Blood and Fire deleted scene released

[GSchnitzer]

Yeah pretty cool scene, actually. That guy is good as cadet Kirk (somewhat Matt Damon-esque as some mentioned), but I really like the older guy. Half way through the scene he seems to catch some fire and I also like the composition which reminds me of the reprimand scene in Trouble With Tribbles. Good composition and camera angles, the only constructive criticism is the lighting is done well except there's some shadows with both characters as they interact. Nice work!

I think when David Gerrold wrote this lined-up, dressing down reprimand scene in "Blood and Fire," he was intending it to harken back to the lined-up, dressing down reprimand scene he wrote in "Trouble with Tribbles."

The dark shadows, high contrast is a result of the poor YouTube delivery system. The scenes when viewed in HD look just wonderful and are well lit.

 

[CaptainKen]

Over at Phase II Forum, I was told it would be included on the final BAF DVD.

That sounds wonderful!

But I thought STP2 was no longer creating DVDs (downloadable .ISO files) since a disrepute few have been trying to sell them online?

I think CaptainKen's comment might need a bit of clarification.

For the cast and crew of each episode, as a "lovely parting gift," we provide a DVD copy of the episode once it is finally completed--months and months after the actual shoot. These are usually nicely made, with menus and chapters and '"extras" like outtakes and deleted scenes and actors' screentests and such....
We don't really make these available to the general public; they are for "Phase II family members" only.

Other than appearing on the "family member only" DVD, I think the only place this cutting room floor scene will ever be released is probably exactly where it is right now: on YouTube.

Sorry about adding confusion. At the Phase II forum, I had suggested that this deleted scene could be given a frame and credits and turned into a vignette for public release. I think that would be AWESOME and shouldn't be too difficult as it's close to ready. BUT when I suggested this I was shot down and told that it's a deleted scene and of course it will be included in the DVD. I was confused by that, but given the source, I assumed (wrongly) that a public release DVD must be being planned since the reply was directed at me (a non-participant). I'd hate to see this scene die this way. What do you think Greg? Do you see any way of this becoming an officially released vignette?

 

[CaptainKen]

*The Admiral commanded the Starship Kobayashi Maru? Isn't the Kobayashi Maru a Third Class Neutronic Fuel Carrier? Or is that just in the simulation, not in "real life?"

* Does Kirk really get chewed out for this? What happened to the "Commendation for Original Thinking?"

* David Gerrold's close friend and mentor Mr. Randy Hunt played the character "Admiral Hunt." At least that was his name in the script. I don't think it's actually mentioned in dialog. But we know "Kojiro Vance" was the Master of the Kobayashi Maru in TWOK--but, again, maybe that was just in the simulation, not in "real life."

I wanted to respond to these criticisms. Greg, I think the script for this scene was outstanding! I really think it's awesome. We saw hints of this in Star Trek XI, but basically, I don't think we should assume that everyone's response at Starfleet Academy was the same after Kirk's "solution" or "stunt" in the Kobyashi Maru simulator. Why couldn't one Admiral give him a commendation for "original thinking" and another Admiral chew him out for his oversized ego? I can totally see that. Even in University I remember events like this, where one Professor encouraged me for the direction of my research while another Prof feeling threatened challenged me. So when it comes to something as controversial as ONE cadet actually finding a SOLUTION to the NO-WIN SCENARIO simulator, of course there would be a mixed reaction. Of course the designer of the Kobyashi Maru simulator would be upset that someone messed with his programming. But, how thrilled would a starship Captain be knowing that someone finally cracked that nut! There's room for Vance and Hunt and even Spock (Star Trek XI) to have very different responses to Kirk. That's what is COOL about this scene. It shows us an admiral with vested interest being pissed off at Kirk!

When the Admiral commanded the Starship Kobayashi Maru, I don't see a problem there. He MUST be speaking figuratively. The Kobyashi Maru is destroyed -- it's a no-win scenario -- everyone is killed! I doubt that many Captains of Third Class Neutronic Fuel Carriers go on to become Admirals. So why does he say he commanded the STARSHIP Kobayahsi Maru? He's speaking figuratively, saying he commanded a starship which faced a no-win scenario. His ship went down. He was left with a permanent scar to remind him of that loss. He survived and so did some of his crew, but at a tremendous cost. He's deeply insulted that some snotty-nosed cadet thinks so highly of himself that he believes he can outwit any seemingly no-win scenario. This admiral knows that sometimes you lose. And he wants to make damn certain that Kirk and those other cadets will know that sometimes you do everything right and still lose. That's life as Admiral Hunt sees it.

