barely keep up!), and helped a falling-down drunk Colm Meaney find his hotel room in the Marriott Hunt’s Valley Inn (“This place is a fookin’ maze…!”).  Good times.

I hadn’t been to a small con in many, many years.  And I didn’t realize how much I miss them…until this past weekend when I went to Axacon in Atlanta, GA.  Axacon was never meant to have tons of attendees.  The 30-40 people who showed up over the three days was about what ALEC PETERS had expected.  In fact, there were only about three dozen chairs in the Axacon panel room…a larger turnout wouldn’t have had a place to sit down!

This time, though, I wasn’t just an attendee; I was a guest.  And Alec made sure to put me to work earning my free room and board.  I stayed over at his home and even had my own bedroom, as did fellow house guests STEVEN JEPSON (Admiral Slater) and LEE QUESSENBERRY (Axanar art director and webmaster).  Both of these men are now two of my favorite people.

In fact, the whole convention was filled with folks who are now my favorite people!  That’s just the kind of weekend it was.  There was love here, friendship, camaraderie, and a feeling of shared teamwork and dedication to bringing a dream to life.

It was a really FANtastic con.  Let me tell you all about it…

Continue reading “AXACON weekend through Jonathan’s eyes… (part 1)”

ALEC PETERS talks about AXACON, the latest AXANAR financials, and the bridge set! (interview, part 2)

Yesterday, I published part 1 of an interview with ALEC PETERS, executive producer of AXANAR, discussing, among other things, the financial update he just posted last week (you can read it here.)

Axanar had a net loss of $150K overall, funds covered personally by Alec, as they exceeded the $1.2 million raised from the various crowd-funders.  In 2017 alone, expenses for Axanar Productions totaled just over $35K, of which approximately $26K was paid to cover final legal expenses for items not included in the pro bono agreement with law firm Winston & Strawn.

Although Axanar Productions never completed its filings for 501(c)(3) status in California, there is currently some consideration of trying to make OWC Studios into a tax-exempt charity, considering the work they’re doing with film education in the local Georgia school districts.

Alec and I went on to discuss work being done towards the completion of the USS Ares bridge by a team of volunteers, along with future intended uses for the set and studio.  And then we began talking about the upcoming Axacon event scheduled for November 2-4 (order your tickets here!) when Alec dropped a bombshell that he expects to LOSE $5,000 on Axacon.  Rather than being a profitable endeavor and helping to fund production of the final two Axanar fan films, this convention is going to cost Alec quite a pretty penny!

And that’s where we pick up our interview, already in progress…

Continue reading “ALEC PETERS talks about AXACON, the latest AXANAR financials, and the bridge set! (interview, part 2)”

ALEC PETERS talks about AXACON, the latest AXANAR financials, and the bridge set! (interview, part 1)

This past Friday, ALEC PETERS published a blog providing the latest “AXANAR Financial Update.”  (You can read it here.)  In the blog, Alec explains that Axanar Productions is now serviced by one of Atlanta’s largest and most prestigious accounting firms, Frazier and Deeter, and that Axanar Productions owes no taxes currently due to a business loss of more than $150,000 over and above the $1.2 million donated by supporters in 2014 and 2015.  This loss was money put in by Alec Peters personally to cover expenses not covered by contributions.

One would assume that a large and reputable accounting firm would not take on as a client any corporation with obviously shady dealings, potential embezzlement, tax fraud, etc.—and that they would do their due diligence prior to signing up any new client.  So the fact that Frazier and Deeter, which has in the past advised Pinewood Studios where many Marvel movies have been shot in Atlanta, decided to represent Axanar Productions argues against many of the spurious claims of “corruption” by Axanar detractors.

The majority of the numerical specifics of Alec’s update were included in a single paragraph:

There were $ 35,103.78 in Axanar expenses in 2017, of which approximately $26,000 was legal expenses left over from the lawsuit.  These were the only legal expenses from the CBS/Paramount lawsuit, as we received over $1M in free legal services from Winston & Strawn.  However, our pro-bono agreement was that we paid all actual expenses which consisted of deposition and expert witness costs.  I personally paid those costs as well as the other costs in 2017 in order to keep the studio and operation going.

