Potemkin Pictures' total budget this year is $2240, or ~$186.67 per month. We're more than halfway there. Last year's was a little less, but we produced 15 Star Trek fan films, received 8 donated tulip chairs for the briefing room, produced several new Klingon uniforms, and started on our shuttlecraft, well, shuttlecoupe. This year, we're adding two monster maroons and finishing up the shuttlecoupe, all along producing 13-15 productions (two of which were shot in January).
When we moved from our 2000 sqft warehouse in Albany, Georgia, we intentionally sought homes within our budget that had either a detached studio or partially-completed basement in which we could rebuild our sets. The search took about six weeks, and we found three suitable houses in Metro-Birmingham that met those requirements. We selected a residence with a 500 sqft detached boathouse and 1000 sqft partially-completed basement. The boathouse has 100 amp service, and the residence has 300 amp service. We gave up our brig set, our engineering set and our corridors, reduced our bridge by 60 sqft, but the rest fits nicely. Total Rent: $0. Increase to utility bills shooting once or twice a month: $35-$55 (which Linda and I pay for ourselves).
I'm not sure why there's some sort of need for these big 6,000-10,000 sqft studios. Sure, they're awesome to visit (we've been to the Starship Farragut sets four times), but Farragut themselves hardly used them. Star Trek Continues shot a healthy amount of episodes after obtaining them from the Farragut guys, but then moved on. Ray Tesi has them now, and he appears to be shooting on them fairly often, but the rental costs of these studios, along with utilities, has to be massive. Glen Wolfe is putting his new sets into an actual house. The Starship Exeter/Starbase Studio sets are gone.
I only hope that these larger fan studios can get enough donations to continue producing fan films.
When we moved from our 2000 sqft warehouse in Albany, Georgia, we intentionally sought homes within our budget that had either a detached studio or partially-completed basement in which we could rebuild our sets. The search took about six weeks, and we found three suitable houses in Metro-Birmingham that met those requirements. We selected a residence with a 500 sqft detached boathouse and 1000 sqft partially-completed basement. The boathouse has 100 amp service, and the residence has 300 amp service. We gave up our brig set, our engineering set and our corridors, reduced our bridge by 60 sqft, but the rest fits nicely. Total Rent: $0. Increase to utility bills shooting once or twice a month: $35-$55 (which Linda and I pay for ourselves).
I'm not sure why there's some sort of need for these big 6,000-10,000 sqft studios. Sure, they're awesome to visit (we've been to the Starship Farragut sets four times), but Farragut themselves hardly used them. Star Trek Continues shot a healthy amount of episodes after obtaining them from the Farragut guys, but then moved on. Ray Tesi has them now, and he appears to be shooting on them fairly often, but the rental costs of these studios, along with utilities, has to be massive. Glen Wolfe is putting his new sets into an actual house. The Starship Exeter/Starbase Studio sets are gone.
I only hope that these larger fan studios can get enough donations to continue producing fan films.