What an awesome scene! I love it!

 

[GSchnitzer]

That sounds wonderful!

But I thought STP2 was no longer creating DVDs (downloadable .ISO files) since a disrepute few have been trying to sell them online?

I think CaptainKen's comment might need a bit of clarification.

For the cast and crew of each episode, as a "lovely parting gift," we provide a DVD copy of the episode once it is finally completed--months and months after the actual shoot. These are usually nicely made, with menus and chapters and '"extras" like outtakes and deleted scenes and actors' screentests and such....
We don't really make these available to the general public; they are for "Phase II family members" only.

Other than appearing on the "family member only" DVD, I think the only place this cutting room floor scene will ever be released is probably exactly where it is right now: on YouTube.

Sorry about adding confusion. At the Phase II forum, I had suggested that this deleted scene could be given a frame and credits and turned into a vignette for public release. I think that would be AWESOME and shouldn't be too difficult as it's close to ready. BUT when I suggested this I was shot down and told that it's a deleted scene and of course it will be included in the DVD. I was confused by that, but given the source, I assumed (wrongly) that a public release DVD must be being planned since the reply was directed at me (a non-participant). I'd hate to see this scene die this way. What do you think Greg? Do you see any way of this becoming an officially released vignette?

James and I had discussed the notion of taking our unused scraps and cobbling them together somehow into an episode. (I was imagining some kind of "clips show" with some small framing device that would would be used to highlight not only this deleted scene from "Blood and Fire" but two filmed-but-unreleased vignettes.) Finding a way of getting some mileage out of this footage would be a "Menagerie"/"Shades of Gray" cost-saving measure.

In the end, this "Blood and Fire" outtake and the other unreleased vignettes are all just not good enough for "official release." The weaknesses of this clip were already listed in earlier posts. I know there are a lot of people out there that, if this happened to be their first exposure to our production, would say "Wow! I had heard about Phase II, but I never realized it was going to be quite this crappy in so many ways!" So, I don't see us sinking even more time and effort into this thing than we already have. The payoff isn't worth any more of my investment.

But you do get a really, nice little YouTube clip. Your get your clip and we get plausible deniability.

 

[bionicbob]

[

James and I had discussed the notion of taking our unused scraps and cobbling them together somehow into an episode. (I was imagining some kind of "clips show" with some small framing device that would would be used to highlight not only this deleted scene from "Blood and Fire" but two filmed-but-unreleased vignettes.) Finding a way of getting some mileage out of this footage would be a "Menagerie"/"Shades of Gray" cost-saving measure.

In the end, this "Blood and Fire" outtake and the other unreleased vignettes are all just not good enough for "official release." The weaknesses of this clip were already listed in earlier posts. I know there are a lot of people out there that, if this happened to be their first exposure to our production, would say "Wow! I had heard about Phase II, but I never realized it was going to be quite this crappy in so many ways!" So, I don't see us sinking even more time and effort into this thing than we already have. The payoff isn't worth any more of my investment.

But you do get a really, nice little YouTube clip. Your get your clip and we get plausible deniability.

So then, is there any chance of releasing of the other two VIGNETTES (I think one is about Kirk taking command of the Enterprise from Pike, but I can not recollect what the other one was....) to Youtube???

 

[GSchnitzer]

So then, is there any chance of releasing of the other two VIGNETTES (I think one is about Kirk taking command of the Enterprise from Pike, but I can not recollect what the other one was....) to Youtube???

Not if I can help it.

The "Blood and Fire" deleted scene had the virtue of being well shot and wll lit--although it had the various weakness that have already been mentioned. In the case of "Change of Command" and "No Win Scenario," they just aren't very good technically. (It was rather early on in our short lifespan.) The scenes are dark; the camerawork is, well, not what folks have come to expect from us. They aren't shot in HD. The sound is lousy. The footage hasn't been edited together; it's still just a bunch of shots. So we'd have to start editing them in order to make them into a coherent narrative. In short, these uncompleted vignettes make this "Blood and Fire" deleted scene look like genius cinematography and acting.

The point of the vignettes was to provide some content as a stopgap measure until we could finally get "World Enough and Time" released. That's no longer really an issue, and the vignettes aren't really needed now.

