Star Trek -- Project: Potemkin "The Night the Stars Fell from the Sky"

M-rays have been detected from a primeval world. Captain Grigory and his landing party try to unravel the dark secrets of this unusual planet.

Starring Jeffrey Green, Christin Woods, Bill Mackenzie and Richard Thornton. Guest starring Dennis Proulx, William C. Searcy, Sara Higgins Mackenzie and Eric Holt. Featuring Doug Harper, Eric R. Moore, Kate Funk, Jack Zumwalt, James Green.

Directed by Jeffrey Green. Edited by Rick Foxx. VFX by RH Barr, Chris Cameron, Jon Carling, Rick Foxx, Skyler Foxx, Randall Landers and William Walker. Sound and music by Steve Gallant.

Now available on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCrlDyCPA_Q

Vimeo link to be posted as soon as it's available.

 

Re: Star Trek -- Project: Potemkin "The Night the Stars Fell from the

Into the first five minutes now. Man it felt good to see a Constitution class refit again. As Scotty might say, "Aye, the Lexington is quite a beauty."

 

Re: Star Trek -- Project: Potemkin "The Night the Stars Fell from the

Actually, it's the Potemkin, but we kin ye!

 

Re: Star Trek -- Project: Potemkin "The Night the Stars Fell from the

It's that damn accent of his makes "Lexington" sound just like "Potemkin"....

 

Re: Star Trek -- Project: Potemkin "The Night the Stars Fell from the

LOL I wouldn't know. Southerners actually say Potemkin pretty darn close to the Russian pronunciation.

 

Re: Star Trek -- Project: Potemkin "The Night the Stars Fell from the

And for those wanting a higher quality resolution than what YouTube provides, here's the Vimeo link:

http://vimeo.com/84090336

 

Re: Star Trek -- Project: Potemkin "The Night the Stars Fell from the

Woops! Sorry about that. With the exception of the Enterprise-A, who will always be my favorite, I see all Constitution class ships as a thing of beauty. Especially Potemkin.

I'll write a review a little later, but I want to say how refreshing it is to watch a movie era film. In addition I really like the Captain. He's not a cookie cutter copy of Kirk or Picard. It's one of the reasons why I love Intrepid as much as I do and Hidden Frontier before it. The characters were original. There's no captain more original than Captain Daniel Hunter played by Nick Cook. Captain Gregory would be a close second.

As far as The Night The Stars Fell...loved it, Nicely done. I won't spoil the ending, but I was glad to see it end the way it did. A total surprise. If this fan film stays in production, I think maybe this episode could be what Space Seed was to TOS.

As far as a score, relative to other fan films, I give this a 7/10 +1 for that great ending, for a total of 8. Thanks Potemkin team, you just earned a new fan.

 

Re: Star Trek -- Project: Potemkin "The Night the Stars Fell from the

Pardon me if I've missed this previously, but what native resolution do you shoot at?

 

Re: Star Trek -- Project: Potemkin "The Night the Stars Fell from the

Thanks, Halliwell! We really appreciate your feedback, and I'll pass it along to the cast and crew!

 

Re: Star Trek -- Project: Potemkin "The Night the Stars Fell from the

This episode was shot in 480p, iirc, using the Panasonic. Future episodes/vignettes have also been shot on a Sony Handycam at various resolutions.

 

Re: Star Trek -- Project: Potemkin "The Night the Stars Fell from the

Please do! They earned it.

 

Re: Star Trek -- Project: Potemkin "The Night the Stars Fell from the

Maurice, here's why I like Vimeo over You Tube:


Both are captured at 480p, and yet the Vimeo looks a whole lot better to my untrained eye.

And Halliwell, thanks again!

 

Re: Star Trek -- Project: Potemkin "The Night the Stars Fell from the

That's really surprising, especially since I uploaded the same source file to both sites. @(#*$&^ YouTube!!!

 

Re: Star Trek -- Project: Potemkin "The Night the Stars Fell from the

When permitted by the filmmaker, I like downloading the episodes best, Vimeo Second, and then You Tube, but I let the episode load as much as I can before viewing. Know this about You Tube: It doesn't necessarily pick the highest possible resolution when you view it. It could be that you could set your You Tube video to a 480 resolution. When I didn't touch the resolution on TNTSFFTS, the You Tube video was set on 'auto' and downgraded me to 144 from 480. In fact, I tried to move it up to 480, and it wouldn't do it for me.

