The Star Trek fan film community: What it looks like & where its going

[Danlav05]

Re: The Star Trek fan film community: What it looks like & where its g

He made a couple movies.

That doesn't make JJ Abrams "universe" any more distinct than Nicholas Meyers, or Roddenberry 2.0. It's all Star Trek. All owned by CBS.

CBS owns the rights to the franchise and Paramount have the rights to make and distribute the movies. JJ Abrams and his team 'created' the new universe, and as production parthers (Bad Robot) they have a creative 'guide' role for spin-off media i.e. comics and games.

Same as Warner Bros/DC Entertainment own Batman as a property, but it was Nolan who created the world of the Dark Knight Trilogy; Bruce Timm who sheparded the Animated Universe and now Zack Snyder is creating, with other writers/directors, the DC Extended Universe as it seems to be called.

In all this situation started with the Axanar affair I cannot help but wonder where the others will end up.


Phase II/Continues, despite noticable differences have the same goal, to create a fourth/fifth season for Star Trek, and they both have a very high quality finish. Renegades features a whole load of Trek alumni from behind the scenes and in front of the camera, ditto with Captain Pike. Farragut/isolation seems relatively medium-sized while Horizon is mostly the work of one man but it looks spectacular, and it seems to brign closure to the Enterprise show.

Inrtrepid and Potemkin are lower key so are probably 'safer' if you will.

 

[Squiggy]

Re: The Star Trek fan film community: What it looks like & where its g

And Youtube has gotten so yuge that there's little recourse. I was only able to talk to someone because I represented NASA.

Same with Facebook though. I had my first profile yanked years ago because I broke some rule (apparently one can't add a ton of friends to play one of those games that required you to add a ton of friends). So with no warning my profile was pulled. No appeal allowed.

#firstworldproblems

 

[scifib5st]

Re: The Star Trek fan film community: What it looks like & where its g

[FONT=Times New Roman]Almost 10 years ago, James Cawley suggested CBS/Paramount could treat fan films like they do with Pocket Books. A story of episode is presented for approval. The studio green lights it. The product is made, the studio distributes the episode, and in the end each party is given a percentage of the revenue. Such simple idea. This could have prevented the mess today.[/FONT]

 

[OpenMaw]

Re: The Star Trek fan film community: What it looks like & where its g

Whoa on the broken post there, my friend!

Still, to that idea I say no. That's really not in the spirit of what fan films are all about. That would also limit who could make fan films. Those wouldn't really be "fan films" anymore since they'd essentially have some kind of a license setup there.

 

[Danlav05]

Re: The Star Trek fan film community: What it looks like & where its g

Whoa on the broken post there, my friend!

Still, to that idea I say no. That's really not in the spirit of what fan films are all about. That would also limit who could make fan films. Those wouldn't really be "fan films" anymore since they'd essentially have some kind of a license setup there.

I can see the 'working together' strategy but no, that would basically make them licensed products, the smaller groups would not have a leg to stand on.

 

[nx1701g]

Re: The Star Trek fan film community: What it looks like & where its g

Almost 10 years ago, James Cawley suggested CBS/Paramount could treat fan films like they do with Pocket Books. A story of episode is presented for approval. The studio green lights it. The product is made, the studio distributes the episode, and in the end each party is given a percentage of the revenue. Such simple idea. This could have prevented the mess today.

Fixed it for you.

 

[Squiggy]

Re: The Star Trek fan film community: What it looks like & where its g

A percentage of what revenue?

 

[nx1701g]

Re: The Star Trek fan film community: What it looks like & where its g

^ I think that the reference is to advertising revenues or something along those lines. Unless the reference is that, like the book companies, the fanfilms would be distributed for profit and that CBS gathers the majority, and the fans the minority, of said profit.

 

[Maurice]

Re: The Star Trek fan film community: What it looks like & where its g

Almost 10 years ago, James Cawley suggested CBS/Paramount could treat fan films like they do with Pocket Books. A story of episode is presented for approval. The studio green lights it. The product is made, the studio distributes the episode, and in the end each party is given a percentage of the revenue. Such simple idea. This could have prevented the mess today.