It's also important to remember that we are just a bunch of guys who have real lives and who make these things in our spare time. We have evenings and weekends to do postproduction work--when our wives and kids and jobs allow us. So putting time and effort to get the vignettes ready for even something with such low viewer expectation as a crappy YouTube release (if indeed the vignettes are even salvagable at all) simply pulls us away from doing postproduction work on "Enemy: Starfleet," "The Child," "Kitumba," and now "Buck Rogers Begins." Given a choice (and with our limited resources, we do pretty much have to choose), it's clear where we should be putting our effort.

So I don't want to say "never," but it's hard to see a time when we aren't going to be busy working on better, more interesting, higher quality stuff.

As a postscript, another reason why we haven't released the vignettes is that, since the problem is mostly technical production-related, we've toyed with the idea of just reshooting them altogether. We don't hate the stories or scripts; we just didn't realize them very well. So since there is a chance we might re-do them, we're not really interested in releasing the crappy version first.

 

[CaptainKen]

Greg, that totally makes sense. Thanks for explaining these things so well.

 

[DestinyCaptain]

I think it works as a extra piece of Kirk character info. I'd like to see them do more of stuff like this as a way to add more to the lesser characters and maJOR episode build ups. This would give the fans something to chew on in between the releases.

 

[CaptainKen]

I think it works as a extra piece of Kirk character info. I'd like to see them do more of stuff like this as a way to add more to the lesser characters and maJOR episode build ups. This would give the fans something to chew on in between the releases.

I like that idea! Short, quick and easy videos. Could even be something like a Captain's Log entry. I know the Vignettes concept seems to have been dismissed, but they are cool, but not if they take away from the bigger productions. I don't know I'm torn.

I guess at the end of day, I just want to see MORE Trek. I love what you guys at Phase II are doing, and I'm excited by the fact that you currently have as much in post-produced as has been released! That means that I've only seen half of what you got!! That keeps me very excited!

Greg: I know BAF-2 is coming soon, what will be released after that? I think Enemy Starfleet was scheduled to be next, but it's been sounding like The Child might be closer to being release-ready.

 

[S'kai]

There is a novel in which the crew of the Enterprise no bloody A,B,D, or nu, are stuck in a shuttle, and each of them tells how they got through the Kobayashi Maru.

A similar series of vignettes, not necessarily restricted to one event, could be tied together by the crew on some sort of outing or reunion or stranded in a subway.

Not gonna happen, but just thinking.

 

[GSchnitzer]

I think it works as a extra piece of Kirk character info. I'd like to see them do more of stuff like this as a way to add more to the lesser characters and maJOR episode build ups. This would give the fans something to chew on in between the releases.

I like that idea! Short, quick and easy videos. Could even be something like a Captain's Log entry. I know the Vignettes concept seems to have been dismissed, but they are cool, but not if they take away from the bigger productions. I don't know I'm torn.

I guess at the end of day, I just want to see MORE Trek. I love what you guys at Phase II are doing, and I'm excited by the fact that you currently have as much in post-produced as has been released! That means that I've only seen half of what you got!! That keeps me very excited!

Greg: I know BAF-2 is coming soon, what will be released after that? I think Enemy Starfleet was scheduled to be next, but it's been sounding like The Child might be closer to being release-ready.

I don't know that we "dismissed" the vignette concept. I think we just don't have time and resources for it right now--just as you suggested.

As I said before: we like vignettes as much as the next guy. But we just don't have enough "next guys" stepping up to the plate dropping several thousand dollars each year into our projects. We can't afford to do it all, so we prioritize. We're pretty good at stretching our dollars and resources. I just wish we had more of them to stretch.

I'm predicting "Blood and Fire" should be out somewhere around Labor Day. Afrter that, both "Enemy: Starfleet" and "The Child" are neck and neck at the finish line. (We'll be showing a nearly-finished "The Child" at Dragon*Con over Labor Day weekend.) But it's not like we'll release our "Blood and Fire, Part 2" follow-up episode (whatever it turns out to be) immediately on the heels of "Blood and Fire." So, allowing for a "savoring period," our post-"Blood and Fire" release will probably end up far enough down the road that *both* "Enemy: Starfleet" and "The Child" will be ready. If that's the case, we would probably just release them in the order we shot them.

I guess all this is to say that "Blood and Fire Part 2" is still a month or more away and the next episode is a few months after that. And who knows what will be going on by then. I mean, I don't even know what I'm doing for lunch today.

 

[PattyW]

Even this deleted scene is missing the outtake that is my favorite line from the entire episode.

The Admiral steps up nose to nose with Kirk and bellows: "Cadet Kirk: Call your mommy!"