 

Re: Star Trek -- Project: Potemkin "The Night the Stars Fell from the

Actually, I had deliberately set the resolution to 480. I always slide it to the top when viewing an episode on line. Those screencaps are comparing apples to apples.

J. Alec West, who runs our Mirror/Download site, is setting up the episode for download in a variety of forms. It should be on-line for download in a couple of days.

 

Re: Star Trek -- Project: Potemkin "The Night the Stars Fell from the

*** SPOILERS ***


Some pluses:

1. T'Noshi was a well-conceived and well-played character.

2. The make-up was generally excellent.

3. The visual effects were very good.

4. The locations were beautiful, although the grass was often well groomed! (I'm assuming that the Georgia spruce line was meant to suggest that there were multiple planets represented in the Preserver Ark that crashed.)

5. The overall story was very well conceived, which is something that generally impresses me about Project: Potemkin.


Some minuses:

1. Plot hole: When their communicators are taken by the other tribe, the landing party should lose their translation abilities. Ordinarily in Star Trek, this might not be an issue, except that the point was explicitly made near the episode's beginning that communicators were necessary to speak with the natives. They get them back shortly, but, by having the ability to communicate when there should have been none and when there was an assumption of hostile intent, an understanding was arrived at too rapidly.

2. Given the proximity of the two tribes, and a variety of other reasons, I found the idea of an atomic war initiated by Sarat impossible to swallow. In fact, I don't even see that it's necessary to bring up the possibility of an atomic war. Conventional war should have served the purposes of the story well enough. Other factors, hypothetically such as the hardship of living in an environment to which they were maladapted and which offered few resources, could have been used to explain why technology remained at such a primitive level.

3. In contrast to how cold they said they were, a lot of the natives sure wore loose-fitting clothing!

Spoiler: Comments about the ending

I think that there's a gap that would've better served the episode, if it had been filled in.

Given that the Federation turned its back on the planet (which, by the way, was somewhat inexplicable), Grigory no doubt can get away with his crime. We all sympathize with the urge, but I'd like to know why Grigory did what he did.

Was it to see justice served? Was it for revenge? Was it so that he could look T'Noshi in the eye? Did he think he'd help to create a better civilization? Was he realizing what he thought was the intent of the Preservers? Did Grigory decide that Sarat was just an insect that he could step on? All of the above? What?

Ambiguity can be a good thing. However, when there's an ongoing protagonist such as Grigory, I think that it's good to convey a clear sense of who the character is, and why he makes pivotal decisions such as this one. I don't think I really got that here.

In any case, I enjoyed watching it, and I am impressed by the efforts and achievement. I look forward to future releases.

Thanks!

 

Re: Star Trek -- Project: Potemkin "The Night the Stars Fell from the

My experience with YouTube is that initially the video looks like crap, as if they first do a real fast and lossy conversion just to get it up there, and then it gets better as they finish more refined conversions. I found this with the music videos I shoot at 1080p, and we've learned not to make them public until the processed image quality shapes up.

That said, I haven't uploaded anything 480i or 480p in a while so I don't know how good a job it does with those

 

Re: Star Trek -- Project: Potemkin "The Night the Stars Fell from the

Downloadable? Oh, goodie! I'm going to wait for that. I always enjoy films more when the whole thing is on my computer and I don't have to wonder if there will be a service interruption.

 

Re: Star Trek -- Project: Potemkin "The Night the Stars Fell from the

Thank you, John (CorporalCaptain)!

Really nice of you to comment! I think you're right about that plot hole!

Glad you liked T'Noshi! Christin Woods is an excellent actress!

Regarding your question about the spoiler, I have no definitive answer. We see this happen, and we're each to draw our own conclusion about the motivation. Me, I think it's more of a combination of things that lead to Grigory's decision.

Spoiler: Insider Info

Interestingly enough, we gave Director and Star Jeffrey Green a choice of options regarding the conclusion, and he went with the darkest choice.

Thanks again for the feedback! Stay tuned for next month's release!

 

Re: Star Trek -- Project: Potemkin "The Night the Stars Fell from the

Interesting! Thanks, Randy.