CBS/Paramount sues to stop Axanar 2 - Electric Boogaloo-Fanboys gone WILD-too many hyphens

Discussion in 'Fan Productions' started by jespah, May 10, 2018.

?

Do you enjoy pie?

  1. Yes, sweet, please

    79 vote(s)
    41.8%
  2. Yes, savory, please

    42 vote(s)
    22.2%
  3. Yes, any kind

    77 vote(s)
    40.7%
  4. No, I'm a heathen

    36 vote(s)
    19.0%
Multiple votes are allowed.
  1. SITZKRIEG!

    SITZKRIEG! Commander Red Shirt

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  2. KennyB

    KennyB I have spoken............ Moderator

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  3. 137th Gebirg

    137th Gebirg Admiral Premium Member

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    :lol: Funny how the spin-off gets made before the main production. I'll watch it though. Hoping for something new and different. Maybe? :)
     
  4. SITZKRIEG!

    SITZKRIEG! Commander Red Shirt

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    One thing I would point out is that, while the initial announcement was apparently/unfortunately made on April 1st, it has been reconfirmed in the days since.
     
  5. SITZKRIEG!

    SITZKRIEG! Commander Red Shirt

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    I'll watch it and decide what I think based on its own merits. I don't believe in the 7 degrees of guilt by association so common today. Axanar Prime is definitely a lemon... if someone else can make lemonade out of it then so be it.
     
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  6. Mytran

    Mytran Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    I didn't listen to the podcast (I have no interest in The Love Boat) but wow that was some biting satire! :wtf:
     
  7. Eduardo

    Eduardo Captain Captain

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    Interlude is already online here:



    And an interesting detail, the first comment pinned by Avalon with Jenkins' statement regarding Axanar.
     
  8. Matthew Raymond

    Matthew Raymond Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    Pause it at 4:41 and look behind the engineer on the rail.
     
  9. Campe

    Campe Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Feel like it’s a poor reference to all the late Game of Thrones water bottles/Starbucks cups. It’s too obvious to be anything else. There’s also something illegible on it on my phone. I’m sure someone will take the time to let us know what it says or Lane will write 1500 words on it.
     
  10. fireproof78

    fireproof78 Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    So, I'm aware that fan films can be extremely tropey. But, this one one definitely leaned hard in to it. The graphics and the music did most of the heavy lifting, while the Artemis captain was the best actor of the whole bunch. They are taking heavy fire and Ares' science officer might as well be the computer reporting. Just flat.

    The last part is distractingly bad, largely due to the editing. But, I will say this. The battles definitely have that FASA RPG style feel that is fun. So, ships firing and attacking is the most fun part.
     
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  11. Ryan Thomas Riddle

    Ryan Thomas Riddle Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Well that was a big bunch of nothing. Just lumbering starships, slowly pew pewing each other out of the stars. Boring AF.
     
  12. F. King Daniel

    F. King Daniel Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Aside from the obvious bug-eyes, Alec has this very distracting big head/tiny body thing going on.

    It wasn't a step down from Prelude, it was a Homer-Simpson-falls-down-the-gorge from it. What was it about?

    And that coffee cup I guess was meant to be funny but it fell flat.
     
  13. urbandefault

    urbandefault Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    No way the coffee cup was an accident. Too obvious.

    [​IMG]
     
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  14. Campe

    Campe Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Finished it. Well that was twelve minutes I’ll never get back.

    I’ll give Lane credit. He got it done. Other than that...The effects were nice. The bridge set is impressive. The lighting was nice (other than Garth being in complete shadow the whole time... oh wait, that’s not a bad thing).

    But the script is terrible. Why does a fan film need a fan film made about it? The background performances are worse. It doesn’t feel like there’s any urgency there. And Alec Peters is a human, right? Not a plank of wood with big buggy googly eyes pasted on? Because it’s hard to tell the difference. Human drama needs actual drama for someone to care. Yes, a ship and crew sacrificing itself for another SHOULD feel like an emotional moment. But it feels about the same as if someone told me I have to have chicken as opposed to shrimp. Yeah, okay. Sucks. But I’ll be okay. That’s the best analogy I can come up with at 5am.

    And yes, the coffee cup is an attempt at an in joke reference from something that happened in pop culture two years ago. Way to be relevant.
     
    Last edited: Apr 6, 2021
  15. F. King Daniel

    F. King Daniel Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    That's Paul Jenkins, right? I wonder if he'd already soured on Axanar when he filmed that. Or maybe it was meant to reference his Warped comedy filmed on the Axanar sets.

    Either way, it didn't work. And no way would it have remained in place while the ship was shaking apart in battle!
     
  16. SITZKRIEG!

    SITZKRIEG! Commander Red Shirt

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    Thanks for the link to the normal upload. I tuned into the stream around 10:30pm-ish last night and it was just a half dozen people silently zoom-streaming themselves watching something (I'm assuming it was the actual film itself). It would have been nice if it had been playing for all the viewers on screen as well but it wasn't so I bugged out after about 30 seconds.