Fixed it for you.

I've said this many times: the potential income such an arrangement would not begin to cover the costs to the I.P. holder to allow it: legal fees in drafting contracts, accounting and audits. There's not enough "upside" for a CBS to do such a thing.

 

[Squiggy]

Re: The Star Trek fan film community: What it looks like & where its g

^ I think that the reference is to advertising revenues or something along those lines. Unless the reference is that, like the book companies, the fanfilms would be distributed for profit and that CBS gathers the majority, and the fans the minority, of said profit.

If CBS could make any decent money off of that, I'm sure they would've taken advantage of such a method.

It's a dry well. There hasn't ever been much water in it anyway.

 

[nx1701g]

Re: The Star Trek fan film community: What it looks like & where its g

^ I don't think that it would work either.

I wouldn't have minded them doing something along the lines of what LucasFilm did with Star Wars fanfilms before Disney acquired them. They did a fanfilm contest.

 

[USS Triumphant]

Re: The Star Trek fan film community: What it looks like & where its g

Maybe this is silly - and I'm sure plenty here will be willing to tell me, if so - but since I heard about the Axanar situation, I've been contemplating a model that looks like this:

CBS sets a price for studio rental for "professional level" productions. The price would obviously include whatever trouble this would be for CBS to manage - and maybe they could even arrange to make actual props available for a fee, as well. (Including, possibly, maintaining a stock of fan produced props for use in whatever is produced?)

If a fan production's cost does not rise to the point of needing such a studio - for instance, if I want to make a fan film and I'm happy doing it by putting a few nice office chairs in my own living room to mock up a "bridge" and film away missions in my hometown - then as long as I'm not making a profit from it, no harm, no foul. It may be appreciated by other fans, but it won't be confused with "real Star Trek" by anyone.

If, on the other hand, the vision for the production requires an actual studio and SAG actors and so on... then they rent the CBS studio, and CBS gives what they're doing a once over. The creators still aren't allowed to profit, but CBS may choose to distribute video collections of these productions kind of like a video version of the "Strange New Worlds" collections - at which point, *they* can make a profit off of them, and the creators can get recognized professionally. *Perhaps* some of these might even be recognized as part of the official Trek canon, and maybe the creators *would* be paid something or given a discount on future use of the studio - but that would totally be at CBS's discretion, of course.

If CBS did that, then it would be indisputably true that anyone trying to make a production at that level *without* working with CBS would be in all kinds of violation of just basically everything.

Thoughts? Total nonsense, or something CBS could/should look at, or.... ?

 

[SuperSpaceMan]

Re: The Star Trek fan film community: What it looks like & where its g

I think it's time for some creative types to band together to come up with a Opened Sourced Sci Fi universe.. optimistic view of humanity's future... a cooperative of human and aliens working together to explore the universe... you know all the fun stuff about Gene's vision of the future, without the name or specific concepts tied to Star Trek... and that would let "Independent features" make money, and profit...

 

[USS Triumphant]

Re: The Star Trek fan film community: What it looks like & where its g

I think it's time for some creative types to band together to come up with a Opened Sourced Sci Fi universe.. optimistic view of humanity's future... a cooperative of human and aliens working together to explore the universe... you know all the fun stuff about Gene's vision of the future, without the name or specific concepts tied to Star Trek... and that would let "Independent features" make money, and profit...

Interesting, and I can definitely see some upsides. The obvious downsides are 1. No Trek proprietary materials, which is the whole point of some of the stories people want to tell - hard to do a story of the Reformation on Vulcan with no Vulcans and no Vulcan, and 2. Who would dictate what is and isn't canon for the overall universe? Seems like it would branch all over the place, with different creators picking "this is in, that is out" in different ways, until it became an incoherent mess, without a central authority of *some* kind.

 

[Mudd]

Re: The Star Trek fan film community: What it looks like & where its g

People keep talking about this Axanar affair as if the studio reining these people in represents some flaw or breakdown in a system that needs to be fixed.

It doesn't.

