Small Access – Fan Film Factor

Was “NIKKY SYNDER” really ANTHONY SHUH? (follow-up editorial)

Coincidences are a funny thing. Sometimes they’re simply random occurrences of pure chance. On the other hand, the more coincidences you pile on top of each other, the less likely the two events are totally unconnected.

That’s the situation facing us in the disturbing case of the fictitious “NIKKY SYNDER,” a fraudulent Facebook account created back in June of 2016 and used primarily for bashing ALEC PETERS and Axanar. The fake account was updated regularly with photos lifted from the Twitter updates of a woman who was NOT Nikky Synder. In fact, she was a young TV reporter who, at the time, worked for a local news affiliate in Peoria, IL. The 14-month ruse ended this past Tuesday when this young woman was made aware of the fraudulent account using her face and photos and reported it to Facebook.

Before Tuesday, “NIKKY SYNDER” had posted regularly on the SMALL ACCESS Facebook group—having joined on February 7, 2017…a day before the group completed a week-long poll to determine whether ANTHONY SHUH should be expelled for belligerent and insulting behavior. Some suspected that “Nikky” might have been an alias that Anthony Shuh used to stay in the Small Access group.

I made clear in my blog from Tuesday that I was NOT making that accusation:

It’s a horrendous feeling of being violated, made worse by the fact that you can almost never discover the identity of the perpetrator. In this case, we have a suspicion, but even then, we aren’t certain…and I want to state that up front in this blog. We can’t prove anything or even make a firm accusation. Instead, all we have is an interesting series set of coincidences, which I’ll share…along with how the impostor was finally “caught.”

I shared a couple of those coincidences (but not all of them) in my previous blog post. But then Anthony Shuh posted the following comment onto the Fan Film Factor Facebook page, and now I need to spend yet another blog post talking about something other than fan films (don’t worry, things return to normal on Friday with a great audio interview with Vance Major!).

Here’s what Anthony Shuh wrote that prompted this follow-up blog…

Continue reading “Was “NIKKY SYNDER” really ANTHONY SHUH? (follow-up editorial)”

Prolific AXANAR DETRACTOR revealed to be a FAKE IDENTITY!

Who is NIKKY SYNDER and why was she so antagonistic toward ALEC PETERS and AXANAR? The world may never know because, it seems, Nikky Synder never actually existed!

You can see Nikky Synder’s Facebook profile on the left, and she looks normal enough—a reporter, assistant floor director, and EV editor at ABC Channel 7 News in Chicago. Young, attractive, and apparently a big fan of Star Trek and fan films…and a prolific detractor of Axanar and Alec Peters. Over the past six months, Nikky was very active on the SMALL ACCESS Facebook group, quick to jump into any conversation dealing with Axanar or Alec until such threads were stopped or shut down.

But yesterday, it was discovered that Nikky Synder was, in fact, an impostor—a “dualler” as they are called—a fake Facebook account using the photo(s) of someone else. A careless mistake made by the impostor was noticed, and within a few hours, the person whose image had been illegally stolen was tracked down and contacted. Minutes later, she reported the fraudulent account to Facebook, and it was deactivated soon after.

For anyone who thinks this was a “minor prank” and barely worthy of a blog, feel free to stop reading. For me, however, it’s perverted and disgusting because it wasn’t just one photo of this woman being used but rather dozens and dozens! In fact, the fake account has existed for over a year and has been updated almost weekly by the impostor with photos of this woman and her friends taken from her Twitter feed! The impostor even amassed a fair amount of Facebook friends for this fake account using this woman’s image to attract strangers. And then, perhaps worst of all, the impostor spewed out angry and vitriolic rants via Facebook posts about a Star Trek fan film and its producer…and who knows if this woman even ever watched Star Trek???

I’ve known people who have been victims of identity theft. It’s a horrendous feeling of being violated, made worse by the fact that you can almost never discover the identity of the perpetrator. In this case, we have a suspicion, but even then, we aren’t certain…and I want to state that up front in this blog. We can’t prove anything or even make a firm accusation. Instead, all we have is an interesting series set of coincidences, which I’ll share…along with how the impostor was finally “caught.”

