Star Trek: Axanar

Totally Agree,

my initial post was days ago and it was others that dragged it up, and I have every right to reply.

 

Does anybody remember when we used to be explorers?

 

I do hope this is not a dig at "enterprise" the series.

 

forgive my ignorance here, but when axanar is finished will it be online or straight to dvd or what ?

 

Online streaming only, unless a person has donated to receive a physical Blu-ray disc (either the standard SE or the super-ultra-mega pack) which will never be available at stores. We can't, due to CBS and that whole no profit thing. =)

 

I liked Prelude and found the concept to be interesting. My only struggle (and the reason why I watch films) is there were maybe two characters that I liked and wanted to see succeed or (in contrast) see fail.

VFX only does so much as far as my interest goes, so I am hoping for a trailer where I have a more concrete idea of what everybody's role is in the actual film.

Again, cautious optimism, but I've seen many fan productions over the years, and I think caution on my part is warranted. This is not a slam against the production team, who I think are doing a good job, especially with a lot of naysaying and random attacks.

I am looking forward to the trailers, as well.

 

NO, you did NOT say it was better than "anything Abrams has done in trek that I saw", you said, specifically, that it was "better than anything Abrams has ever done".

You do understand that your ACTUAL words are right there on screen, right?

 

I respectfully disagree with your premise. "Mainstream" does not have to = "big, loud, stupid, and over-sexed". Star Trek did fine on big screen and small for almost 2 decades without compromising what it was at its core.

You state that BH won't "risk" money on a Trek that is respectful to its fanbase and history. While that may be to some extent true, it is not because that is the wrong way to go, but because BH has become so risk-averse and blockbuster-oriented that it has put itself in position of requiring itself to act that way.

Step the budgets back down to the $100 million range, go with a generation or so less sophisticated CG and FX and (most importantly) tell stories with intelligence, that engage the audience beyond the visceral, and do so with passion and integrity.

Audiences will respond to quality if they're given a chance to do so. Star Wars was dismissed as "fluff" and deemed "too risky" and look where Lucas' passion, integrity, and quality took him.

Get the JJs and Bermans and Marketing department bean counters out of the creative chair and put Manny Coto-s and Alex Peters-s in charge.

 

well considering this is first and foremost a star trek board I think it was pretty obvious what I meant.Why would I be speaking about non trek stuff I never watched. ????

Of course other people have grasped this already , some even mentioning in their posts.
Now that I have informed you and you are aware of my point I am quite sure you wont need to mention it again now will you...unless of course you find more reason to bring it up and then complain about it, which seems the recurring theme at the moment bring up an old post so YOU and OTHERS can moan

 

Cheers Terry

 

This one is for Terry:

It's a minor quibble, but could you guys cut back on the FB posts a little bit? I'm having to go in 3 times a day and clean out excess posts so that the things I want most to show up on my Timeline don't get overwhelmed. Axanar isn't the only culprit, but it's one of the bigger ones. I really don't want to have to "unfollow", but it's just getting to be too much. A large part of it is when you spread stuff that other people have posted to your pages.

Thank you for being open to suggestions/questions.

 

There are some specific reasons why Prelude was the way that it was, specifically the retrospective documentary and interview style of presentation. Some were creative -- wanted to do something different and fresh to pitch the concept and prove what we could do with the money that we had. Others were practical -- having only the money that we had not being low on the list.

The vast majority of the feedback that we've received from fans, pros, and media has been overwhelmingly positive in the near year since it premiered and was released to donors and YouTube. That said, the coming feature will not only have a much larger budget, but it also has more creative talent behind it, not to mention that it will unfold as a traditional film narrative -- as-you-were-there style -- as any Star Trek film from Paramount has done. Thankfully, and this is only my personal opinion, although it may be shared by many, the feature-length film will be largely practically shot on real sets and that should surely kick things up a notch.

Speaking only for myself, one of my jobs is wrangling the displays on the sets; everything from ordering the monitors and video devices that will play the animations, but perhaps even a few goodies that involve very large touch screens. All of that will be practical effects, too, and we're not using TOS repro graphics. Our in house art department has created a new computer interface system that we believe strongly, after a bazillion hours of development, will bridge the gap between the ENT and TOS designs. They'll be practical though, since we're working from the place that technology is today and not what technology of the future was thought to look like 50 years ago. That said... they'll be very familiar, too.

It's a wild ride, but by the time the film premieres, if we all aren't already on a mental hold from exhaustion, we'll be dropping off the grid for a few weeks to an undisclosed location that doesn't even have soup cans and string for outside communication. =P

 

Mr. McIntosh,

Quick question, have you spoken to Abrams and Co at all? I'm very interested to see if we'll see any influence on either end. I especially love the fact that the JJ-fleet is actually here (though I'm a bit miffed you didn't use the window viewscreens!).

 

I'm sorry, but that's been discussed ad nauseam in house and the answer is going to be no. Blame Facebook. Once they revamped their system a good year ago now, where, unless you not only 'like' but specifically tick 'get notification' on their interface, people only see the popular stuff from pages that they like. So, in order to get more exposure, our PR pro folks are adamant that we need to hammer the message a bit with more routine postings.

So, anyone that would like to see less, and that's a very small percentage that have vocalized such a concern to us, would need to use the controls on their own Facebook accounts to slow them down on their end.

I wish that we had a better option, and if Facebook showed our posts to everyone that wanted to see them without complex methods or popularity, like it used to be, then we'd likely only post important things or at least once a day.

BOOOO to Facebook. =(

 

Just call me Terry, please. I'm no one important. =)

No, not a peep and would never expect to hear boo from them for a laundry list of reasons.

The JJ'ish design elements only appear in Axanar due to the Kelvin opening scene from the 2009 filming being proper prime canon. When that film came out that rather solved a big problem for us specifically, because Alec and the proto-team were working out ways to bring in something a bit more modern thinking, but were restrained by canon. Once that film came out then a whole new aesthetic for that time period became available to draw from.

So, that's pretty much the story of why JJ's Kelvin influences, and even influences from that film later on that show the more older ships, appear in Axanar.

 

Wait, what!?

Um, I hate to break to you, but Star Trek (2009) and Star Trek Into Darkness pretty much are the kind of trek movies that have been coming out for almost 2 decades.

 

Thank you for a prompt and honest answer. FB is getting to be a royal pain in the you-know-what.

 

The notion that mainstream entertainment is less intelligent, imaginative and sophisticated than Star Trek is preposterous fannish nonsense.

 

I don't think we're in that much disagreement. I think we've said rather similar things but in different ways.

A mainstream film can be entertainting and it can even be intelligent, but the latter doesn't seem to really matter to the major studios. If the producers and directors manage to get something worthy in there along with some flash-and-bang then fine, but if not then no biggee as far as the studios concerned.

I still stand by my opinion that the studio would not back a project like Axanar unless it was non Trek simply because there aren't enough familiar Trek elements in it for a mainstream audience.

Or put it another way: would the studio back a Captain Pike movie where the only familiar character to the mainstream audience was a young Spock and he wasn't even a prominant character? I think it highly unlikely.

Fan productions can indulge in ideas that a major studio likely wouldn't consider because the fan productions have only to please themselves (and in extent the fans in the audience having similar tastes).