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CBS/Paramount sues to stop Axanar

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Jedi_Master said:
Going back a bit to the blog post quoted a few pages ago... When in human history has the "All the other kids are doing it" defense ever worked?
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NAFTA

Tom said:
Here is another thing no one has mentioned. There is absolutely no reason why he can not have a paying job and work on Axanar on the side. How can he say he works on Axanar full time. What has been done to show it's a full time job over the past 3 years??? I have a full time job myself, yet look at all the stuff I do. There is no reason in the world he should not have a regular job. He is not building the sets by himself, others are doing it. This is just another reason that him making a salary is troublesome.
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But heartell he does have a job, he is CEO of Propworx, and Propworx continues to hold auctions.

Admiral Cain said:
And now that the production has stopped what work is there to be done? No more Captain's Logs, fulfillment blogs, con going, giving interviews, podcasting, patch making, set building, etc. As I have said before, I wouldn't spend one more red cent on Axanar until I got the green light to proceed.
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Telling everyone on the net that they don't know what they are talking about is a full time job.

CaptGrumpy said:
Watch AP try to collect unemployment :guffaw:
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Do you think the books are good enough, if they can't find postage in the million dollars?

Professor Zoom said:
I'm actually going to argue, Downfall video parodies, I don't believe, qualify as Godwinning a thread. I think that requires use of Hitler in an argument. Those were just making fun of the situation. Satire, perhaps. But, I do think Squiggy's recent mentioning of Hitler, that Godwinned the thread.
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yes, but figuratively, or literally?
 
Professor Zoom said:
I'm actually going to argue, Downfall video parodies, I don't believe, qualify as Godwinning a thread. I think that requires use of Hitler in an argument. Those were just making fun of the situation. Satire, perhaps. But, I do think Squiggy's recent mentioning of Hitler, that Godwinned the thread.
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Thank you very much :cool:
 
Let me start out by saying I do have a dog in this fight. I'm a fan of fan films. I really enjoy Continues and New Voyages, I like Farragut, and loved (and tried to help with) Exeter. And yes, I really liked Prelude to Axanar. I want to see more of these productions, even if they are a hit and miss as far as quality. At the same time, Exeter taught me a valuable lesson... good things I want more of might not have a future.

I don't know Alec Peters personally. And besides having seen Prelude to Axanar, I wasn't really aware of the Axanar production and how things were being run. My current interest in this is because this one production has brought undo attention on fan productions and I was curious why?

The following is my opinion on how Axanar got to this point based on what I currently know. If I learn more, that opinion might change... and I do have a ton of questions that I'd love to have answered. The fact that those questions still linger is the troubling part and has influenced my current opinion.


Prelude to...
As I said, I really enjoyed Prelude to Axanar. It was solid, quality work... but also didn't take too many chances. This is exactly what one should expect from this type of demo film trying to show the potential for the production team.

What surprised me was that the original budget was for about $10,000... but when they raised more than $100,000 to pay for it they found a way to spend all that money. This was not $100,000 worth of quality on the screen, even if people were now getting paid. The production took in way more than they needed, but also needed to come up with a way to break even. And I'm guessing that they started throwing money at anything they could to end up with a net total of $0.00 (or less). In this situation, having money left over would be a bad thing.

This was actors in front of a blue screen giving commentary. So this was basically a CGI showcase piece. And while a number of people contributed to the effects, Tobias Richter was paid some $15,000 for his work (while others worked for free). The costumes cost nearly $14,000 and the makeup was another $7,440. That is more than $25,000 over the original budget for the whole thing.

Honestly, I think this was the start of the slippery slope. While in the past it was understood that people making fan films walk away from their endeavors with less money than when they started, the Axanar team realized that when you have money to burn maybe they could start paying people for their work to help zero out the books.


A fan feature film
Axanar was going to be big... a film length fan film. And was going to need quite a bit of money even if you use pre-existing sets. Peters drove home how expensive this was going to be by originally pledging $50,000 of his own money to help fund the project.

Fans understood the scope of this project and were willing to go along with it... throwing a ton of money at them to do this.

Based on their experience with Prelude to Axanar, when you have more money than you need, but still need to reach $0.00 (or less) in the end, you avoid anything cost effective. But why waste that money when you could invest it in something productive? Sounds innocent enough, and even better than trying to throw that money away... right?


A professional studio
Why not build a standing studio with the additional funds? It would help with the future cost of fan films, right? But as long as it is there, why not use it for non-fan projects too? Those projects could pay for staffing, up keep and maybe make some more money (not encumbered by Trek IP) for all involved.

Again, this sounds innocent enough... as long as you avoid remembering that the startup funds for the studio were made from contributions from fans wanting to see a Star Trek fan film. Ares Studio's start up costs would be provided by Trek fans and when the film was finished Peters and company would have a functioning business ready for other projects.