(The poor actor drove hell-bent all night to our studio from a job in NYC, ran through wardrobe and onto the set, without the opportunity in our cell-phone hell to let his family know he'd arrived safely... they called the State Police to come check that he'd arrived safely.)

(Which, of course, resulted in a lot of photos of NY State Police on the bridge of the Enterprise and posing with comely female Starfleet officers.)

 

[Data Holmes]

Even this deleted scene is missing the outtake that is my favorite line from the entire episode.

The Admiral steps up nose to nose with Kirk and bellows: "Cadet Kirk: Call your mommy!"

(The poor actor drove hell-bent all night to our studio from a job in NYC, ran through wardrobe and onto the set, without the opportunity in our cell-phone hell to let his family know he'd arrived safely... they called the State Police to come check that he'd arrived safely.)

(Which, of course, resulted in a lot of photos of NY State Police on the bridge of the Enterprise and posing with comely female Starfleet officers.)

That's rich. Make any contacts with the NYSP that might come in handy later for the production?

 

[DestinyCaptain]

You kids have all the fun.

 

[CaptainKen]

Even this deleted scene is missing the outtake that is my favorite line from the entire episode.

The Admiral steps up nose to nose with Kirk and bellows: "Cadet Kirk: Call your mommy!"

(The poor actor drove hell-bent all night to our studio from a job in NYC, ran through wardrobe and onto the set, without the opportunity in our cell-phone hell to let his family know he'd arrived safely... they called the State Police to come check that he'd arrived safely.)

(Which, of course, resulted in a lot of photos of NY State Police on the bridge of the Enterprise and posing with comely female Starfleet officers.)

Hey, Patty, do you guys have video footage of all this? Maybe we could get Robert to release a special "Koybayashi Marus: Day in 2009 Edition" with the NY State Police footage spliced in and all!

Wow! That's quite the story!

 

[NiteTrek]

Hm, interesting. I have to agree with James Cawley's comments on his YouTube account though--the young man playing Cadet Kirk looks nothing like Cawley.

No, but he does look closer to a young Shatner, which Cawley looks nothing like.

 

[PattyW]

That's rich. Make any contacts with the NYSP that might come in handy later for the production?

The fact that we give the businesses in the area more "new" folks as customers than live in the area year-round pretty much has the entire area thrilled we are there, which is "handy"... and they, and the NYSP, stop by to say hi and check out what we're doing routinely.

This interest can be a strange thing to deal with.... I was driving home from the studio at 3 am one night and got pulled over by a state trooper. I was tired, irritated, and frankly, pissed... because I knew I had done nothing illegal and just wanted to get my three hours sleep before the next day's shooting.

The trooper walked up to my car, stuck his head in the window, and said: "Hi Patty! Have you started filming on the bridge yet?!"

James Cawley similiarly got pulled over at 1:30 am one day in May by an officer that wanted to know what he thought about "Star Trek XI"....

 

[Data Holmes]

That's rich. Make any contacts with the NYSP that might come in handy later for the production?

The fact that we give the businesses in the area more "new" folks as customers than live in the area year-round pretty much has the entire area thrilled we are there, which is "handy"... and they, and the NYSP, stop by to say hi and check out what we're doing routinely.

This interest can be a strange thing to deal with.... I was driving home from the studio at 3 am one night and got pulled over by a state trooper. I was tired, irritated, and frankly, pissed... because I knew I had done nothing illegal and just wanted to get my three hours sleep before the next day's shooting.

The trooper walked up to my car, stuck his head in the window, and said: "Hi Patty! Have you started filming on the bridge yet?!"

James Cawley similiarly got pulled over at 1:30 am one day in May by an officer that wanted to know what he thought about "Star Trek XI"....

roll your eyes now, but I'm sure it will help if you want to do more location shooting in the area.

 

[Lightinspire]

Hm, interesting. I have to agree with James Cawley's comments on his YouTube account though--the young man playing Cadet Kirk looks nothing like Cawley.

No, but he does look closer to a young Shatner, which Cawley looks nothing like.

So true..

 

[jamesmc]

Lightinspire, Are you that unhappy in your life that you now have to get snarky about my looks? I never had any intentions of even trying to look like Shatner! Whats next with you? Truly sad when you have nothing in your life but berating people on the internet. People who are nothing but passionate fans. Here is some advice, if you really dont like my show, dont watch it and dont post about it ! You have no right to insult people over something you have never worked to create.
Remember, Mr. (name removed), their really is no anonymity on the internet.
James Cawley