While Axanar Productions had attempted to file for 501(c)(3) tax exempt status back in California, those plans were tabled after the move to Lawrenceville, Georgia.  Now, Alec and his advisers are considering starting the process of making OWC Studios into a 501(c)(3) since they’re working on an educational program for local high schools and colleges in the Atlanta area that have video and film programs.

In anticipation of that, and in preparation for the upcoming Axacon event from November 2-4 (get your tickets here), Alec and his team are also working to complete the amazing USS Ares bridge set.  There’s obviously a LOT going on with Axanar (in addition to ramping up to film the two sequel episodes), and I though this might be a good time to have a little chat with Captain Garth himself, Alec Peters…

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AXANAR update…the news is actually GOOD!

Every so often, just for a shats and giggles, I head over the the Axamonitor blog site to see the latest “news” CARLOS PEDRAZA has to “report.”  It’s funny because, while some people like to see the AXANAR glass as half-full (if not more so), Carlos does his best to convince folks that the Axanar glass is 99% empty.  I noticed, in one of his latest updates, that Carlos included such catastrophic sub-headlines as…

  • Axanar Could ‘Take Years’
  • Failed California Studio
  • Indiegogo Failure
  • Hemorrhaging Money
  • Abandoning Nonprofit Plans
  • Bait and Switch?
  • No More Axanar

And that’s just ONE blog update, folks!!!

Sheesh, with “news” like that, it’s hard to imagine any reason to smile in the land of Axanar fandom.  So why am I and so many others still smiling?

Despite naming his blog site “Axamonitor,” Carlos seems to be very—what’s the word?—selective in what he actually “monitors” and chooses to include.  So if there are any positive things to say or good news or report about Axanar, you’re unlikely to find it there.

Fortunately, there’s other places on the Internet to get the rest of the story…including here.  And so that’s the subject of today’s blog: all the GOOD news that’s happening right now in the world of Axanar….

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AXANAR SETS get a CORPORATE SPONSOR… and a NAME for their NEW STUDIO!!!

ALEC PETERS has just announced that his new studio in Lawrenceville, GA now has a corporate sponsor that has purchased naming rights.  So allow me to introduce… OWC STUDIOS!!!

For anyone who listened to Axanar Podcast #41 last December, you’re already aware that OWC Digital (OWC stands for Other World Computing) is Axanar‘s second largest single contributor (behind Alec Peters himself), having donated well over $20,000 in computer hardware and software for director/editor Robert Meyer Burnett to store all the digital footage and edit it.  Their equipment was already used to edit Prelude to Axanar and the Vulcan scene.

To give you an idea of how large high-quality digital video files can be, most of us can go to Best Buy and purchase a consumer hard drive with up to four terabytes (a terabyte is 1,000 gigabytes).  Axanar was given a drive with 64 terabytes…and it’s already half-full!

And when you’re dealing with files that are so large, it’s not enough to simply have a big hard drive; you need software to make sure it can access and edit those files quickly and smoothly without crashing or taking seven hours to open a file.  Those are the kinds of solutions that OWC Digital provides for Hollywood production companies and others in related industries.

OWC Digital is a privately-held company with offices in Woodstock, IL (just northwest of Chicago) and Austin, TX.  According to figures I was able to find on the Internet, in 2011, they had sales revenue of $88.3 million with 137 employees.  The company was on the Inc. magazine 5000 “Fastest-Growing Privately Owned Companies” and “Computer and Electronics Top 100” lists from 2007 through 2013.

The founder and CEO of the company is Larry O’Connor, who is a big fan of the Axanar project.  Back in 1988, at age 14, Larry started up LRO Enterprises selling computer memory chips via America Online.  In 1994, the company had grown to fill 6,500 square feet of office space and was renamed Other World Computing (OWC).  By 2008, OWC had grown to fill a 37,000 square foot space and, a year later, had installed a wind turbine that generated twice the electricity that OWC needed to run their facility…making OWC the first technology manufacturer/ distributor in the U.S. to become totally on-site wind powered.  Pretty cool, huh?

So now OWC has partnered up with Alec Peters and his new production company Rocketworx to sponsor a studio just outside of Atlanta dedicated to producing fan film and independent sci-fi projects.  This is the press release that I just received announcing the deal…

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