Remember, they started paying people (breaking one of those unwritten rules of fan films) and nothing happen. No one was hurt, and the fans loved what they produced. How would this next step of having the fans pay for a private studio be any different? If the rationalization worked before, it becomes even easier to apply it again in other situations.


Kick-gogo
I remember when fan films explicitly stated that they couldn't accept money. They requested donations be in the form of gift cards to places where they could get supplies (like Home Depot).

Some where along the line this changed... and I think it was when crowd funding service sites started to pop up. These sites help bring in liquid funds, but also helped justify the accounting of them (because the public could see how much was coming in). And this wouldn't have been a problem if it stuck to a strict donations system. The real problem is when you include rewards/gifts for those who donate a certain amount. This quid pro quo negates the "donation" aspect by piggy backing it on the sales of items.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the system itself is flawed... but for a fan film based on someone else's IP, if those rewards/gifts have anything to do with that IP, then what we have is an exchange of money for unlicensed products. It gets even worse when you start to expand the rewards/gifts systems into an actual store with multiple products.

These sites helped rationalize this sale of unlicensed products by calling them "donations" and "gifts". But once you get comfortable enough with that rationalization, why restrict yourself to just these crowd funding sites? In fact, one could rationalize that it is better for the fans and the production to skip the middle man who would want a cut of the money...uh, I mean "donations".

Again we have something that started out rather innocent and it slowly became much more... as in the case of Axanar Coffee and Ares Digital. Each new rationalization being justified by the success of (or lack of push back from) the previous rationalizations.


As long as we have this space...
So the studio space was rented and paid for for a full year upfront with the funds from fans. But the production itself wasn't ready yet. Besides some construction and fulfillment processing, it seems like a lot of unused space.

And the lead person, Peters, would like to earn his salary by being on site full time even though he has another business on the side... Propworx. Would it be okay to move Propworx into the studio space? Some aspects of Axanar (like domain names) are actually associated with Propworx anyways. Who would it really hurt to have them all under the same roof?

Again, this seems innocent enough and easy to justify to one's self. But Propworx is a for-profit business which originally had an expenditure for paying for rent, but now doesn't seem to have to worry about that. So what we end up with is a business who's rent is paid for by donations based on rewards/gifts based on someone else's IP. So unless Propworx is paying rent to Axanar/Ares, it is directly benefitting from Trek fans' donations intended for something else.


Normalization of Deviance
If you looked at this for the first time with CBS/Paramount filing a lawsuit against Axanar/Peters, it is hard to understand how Axanar/Peters could have screwed up so badly. Even a cursory examination of their practices produces a staggering list of what they were doing wrong, and one can hardly believe they could be doing all this and not realize what they were doing.

But here is the thing... they didn't just jump to the final situation. They eased them selves into this with a long series of rationalizations. Each one not seeming any worse than the one before.

How did Axanar/Peters end up in hot water? I'm sure you guys know the boiling frog anecdote. No fan production in their right mind would do what Axanar/Peters were doing, not even Axanar/Peters! When they jumped in to the water, it was just fine... and then they slowly turned up the heat on themselves to get to this point. Little by little, they cooked themselves without realizing it until the end.


Zombie Fans
Okay, while I don't actually believe that Axanar fans are mindless, the primary common trait among them seems to be cognitive dissonance. Logic, facts and reason have all taken a backseat to an emotional connection. We are talking about people who put their own money into this, and most likely spent some effort promoting this to friends. And for the longest time they only heard how this project they invested in was going to be the best Trek film (fan or professional) ever.

Honestly, why would any of us be surprised to find that emotion trumps logic, facts, reason or even personal self interest. Nobody wants to hear that they were wrong, that they were taken by someone or something they trust. And yeah, their first reaction is going to be to shoot the messenger.


What's next?
From my vantage point (here in the cheap seats) a lot of this could have been avoided by not mixing some of these endeavors. Keeping Axanar Productions separate from Ares Studio could have meant that Axanar would have been a pretty standard fan film using CBS/Paramount IP with Ares insulated from that. Of course the problem would have been that without Axanar (with CBS/Paramount IP) few would have contributed to the building of Ares. Ares was only possible on the coattails of Axanar.

