And you are the shining example of how to do a fan film. Not because you want to compete with others or to dominate the field, not because you are an attention-seeker or constantly fishing for praise. You do it because you love it.
Which productions just "stick the landing" with you?
- Thread starter Phantom
- Start date
And you are the shining example of how to do a fan film. Not because you want to compete with others or to dominate the field, not because you are an attention-seeker or constantly fishing for praise. You do it because you love it.
It STILL sounds to me as if you equate the tv shows as higher-quality because they had higher-paid people working on it (i.e.: spent more $$$)
Making a television show is making a work of art, I repeat. My ONLY barometer for judging a film or tv show is...did it make me FEEL something, at any point?
Looking at the Trek shows, well, I never felt anything when I watched VOYAGER, apart from boredom. I did manage to feel something during the Mirror Universe épisodes of Enterprise.
I would often feel something when experiencing DS9 the series, that one is top notch. TNG, it did happen but that was a rare occurrence.
Did I feel something while watching my choices from the first page? not all of them, but most.
Unless a show\film makes you feel an emotion of any sort, I don't care if you had one of the highest-paid directors helming it (Michael Bay), a golden boy scriptwriter, multi-million $$-earning actors (lots of them), an endless A-list crew, a small-budget production with actual heart will always beat the crap out of it...
Each and ...EVERY time!!
You are confusing my point.
I'm talking about produceability. You're talking about audience emotional reaction.
From a produceability standpoint, no fan film has or will be able to compete with the official franchise offerings. It's just not financially a feasible goal.
If I equate the TV shows and films as "higher-quality" (your words) its because on that level, they are.
As to how a given story can cause any emotional reaction in its audience, that's entirely up for debate. Few fan films have achieved with with me. (I can list about four or five examples, total, of the dozens of films I've seen in the past decade.
I'd still wager however that the writers of the shows and films -- who work in the industry and practice their craft in their daily working lives are easily better at it than the people actually writing fan films and yes, even those who are working pros. Not because any of the fan film writers are bad writers, but because they are not operating in the same functioning environment as professional writers.
Writing isn't something you just sit down and do in a few minutes or a day. It is a precisely-tuned, practiced and finely-honed craft that takes years of practice to become even marginally good at. Some people are better at it than others. I've spoken to writers at length about their editing process and the best ones all said (some version of) the same thing: "Getting feedback is tough because while I want it, sometimes its really hard to hear."
I wept when Sulu's daughter disappeared. I fist-pumped in the air when Richards beams the Tressaurian out into space, thrilled and amused all at once like you would be in the middle of a ridiculous action set-piece in an '80s action film. My heart broke for Kirk when he confronted the ghost/hallucination of his daughter.
These tiny moments were exactly the kind of moments you are talking about Bixby. And its true - they do exist in the fan films. Do they compare to Jake Sisko trying to save his father in "The Visitor?" Or Picard realizing he's lived a lifetime in 20 minutes in "The Inner Light?"
Not really.
The blanketing content surrounding these moments in the fan films is often so riddled with callbacks, fan service, poor production values (hello, sound!), subpar acting, and a distinct lack of understanding when it comes to cinematic language, editing and pacing and even basic story structure that it's impossible for me to hold the majority of the fan films up to the professional productions and not just see them for what they are - fan films made by people who don't know what they're doing.
I'm talking about produceability. You're talking about audience emotional reaction.
From a produceability standpoint, no fan film has or will be able to compete with the official franchise offerings. It's just not financially a feasible goal.
If I equate the TV shows and films as "higher-quality" (your words) its because on that level, they are.
As to how a given story can cause any emotional reaction in its audience, that's entirely up for debate. Few fan films have achieved with with me. (I can list about four or five examples, total, of the dozens of films I've seen in the past decade.
I'd still wager however that the writers of the shows and films -- who work in the industry and practice their craft in their daily working lives are easily better at it than the people actually writing fan films and yes, even those who are working pros. Not because any of the fan film writers are bad writers, but because they are not operating in the same functioning environment as professional writers.
Writing isn't something you just sit down and do in a few minutes or a day. It is a precisely-tuned, practiced and finely-honed craft that takes years of practice to become even marginally good at. Some people are better at it than others. I've spoken to writers at length about their editing process and the best ones all said (some version of) the same thing: "Getting feedback is tough because while I want it, sometimes its really hard to hear."
I wept when Sulu's daughter disappeared. I fist-pumped in the air when Richards beams the Tressaurian out into space, thrilled and amused all at once like you would be in the middle of a ridiculous action set-piece in an '80s action film. My heart broke for Kirk when he confronted the ghost/hallucination of his daughter.
