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

[Maurice]

Not trying to argue here just stating the facts.

Fact. Your facts aren't facts.

You ignore the fact that those aren't science fiction series.

Three words: Men Into Space
Two words: Cowboy Bebop (many episodes can be watched without knowing the show's larger arc)

Anyway, the duration of a program has no bearing on its story quality. Once upon a time there used to be a lot of half-hour dramas, just they fell out of fashion in part because of cost reasons. Gunsmoke started that way, fer crissakes, and there's no way anyone is going to convince me that show's half-hour "Matt Gets It" episode is not a fine piece of drama.

 

[Gabriel]

Fact. Your facts aren't facts.

OK so I was wrong on mash but I am right on friends. Even though every episode of friends was only 30 minutes long ( 22 minutes really) it was The life( and since they are fiction, story) of a group of people and they progressed and grew throughout the series. Just about all the episodes connected into each other. And also on mash they still use the same characters and in the guidelines is 30 minutes no sequels that would mean you could use characters in other fan production Because that could be construed as a sequel.
So Friends is definitely not a good example of good story in 30 minutes. I’m not saying that can’t happen but it definitely did not happen there.

 

[Gabriel]

You ignore the fact that those aren't science fiction series. In fact, all your examples are comedies/sitcoms. I suspect most of the examples you might want to cite are either sitcoms or kid's shows

It’s nice to know that somebody else here it’s not making excuses for CBS. I tried to go along with it but my heart just wasn’t in it.
Even though friends was really not episodic since most of the episodes connected to each other. I’m in sure they have to recon stuff but it’s still the same story which is the story of their life During those ten years. Although I doubt we can convince them of that. Well I’m cutting out. If you need me I’ll be finding some fun threads like tng faffs or what ever. However if you want to keep on trying to argue with them I wish you the best of luck. That is unless you’re Romulan and you don’t believe in luck. (yes I cannot figure out the emoji thing here on Trekbbs).

They really weren’t one story told over 10 years. They weren’t connected, for the most part, like episodic. That’s why you could start almost at any point without having seen any of it. That’s why they were called episodic and not serialized shows.

Opinion can often be confused for facts.

I find that statement to be wrong. You probably don’t care And you know what we could argue all night long and we won’t change each other mind at all. All we really are doing is just yelling the same thing back at each other. I find a pointless don’t you.
I’m un watching this thread thread so don’t worry you won’t have to see my opinions again.
Also before I leave let me just make my opinions clear so there is no doubt
I definitely do not think the axanar guys are good guys. And I think that they are the straw that broke the camels back and cost the guidelines It would’ve happened eventually but they definitely sped it up.
The Time limit is too short.
I agree with every other guideline and think they are reasonable
CBS came down harsh. I don’t know if I will come down that harsh but I can see why they did it. ( frankly I would’ve just beaten them as best as I could with the lawsuit and use them as example to warn other fan productions not to go as far as they did)
I do believe in copyright laws and in the intellectual property and you should not make money off of other peoples work.
Friends is not episodic you can scream to moon that it is. it won’t change my mind.

 

[USS Intrepid]

I think you’re confusing continuity for story arc. They’re not the same thing.

Temporal Anomaly, by the way, was contacted because they were using footage from the TNG movies. The producer was able to negotiate releasing the film but had to recut it prior to release. He also had to replace the musical score with an original one, rather than the copyrighted Star Trek music he’d originally used.

 

[Matthew Raymond]

Three words: Men Into Space

Kinda scraping the bottom of the barrel with that one. Just went and watched on of the episodes, "Christmas on the Moon".

It is each man's dream to be at home with his family. Sometimes, for reasons beyond control, men are not able to get home. In this story, which hasn't happened yet, these men will not be able to get home for Christmas, because they spent man's first Christmas on the Moon!

Some thoughts:

• Is this your really subtle way of telling us that we should abolish Christmas?
• Apparently, it's important to keep you holiday plans from your wife until the very last minute.
• Someone tells you your wife has given birth, and you suddenly go from an atheist to a born-again Christian who thinks the very comet fragments he traveled for twelve hours to examine are somehow miracles sent from God specifically in answer to a prayer he just made 30 seconds ago. I find this insulting, and I'm not even a bloody atheist.
• Why are they walking around for hours on the Moon to get to a Moon base? Why didn't they just land there in the first place?
• If you're trying to get uncontaminated comet samples, why wouldn't you just fly TO THE COMET?!? (Or send a probe, but it's like 1960, so I'll cut them some slack on that one.)

Two words: Cowboy Bebop (many episodes can be watched without knowing the show's larger arc)

A vastly superior example. When I said "Kid's Shows", I was originally thinking "animated shows", and I should have stuck with that initial impulse. Animation basically gives you the equivalent of an unlimited special effects budget. This allows them to do things that can be literally impossible for a live action show. Most fan productions will not have the resources necessary to create a fully animated fan film, and even then, there are plenty of examples of 30-minute animated shows with multi-part stories, series story arcs and character arcs.

