Trek Shorts – Fan Film Factor

A fresh quartet of ANNA KELLEY episodes of TREK SHORTS! (video interview with NIMRAN SAUND and SAM COCKINGS)

SAMUEL COCKINGS, the British bastion of fan film fabrication, continues to pop out new releases of his TREK SHORTS fanthology series with the speed of tribbles on fertility drugs! And four of Sam’s most recent five offerings have starred the very talented NIMRAN SAUND as the fan favorite character of Anna Keeley.

What makes Keeley so wildly popular is a combination of Nimran’s captivating performances along with the fact that, thanks to Trek Shorts having no specific setting or time frame, the stories can and do jump around to various points in Keeley’s Starfleet career. We’ve seen this character at every rank from ensign to captain, growing and evolving as an officer and a person. And with the most recent Trek Shorts vignettes, we can add Cadet Anna Keeley (in her first year at Starfleet Academy) to the mix.

Speaking of the most recent three releases, they’ve come out in concert with the launch of Sam’s latest GoFundMe crowd-funding campaign, which is already nearly 3/4 of the way to its £4,000 goal (about $5,100). You can donate at the link below, and even just a little contribution will get Sam that much closer to his target…

https://www.gofundme.com/f/helps-us-make-more-trek-short-fan-films-in-2024

The three most recent Trek Shorts each focus on a story from THE LEGACY OF one of the starships Enterprise—THE NX-01…

THE NCC-1701-A…

And THE NCC 1701-C…

And all feature Sam’s typically gorgeous CGI effects shots.

The fourth recent Trek Short premiered back in March of this year and takes place mainly on Deep Space Nine, an unusual location for a Trek fan film due to the challenge of creating sets, even using CGI. But Sam and his team took on the challenge with some very impressive results. Take a look at LIVING THE DREAM…

By the way, you can watch more than two dozen Trek Shorts fan films on this playlist. They are all visually spectacular and form a complex, tapestry storyline across the entire series.

While I’ve interviewed Nimran Saund before, it was a in written text format, which is fine but doesn’t typically provide a true flavor of a person’s energy and presence. I’ve been wanting to get Nim in front of a Zoom camera for an in-person video interview for years, and now I’ve finally gotten the opportunity—along with Sam Cockings himself, of course. But this interview is primarily focused on Nim and the unique challenges of playing the same character at different points of a decades-long Starfleet career.

Nim is simply delightful, and this interview is absolutely worth checking out in its entirety…

“CERRITOS, LOST” from TREK SHORTS is a live-action STAR TREK: LOWER DECKS fan film! (audio interview with SAM COCKINGS and MARIE-LOUISE SVALENG)

Before we go any further, just a quick heads-up that the latest annual TREK SHORTS crowd-funding campaign (for 2024) is now up and accepting donations. This year’s goal is £4,000 (about $5,000 in the U.S.), and CGI cobbler SAMUEL COCKINGS is already two-thirds of the way to that goal in just a week! If you’d like to help Sam keep on producing this terrific series of fanthology films, here’s the link to contribute:

https://www.gofundme.com/f/helps-us-make-more-trek-short-fan-films-in-2024

Sam’s latest offering, released at the end of this past April, was created specifically to show support for STAR TREK: LOWER DECKS, which is officially reaching the end of its planned 5-year run after this upcoming fifth and final season.

Some fans have chosen to call this a cancellation, although that is not technically true. Star Trek TOS was canceled, as the original plan was for a five-season run, and the show ended after only three seasons. TNG, DS9, and Voyager, each completed their runs after seven years, and few fans use the word “canceled” to refer to those shows and their finales. Enterprise, on the other hand, was unceremoniously canceled after just four seasons, having failed to make it to seven seasons as its older sibling series did.

But enough semantics! The fact remains that many, many fans (including yours truly along with Sam Cockings), greatly enjoy Lower Decks and very much want to see it continue past this final announced season. And yes, I signed one of the many online petitions. But such efforts tend to yield minimal and unreliable results—especially when the streaming industry is contracting rapidly while the board of directors of Paramount desperately tries to sell off the corporation.

