I discovered a website called www.stagevu.com. Since I own all the series but Enterprise, I wasn't looking for Star Trek, but I ran into a fan generated series called Star Trek:Odyssey. http://stagevu.com/video/bihvsvaedjxi Unfortunately, no one on the cast could act. This is not me being a jerk about them, but none of them seem to have any acting experience whatsoever, even High School productions. I give them an "A" for effort, and tried to ignore their bad acting. but I could not avoid it in the end. I did not care that they were on a limited budget. The CGI was decently cool. I realize the uniforms might be a bit ill fitting. (Why would their uniforms be ill fitting while the TV series uniforms were so perfect?) I did like the Romulan Commander who was a cute girl who wore her hair down. Reminded me of the original Romulans in TOS. The Klingon makeup wasn't bad for that level of production, but it seems again that none of the actors have had any experience whatsoever. Like I said, I really liked their CGI. I think an animated CGI Star Trek series would be fantastic, and it could tell incredible stories that just would be too expensive to do with live actors and sets. The CGI would not have to be that much better than this production to satisfy me. TAS lost me because the animation was so 1970's and cheap, although I found some of the stories to be of as good of quality as TOS. I remember one TAS episode that dealt with Spock and his boyhood, and his relationship with his father. Spock went back in time and met himself as a child. Nice episode. But, really, really bad acting.
Other fan productions suffer from poor acting too, but I cannot help but commend the work the actors and crew, especially because they're up against the Hollywood studio quality of the Trek we see/saw on television.
I've read some very good fan fiction but have pretty much given up on seeking it out because I haven't found any good system for zeroing in on the small percentage that is worthwhile vs the mountainloads of crap on the internet. Slash fic can be hilarious but again, there's the needle-in-a-haystack problem. I've looked at a few fanvids - far less than the fan fiction I've read - and I've noticed the acting problem. Even when the rest of the production and the story setup strikes me as intriguing, I cannot get past the amateur acting. Aren't there any wannabe actors who have decent levels of training and talent who would be happy just to practice their craft in return for the chance of being discovered through a viral video? LA should be swarming with them. I would expect in a no-pay situation, decent actors would be the easiest to get, and SFX folks the hardest, since wouldn't their talents always be in demand for paying gigs vs the number of qualified people?
At first I thought this was about asking opinions of written fan fiction, in which case I was going to say they are so varied in quality it's like asking what's your opinion of books. The fan productions vary in quality too, though most are fairly amateurish since they simply don't have the budgets or caliber of actors that a network show would get. Several have gotten Trek actors to guest star though and one of them, Of Gods and Men ( http://startrekofgodsandmen.com ), is even almost completely acted by Trek actors. As far as animated fan works go, I like Star Trek: Aurora ( http://www.auroratrek.com/ ). It's not quite de-aged Jeff Bridges in Tron Legacy level cgi, but it's pretty good considering it was made by just one guy on his computer. I also like that it tells stories from a civilian perspective, which is something you don't see too much in either official or unofficial Trek works.
That's actually easy. Just go to forums with creative writing boards and see if they have any recommendation threads. Usually they'll have good stuff, with a few crackish stories tossed in here and there. Actually, the CGI part is easier because you do that all on your free time since everything is on the computer. Getting actors to do anything for free is pretty hard outside of a film school, since they probably have to do something to pay the bills and being associated with a fanfilm might be career kryptonite.
I enjoyed both of these and thought the "Gods and Men" film was very good. It incorporated actors from all the ST series and managed to make a good story from at least three TOS episodes. I did wonder with some of those actors that this film was something to make some money and that their careers are flagging outside the Trek realm. But I was impressed by the number of good actors they had in the film. Auroratrek was cute and it did hold my attention and was interesting. The Lone Star pilot and story was somewhat lame however, but still worth following. There was only one 45 minute segment and the website stated the next installment will not be until 2011.
There's a separate forum here to discuss fan productions, if you'd like to discuss them further. That's where the folks who make them hang out. You'll get more discussion overe there. As for my opinion of fan fiction - it's hard to write! I tried! As for the various fanfilm productions - Starship Exeter gives me the best "TOS" feel, but they still haven't finished their one damn episode. New Voyages/Phase II has come a long way. Their first ep was poop, frankly. Their second was pretty good, except the CGI reminded me of Road Runner cartoons. After that, they started getting better and better, and now I have nothing but complete admiration for their efforts.
I liked the Chekov and Sulu episodes of New Voyages/Phase 2. Their others...not so much. Do not watch their pilot episode under any circumstances. I love Star Trek: Of Gods and Men. IMO it's a fine epilogue to both TOS and "old Trek" in general, and it more than washed out the horrible taste left by Enterprise's rancid finale. Shame about the iffy attempts to sell DVD's. Starship Exeter's pilot episode is worth watching if only for the awesome claymation dinosaur. I laughed 'till I cried. Their second episode is incomplete, but still a fun watch. I'm sure they save the day somehow!