Anyway, the duration of a program has no bearing on its story quality. Once upon a time there used to be a lot of half-hour dramas, just they fell out of fashion in part because of cost reasons. Gunsmoke started that way, fer crissakes, and there's no way anyone is going to convince me that show's half-hour "Matt Gets It" episode is not a fine piece of drama.

This is kinda nibbling around the edges when the fundamental point is that a 30-minute format doesn't really lend itself to the genre of a modern, live-action sci-fi drama. Just because you CAN write a story for a 30-minute time slot doesn't mean that you're writing the same kind of story you'd write for a hour-long format in the same level of detail. In fact, you basically jettison conventional genre story structure.

Nor has anyone even bothered to argue whether or not it's easier for amateur writers to write shorter film scripts instead of long-form works like the ones they're paying homage to in the first place. I mean, you're literally asking fans who are (by order of the Guidelines) amateurs to use a less familiar time format. That may not be a huge challenge for a professional writer who's done scripts of varying length, but Joe Trekster might find it more challenging.

I think you’re confusing continuity for story arc. They’re not the same thing.

Character arcs are equally as valid, though. It's hard to keep a show going season after season if your characters never evolve.

 

[Krandor]

I am the last person to make excuses for CBS.
Frankly I find these guidelines a little harsh. I can see why CBS did it. I mean they do own Star Trek they should be only ones making money off of it. However I think they drop too big of a hammer. Because you’re in a fact most fan films were not making any money. Fact I think one like refuse to.

The guidelines are restrictive and unfortunatly had to be.

There was a long time when most fan films simply did an amateur production, made no money and there was an unspoken agreement between CBS and fan films where as long as it was like that CBS was hands off.

Things changed though especially with the rise of crowdfunding. Lots more money coming into fan films meant a lot more could be spent on. Honestly, with the exception of the few that made nonprofit companies, we really have no idea if all the money raised for a fan film went to the fan film. Financials were never released for basically any of them.

However, the concept of are you making money leads into a different question. As crowdfunding money grew, actors started being paid, crew started being paid and leads to the question... if a film is crowdfunded, doesn't sell anything, but some actors or crew on the production get paid to be in the production, does that count as making money? In my mind it does because those people gained money because of the production. Yes we can go down the rabbit hole of what about prop or a seamstress you buy a uniform from and so forth but it all comes back to it becomes very complicated on some of those productions to define what "making money" is. It was a far cry from "hey guys lets go film a fan film in my garage and I'll buy everybody pizza for lunch".

When cast and crew started to be paid in my mind that is when many productions went beyond what a fan film should be.

It is a sticky and thorny issue and since fan films had gotten to that point, CBS/P decided they needed to step in. Did the guidelines go too far in some areas? maybe. However once they decided guidelines needed to be made they had to make sure there was no wiggle room. Even as it is AP is trying everything he can to skirt around the rules he is under. Make the guidelines much less and AP (or somebody after him) would find any loophole you left.

Once hundred thousand dollar kickstarters started, this was unfortunately going to be the result.

 

[Csalem]

Looks like Interlude will reach its lower $13500 target. With donations being tripled today, about $600 was needed to reach that and already nearly there:
https://www.gofundme.com/f/interlude

 

[Krandor]

Looks like Interlude will reach its lower $13500 target. With donations being tripled today, about $600 was needed to reach that and already nearly there:
https://www.gofundme.com/f/interlude

When it takes lowering your budget and going to triple bonus points to hit your number I'm not sure I'd call it a win.

Now he still has to make the movie... and if he does you know AP will try to use it in his fundraising campaign.

I do hope Lane makes his movie and it's good but his involvement with AP is why there was no chance I'd donate to it. That and AP is somehow going to take credit for it and fundraise off of it.

If Lane had done something totally unconnected with AP I might have donated.

Though I can't help but find it ironic that the same time Lane is asking for $13,500 he has a blog up talking about how Orville, Expanse, and Trek are no longer on "free TV". (and the expanse really doesn't fit that definition at all since you had to pay for cable to get it).

 

[jespah]

...why did they settle with axanar? CBS is a multibillion-dollar corporation I doubt very much that legal team would not be able to handle the situation.

They were all set to go ahead. But over 90% of civil cases are settled before trial.

 

[Krandor]

They were all set to go ahead. But over 90% of civil cases are settled before trial.

From what i understand a settlement offer had been on the table from the start but AP wasn't interested in it. Once the judge screw out fair use as a defense AND said the axanar financials would be made public was when AP finally decided he really needed to settle. Without fair use he had no case and if financials came out he'd have no donors.

 

[BillJ]

I still don't understand why the conman hasn't caught the eye of law enforcement yet?