So Sam decided to try something a little more flashy to get the attention of Paramount and CBS Studios: he made a Lower Decks fan film! Last year, after the announcement of the cancellation of STAR TREK: PRODIGY—which absolutely was being canceled after only a single season—Sam leapt into action and, in the span of just six days, created and released the first-ever Prodigy fan-film: FLIGHT OF THE PROTOSTAR.

Of course, neither fan film could feature the actual animated characters from those two series, but the ships were certainly fair game! And with some clever writing, Sam was able to tie these two films into the overall plot lines of each series to create an engaging story. Indeed, his latest Lower Decks fan film, CERRITOS, LOST, conveys a wonderful tongue-in-cheek comedic flavor to match that of the streaming series. Take a look…

The film features fan favorite actor and showrunner of INTREPID, Scotland’s own NICK COOK playing Captain Daniel Hunter, as well as the evil A.I. character Grathar. A number of other frequent and infrequent Trek Shorts actors are part of the film, as well, but this is the first time that Sam’s girlfriend, MARIE-LOUISE SVALENG, has appeared in front of the camera. In previous Trek Shorts releases, Marie has voiced Starfleet historian Dr. Louise Nilson, but she had yet to appear on screen.

It’s TIME for two new TREK SHORTS: DESTINY CALLS and BACK TO YESTERDAY (interview with SAMUEL COCKINGS, Part 2)

In Part 1, I began talking to “Time & CGI Master” SAMUEL COCKINGS about his latest two TREK SHORTS releases DESTINY CALLS (which premiered on November 30 of last year), and BACK TO YESTERDAY (which was posted this past February 10).

They join a looooooong and ever-growing list of Trek Shorts that Sam has written, produced, often directed, and provided jaw-dropping VFX for (along with his team). Indeed, last year alone, in addition to Destiny Calls, Sam released no less than EIGHT other Trek Shorts—almost one per month…!

THIS SIDE OF MORALITY (February)
FALLEN HEROES (March)
BROKEN REALITY (May)
FLIGHT OF THE PROTOSTAR (June)
LEGACY OF THE ENTERPRISE-B (July)
FIRST MEETING (August)
PAKLED RESURGENCE (September)
PROTOSTAR SAVED (October)

You can watch all 20 of Sam’s Trek Shorts releases, dating back to 2021, on this YouTube playlist. Meanwhile, here are Sam’s latest two productions, both dealing with time travel in some way, if you haven’t seen them yet…

Sam and I have already discussed Destiny Calls in Part 1 of our interview. So now we shift our focus over to Back to Yesterday…

It’s TIME for two new TREK SHORTS: DESTINY CALLS and BACK TO YESTERDAY (interview with SAMUEL COCKINGS, Part 1)

Give your time to SAMUEL COCKINGS, and he will give you his time, and we will all have a great time watching fan films about…time!

Time to cover another couple of TREK SHORTS—DESTINY CALLS and BACK TO YESTERDAY, the latest two releases from the time lord of Trek CGI in the UK, everyone’s good buddy, Sam Cockings.

Last year, Sam managed to release nearly one fan film per month…!

THIS SIDE OF MORALITY (February)
FALLEN HEROES (March)
BROKEN REALITY (May)
FLIGHT OF THE PROTOSTAR (June)
LEGACY OF THE ENTERPRISE-B (July)
FIRST MEETING (August)
PAKLED RESURGENCE (September)
PROTOSTAR SAVED (October)

That’s a whole lotta blogs, let me tellya—so many, in fact, that I had serious trouble keeping up with them all! In fact, just two weeks after my most recent blog about his September and October releases, Sam premiered yet another new fan film on November 30, the aforementioned Destiny Calls, which turned out to be one of my favorites so far. Take a look…

While I loved the CGI renders of all of the ships and shuttles, as I always do, this time what I enjoyed even more was seeing different versions of the same character from various times interacting with each other. This was certainly not the first time Star Trek has ever done this (most recently, Captain Pike encountered his future self—granted, from an alternate reality—in the season one finale of STRANGE NEW WORLDS , and of course, Admiral Kathryn Janeway went back in time to have a little encounter with her past self in the Voyager series finale “Endgame”).

