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Amaris
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Exactly. There's no glee here, just exasperation, and frustration, because it puts other fan films at risk because of someone's mouth, in this case, Alec's.
CBS/Paramount sues to stop Axanar
- Thread starter Richard Baker
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I'm hoping that this doesn't affect my favorite fan show (and IMHO one of the good ones of a few [New Voyages and Continues]), Star Trek: Aurora, especially since the guy that makes it is hard at work making a new one. I now have a slight resentment of Peters for this debacle.
Perhaps "glee" was the wrong word, and in any event, I would read everything thing I could find about Peters' ego and temper, so I admit I'm not perfect!
I also read the issues with Vic from Continues and James from New Voyages. And you can bet I'll keep reading this thread!
In the end, I dismissed the jerky side of his behavior in the hopes that a decent product could still result. Now it's not going to happen, and it MAY bring other productions down with the ship.
I just hope his comeuppance doesn't ruin it for everyone else.
I also read the issues with Vic from Continues and James from New Voyages. And you can bet I'll keep reading this thread!In the end, I dismissed the jerky side of his behavior in the hopes that a decent product could still result. Now it's not going to happen, and it MAY bring other productions down with the ship.
I just hope his comeuppance doesn't ruin it for everyone else.
Take this with a pinch of salt but this might give some insight into what Peters is like.
http://wrathofdhanprops.blogspot.co.uk/p/off-topic-treatise-my-experience-with_4.html
http://wrathofdhanprops.blogspot.co.uk/p/off-topic-treatise-my-experience-with_4.html
I pledged for Axanar; but yes, I do have to say that it appears Mr. Peters has lost his mind. To post something like that publically when he really has zero legal ground to stand on in that they are making use of the Star Trek IP (unlicensed) - and then started saying how they plan to run a studio available to other fan and legitimate productions (for a fee) - pretty much in effect stating "Hey we raise funds based on a Star Trek related project; and are using some of that to start what can only be construed as a 'for profit' business is probably what finally pushed CBS legal into action.
At this point, trying to defend their actions in court would be pointless as they have no defense. If Mr. Peters somehow thinks antics like this will perhaps bring CBS to a negotiating table where they can try and get CBS to officially sanction Axanar; he's delusional.
IF this somehow goes in front of a Judge, CBS will have no choice but to issue a blanket C&D to every Star Trek fan film project because I'm sure one of Axanar's arguments will be
"We aren't the only ones doing this, and yet we're the only one CBS went after. It's not our fault CBS/Paramount has failed to properly defend their Star Trek IP..."
^^^
And if an argument like that gets on the record in court, the days of CBS silently looking the other way with regard to semi-professional Star Trek fan film project is 100% over; no ifs ands or buts. They will be legally obligated to show due diligence in protecting the Star Trek IP or LOSE their ability to enforce it - thus every fan film group gets a C&D followed by legal action if said C&D isn't complied with.
IF CBS didn't want to shut down ALL fan films, I think they can go after Ares Studios... A for Profit studio, that was built out using funds raised using CBS IP would be more than enough, I would imagine to be able to shut down Ares Studios, while leaving other fan films unscathed....
I've been reading a lot of schnizzle about this whole Axanar situation. It's all very intruiging! Rumours of the creator being a megalomaniac. Tony Todd left 4 months ago due to 'creative differences'. The project itself had a whole studio created for it which appararently WAS being run as a business, even if the project itself was for non-profit. I'm not even sure if I've got all my facts right here. Can someone who's more in-the-know than me please confirm the above? Perhaps just lay out the facts in bullet form? That'd be great!
I just read about this on fb and decided to see what you guys think I won't see this either way but I think it was the funding was their down fall
I think they crossed a line too and there are consequences when you cross lines
no it doesn't they just care about the facts not what you feel or want
bad bad
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I think that's what worries everyone. Will CBS (A) knock back the people up top at Axanar, or (B) will they decide to "clean house" while they're here? I'm hoping scenario A is the way they go, and that they decide regular fan films aren't harming anything, especially since a lot of them look quite different from the latest incarnation of Trek (another reason I think Axanar was hit, was that their design is very much nuTrek in a lot of ways, and there's a new film coming out in 2016. Plus we've yet to see the design for the series).