 

[KennyB]

Though I can't help but find it ironic that the same time Lane is asking for $13,500 he has a blog up talking about how Orville, Expanse, and Trek are no longer on "free TV". (and the expanse really doesn't fit that definition at all since you had to pay for cable to get it).

Yeah I just rolled my eyes when he dropped 3200 words on that while pitching "Thousand Dollar Thursday" with his mystery donors..........I still wonder how much of his props and costumes will make it into Axanar's hands. $9000 for costumes for a 10 minute film? Something ain't right there.........

 

[USS Intrepid]

I’m not sure why so many people seem to be confused about this point, but they’re GUIDELINES, not laws. We don’t have to follow them. If you want to risk getting C&Ded, no one is stopping you. You may fly under the radar or not, it really just depends on if the studio thinks you’re doing something problematic. And that’s exactly the same situation we were all in before the guidelines dropped. Except now, if you want to be safe, you can play in the guidelines sandbox.

The studios are not and never have been interested in taking down fanfilms. They’re not some monolithic bad guy. On the contrary, they’ve been pretty generous to most of us.

 

[fireproof78]

The studios are not and never have been interested in taking down fanfilms. They’re not some monolithic bad guy.

This really needs to be repeated.

 

[USS Intrepid]

This really needs to be repeated.

There’s only so many times you can bang your head off a brick wall.

 

[fireproof78]

There’s only so many times you can bang your head off a brick wall.

True...

 

[Krandor]

This really needs to be repeated.

Agreed. The studios don’t want to police fan films.

 

[Professor Zoom]

You ignore the fact that those aren't science fiction series. In fact, all your examples are comedies/sitcoms. I suspect most of the examples you might want to cite are either sitcoms or kid's shows.

What makes you confuse the demands of a network schedule for the demands of a genre? Is Sci Fi so special it can ONLY tell a story in 42 minutes? Or in a season?

Now, let's look at what two science fiction series similar to those of the Star Trek franchise and see what conclusion they came to.

No. Let's look at OTHER examples of shows. Tom Corbett, Space Academy, the 2nd season of Jason of Star Command--which went TO episodic stand alone stories, He-Man, Thundarr The Barbarian, Silverhawks, Bravestar, hell, Transformers. All of them told stories, complete in 30 minutes.

But, let's look at short films...

Here's a list of short films from 2018
Or, what about a lot of 20,000 titles....

La Jetee, for god's sake... Decidedly NOT a kid's film.

Network demands are NOT the demands of a genre. If you are making a film you DON'T have to do it the way a network does in order to fill time.

Will every story work as 30 minutes? 7 minutes? Of course not. You can't tell the story of Lord of the Rings in 30 minutes. But, then, trying to tell the story of the Hobbit in 9 hours is also terrible.

Storytelling is limited by the imagination of the creator, not the the time slot.

OK so I was wrong on mash but I am right on friends. Even though every episode of friends was only 30 minutes long ( 22 minutes really) it was The life( and since they are fiction, story) of a group of people and they progressed and grew throughout the series. Just about all the episodes connected into each other. And also on mash they still use the same characters and in the guidelines is 30 minutes no sequels that would mean you could use characters in other fan production Because that could be construed as a sequel.
So Friends is definitely not a good example of good story in 30 minutes. I’m not saying that can’t happen but it definitely did not happen there.

If you can watch any episode in any order without having to know what happened before, it is most certainly episodic. Friends is an episodic show. Period. It's not like The Good Place. I can show any episode from season 2 of Friends to a stranger and they will get it. I can't do that with The Good Place. Or Atlanta.

And also, Friends generally has 2 to 3 stories in a single episode. So, really each story is taking anywhere between 7 to 10 minutes of actual screen time.

 

[Admiral2]

Kinda scraping the bottom of the barrel with that one.

Then how about this one?
The Twilight Zone

A good hunk of the stories in the original run of Rod Serling's creation (especially in the first season) were science fiction stories, and it wasn't until the last season that those stories were longer than a half hour, so not only is it possible to do well, it's already been done well enough to win acclaim.

Or are you going to sit there and say "Eye of The Beholder" and "To Serve Man" sucked?

 

[Professor Zoom]

Then how about this one?
The Twilight Zone

FUUUUUUUUCCCK. Of course. That's a FANTASTIC example.
I can't believe it hasn't been brought up in this discussion.

A good hunk of the stories in the original run of Rod Serling's creation (especially in the first season) were science fiction stories, and it wasn't until the last season that those stories were longer than a half hour, so not only is it possible to do well, it's already been done well enough to win acclaim.

Or are you going to sit there and say "Eye of The Beholder" and "To Serve Man" sucked?

They are perfect examples of telling a complete story in a half hour format that are rich in character, strong in substance and theme.

I feel ashamed I didn't think of it.