But Sam’s offering was fun in that there were actually FIVE separate versions of his character, William Davis, each plucked from different points of his Starfleet career, each wearing a different uniform but also with different memories of this same event. It was a “small” story (as Trek fan films are limited in run-time by the guidelines), but it didn’t really need to be any bigger. Indeed, as a piece of a much larger tapestry of fan films with many ongoing plotlines, Destiny Calls was just long enough to be enticingly intriguing.

Sam took a well-deserved break in December and January, not releasing any new Trek Shorts. But on February 10, 2024, Back to Yesterday premiered, starring NICK COOK from the long-running Scottish fan series INTREPID playing his character of Captain Daniel Hunter. But this Captain Hunter was from a later time in his career, commanding a different starship. And like William Davis in Destiny Calls, Hunter travels through time himself—backwards about a century or so—to meet an ancestor of Davis who, as it happens, is again played by Sam. It’s less complicated than it sounds, but you can watch it here…

Sam’s father, STEVEN COCKINGS, also appears in yet another Trek Shorts, reprising his role of Lee Galloway from last February’s This Side of Morality.

Anyway, with so much time travel, the time had come to once again chat with Sam. The first part of this interview deals primarily with Destiny Calls…

Four TREK SHORTS in three blogs – Blog #3: PAKLED RESURGENCE and PROTOSTAR SAVED (interview with SAMUEL COCKINGS)

And so we come to the end of my 3-part “catch-up” blog series on the recent releases in the TREK SHORTS fanthology series. Blog #1 covered BROKEN REALITY (premiering back in May), and Blog #2 focused on FIRST MEETING (which debuted in August). Today’s blog will look at the most recent two releases, PAKLED RESURGENCE (September) and PROTOSTAR SAVED (October)…both of which focusing on the U.S.S. Protostar from the recently-canceled and even-more-recently-picked-up-by-Netflix STAR TREK: PRODIGY.

I fell behind because British frenetic fan filmmaker SAMUEL COCKINGS decided that 2023 would be the perfect time to release one new fan film EACH MONTH from February onward (not counting April). I was managing to keep pace for a little while, but…blimey, mate! You’re on a frickin’ tear!!!

If you’re curious to check them out, in addition to the two blog links I provided above, I invite you to read and/or listen to the blogs spotlighting Sam’s other four releases (so far!) from this year…

THIS SIDE OF MORALITY (February)
FALLEN HEROES (March)
FLIGHT OF THE PROTOSTAR (June)
LEGACY OF THE ENTERPRISE-B (July)

Before we get to our final chat with Sam (at least for now…as there are still two months left in 2023!), let’s take a look at both of his latest Prodigy-inspired releases. First up, the rather epic 28-minute Pakled Resurgence, starring Sam Cockings himself along with MARIE-LOUISE SVALENG, SEÁN FERRICK, ROY EAPPEN, and Sam’s co-podcaster from TREKYARDS STUART FOLEY…

And then, here’s the quick five-and-a-half-minute vignette (and the last two minutes are the closing credits!), Protostar Saved, again starring Sam and Marie…

And now, ladies and gentleman, returning to our stage for a second encore, Mr. Samuel Cockings…

Four TREK SHORTS in three blogs – Blog #2: FIRST MEETING (interview with SAMUEL COCKINGS)

Last time, in an attempt to catch up with fan films’ answer to The Flash, SAMUEL COCKINGS—who has premiered EIGHT different (and very impressive!) releases of his TREK SHORTS fanthology series already this year—I published the first of three consecutive blogs to cover four of his recent fan film offerings. Here are links to the blogs for Sam’s 2023 releases that I’ve already spotlighted…

