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CBS/Paramount sues to stop Axanar

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King Daniel Beyond said:
Ever since Horizon, I'm convinced the way for fan films to go is high quality CG sets. A little bit of shakey cam and you'll hardly notice. And this from someone who used to passionately hate greenscreen and CG sets.
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Yes, Tommy and crew worked wonders with their small budget. And even before that, the difference in green screen work between the beginning of Hidden Frontier and the end of the Helena Chronicles is light years apart. But even at the start, you could tell that HF were trying to tell stories and have character arcs, even amongst all the pew pew!
 
King Daniel Beyond said:
Ever since Horizon, I'm convinced the way for fan films to go is high quality CG sets. A little bit of shakey cam and you'll hardly notice. And this from someone who used to passionately hate greenscreen and CG sets.
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And a decent, engaging story. Also, trim, trim, trim! Fan films always linger too long on the "actors" pause too long between cuts and in general move at a very torpid pace. EDIT EDIT EDIT.
 
'Once Upon a Time' makes extensive use of CGI sets and minimal sets with greenscreen for their castle scenes- it is a great way to add production value on a budget.
My only problem with how Star Trek Horizon did it was that was hard to watch with my vision issues. Films like 'Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow' (which also made extensive use of virtual sets) are too blurry/soft focus for me to watch without getting a massive headache. The story though was excellent and it was nice to see events taking place in the NX era instead of the TOS where most fan films set theirs.
 
King Daniel Beyond said:
Ever since Horizon, I'm convinced the way for fan films to go is high quality CG sets. A little bit of shakey cam and you'll hardly notice. And this from someone who used to passionately hate greenscreen and CG sets.
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This will probably be the next frontier for IP holders. Audio processing used to require elaborate installations only a dedicated company could afford. Now its good enough to use a laptop for many purposes. Scene and character CGI clearly will follow suit.

I think the guidelines' key protection on this is "no continuing stories". Even if introduction of a new character on a show results in a hundred fan filmlets trying to forecast/define the character, the audience won't see these productions as "the real timeline", because this content won't be allowed to have followup evolution of the alternative character framing.
 
Jedi_Master said:
And a decent, engaging story. Also, trim, trim, trim! Fan films always linger too long on the "actors" pause too long between cuts and in general move at a very torpid pace. EDIT EDIT EDIT.
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This. Oh my God, this.

I do a lot of beta reading, editing, and reviewing in the indie writing community. I realize it's not the same, but hear me out.

I was recently reading a pretty interesting space opera story. Except for the first paragraph of the first chapter, which was a freakin' weather report. The story was not a natural disaster tale or the like. No. It was about aliens, etc.

The author had a first sentence, first paragraph, first page, and first chapter to grab my attention amidst a thousand other things that capture me every single day. My husband, my family, work, looking for more work, my own writing, social life both on and off line, fitness and other health stuff, home management, entertainment, etc. You know the drill.

That writer squandered the first two items on my list with a weather report which was utterly irrelevant to everything else in the entire book.

I predict a fine and busy future for anyone who will edit the crap outta fan film scripts.
 
jespah said:
This. Oh my God, this.

I do a lot of beta reading, editing, and reviewing in the indie writing community. I realize it's not the same, but hear me out.

I was recently reading a pretty interesting space opera story. Except for the first paragraph of the first chapter, which was a freakin' weather report. The story was not a natural disaster tale or the like. No. It was about aliens, etc.

The author had a first sentence, first paragraph, first page, and first chapter to grab my attention amidst a thousand other things that capture me every single day. My husband, my family, work, looking for more work, my own writing, social life both on and off line, fitness and other health stuff, home management, entertainment, etc. You know the drill.

That writer squandered the first two items on my list with a weather report which was utterly irrelevant to everything else in the entire book.

I predict a fine and busy future for anyone who will edit the crap outta fan film scripts.
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My Dad just wrote a novel, and self-published. It is 198 pages long. It should be about...75 pages long. Maybe.
Both fan films and fan fiction suffer from the "creators" being too in love with their own material, so they refuse to cut anything. Professionals appreciate the need to ruthlessly trim their own work, and have people come behind them to trim even more.
 
Jedi_Master said:
My Dad just wrote a novel, and self-published. It is 198 pages long. It should be about...75 pages long. Maybe.
Both fan films and fan fiction suffer from the "creators" being too in love with their own material, so they refuse to cut anything. Professionals appreciate the need to ruthlessly trim their own work, and have people come behind them to trim even more.
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Until they become so successful that editors are afraid to touch their work. I'm looking at you, J. K. Rowling and George R. R. Martin.
 