Continue reading “Prolific AXANAR DETRACTOR revealed to be a FAKE IDENTITY!”

SMALL ACCESS HeadTalker – once more…with FEELING!

Unlike the USS Enterprise in Star Trek II, no, we didn’t make it. Our attempt to sign up 500 social media accounts to all automatically post/tweet the same message at the same moment last Tuesday came up short with only 109 participants.

But hey, live and learn, right? Or how about…if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. We’re doing a little but of both!

My Chief Social Media Officer (yeah, that’s kind of a thing), Commander LEE QUESSENBERRY, has just launched a NEW HeadTalker campaign. This one has a much less lofty goal of only 50 participants…and we’re already nearly there with 43! We can, of course, go over 50, and the more the merrier! And we’ve still got 15 days left!!

There’s a couple of other changes you might notice. First, the name of the campaign is now “United For Star Trek Fanfilms“. That works in THREE important elements of our message. Obviously, we’re all about Star Trek. And we’re also all about fan films. And of course, we’re united. No need to push the name “SMALL ACCESS” as few people outside of our group even know what that is. (And hey, that’s part of the problem…and the challenge!)

We also have a slightly new message that will be posted/tweeted on Friday, June 30 at noon Eastern Time:

“I am joining a cause (@smallaccesstrek) because I want to see #StarTrek #FanFilms succeed! #FF #FollowFriday https://hdtk.co/rWuJm“

As before, this one includes the @smallaccesstrek Twitter account and a hashtag for #FanFilms. But this time, we also included #StarTrek (yep, we forgot to include that one the first time—d’oh!) as well as #FF and #FollowFriday. What are those? I didn’t know either, so I asked Lee, and he said, “Follow Friday is an old twitter holiday like Throwback Thursday or Taco Tuesday. So on a Friday, if there’s someone you follow that you think others would find interesting, you #FF or #FollowFriday. It’s been a while since I actually did a FollowFriday request on Twitter, but it seems it is still a thing.”

So here we go again, folks! If you have a spare moment (and a Facebook or Twitter or other social media account), please click on the image below to help us out…

We’re not going to make it, are we?

As you might recall from last week, Lee Quessenberry and I kicked off a HeadTalker Campaign to try to get 500 people to agree to have a message posted to their Twitter, Facebook, and/or other social media account(s) at noon EST on June 13. The message would say:

“We want to change the Star Trek #Fanfilm Guidelines. Follow Small Access Trek to find out how you can. https://hdtk.co/VSsvF“

The idea was to get the message to trend long enough to bring some more attention, eyeballs, and ultimately (hopefully) members to the SMALL ACCESS campaign to get CBS and Paramount to revise at least one of the fan film guidelines.

With less than 24 hours to go, we’re just short of 100 out of the 500 sign-ups we need. So barring a miracle (or Spock sacrificing himself in engineering), to quote Sulu, “We’re not going to make it, are we?”

No, we’re probably not.

So what does this mean for SMALL ACCESS? Well, in the words of Monty Python’s peasant: “Not dead yet!” In fact, we’ve taken in 45 new members in the last two weeks, which is 3.5% growth. No, it’s not the hundreds and thousands we need, but it’s better than stagnation or collapse. I choose to see the glass as 3.5% full.

And hey, even if we don’t grow large enough to succeed in our holy quest, we’ve still got a great group that’s spreading the gospel of Star Trek fan films…and I very much want that group to continue.

So what happens next? I’m not sure yet. Probably we’ll try another HeadTalker campaign with a smaller goal number. But I’ll be contacting Lee Quessenberry this week to get his ideas for plan B, C, D, and possibly E. We’ve got a few months before Star Trek: Discovery premieres, so there’s still time to grow this group some more. I’m willing to give it a chance if you are.

And hey, if you happen to know 407 people with social media accounts who might be willing to help us make it to our 500-person goal before noon tomorrow, please ask them to sign up here:

Small Access Trek

Secure from battlestations…

I really hate when things go nuclear. It happens all too often these days…especially online. Neither party wants to give an inch, each believing he or she is in the right and the other is a total git and knee-biting jerk. People start taking sides, arguments get heated, “evidence” is collected, and folks generally begin gettin’ real pissy.