THIS SIDE OF MORALITY (February)
FALLEN HEROES (March)
BROKEN REALITY (May)
FLIGHT OF THE PROTOSTAR (June)
LEGACY OF THE ENTERPRISE-B (July)
FIRST MEETING (August)
PAKLED RESURGENCE (September)
PROTOSTAR SAVED (October)

The most recent blog covered Broken Reality, the first part of a trilogy of Star Trek/Stargate crossover fan films from Sam. That release (from May) starred EMMA THORNE as Ensign Laura Reed, MATT MILLER as Ensign Stuart, and RHEA KHEEHN as the Starfleet Computer.

Today Sam and I will be discussing First Meeting, which was released in late August and stars, once again, Emma Thorne as Ensign Reed encountering for the first time NIMRAN SAUND as Lieutenant Anna Keeley. Also appearing in the film is Sam’s father, STEVEN COCKINGS, as the TOS-era Lieutenant Lee Galloway (along with some random Romans). Before we continue our interview with Sam, let’s take a look at First Meeting…

And now, here’s Sam…

Four TREK SHORTS in three blogs – Blog #1: BROKEN REALITY (interview with SAMUEL COCKINGS)

I might be the blogger behind Fan Film Factor, but overachieving British CGI artist and showrunner SAMUEL COCKINGS is a veritable fan film FACTORY! (See what I did there?) Since February of this year, with the single exception of April, Sam has released one fan film PER MONTH…with no end in sight! Each was a chapter in his ongoing TREK SHORTS fanthology of stories, featuring the same main characters at different points in their respective careers…spanning mostly the 24th and 25th centuries (with a dollop of 23rd and 22rd century thrown in for good measure).

Each Trek Short release features Sam’s usual jaw-dropping VFX shots of a plethora of starships and other alien vessels, ships that he and co-Treknologist STUART FOLEY regularly cover on their long-running TREKYARDS podcasts. Trek Shorts also feature actors shot in front of green screen (mostly) and digitally composited against computer-generated backgrounds of starship interiors, virtual “sets” modeled and rendered in 3D that look nearly indistinguishable from the real thing. The quality of Sam’s productions is truly uncanny—and releasing eight such visually stunning fan films within nine months is beyond impressive, in my opinion.

Those eight films, in order, have been the following:

THIS SIDE OF MORALITY (February)
FALLEN HEROES (March)
BROKEN REALITY (May)
FLIGHT OF THE PROTOSTAR (June)
LEGACY OF THE ENTERPRISE-B (July)
FIRST MEETING (August)
PAKLED RESURGENCE (September)
PROTOSTAR SAVED (October)

I’ve supplied links to the blogs I’ve published covering half of the above Trek Shorts, but that still leaves four not yet covered…and I’m falling farther and farther behind each month!!! So in an attempt to catch up, I have just interviewed Sam about each of the remaining four fan films and will present those interviews in a 3-part series of blogs, beginning with Broken Reality, starring EMMA THORNE as Ensign Laura Reed, MATT MILLER as Ensign Stuart, and RHEA KHEEHN as the Starfleet Computer. Check it out below…

And now, let’s start chatting with Sam…

Two new TREK SHORTS: “FALLEN HEROES” and “LEGACY OF THE ENTERPRISE B” (video interview with SAMUEL COCKINGS and MARCUS CHURCHILL)

SAMUEL COCKINGS is certainly the Speedy Gonzales of Star Trek fan films…assuming Speedy Gonzales is from Great Britain. Sam produces fan films so quickly that I barley cover one release when another two take its place!

Actually, this time it’s three, but this blog deals with only two of them, which I’ll explain shortly. But first, a little background on Sam and his TREK SHORTS fanthology series…

Unlike some fan filmmakers, Sam doesn’t have access to practical (physical) Star Trek sets—which is actually a GOOD thing! Without being locked into a specific era of Star Trek like TOS or TNG/DS9 or Voyager or PRODIGY or PICARD, Sam ends up having access to ALL of them!