 

[SuperSpaceMan]

Re: The Star Trek fan film community: What it looks like & where its g

I think it's time for some creative types to band together to come up with a Opened Sourced Sci Fi universe.. optimistic view of humanity's future... a cooperative of human and aliens working together to explore the universe... you know all the fun stuff about Gene's vision of the future, without the name or specific concepts tied to Star Trek... and that would let "Independent features" make money, and profit...

Interesting, and I can definitely see some upsides. The obvious downsides are 1. No Trek proprietary materials, which is the whole point of some of the stories people want to tell - hard to do a story of the Reformation on Vulcan with no Vulcans and no Vulcan, and 2. Who would dictate what is and isn't canon for the overall universe? Seems like it would branch all over the place, with different creators picking "this is in, that is out" in different ways, until it became an incoherent mess, without a central authority of *some* kind.

Canon.... that only refers to official productions anyway.. people have their own head canon, as it is.. so Star Trek in alot of ways is already an incoherent mess.... With an "Open Sourced Universe" you could pick and choose your own canon...

 

[USS Triumphant]

Re: The Star Trek fan film community: What it looks like & where its g

People keep talking about this Axanar affair as if the studio reining these people in represents some flaw or breakdown in a system that needs to be fixed.

It doesn't.

It isn't that I think it represents a flaw or breakdown in a system. It's that I think that, formally, there is no system at all - and that maybe fan productions would not have to worry about, "oh, well, hey, this is all cool and fun and we're bringing it together but CBS could shut us down at any given moment" if there was a formal system for them to operate in beyond "hope CBS ignores us".

 

[SuperSpaceMan]

Re: The Star Trek fan film community: What it looks like & where its g

People keep talking about this Axanar affair as if the studio reining these people in represents some flaw or breakdown in a system that needs to be fixed.

It doesn't.

I don't think there is a flaw or breakdown... I think people want to do more than the current system will allow, and maybe it's time to figure out a way to let people do that..

 

[RunawayStarShip]

Re: The Star Trek fan film community: What it looks like & where its g

People keep talking about this Axanar affair as if the studio reining these people in represents some flaw or breakdown in a system that needs to be fixed.

It doesn't.

I don't think there is a flaw or breakdown... I think people want to do more than the current system will allow, and maybe it's time to figure out a way to let people do that..

There are specific issues with Axanar that generally aren't a problem with other productions. CBS has generally been very, very lenient. One could even argue that they are paying CBS Legal to go out of their way and work with fan productions to make sure they stay on the right side of things. There's an alternate reality where CBS Legal is just issuing C&D's rather than playing nice when they don't have to. (I think I read on here that CBS Legal even helped get an episode of "Star Trek Continues" back on YouTube after it was pulled by YouTube because YouTube.)

If people want to do more, perhaps now would be a good time to petition for an open submission process for non-professional writers for the 2017 series like Piller did on TNG.

 

[SuperSpaceMan]

Re: The Star Trek fan film community: What it looks like & where its g

People keep talking about this Axanar affair as if the studio reining these people in represents some flaw or breakdown in a system that needs to be fixed.

It doesn't.

I don't think there is a flaw or breakdown... I think people want to do more than the current system will allow, and maybe it's time to figure out a way to let people do that..

There are specific issues with Axanar that generally aren't a problem with other productions. CBS has generally been very, very lenient. One could even argue that they are paying CBS Legal to go out of their way and work with fan productions to make sure they stay on the right side of things. There's an alternate reality where CBS Legal is just issuing C&D's rather than playing nice when they don't have to. (I think I read on here that CBS Legal even helped get an episode of "Star Trek Continues" back on YouTube after it was pulled by YouTube because YouTube.)

If people want to do more, perhaps now would be a good time to petition for an open submission process for non-professional writers for the 2017 series like Piller did on TNG.

I get all that.... (and yes CBS Legal did help STC with Youtube).

I am just saying, maybe, it's time for amateur reaching to be professional film makers who want to do Sci Fi, for profit, band together and create something "Opensourced" that aspires for the optimism of Trek, and make money from it...