There are whole filmed episodes sitting around. Let's not minimize the effort all the volunteers put into those by putting them all under the blanket term "proposals".
Oh agreed. By proposals, I meant the ideas for a Harry Mudd episode, and the "Kilkenny Cats" idea too. As you said, Maurice, volunteers put a lot of work into the filmed episodes still to be released.
There was the unfinished Mind-Sifter with James as Kirk and Kargh instead of Kor; Origins directed by Vic (which a year or two ago James said he has the footage and was working on in his spare time); Bread and Savagery which was Gross' first shoot where the director passed away; and Torment of Destiny which was I think the last shoot with Richard Hatch as the guest star so three new episodes we haven't seen plus a couple of vignettes shot around the same time as To Serve All My Days Clips/next time trailers for all of these are online somewhere
Yes, the last kickstarter was specifically to finish Bread and Savagery. Of course it was the one and only time I contributed to a kickstarter...
I hope I'm not breaking rules here, these are campaigns long long finished: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/startrekphaseii/star-trek-phase-ii-2014 "$ 20,000 STRETCH GOAL - ACHIEVED! Bread And Savagery Post Production - $ 20,000 we will pay for the post-production on Bread And Savagery as well. This is the second Brian Gross episode. Again, that will be $ 6,000 and the balance will be used to buy more hardware. $ 20,000 Stretch Perk - Everyone who donates at least $ 10 gets a special "Bread And Savagery" digital wallpaper & a USS Enterprise Phase II refit digital wallpaper. $ 30,000 STRETCH GOAL - ACHIEVED! The New Sets - The move to new facilities is costing us a LOT of money. Our new 13,000 sf facility is EPIC! and we will have the best and biggest Star Trek sets in the known universe. But this move costs money and so the $ 8,000 we get at this level pays for that move." So fans unknowingly paid for the Set Tour, now licenced by CBS https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2075083284/star-trek-new-voyages-phase-ii-2015/description "This July, we film our next episode, "Torment of Destiny"! Besides being an ambitious episode, we will be filming on location, as well as on a variety of brand new sets to be built just for this episode. In addition to location costs and new sets, there's of course the normal costs associated with making an episode. Like "Mind-Sifter", with our new post production processes and team in place, we expect, with your generous help, "Torment of Destiny" to be released in short order, with no shortcuts taken. "
also I remember these: "Change of Command" ~ Written by Erik Korngold, Directed by Erik Goodrich. Starring Jeff Quinn, Charles Root, James Cawley and Kurt Carley as Capt. Christopher Pike. Never released. The handover from Pike to Kirk, replaced by the Origins episode, also unfinished. Maybe the Chain of Command could be upscaled andf worked into Origins somehow if the episode is completed/footage released? "Auld Lang Syne" ~ Written by Erik Korngold and intended to be an animated vignette, the story centered on the moment, during New Year's celebrations, when Chekov is promoted. The dialogue was directed and recorded by Erik Goodrich during the filming of "To Serve All My Days". Never released I never knew there was going to be an animated short! "No Lesson Learned" ~ Written by Erik Korngold. Never released. "Untitled Rand/DeSalle Story" ~ Written by Erik Korngold. Never released. Info from Wikipedia; shot during To Serve All My Days, abandoned by Cawley for 'not being good enough' (World Enpugh and Time started being filmed in higer quality, but tbf now there is a nostalgic thing baout these old films) like a couple of full episodes people gave up their time to make!
As I've said in the past, as long as James is keeping the footage safe, there's a chance he could revisit these sometime in the future if he wishes to and is allowed to. Not much more can be said beyond that since he's keeping quiet and Trek-wise focusing on the Tour and "film school".
Would it make sense for future fan film makers to publicly release footage? Is there a lesson about transparency we can learn from this situation?
I think this is a bit of a unique situation since it involved guidelines released after/during filming and every fan production had to make decisions on how to handle those. Then becoming an official trek licensee threw a big monkey wrench into what they could do as far as fan films.
True. I was just wondering what the ideal way to handle this proactively would be, for those who may want to avoid this potential situation in the future.
My opinion has always beeen if you raise funds from the fans through crowdfunding you owe it to them to deliver a finished product. If you can't, refund or do the best you can to make it up to the donors who gave you money in good faith. That being said, I do give a little leeway to those productions that were in some phase of production when the guidelines came down... except for the production that caused the guidelines (they get no leeway).
It's not just the donors you owe (and mind you, they are due some recompense), but also the cast and crew who went before and behind the cameras. Out of all of our productions, I've made the decision a few times to go ahead and release a handful of films that don't quite measure up to our standards. But I owe it to the donors, the cast, and the crew to make it as best as we possibly can with our limited resources and then release it to the public. And you know what? Some of those are our most popular productions. They're missing a lot, but damn it, they've got what the fans want. I'm sure that these missing productions from New Voyages/Phase 2 would be as well appreciated.
Hell, I'm planning to drop the script for "The Atlantis Invaders" out there so people who might've contributed with the idea of making two episodes can at least see what was planned. I have it all assembled, including annotations, cut bits, concepts drawings, etc. Just wanna check with Jimm before I make it public.
I'm probably going to do something similar with a script I'm writing, although I may have a few beta readers look over it first. Since the script isn't a work of fan fiction, though, I'm pondering releasing it under an open license. Perhaps CC BY-SA or something...
The following words today from James Cawley's Facebook The man has it all in perspective, these films should ONLY be done in the spirit of fun and friendship, a way of giving back for the endless hours of warmth spent during our youth carried away to a universe of wonder. But sorry, even if you really, really, really, REALLY want to consider these fan films at the same level of craftsmanship and imagination and professionalism of the men and women whose names filled the credit boxes back in the 60s, they could never hope to be and if you do regardless then you are doing those long ago people the greatest of disservice. but i deeply thank all those who try for sparking but for a moment the joy of childhood past...
Fan films are not "designed" to be anything. They're just films made by fans. That's it. I agree that people shouldn't be able to profit from other peoples' copyrighted material. However, I'm greatly disturbed by this idea that fan films must be made a certain way and in a certain spirit or else they're not a true Scotsman fan film. So long as no one is doing anything wrong, it's not for us to judge their methods or motivations. Nor does striving for quality in fan films or appreciating that quality denigrate the people who worked so hard on the original series. People may sometimes have inflated opinions of a particular fan film, and the way they express that can be disrespectful to the series or movie the fan film is based on, but striving to make the best possible fan film, by itself, should never be considered disrespectful of the people who created the source material.
.... says the man that got a fully licensed operation out of the deal, quit the game as soon as competition entered the arena, and had countless pissing matches about who's set is more precise and scrapped entire productions because they weren't up to par. If its not that important and just for warmth and fun, can we get the damn recorded material released?!
I cannot believe this! James Cawley, all of these fans just want to see the finished products, and you won't even allow even one of the last three to be completed? You gutless coward! To think I looked up to you! You're a traitor to everything the Federation stands for!!!