Yes, just like Ford needs to be the only one making Mustangs.
Just this morning, Les Moonves showed up at my place, knocked me out, and stole all of my Trek DVDs, scripts, and books. I've been bamboozled!
The greed of the one outweighs the deeds of the one.The needs of the many are outweighed by the needs of the few... or the one.
He also drank the milk straight from the carton, unset the morning alarm, and left the seat up!
I forget the name of it, but there's a psychological effect where if you don't have a high enough price for your product, people will think your product is of lower quality and your sales will suffer. It wouldn't surprise me if, by instituting a caps on funding and runtime, CBS has put fan film producers in a situation where no one will fund them because their funding goals and projected run length suggest to prospective patrons a lack of ambition on the part of film makers.
Mark my words, though, you will be watching this movie on your death bed, because you'll want every remaining second you have to feel like an eternity!
Actually, I was wondering if people couldn't use Amazon Mechanical Turk to pay random people to view a fan film. That way, all the IPs would be from distinct machines on different networks.
Give the way the car market is going for Ford, they may not be making Mustangs for much longer...
The guidelines explicitly prohibit crowdfunding of $50k per "film".
Guidelines said:
Was that not what I was referring?
Yes, you can theoretically have rich friends fund a fan film, but in reality, most people will have to crowdfund to get any serious funding, so I don't see how it matters. You can't plan on Elon Musk to fund your fan film.
I think they should not care if someone's uncle donated to a fan film. The masses are not being duped, and the other restrictions would prevent the film from being anything more than a fan film. That is, no threat to their IP and no threat that crowd funded money would be used to create a studio to compete with them.
Fixed that for ya. The 15 minute time limit and the use of exclusively amateur cast and crew actually make the amount you can raise academic, because you have virtually nothing to spend it on. In fact, you might as well spend it on a studio, because otherwise all you can spend it on is frivolous things like solid gold phasers. Not that you need to worry about that, because you'll never raise a million dollars for a 15 minute film made by people with no professional experience.
Right, 'cause there's no way to economically build a studio to film a day's worth of footage on one set. You need to have a post fan film business or funding model.
I'm going to disagree with you here. Private entities with money to burn could build a studio, use it to film a Star Trek fan film, then use that film to attract business and investment. In fact, they could easily redress the fan film sets to look like generic sci-fi sets and rent them out to low budget sci-fi productions. The studio would still potentially be sapping viewers from CBS via productions they make after the fan film. By contrast, things like Renegades, STC and Axanar, while being generally successful in their fundraising, had to raise funds multiple times to get all their funding. They also had to deal with promises to contributors and shipping perks and the like, whereas a rich backer can self-fund with no restrictions.
On this point, I think I will say that CBS was merciful in their decision to settle and establish some guidelines. You know the saying, "no good deed goes unpunished". Hence, there is potential for harm, but still I think they did a reasonable job of balancing being merciful (perhaps to achieve other ends) and protecting their IP.
Like I said, I think the sound stage itself is a greater threat than any fan films produced there, because the original content doesn't serve to reinforce the franchise. For instance, one could make the argument that a good Enterprise fan film probably makes people more interested in Enterprise, whereas now independent series Renegades doesn't really do this.
I would agree if not for two points. First, cutting the run length to 15 minutes makes it impossible to tell the type of story that a Star Trek episode or movie tells because of time constraints, or to tell a story arch due to the series prohibition. Second, they don't provide any license or covenant not to sue, so film makers don't really have any form of legal protection no matter how friendly and respectful they are to CBS or Paramount. Either of these would go a long way to making me think it's balanced.
I too question the whole idea as a profit-making business model. As for something akin to a non-profit sound stage, I'm cautiously optimistic.
I disagree. I think a soundstage/studio is fine, as long as it doesn't run afoul of existing copyright/trademark laws, or the guidelines - which seem to exempt it if the studio/stage whatever is not built as a "star trek fan production".
STC wrapped last year and they sold their sets lock, stock and barrel to a guy named Ray Tesi a number of months ago. Unclear what he intends to do with them now.
From the standpoint of violating the legal rights of CBS, I get what you're saying, but from a purely profit point of view, I can see a new sci-fi franchise being filmed at a sound stage initially set up for a fan film and legally "stealing" some of CBS's profits. Heck, it might happen at the sound stage AP created and lost when he had to vacate. Some new sci-fi franchise may come along and rent that very building.
Maybe. I question if they could have actually made a profit off of renting the sets without pissing off CBS.
The sets have been bought by a company called Stage 9 Studios last January, and will remain in the same building. The company is run by a fellow named Ray Tesi (who was a writer and co-creator for Starship Republic). He's stated "This is NOT a money-making enterprise", and it seems like he's going to let other people film on the sets, but his exact plans are unclear. He did relinquish some of the space to reduce the rent, so they lost a few rooms and the planetary set, but I think they kept all the other sets. (The company that moved into that space makes egg rolls.)