I got a bad feeling when they said quality films can be produced without spending millions of dollars.......then said BTW we need a million dollars. I wanted to donate and almost did several times but I kept feeling like Kirk in TFF when he said "Why does God need a starship?"
I also kind of feel like with Axanar they have been kind of moving slow on things, the pre-production started in 2010, 5 years later and they have had dozens of crowdfunding a 20 minute short, and not much else. This could possibly be another reason they are facing this there are a few other Fan Films that move slowly than what they should be. One film that I wont name from the past year was fully completed vfx and all then they sat on it till it was released(meanwhile their Facebook posted nothing but star trek clickbait to generate likes (and by click bait it was literally everything they could find on the internet that said star trek on it things that were not ever relevant to their production other than to post for the sake of posting)) So I feel to other fan films this should be taken as a warning get stuff out or don't get it out at all. Remember Star Trek Equinox they had a crowdfund for a trailer to have a crowdfund, I feel like if this production kept on(maybe they still are) they would get shut down for a reason such as trying to raise money and not delivering a product.
from a production stand-point I feel like most fan films could probably cut down costs on vfx by switching to opensource software for some of the things that they use
i think they more so did this because it would be easier to hide that it was all bluescreen except for a scene filmed out doors and a scene filmed in someones house. Horizon is a great example of what can be done on low budget and still look production ready. they asked for 10k got 22k. a small fraction compared to the other crowd sourced films.
Another thing that comes to mind is perhaps this should be looked at for a time for productions to set aside differences and work together, share sets (IE starbase studios) and vfx people to bring things away from spending tens to hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars. I give kudos to Farragut for making a time jump to TWOK era, something that has not been done much by fan films when compared to the few hundred TOS films. I would hope they would let other productions use their TWOK sets when they are not in use, again in the name of cooperation and to avoid the need for extensive crowdfunding campaigns.
from a production stand-point I feel like most fan films could probably cut down costs on vfx by switching to opensource software for some of the things that they use
i think they more so did this because it would be easier to hide that it was all bluescreen except for a scene filmed out doors and a scene filmed in someones house. Horizon is a great example of what can be done on low budget and still look production ready. they asked for 10k got 22k. a small fraction compared to the other crowd sourced films.
Another thing that comes to mind is perhaps this should be looked at for a time for productions to set aside differences and work together, share sets (IE starbase studios) and vfx people to bring things away from spending tens to hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars. I give kudos to Farragut for making a time jump to TWOK era, something that has not been done much by fan films when compared to the few hundred TOS films. I would hope they would let other productions use their TWOK sets when they are not in use, again in the name of cooperation and to avoid the need for extensive crowdfunding campaigns.
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I've been reading a lot of schnizzle about this whole Axanar situation. It's all very intruiging! Rumours of the creator being a megalomaniac. Tony Todd left 4 months ago due to 'creative differences'. The project itself had a whole studio created for it which appararently WAS being run as a business, even if the project itself was for non-profit. I'm not even sure if I've got all my facts right here. Can someone who's more in-the-know than me please confirm the above? Perhaps just lay out the facts in bullet form? That'd be great!
Okay, Let me see what I can put together....
First, Back in early part of 2014, the Axanar team, launched a kickstarter for "Prelude to Axanar. in this kickstarter they asked for 20K to make their film Because of the success of the kickstarter, they upped their budget to 57K (Including Perks) and wound up raising 101K....
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/194429923/star-trek-prelude-to-axanar/description
They completed Prelude, which was a talking head, fauxumentry shot in front of green screens, and such, and released that. Then in the summer (July/August time frame) they launched their Feature Kickstarter.
https://web.archive.org/web/20140821023706/https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/194429923/star-trek-axanar
In their Feature Kickstarter (I posted the earliest one from the Wayback, because it looks considerably different than the final version) they were asking for 100K for sets but overall their budget had a few different buckets.
