I know not everyone who reads this also reads the Fan Art, so you may not be aware of the progress on our titular Polaris spaceship model. If you haven't seen it lately, here she is, in the finishing stages of modeling:
From the Fan Art thread, more of Vektor's renders of the ship. The model is now being imported into Lightwave in preparation of getting shots of the ship into the production pipeline.
I have to say this is will probably be the first fan film that I will watch from start to finish. Can't wait to see the finished product!
Polaris is not a Fan Film. It's an independent production which includes some people who have worked on fan films.
Dennis drew upon quite a few people from the fanfilm community to make this, but there are people from outside that who bring additional disciplines and experience to the table that I think will give it a different character from fan films beyond just what the story and setting is.
So Barb, what do you think is the difference between a fan film and an independent production? Is it the subject matter? Alec
Not speaking for Barb, obviously, but my read on it is that a fan film is a film made by fans of a particular show who make their own film based on it. Polaris is a riff of the kinds of space adventure typified by Forbidden Planet and Star Trek, but it is its own thing in the same genre. A lot of Star Trek fan film people are involved, I think, because they like this kind of show even if it's not Trek per se. I can't speak for anyone else on the crew, but I'm not really a fan filmmaker, despite my posting here and giving occasional assistance to friends who do make them. My only serious involvement in fan films was helping out with Starship Exeter (rewriting a script 8 years ago and doing some post production more recently). I've turned down all other offers to be involved in fan productions because I'm not interested in playing with someone else's toys. What I hope I bring to the table for Polaris is the perspective of someone who doesn't primarily work in this genre. I like scifi, but my own film stuff tends to be more contemporary. As such, I'm always encouraging us to make this film its own thing. I think when the first trailer finally comes out the true identity of this show will be very apparent. The trailer itself is nothing like any fan film trailer I've ever seen (whether that's good or bad I'll leave up to viewers).
What is the difference between an independent production and a fan film? The difference is, who owns it? Polaris is owned by the people who made it. Space adventures are a group of stories not all of which are owned by the same person. If the Polaris people want to sell me a DVD of their movie for $12, they can sell it, I can buy it, and Paramount, Warner Communications, Disney, CBS, and whoever else owns a space franchise has nothing to complain about. James Cawley and I can't make the same deal about World Enough And Time. Granted, there are parodies which can be 'fair use' exceptions and which may be sold, and are also fan films. But the key word is exception. Polaris is playing in their own playground, not Paramounts'.
Just wait when a big company like Paramount releases a similar film, and the Polaris guys get *lawyered*.
That's naive. There's nothing in our show such a studio could claim Copyright or Trademark violation on. Similar in kind is not legally actionable, otherwise practically no movies would get released.