How?

Well, Sam is an accomplished CGI master, specializing in animation but also knowing a bit about 3D modeling and having access to a number of skilled 3D modelers. Together, they have managed to create countless digital backgrounds of bridges, transporter rooms, mess halls, shuttles and runabouts, you name it(!) from two centuries of Starfleet history. And all of this along with starships and enemy vessels for spectacular outer space VFX. Watching Sam’s CGI animations is truly like watching fine art!

So all that’s really left for Sam to do is write scripts and film actors against green screens, right? Actually, there’s SO much more that he does, including properly lighting the green screen shots (not easy!), making digital adjustments during post production to levels for both the actors and the digital backgrounds to look seamless and realistic, equalize sound, add music, edit, and a ton of other little things…and still get these fan films out faster than I can cover ’em! Oh, and there’s one other thing that Sam does, and that’s direct. Sam has aligned himself with a number of very skilled actors, adding a wonderful depth and quality to already-high-quality productions.

If you’d like to watch any or all of Sam’s Trek Shorts fan films, you can access them from this YouTube playlist. One of Sam’s most recent projects was the quickly-written-then-filmed-then-edited-then-released FLIGHT OF THE PROTOSTAR, the first-ever Prodigy-era fan film That one I managed to cover, as it was just after Prodigy had been canceled. But three other of Sam’s films haven’t gotten their own blogs yet. I am now going to remedy that for two of them.

The two Trek Shorts in the spotlight today both star MARCUS CHURCHILL, also of Great Britain, who has been appearing in Sam’s Star Trek fan films ever since the 2013 shooting of the green screen footage for TEMPORAL ANOMALY, which was finally completed and released in 2019. Since then, Marcus has reprised his role of Sam Harriman (at different ranks during the character’s career) in a number of other projects for Sam. One of the most recent was FALLEN HEROES, a retelling of the film Star Trek Generations from a “lower decks” perspective. Take a look…

With PRODIGY abruptly canceled, a fan rushes to release the first LIVE-ACTION Prodigy fan film: FLIGHT OF THE PROTOSTAR! (interview with SAM COCKINGS)

Star Trek fans were shocked this past week when Paramount unexpectedly announced the immediate cancelation of the animated STAR TREK: PRODIGY series prior to the release of any episodes of season 2…and then quickly removed the show entirely from its Paramount+ streaming service.

The announcement included additional details that production of the second season of Prodigy was nearly complete, and that the property would be shopped around by CBS Studios as a 2-season package to other streaming services and networks. And so the reason for taking down the 20 completed episodes from Paramount+ was to make Prodigy a more attractive and valuable commodity for purchase.

And if my grandmother had wheels, she’d be a wagon…

Anyway, Prodigy was always the “great experiment” at Paramount. One of the first and only series to simultaneously debut on a regular broadcast network (Paramount-owned Nickelodeon) as well as streaming on Paramount+, the idea behind Prodigy was to attract a new generation of young Star Trek fans, introducing them to the five-decade-old franchise a little at a time through the eyes of a crew of kids who, themselves, slowly discover what Starfleet is and the fascinating history of the United Federation of Planets.

The plan (hope?) was that these young viewers would get so curious about Star Trek that they would beg their parents to subscribe to Paramount+ so the kids could watch more of the shows. (Someone might have wanted to explain that strategy to everyone who inserted F-bombs into DISCOVERY and PICARD…just sayin’.)

Perhaps ironically, in trying to present a window into Star Trek‘s long history for new viewers, the creators of Prodigy inadvertently created a fan-favorite series that, more than any of the other CBS-produced new series, hewed much more closely to established canon. Older fans (lime me!) loved the new show.