King Daniel Beyond said:
Ever since Horizon, I'm convinced the way for fan films to go is high quality CG sets. A little bit of shakey cam and you'll hardly notice. And this from someone who used to passionately hate greenscreen and CG sets.
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While I applaud Tommy for getting HORIZON over the finish line, the CG sets weren't spectacular and the overuse of lens flare and such to mask the flaws in the sets made it hard to watch the film.

Jedi_Master said:
And a decent, engaging story. Also, trim, trim, trim! Fan films always linger too long on the "actors" pause too long between cuts and in general move at a very torpid pace. EDIT EDIT EDIT.
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Story first. That's what we've been saying for a long time on this forum, particularly in our reviews of fan films and in the fan film writer's thread. It's easier to fix a lot of problems at the script level, yet most productions still don't put in the work upfront and rush to the stage instead.

+1 on the editing. Most fan films move at a snooze-inducing pace, except for STARSHIP EXETER's "The Tressaurian Intersection." Boy does that film move, especially in its last act.
 
Earthrise said:
Until they become so successful that editors are afraid to touch their work. I'm looking at you, J. K. Rowling and George R. R. Martin.
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The best example is Peter Jackson and his bloated reimagining of The Hobbit. Fleshing out the story to make it fit the LOTR timeline a bit better made sense, but there obviously was no one there to put the brakes on him when he got carried away.
 
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Sgt_G said:
I'm a retired weather forecaster, and even -I- would not do that!!

However, I did use a weather background to explain the science-theory stuff in my story Timelines: http://www.trekbbs.com/threads/short-story-set-in-st-tos-era-timelines.221197/
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Relevance? Sure. Want to show an idyllic prelude? Bring it on.

But this had zip to do with the rest of the book.

Getting back on topic - people don't have to talk over each other, but if the pauses are long, then you're wasting your fifteen minutes. Robert Altman used to layer dialogue. It's probably not an easy thing to do, to make sure everyone can be understood. So I'm not suggesting that, but the speak a line, pause, change cameras, pause for a second, next actor speaks a line? Ain't nobody got time for that.
 
I'm not an actor, but I think what might be the problem for these amatures is they want to recite every word of every line, so they pause to remember what comes next. It almost might be better if they had a generalized script and adlib most of it. It might come across as more natural that way. Maybe. But what do I know? I'm not an actor.
 
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MikeH92467 said:
The best example is Peter Jackson and his bloated reimagining of The Hobbit. Fleshing out the story to make it fit the LOTR timeline a bit better made sense, but there obviously was no one there to put the brakes on him when he got carried away.
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Was that Jackson, or the studios insisting that he pad out the Hobbit into a trilogy for financial reasons? Its not like they can write new stories/new books/spinoffs.... stuffing the Hobbit was the only chance they had of milking the property further.
 
Jedi_Master said:
And a decent, engaging story. Also, trim, trim, trim! Fan films always linger too long on the "actors" pause too long between cuts and in general move at a very torpid pace. EDIT EDIT EDIT.
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See, this is why my favorite "Trek" series was the animated series. Sure it's cheap Filmation animation. But 22-minute stories zip along nicely without a lot of filler. :-)
 
I'll just have to be the dissenting opinion because I like a little meat on my adventures, a little time to get into the characters, have the tension boil a bit and just when you think it's over the villain has one last trick up his/her sleeve. I'm not talking fat or fill but definitely I don't wish to live on a steady diet of twice cooked bone.
 
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King Daniel Beyond said:
Ever since Horizon, I'm convinced the way for fan films to go is high quality CG sets. A little bit of shakey cam and you'll hardly notice. And this from someone who used to passionately hate greenscreen and CG sets.
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I like CG and SFX too. With that said a well crafted story on a shoestring budget doesn't necessarily mean those are mandatory.

An away mission shot outdoors, a crewman's log as a disastrous event unfolds, a high stakes negotiation with clever plot twists, marooned on a planet, are examples that come to mind.

The Twilight Zone with their 1/2 hour format told some fantastic stories. With some ingenuity a fan film could do the same in a Star Trek context.

That's something I think LFIM & Co. don't understand because to them it's about being better than everyone with heaps of accolades and illegally obtained profits in their pockets.
 
Bingo. What about telling a straightforward romance? Costumes and makeup, existing sets and/or outside. Or a medical drama? A courtroom battle? Some sort of sporting event?
 
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