100K for sets
125K for a studio (they said they had a 2 year lease on a location for 78K and left the remainder for Studio renovations
25K for a series of Vigniets
50K for Pre Production
350K for production
All in all, they were asking for 650K. Over the course the campaign that figure went up to almost 800K, with more detail being added about the various needs. Of the 800K they were asking for at the end, they raised 650K.... (I assumed the another fund raiser would come down the pike to pay for post production.. and that would be a few to several hundreds of thousands)
Well this summer, Axanar launched their second feature crowd funding initiative, on indigogo. However, instead of asking for what I was expecting 300-400K, they were asking for 250K to "Keep the lights on" but really 1.3Million to make the feature. This was of course on top of the 650K they raised last year.
There was some Rededit stuff going on, with people claiming that peters bought himself a new car (A rumor that hasn't been substantiated) but that raised a cloud of suspicion how this "Fan Film" needed 2 million to get made.
Apparently, the cheapo warehouse they planned on shooting in fella through, and they secured anther one at almost double the cost. In addition, it looks like all their line item budget items shot up almost astronomically. When people asked Alec or company about the overruns, they were typically greeted with Scornful answers.
more importantly, the Prelude perks, (Remember that was released LAST SUMMER, just finally got done shipping just a few months ago, and as of this writing, even the donor board hasn't been updated with the Kickstarter donors from the feature.
Hope that helps a little, maybe others can give their perspective.
Thanks Superspaceman! That's bloody good of you. I speed-read up to about page 12 and then started to get a headache.
I am beginning to think that the line was Peters' 38k salary... Notice the annual report was released on the 20th....
Is there anyway the general public can read this annual report?
They haven't made it public, and there doesn't even seem to be a way to copy... I could screen shot it, but Alec is very litigious...
Nah, that's quite alright. Just want to know if anything else seems amiss.
Bah!
There's 23 pages, but here's what I took away from reading it (and I've not included cents in dollar totals):
The Prelude short film raised $101,171 and Axanar got $91,006 from it after Kickstarter fees. With add-on sales of perks an additional $22,826 was raised.
The 20 minute film cost $123,285, which left them over $9000 in the hole, but that was paid from the actual Axanar film Kickstarter.
The next Kickstarter took in $638,471, and after fees brought them $571,044. This covers April -July 2015, with future financials to be revealed later (switching from Kickstarter to Indiegogo). Of that, $118,428 went to salaries (if I read correctly). The biggest expense was rent ($196,510) with $49,674 for building renovation followed by set construction at $36.372. All in all, their total costs for that period are $574,371, which is more than what that Kickstarter took in, by about $3000. The difference presumably made up for from the Indiegogo funding which hasn't been disclosed yet.
In the 2016 plans: besides the actual Axanar shoot, there is( or was) supposed to be another Kickstarter for an Axanar Four Years War book anthology. Kickstarter for a "Ships of Axanar" coffee table book. The AxaCon (ouch!) event convention, and their "Sci-Fi Film School"
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Amaris
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Look at all that delicious opportunity for merchandising! Conventions based around Axanar, a film derivative of of CBS' Star Trek, lots of swag, anthology books based on Star Trek history for a healthy "donation", illustrated coffee table books based on Star Trek designs for a healthy "donation", man, CBS must be happy to have all of these royalties rolling in!
Wait, what was that? They don't get royalties? Oh, but I figured when they made the agreement to license Star Trek to the people at Axanar... what do you mean they didn't make an agreement? No license? But Alec said there was an agreement that all of this was okay. I mean, he had to show CBS legal the numbers, I'm sure! I mean, he wouldn't just say everything from CBS was okay if it wasn't! That would be pretty embarrassing if CBS decided to sue Axanar later on, which won't happen because Alec said CBS legal gave verbal permission for all of this, so, you know.
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