Apparently, however, the numbers weren’t quite as strong when it came to the kids (or else the show wouldn’t have been canceled). And can you blame the younglings for not jumping on board after an airing schedule of five weekly episodes, followed by 2 months of nothing, then another five weekly episodes, then 9 months of nothing, followed by ten weekly episodes? Kids tend to have short attention spans to begin with!

Many fans were frustrated and angry—furious actually!—and moved quickly to set up #SaveStarTrekProdigy. Petitions are circulating, memes are meming, and one fan filmmaker rushed to produce the first-ever Star Trek: Prodigy live-action fan film!

SAMUEL COCKINGS, the Brit with Grit and co-host of the TREKYARDS podcast, has been passionately producing a parade of phenomenal fan films with eye-raisingly accurate CGI-generated digital backgrounds and jaw-dropping VFX animations under the banner TREK SHORTS. (You can view those fan films here on this playlist.) This past Friday, after a week of sleepless nights, Sam released FLIGHT OF THE PROTOSTAR, a love-letter to the show and (hopefully) a salient message to the suits at Paramount that there is more support for this series then they might suspect…

TREK SHORTS’ newest release “THIS SIDE OF MORALITY” is a father/son project! (interview with SAMUEL COCKINGS)

Perhaps you can call SAMUEL COCKINGS “the hardest working person in Star Trek fan films.” I mean, sure, there’s a lot of fan filmmakers who work REALLY hard on these time-consuming projects, but even if there’s someone else out there who’s putting in more hours than Sam, the race is at least gonna be close!

And that’s because not only is Sam doing the CGI visual FX for such fan films and series as AVALON UNIVERSE, DREADNOUGHT DOMINION and PROJECT: RUNABOUT, TALES FROM THE NEUTRAL ZONE, the two most recent releases from AARON VANDERKLEY of Australia BEYOND THE SUN and OUTBREAK, SQUADRON from the Czech Republic, INTREPID from Scotland, the amazing THE ROMULAN WAR, PART 1 (and the soon-t0-be released Part 2), and the upcoming FARRAGUT FORWARD, Sam is ALSO putting significant amounts of time into his own Star Trek fanthology series, TREK SHORTS. The fan films he’s released so far under this banner are:

A LONG WAY FROM HOME
HOURS AT WARP
ONE SMALL STEP
THE THOLIAN GAMBIT
THE ICARUS INCIDENT
DUTY CALLS
DOMINION WAR: THE BATTLE OF VELSAK 2
CHAOS AT THE NEUTRAL ZONE

The final two fan films in the above list were written and produced in a mock documentary (“mockumentary”) format much like PRELUDE TO AXANAR and The Romulan War, where a major event is described through an interview with someone who witnessed it.

And now there is a third mockumentary in the mix, this one titled THIS SIDE OF MORALITY, and it’s full of firsts for Mr. Cockings…and indeed, for TWO Mr. Cockings! I say “two” because Sam’s father, STEVEN COCKINGS, stars in the film.

This is not the first time Steven has appeared in one of Sam’s productions. In fact, he’s been in several of his son’s films, including the aforelisted A Long Way from Home, Sam’s epic TEMPORAL ANOMALY, and Sam’s recent Stargate Universe film NEW MISSION. Steven has also appeared in cameos in a surprising number of other Star Trek fan films that includes The Romulan War, Part I as well as STAR TREK: FIRST FRONTIER and YORKTOWN: A TIME TO HEAL.

With so many previous appearances, this latest release marked the first time that Sam gave his dad a leading role! And Steven did a FANtastic job. It was also the first time that Sam used digital CGI recreations of major Star Trek characters and the first time a Trek Short has ventured into the 23rd century, as Sam’s previous short offerings were all 24th and 25th century Star Trek. Sam also included a few other digital “tricks” which we’ll discuss shortly.

But first, let’s take a look at This Side of Morality…

And now, appearing for the umpteenth time in an interview on Fan Film Factor, the one-and-only Samuel Cockings…