    As for the review... I actually liked it for what it was. That may be an unpopular opinion given the vehemance of this thread traditionally but I have no problem being a thread heel (in wrestling terms) for the umpteenth time. Apologies if I slightly misuse (or use the common vernacular definition of) certain literary/cinema terms but I'm strictly a normy and not a creative myself. Does it have a traditional story structure and/or character development that you'd expect even in a short film? No... but I don't think it was ever intended to. Granted I'm going off of articles Jonathan Lane wrote a year or two ago but this was conceived as an alternate additional scene or version of the Axanar fan film as it was years ago then spun off as its own thing. It was never meant to be a wholly independent creative endeavor so I think it's fine if it doesn't fly on its own two nacelles.

    Agreed. I have some quibbles with the battle (namely that the trio of Klingon ships were so gracious/honorable as to completely stop firing for the entire period of dramatic dialog between the captains so that they could peacefully have their moment amidst the carnage). At least the captain returned the courtesy by setting the maximum yield of his warp core explosion to 1% so as to only minorly inconvience the trio of point blank klingon ships as opposed to completely destroying them as I expected given the range. I see the first half as more of a collection of cutscenes that run before, during, and after a video game style battle scenario straight out of the Legacy pc/console game from about 12-14 years ago. Given the original intent, I think it works quite well when viewed in that regard.

    I am Greek? I am Greek! :) That's a Guardians of the Galaxy reference/joke in case any Spartans are offended reading it. At one point, I started counting his blinking during the first couple of minutes and, except for one shot, he averages only one blink per shot he is the sole focus of; Teddy Ruxpin might have had better facial animation. Admittedly, his acting improves significantly (in that he is actually emoting at all) during the faux documentary second half from that ultralow bar initially set but he's still by far the weakest link in the whole film. Other than that, I'd say the acting was significantly better than most recent fan films I've watched and better than the previous Avalon offerings. That last part is hard to tell because the Avalon universe purposefully incorporates corny humor and sometimes it's hard to tell whether something feels off or cringey on purpose or by accident. Kudos to the actors and director Victoria Archer for pulling it off IMO better her than in their own films.

    Now for a bit of nitpicking/criticism (because it wouldn't be trek fandom without that!). I like the addition of the faux documentary scenes at the end but felt that they went on too long. I'd have preferred if it was just the garth part, maybe one more CGI battle scene with a voice over, and one Admiral Slater part. The additional Slater scenes overly explaining about Ramirez fall into the "show, don't tell" category of things not to do and I'd have preferred if they had just killed Ramirez on screen with a quick few seconds scene from sickbay after escaping further emphasizing the pyrrhic victory. I understand that Tony Todd was one of the first professionals to distance himself from Axanar and that he's never coming back but explaining by third party dialog his sidelining for the rest of the war seemed to be a worse choice than just showing it. YMMV.

    As for sound, directing, fx, and editing, I think this easily stands out as above average to one of the best in post guidelines fan films. I have no issues at all with the sound (monotone Garth human emotosynthesizer v2.021 excluded) and my only quibbles with directing/editing are probably more with Producer/Writer Lane's direct and heavy involvement in post. From his own interviews and articles, he was "a perfectionist" and absolutely wanted every minor detail to go exactly to his own specifications and that likely included scenes/lines that I felt dragged or should have been cut so I don't view those as the primary fault of the editor/director. The special effects are top notch for a fan film and better than alot of professionally done indy scifi films I've watched. Some are I think borrowed from Prelude and those released by RMB from his aborted version of Axanar but I think the majority are new so kudos to Jonathan getting them done.

    TL;DR: I liked it for what it was. It wasn't a fully fledged independent film but rather a game DLC add-on for the firmly in development hell Axanar Prime film... one that most importantly was actually completed both with minimal internal drama and under the fan film guidelines.
     
    Last edited: Apr 6, 2021
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  17. Eduardo

    Eduardo Captain Captain

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    Meanwhile, in the comments.

    We've been communicating with Paul, and Meta Studios. They asked that we place this disclaimer, and NOT distribute on the Axanar or Ares Studios channel. Their request was that we insert the disclaimer in the film. That was not possible due to the timing of the request. So I pinned the disclaimer in the comments. I felt that was the best I could do.
     
  18. fireproof78

    fireproof78 Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Yeah, that highlights something that I noticed. The overall feel is sterile. This is supposed to be dramatic but the only real dramatic feel comes from the music. No sense of urgency to a weighty situation. It's polished within an inch of its life and it misses on that point. So, his perfectionist tendencies weigh it down.

    And the documentary style was something even less enjoyable. Distractingly bad editing, and a lot of exposition without much substance.
     
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  19. CorporalCaptain

    CorporalCaptain Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    I had trouble keeping track of which of the two hero ships were getting hit. Clunky, stilted, trope-ridden dialog. My interest was down to 40% as soon as shield percentages got mentioned. I bailed as soon as it switched to documentary interview mode. Don't care enough to sort out the issues or learn who the mystery passenger was and what they were all about.
     
  20. 137th Gebirg

    137th Gebirg Admiral Premium Member

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    This release pretty much identically mimics the comic pages that came out late last year (the one that looks like everyone was drawn screaming at each other). Same dialogue, very different look in delivery.

    As for AP in shadow, that was an old cinematic lighting trick that was commonplace when TOS was filmed, placing the main character in shadow and having a narrow bar of light shining across the eyes, making for a more dramatic visual. They did that with Kirk a lot in Season 1 but toned it down later on:
    thecorbomitemaneuverhd555.jpg theenemywithinhd537.jpg
     
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