These tiny moments were exactly the kind of moments you are talking about Bixby. And its true - they do exist in the fan films. Do they compare to Jake Sisko trying to save his father in "The Visitor?" Or Picard realizing he's lived a lifetime in 20 minutes in "The Inner Light?"
Not really.
The blanketing content surrounding these moments in the fan films is often so riddled with callbacks, fan service, poor production values (hello, sound!), subpar acting, and a distinct lack of understanding when it comes to cinematic language, editing and pacing and even basic story structure that it's impossible for me to hold the majority of the fan films up to the professional productions and not just see them for what they are - fan films made by people who don't know what they're doing.
Last edited:
More contemporary examples might be El Mariachi ($7,000 budget before post-production in 1992), Clerks ($27,575 before post-production in 1994), or Primer ($7,000 budget in 2004).
The thing is, those movies didn't try to emulate a $100 million blockbuster or even a $2 million episode of television, which is why no one who's being honest with themselves will ever mistake a Star Trek fan film for the real thing.
Entertainment is entertainment. And everyone has a different threshold level to what they can or cannot accept.
I will freely say that I have been largely underwhelmed with fan productions in the past. But things have evolved. I found something like Starship Exeterr interesting because it had a freshness to it that somehow overcame some of its shortcomings. Same with Starship Farragut. In the end I liken both to how I enjoyed certain Trek novels in the past or Marvel Comics' short run of Star Trek: Early Voyages. They're enjoyable offshoots of the original source materiel aided by the fact that they're not trying to closely recreate said source materiel.
I haven't watched any TNG era fan productions simply because while I enjoy certain episodes and elements of TNG the majority of Berman (and company) era Trek just leaves me cold.
The TOS based fan productions are another kettle of fish (for me) and there I become somewhat more demanding simply because they are trying to closely recreate (in varying degrees) the original source materiel. I admit I'm going to hold them to a different standard even while knowing they simply cannot perfectly recreate the original source materiel. Firstly they are working from a contemporary perspective fifty years changed from the perspectives that forged the original show. Secondly (and hugely) they honestly cannot recreate the original cast that gave TOS so much of its life.
I don't want to appear to be bashing here, but as I've said before the two major fan productions proclaiming to pick up where TOS left off are respectively using different approaches to their ends. NV/P2 strikes me as much more fanfic with its abundant continuity callouts and injecting lots of stuff that we simply would never have seen in TOS. It's a production of "ought to's" to add things they would like to have seen in TOS. That's how it feels to me and as such it greatly undermines the sense of really picking up where TOS left off. Their choices of stories also adds to that in tales I simply cannot believe I would ever have seen on TOS if the show had continued another season or two.
Casting, acting and writing are another area where it just doesn't click for me no matter how much allowance I try to make. They deserve kudos for doing fanfilms for so many years, but it still doesn't click for me.
STC blew me away initially and I'm still excited with their productions, but they are not above criticism (just as TOS itself wasn't above fair minded criticism). STC has also included some continuity callouts to productions that would have been totally outside of the knowledge of TOS' creators. That said I must add that STC is usually a lot more subtle and far less frequent with its callouts. I still pick up on them, but I don't feel barraged with them.
In terms of overall execution is where STC has really grabbed me even when at times they do things I don't believe we would have ever seen on TOS. Three of their current four episodes are stories I strongly believe we would never have seen on TOS even with a fourth season. I still enjoyed them because of their overall execution. but there remains a bit of disappointment that they weren't more ambitious with at least two of those episodes. Their last episode ("The White Iris") was well done, but it is so much a TNG style story I felt it was something that felt more like something Pocket Books might publish rather than something that would have ever been filmed during TOS.
In the end it's the plusses of a production overshadowing the minuses that can win me over. I don't care if it's not recognized as professional given how many "professional" productions have disappointed me.
Fan productions do exihibit a familiar quality of fanfic: they often aren't comfortable with venturing too far from the familiar. Continuity callouts could indeed be seen as a form of masturbation in revisiting things that gave viewers some enjoyment in the past. But such callouts are not the hallmark of interesting storytelling particularly if they feel shoehorned in.
I will freely say that I have been largely underwhelmed with fan productions in the past. But things have evolved. I found something like Starship Exeterr interesting because it had a freshness to it that somehow overcame some of its shortcomings. Same with Starship Farragut. In the end I liken both to how I enjoyed certain Trek novels in the past or Marvel Comics' short run of Star Trek: Early Voyages. They're enjoyable offshoots of the original source materiel aided by the fact that they're not trying to closely recreate said source materiel.