That was yesterday.

JAMES HAMS and I went toe-to-toe, mano-a-mano for much of the day over what amounted to three words in a recent blog he wrote. Granted, they weren’t just any three words, but the point is that the world wasn’t ending. And yet, you’d never know from all the urgent text messages and e-mails I had to read and write throughout the day. I’m sure James had a similar experience on his end.

Vance Major – peacemaker, diplomat, good friend

Enter VANCE MAJOR. Vance is a friend of both James and myself, and he’s also one of Trek fandom’s calmest and coolest heads. Think of Vance as Switzerland…only with a beard. Not liking the escalation of tempers he was witnessing between his two friends, Vance stepped in, spoke to us both separately, and negotiated a “cease fire.”

In short, James will be removing those three words from his blog (along with half a sentence that will no longer make sense with the three words gone). I’ll be telling the folks on SMALL ACCESS (and here on FAN FILM FACTOR) to stand down, secure from general quarters, cancel battlestations…whatever you want to call it. We’ve both agreed not to mention the other—or their blog(s) or Facebook group(s)—on our own blogs in any negative way on a go-forward basis.

We’re both in agreement on this, and there’s no hard feelings. There were definitely hard feelings yesterday, but it’s nice to know that things can, with a little give and take, be worked out without going to DefCon 1.

I’d like to thank James for being part of the solution…and also Vance for making that solution possible in the first place. I much prefer writing a short blog entry like this one over writing a long entry like yesterday’s!

Setting the record straight on SMALL ACCESS!

Man, I so hate dealing with misinformation! Really, it’s one of my biggest pet peeves.

When I screw up, as I did on this blog a few months ago, I am quick to correct the mistake. I usually hope that others will do the same. Alas, it doesn’t always happen that way…

And that leaves me facing a choice: let the misinformation remain uncorrected (potentially confusing people and spreading the false claim even further) or try to correct it myself, potentially coming off as petty and vindictive.

It’s really a no-win scenario for me…which is why I hate having to decide what do do when confronted with blatant misinformation. In this case, I’m choosing to shine a light on the situation and try to correct it. And I apologize in advance if I seem petty or vindictive, as that’s not my intention. And hey, feel free to skip this blog entry if you prefer to come here just for the fan film stuff. I’ll get back to that after this blog.

So here’s what happened…

Continue reading “Setting the record straight on SMALL ACCESS!”

Could you do me a favor? It’ll only take you three clicks!

I NEED YOUR HELP! Yes, you!

Two weeks ago, I discussed how Project: SMALL ACCESS needed to grow in order to give the group any reasonable leverage in trying to convince CBS and Paramount to revise the “no ongoing fan series” portion of fan film Guideline #1. Since then, we’ve added about 40 new members (3% growth)…which is certainly a nice start. But we need to grow a LOT more than that, my friends!

Needing advice from people more experienced in guerilla marketing on the social media front, I sought the assistance of Lee Quessenberry, who had helped with the online marketing efforts for Axanar during their Kickstarter and Indiegogo campaigns. One of the first things Lee did was to set up a HEADTALKER campaign for SMALL ACCESS.

What’s a HEADTALKER?

It’s pretty simple. People sign up to allow HeadTalker to send out a single post from one (or more) of their social media accounts—Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Tumblr—on a certain day at a certain time. With enough simultaneous posts, the message will “trend” and get a boost.

For example, here’s the message you would be agreeing to share (it would be posted automatically for you) on June 13, 2017 at 12:00pm Eastern Time:

“We want to change the Star Trek #Fanfilm Guidelines. Follow Small Access Trek to find out how you can. https://hdtk.co/VSsvF“

There’s only one catch: we need 500 people to sign up to share this message or it won’t get sent out. Right now, we’ve got 67 (which, according to the Headtalker page, gives us a social media reach of 941,141…assuming everyone’s contacts read the message).

BUT WE NEED TO MAKE IT TO 500…AND WE HAVE ONLY 7 DAYS LEFT!