I've read an awful lot of fanfiction over the years, and spent a fair penny on it, too. I always liken fanfic to panning for gold: there is an awful lot of debris to get through before you find a nugget, and some of them are awesome.
WillsCorpse: SPENT money on fanfic? You do mean the official Treklit, right? I should hope so, anyway, because no fanfic author with half a grain of sense would EVER put a price tag on their work. To the OP: I think that this forum actually has a lot of quality fanfic, and I could recommend authors depending on a person's tastes. Same for www.adastrafanfic.com, where I archive my own fan fiction. I do understand that there's a lot of stuff out there that has flaws you would not see in professional works. In some cases it's simply that you have people writing in English for whom English is not their native language, and you can look past the grammar to see some VERY good stories and characterization. In other cases I agree that there is not as strong of an understanding of the writing craft. But there IS a lot of very good stuff. PM me for recommendations based on your tastes. I have not watched any Trek fan-movies. I've heard one audio-only podcast I like, that while the voice acting varies in quality depending on the actor, the writing is really very good.
But that's not always the point of the venture. Many of the amateur actors in a fanfilm want the fun and excitement of being in a fanfilm. Hiring professional actors to work for free might give a better result, sure, but if your goal is to experience being in an episode, then making someone else do it for you, while you sit on the sidelines watching them have fun, kinda defeats the purpose. If the purpose is to entertain others, then sure, you look at casting trained actors. "The Savage Empire" is certainly finished. It's "The Tressaurian Intersection" that still awaits its coda. Written fanfic can be distributed for free via Internet download these days, but certainly up till the mid 90s, you'd be expected to pay money for a "break even" fanzine venture, covering printing, photo screening of images, paper, ink, staples/binding, postage, etc. And most of the studios are okay with fans covering their costs, just not making of profits.
These days fanfiction is free all over the internet. Before that people paid for their fanfic, in zines. We did that for years and years. So, no, I don't mean the official Treklit. There was a thriving zine "industry" for years, and some of the most sought after went for a great deal of money second hand in auctions.
I guess I'm just a perfectionist then, because I thought it was weak. The writing was tolerable, and our favorite characters were also okay (good enough considering how out of practice they must be). ANd obviously the sets and costuming were good. But the acting in general was iffy. It just didn't flow very well.
Never bothered with the "live" stuff, but I've recently grown to really like some of the written stuff, esp anything dealing with the Border Service. Also reading the Tessaract stories which is really fun. As for zeroing on in the good stuff, well, you just have to read a little. I can usually tell within the first few paragraphs if I like where it's going and if the writer is going to infuriate me with typo's and anvilisms. Like the "professional" written Trek it benefits from not having to keep within a certain FX budget, so it's usually aliens a plenty, and unlike the professional stuff, it doesn't have to appeal to a certain demographic in order to move enough units so you can have narrow focussed stories such as the Border Service ones.
Anvilisms? I've never heard that particular expression before... (Oh, and about typos, I would suggest cutting non-native English speakers some extra slack.)
In 1982, I did 100 numbered copies of a break-even fan manual of TOS, TAS and TMP aliens of the UFP, called "Races of the Federation". I was selling it for $5 (the offset printing/paper having cost me $3 per issue, the toned artwork processing $1 and the comb binding another $1 per issue). When I still had about ten issues left, still @ $5 each, I heard of one second hand copy selling in a very small, interstate Star Trek convention... for $75. Sigh.
Well that is flattering for you in some ways. I've seen zines go for pretty prices over the years at con auctions. I recall sometime in the 80's, seeing Spock in Manacles go for about £120.
Somehow I managed to go my entire fan fiction run without getting anywhere near Star Trek. Strange considering how many different things I wrote fan fiction for. It was good stuff when I was between the ages of twelve and sixteen and was just really starting to realize in that time period that I wanted to write for a living. The whole idea is to write about things that interest you, and I was able to gain a lot of experience by supposedly wasting my time (as some suggested) writing and publishing fan fiction. You can only go so far with it. That's really the only problem I ever had with fan fiction. There's only so much you can do. The glass ceiling for success is fairly low, but that doesn't mean it can't be fun, and that certainly doesn't mean there can't be some truly wonderful examples of writing quality and creativity within the genre. I haven't written fan fiction in almost a decade, but I still commend anyone who is able to do something interesting with it. I'm not as familiar with fan films though, but the stuff I've seen has run the gamut from just a shade below Ed Wood territory to something that will probably get at least some of the people involved a job in Hollywood someday.
I can usually tell by the type of typo if it's non-native English speaker or somebody that's just lazy and adjust my attitude appropriately. As for the anvilism, just my interpretation of this concept: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Anvilicious
Yeah, I can usually identify a non-native English speaker pretty easily. AND I can usually identify the part of the world they're from, too, by the nature of the typos (though not always). Glad to see you don't hold that against people. As for anvilisms...that definitely made it look like it's in the eye of the beholder, given that some people think it's an anvil just because they disagree...