I haven't watched any TNG era fan productions simply because while I enjoy certain episodes and elements of TNG the majority of Berman (and company) era Trek just leaves me cold.
The TOS based fan productions are another kettle of fish (for me) and there I become somewhat more demanding simply because they are trying to closely recreate (in varying degrees) the original source materiel. I admit I'm going to hold them to a different standard even while knowing they simply cannot perfectly recreate the original source materiel. Firstly they are working from a contemporary perspective fifty years changed from the perspectives that forged the original show. Secondly (and hugely) they honestly cannot recreate the original cast that gave TOS so much of its life.
I don't want to appear to be bashing here, but as I've said before the two major fan productions proclaiming to pick up where TOS left off are respectively using different approaches to their ends. NV/P2 strikes me as much more fanfic with its abundant continuity callouts and injecting lots of stuff that we simply would never have seen in TOS. It's a production of "ought to's" to add things they would like to have seen in TOS. That's how it feels to me and as such it greatly undermines the sense of really picking up where TOS left off. Their choices of stories also adds to that in tales I simply cannot believe I would ever have seen on TOS if the show had continued another season or two.
Casting, acting and writing are another area where it just doesn't click for me no matter how much allowance I try to make. They deserve kudos for doing fanfilms for so many years, but it still doesn't click for me.
STC blew me away initially and I'm still excited with their productions, but they are not above criticism (just as TOS itself wasn't above fair minded criticism). STC has also included some continuity callouts to productions that would have been totally outside of the knowledge of TOS' creators. That said I must add that STC is usually a lot more subtle and far less frequent with its callouts. I still pick up on them, but I don't feel barraged with them.
In terms of overall execution is where STC has really grabbed me even when at times they do things I don't believe we would have ever seen on TOS. Three of their current four episodes are stories I strongly believe we would never have seen on TOS even with a fourth season. I still enjoyed them because of their overall execution. but there remains a bit of disappointment that they weren't more ambitious with at least two of those episodes. Their last episode ("The White Iris") was well done, but it is so much a TNG style story I felt it was something that felt more like something Pocket Books might publish rather than something that would have ever been filmed during TOS.
In the end it's the plusses of a production overshadowing the minuses that can win me over. I don't care if it's not recognized as professional given how many "professional" productions have disappointed me.
Fan productions do exihibit a familiar quality of fanfic: they often aren't comfortable with venturing too far from the familiar. Continuity callouts could indeed be seen as a form of masturbation in revisiting things that gave viewers some enjoyment in the past. But such callouts are not the hallmark of interesting storytelling particularly if they feel shoehorned in.
Also, The Blair Witch Project (wiki sez $22,500 budget in 1999, making $248.6 million
).Yeppers.
STC is incredibly impressive in their recreation of very subtle things -- like the original series' method of lighting scenes and close-ups -- which very clearly are not easy to replicate.
In terms of all the verbiage about "professional" vs. "fan film," the stuff Karzak is talking about when comparing things like "Shades of Gray" to amateur product are about polish. Which is all well and good -- budget should show onscreen and something would be very wrong if it didn't -- but really has very little to do with quality. There's any amount of no-budget SF with far more primitive production values that I would watch any day of the week and twice on Sunday in preference to "Shades of Gray," polish notwithstanding (the bulk of, say, the famously rather primitive Babylon 5 comes to mind). Certainly even as just a Trek story something like "Lolani" is easily preferable as a viewing experience for me. That's not a claim about its level of polish or about its exactly "matching" hundred million dollar or even two million dollar budgets or replacing official product or being pick-uppable by CBS or Paramount -- claims which, like the business about "real Star Trek fans," way too often seem to be put in people's mouths whether they actually make them or not -- it just happens to be more fun to watch than a clip episode.
Last edited:
Discussing a sub-genre of Trek that is dominated by the Prime universe is going to be primarily about Prime. Show me a JJ-verse based fan project and I'll take a look (never let it be said I was being unfair).
Like I said to Big Jake earlier... you buried the lead with:
Phantom said:
Sorry, but 2+2=4 in this universe.
No. It's about people who have spent their adult lives honing their craft vs. people who are doing it as a side project.
It's perfectly possible to just read that sentence as meaning "I just watched something worthy of the name Star Trek" without taking it as an attack on someone or something -- that's what I did -- and your reading still seems tendentious and needlessly defensive to me.
Or Joss Whedon being asked in effect for a "2nd pilot" (Firefly's "Train Job).
I'd say Bixbygot your point entirely...much to your chagrin...
When you're judging the artistic merits of a work, it is quite proper to judge the result, not the mechanics.
