Fan Production Submissions

Creating a Google Sheet and then using it to create its own App sounds promising.

 

I don't know how useful it would be. I used to program in dBASEII and PARADOX, but I doubt those are in use anymore.

 

Well, I started a Google sheet to list the films on. I started by plunking in Intrepid and then Exeter, then a few others. I could make it public for people to plug other films into. The trick of course is keeping it simple.

 

There is a website that has already reviewed hundreds of Star Trek Fan-films, etc.
http://startrekreviewed.blogspot.de/

 

Well, another way to do it might be something like create a publicly viewable Google sheet that people can sort by different columns to see/find what they want. Like this perhaps (LINK).

 

I actually would prefer this.

 

Well, I could make it open for others to edit for now, with the caveat that certain fields like the descriptions should be kept brief, like to 50 words or less, otherwise people tend to ramble.

One of the things that's slightly maddening about trying to find these things is that sometimes they have been uploaded multiple times, and in multiple ways. And sometimes followers download them then re-upload them. I found multiple copies of the 7 segments of Farragut's "The Captaincy" on YouTube, and had to go to the Farragut website to see which version they pointed to, since it's weirdly not in their YouTube channel. (I found it, fortunately in a playlist, but part 6 of 7 displays in a fucked-up aspect ratio, so ugh.)

I don't think a lot of uploaders realize that any views they bleed off the original actually limits the chances that the films will appear as Recommendations. Over 3 years on we still get hundreds of views per day on TTI (closing on a half million now), and that's largely from Recommendations. The more views you have the more views you get, so you don't want to split the traffic. That's why we never uploaded a fixed version to correct the Act One volume issue, because we'd split the views and fewer people would find the film at all.

 

Maurice, please let me know when the sheet is open to new entries. Thanks.

 

I'll unlock it right now if you want to add your stuff to it. The URL is HERE. I ask that no one touch anyone else's film's entries. If you see a problem, right-click on a cell and indicate the issue in a comment. There is a public copy and a locked master copy, so as soon as someone updates the public copy I'll copy the entries to the locked copy as a backup so no one can screw it up.

I think we should treat supplementary material, like trailers and behind the scenes stuff as separate material since the main list should be just for the films proper, not promo stuff. Or I can add a column for film/supplement and I can sort it out later.

Could I also suggest to any fan filmmakers out there that for work on YouTube they make playlists of their films? Like maybe one playlist that is each "series", and another which could be the films mixed in with behind-the-scenes stuff? If the links you then provide for each is its playlist URL, it's automatically roll to the next film, which is low-friction for viewers and might up your view counts. If you look at the Exeter entry I created a "Come Get Some!" playlist for, which plays pretty much everything about Exeter on YouTube, and used the playlist URLs for the episodes instead of the direct URLs.

 

Can I also ask that we point to the OFFICIAL releases, not to reposts?

 

I keep getting this error when trying to enter a date of release:
The data you entered in cell D56 violates the data validation rules set on this cell.
Please advise.

 

I got that as well. Copy a date from a previous line and then edit it manually.

 

A good work-around. Thanks!

 

The dates can be entered like this: Dec 7, 1979 Time indexes are hour:min:sec, like 0:25:45

I also ask that the links for watching really ought to be directly to the films wherever they were originally put up (if possible), and not to landing pages which a user has to figure out. And NO pointers to file downloads when the films can be viewed directly. YouTube or Vimeo are low friction for viewing, and if most of the views are there, that's where we ought to point. Any extra steps will stop a lot of potential viewers dead in their tracks.

 

No matter what format I tried, I was unable to enter the date except by using workaround described up thread.

I might recommend a TIMEFRAME column (eg ENT, TOS, TOSm, TNG, DS9. VOY, TNGm)?
Also production/episode numbers?
And lastly, do we want both YT and VIMEO? The latter has such a low percentage of viewers by comparison...

 

From our point of view, we prefer people to visit our website, as that is where we can present the episode properly with trailers, background infos, downloads and much more. The episodes can be viewed there just as easily as on YouTube, but with additional infos, subtitles. It helps our project much more when people go to the website and then see we have done so much more than just make episodes. For example, we also have a series of eBooks that you will miss if you just go straight to YouTube.