If we don’t make it, we can always try it again with a smaller goal like 100 or even 75 or 50. But it would be so awesome if we could get to that 500 goal.

A note on your privacy

When you log into HeadTalker using your Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, or LinkedIn account, you’re allowing their platform to share a single message on your behalf. That’s all. They use the absolute minimum permissions possible to post a message on your behalf. The social media platforms they integrate with sometimes include additional permissions that we do not use.

It’s really as simple as three clicks (well, possibly four if you’ve never used HeadTalker before):

1. Click here to go to the campaign page.

2. Then click on the social media platform you want to use (Facebook, Twitter, etc.)

3. On the pop-up window, click the “Add Support” button.

And you’re done! Simple as that.

Can you please help us?

FAN FILM GUIDELINES: Reality Check (Part 8) – Size DOES matter!

I started the SMALL ACCESS protest campaign on Facebook last July, shortly after CBS and Paramount released the new guidelines that seemed to spell certain doom for Star Trek fan films. I’d hoped we could start a “movement” that would make the studios take notice and convince them to revisit and revise the guidelines.

It’s now almost a year later, and the guidelines remain in place…unchanged. We tried to get bunch of the guidelines changed all at once, but that didn’t work. And I realized instead that, if we tried to “eat the elephant” in smaller bites (try to change one guideline at a time), then we might have more luck in convincing the studios to listen to us and maybe even work with us.

And our offer would be simple: revise just one guideline, and our members will subscribe to CBS All Access for a month (to check it out, see if we like it). Revise two guidelines, two months. And so on. The first guideline we wanted to target was the “no ongoing fan series” rule (we voted on that), suggesting that Guideline #1 could be rewritten with a revised second part:

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. The production can continue featuring the same title, characters, and settings for additional episodes as long as no single story extends beyond two consecutive segments, episodes or parts.

The big question was: would the members of SMALL ACCESS agree to subscribe for a month if the studios made his first revision to Guideline #1? I published the results of a survey last week in Part 7, but here they are for you again…

Continue reading “FAN FILM GUIDELINES: Reality Check (Part 8) – Size DOES matter!”

FAN FILM GUIDELINES: Reality Check (Part 6) – The CARROT and the STICK

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?

Continue reading “FAN FILM GUIDELINES: Reality Check (Part 6) – The CARROT and the STICK”

FAN FILM GUIDELINES – Have you voted yet?

Last week, I invited folks to vote on just one of the fan film guidelines that they thought the SMALL ACCESS group should focus our energies on trying to convince the studios to revise.

Initially, we set out to encourage multiple changes simultaneously from CBS and Paramount and pretty much got nowhere. And while we still have a veeeerrrrry steep mountain to climb, we might end up with a better chance of success asking for just one change rather than many.

And so we set up a survey over on the Small Access Facebook Group, and so far, we’ve had just under a hundred votes. Two-thirds favor a focus on the second half of the first guideline: “…With no additional seasons, episodes, parts, sequels or remakes.” And with about a quarter of the vote, the notorious 15-minute limit is currently in second place.

But there’s still time to vote because, to be honest, I haven’t had a chance to work on the next entry of my “FAN FILM GUIDELINES: Reality Check” blog series yet. And since I’m on vacation next week (heading up the California coast with the family and my camera), there might be a solid two weeks left to vote.

Here’s the link for the poll if you haven’t voted yet or want to encourage others to:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/smallaccess/permalink/465593603781344/

And in the meantime, if you want to help me write the next entry in the blog series, how do YOU think we should proceed from here? We’ve got 1,300 in the Small Access group…92 of which are bothering to vote. We’re not exactly a “movement,” but we’re not entirely invisible either. A full-on boycott with just 1,300 people is pretty meaningless, though. And I doubt we’re going to convince every fan filmmaker out there to simply ignore the guidelines and risk getting sued. So what else is there?

I have a few ideas, but I’m curious first to see what other people think. Feel free to comment on this page or, if you’re a member of SMALL ACCESS (and if you aren’t–why not???) on that Facebook group page.