Or are you just another J Evans Pritchard (PhD)?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpeLSMKNFO4
From a produceability standpoint, no fan film has or will be able to compete with the official franchise offerings. It's just not financially a feasible goal.
Now, this is a fair and arguable statement.
Refer back to Mr Keating's reaction above.
By that definition, JK Rowling would have never sold the first Harry Potter. How many books/scripts/ films does it take to "become even marginally good", Mr Pritchard?
Nonsense. If the reaction is the same, obviously the product is as good or it would not have produced said reaction.
Well at least you're moderating from "absolutely none".
That's where you're wrong. There are a couple of productions that do indeed meet that bar or come very close to it. One is Axanar, and the other is Bridges' Spectre/Retribution/Redemption trilogy.
I'd put Bridges in particular in my "writer's room" on a pro-basis any time. His characterizations are so solid and intriguing, his attention to detail so thorough, his plotting so tight, that it's absurdly easy to ignore the 2-man voice cast and the limitations of Poser animation.
(split for length)
You beat me to it...you get it, BigJake.
There are a (precious) few works in the tie-in and fan segment of the Trek community that very much deserve to (and in my mind DO) hold status equal to anything ever put out by Paramount/CBS.
The Early Voyages comic from the late 90s-early 00s that Warped9 mentioned up thread is one. Diane Duane's early books, especially Spock's World and the Rihannsu quintology, John Ford's The Final Reflection, along with Continues (so far) and Bridges' animated trilogy round out the top of the list.
You beat me to it...you get it, BigJake.
There are a (precious) few works in the tie-in and fan segment of the Trek community that very much deserve to (and in my mind DO) hold status equal to anything ever put out by Paramount/CBS.
The Early Voyages comic from the late 90s-early 00s that Warped9 mentioned up thread is one. Diane Duane's early books, especially Spock's World and the Rihannsu quintology, John Ford's The Final Reflection, along with Continues (so far) and Bridges' animated trilogy round out the top of the list.
The only Axanar film released to date consists mostly of talking heads shot against greenscreen and a bunch of spaceship shots. No one's going to mistake it for a $2 million TV show, let alone a $100 million movie.
Perhaps.
But "WOW! I just watched real Star Trek!" still comes across as just another passive/aggressive "My Trek is better than your Trek" statement. And now, Jake, your defensive interpretation of "I just watched something worthy of the name Star Trek" kinda exacerbates the perceived sentiment in an almost equivalent passive/aggressive way. It's the whole: "I'm want to piss on your neck but tell you it's warm rain" thing. I love the same Star Trek you guys do, plus some that is just as much Star Trek to myself, and many others. The phrase real Star Trek, when used by those with a far more narrow definition of what Star Trek is (no matter what side of the fence you fall on) comes across as elitist condescension.
Understand, Jake, Phantom, these are not personal allegations I make of either of you. I like both of you, sincerely. It's simply the way you're coming across. And trying to tell me I'm being needlessly defensive doesn't help your case. "Warm rain" it isn't.
Look, Phantom, perhaps your intent truly was not so disingenuous.... but just understand that the statement you made can come across like that. If that was not your intent, then I sincerely apologize.
Then there is the case of you getting defensive/dismissive with Karzak's initial reply.
Phantom, just as Big Jake (with all respect) defends your position about the notion that you meant nothing other than "This is the kind of Trek I like" (which, to me, is a perfectly amicable and uncharged statement), I have to say that I, myself (and it would seem some others, but I cannot speak for them) defend Karzak's reply that "none of the above" answers your question as effectively and honestly as someone who answered whether or not any one particular fan production did "stick the landing" with them. Just as BigJake seems to think that you meant no disparagement with "I just watched real Star Trek", I don't think Karzak was being snarky with "None of the above." An open ended question generally begs a variety of answers...and I'd say you've gotten plenty of them across the spectrum.
In both cases, from "I just watched real Star Trek" to "none of the above", then no harm, no foul. If it can be agreed that in neither case, nothing was what it seemed to be to others, then we carry on as if nothing untoward ever happened.
If you're determined enough to interpret something a certain way, you will find any excuse to do so even after being told explicitly that such wasn't the intention. This, incidentally, is what "tendentious" means. I like you too but you're kind of digging a hole here, man. You always have the option to... not dig. Alternatively you could always continue digging and then complain it's the other guy who's being "toxic" or "passive-aggressive," just don't expect to convince.
Heh...I hope you read my summation at the end of my last post (which had since been added before I knew you even replied.)
I am sure that my "tendentiousness" came across as personal. Unintended. Just as you suggest that Phantom's statement was not disparaging.
Ya' know...I need to come up with a good disclaimer for a signature like JWPlatt's.
Similar threads