I can take an educated guess at what might happen next in the lawsuit. If I were CBS/Paramount, this is what I'd do first...
  1. Ask the court to put the Ares Studio location under temporary seizure and have the court assign an outside auditing firm to do a full accounting of assets.
  2. Ask the court to put any accounts (within the past 18 months) associated with the Kickstarter campaigns, Indiegogo campaign, Ares Digital/Studio and Axanar Productions under temporary seizure and have the court assign an outside auditing firm to do a full accounting of all funds. I'd include a notation that because the defendant's legal counsel is being supplied pro bono that this shouldn't incur any undo hardship on them.
  3. Ask that the accounting firm determine the minimum amount of funds needed to supply and complete fulfillment obligations and maintain the studio site, then ask that the court hold all other liquid assets in a trust pending the outcome of the trial. Again noting that because the defendant's legal counsel is being supplied pro bono that this shouldn't incur any undo hardship on them.
  4. Once access to the Ares Studio location is returned to the defendants, ask the court for an order restricting the defendants from the removal or sales of any of the physical assets on the site found in the accounting until the outcome of the trial.

Though I know I would never get answers for these, here are a few of my wish list questions that donors/backers/volunteers really should be asking of Axanar/Peters...
... about Prelude to Axanar:
  1. In the production of Prelude to Axanar (PtA) there was nearly $14,000 spent on costumes. The costumes themselves could be considered assets, why wasn't their value (minus any depreciation) noted in the final Income and Expenses report?
  2. There was $2,000 spent on a TOS Bridge Chair for PtA, which I was unable to spot in PtA. This set piece could be considered an asset, why wasn't it's value (minus any depreciation) noted in the final Income and Expenses report?
  3. Being a fan film, people working on such an endeavor are usually doing so as fans. While it is understandable that members of some unions are required to receive a minimum salary, other contributing artists should be donating their efforts. A number of people contributed to the CGI effects on PtA, but the report shows $15,000 going to Tobias Richter. Why was Richter getting paid? Why weren't others?
  4. Being a fan film, people working on such an endeavor are usually doing so as fans. Why was there $7,440 spent on make-up?
  5. In general, why weren't the value (minus any depreciation) of any of the physical assets accounted for at the end of production? Why weren't these accounted for as being transferred to Axanar budget?
  6. Who is the owner of these remaining assets?

... about Axanar/Ares/Propworx:
  1. When looking at donations, I wasn't able to find records of donations outside of Kickstarter/Indiegogo sources. How are more direct contributions recorded? Why weren't these funding avenues included in the financial report?
  2. When the project was started there was a promise of $50,000 from Peters. There is no listing of this contribution, but there is a listing of Peters receiving $38,000. Are there records showing how Peters went from giving $50,000 of his own money to the production to getting $38,000 of fan donations to the production?
  3. Being a fan film, people working on such an endeavor are usually doing so as fans. Why was there $15,000 spent on make-up? Why was this major expense paid for before the start of filming?
  4. There was a listing of $7,000 for PtA costs. Shouldn't that have been off set by assets transferred from PtA?
  5. There was a listing of $20,598.44 for equipment. Is that coming out of Ares Studio's budget or Axanar Productions'? In the end, who owns this equipment?
  6. There was a listing of $49,674.48 for building renovations. Is that coming out of Ares Studio's budget or Axanar Productions'?
  7. There was a listing of $36,372.56 for set construction. Is that coming out of Ares Studio's budget or Axanar Productions'?
  8. There was listings of $9,163.62 for auto and $9,018.29 for travel. Why are these included, were they essential to the film's production?
  9. There was a listing of $196,510.41 for rent. Propworx has been operating out of the Ares Studio location, has Propworx been paying Ares Studio rent for this space? If it has been, how much and why wasn't it listed as income?
  10. Ares Studio (a for profit venture), Axanar Productions (a fan film, and assumed non-profit endeavor) and Propworx (a pre-existing company) are occupying the same space and appear to share many of the same resources. Is there an accounting of which funds/assets/labor are going to each? Are proper boundaries and guidelines set up to keep these entities from intermingling?
  11. Why weren't the funding campaigns for Ares Studio and Axanar Productions conducted separately? How are the funds divided between these two entities?
  12. If the film had gone forward to completion, who would have had final ownership of all physical assets remaining at the end of production? Would their value (minus any depreciation) been noted in a final statement? Who decides the final disposition of assets at the conclusion of the film?
  13. What aspects of the studio, offices and equipment are listed as being part of Ares Studio verses Axanar Productions?
  14. Are salaries coming out of Ares Studio's budget or out of Axanar Productions' budget? How is work done on Propworx differentiated from Axanar/Ares?
I really don't think a lot of this was well thought out before they started, and I'm not sure they would have been welcoming of anyone asking hard questions that would have made them reconsider their strategies. Still, I just don't see malicious intent behind this. Between rationalizing questionable practices and the scope of the project ballooning so quickly on them, by the time they started seeing that they had gone too far they were too deep to back out or change course.

Sadly, when some of this started to come to light last summer, rather than attempting to be pro-active and fix some of the issues, Axanar banked on CBS/Paramount allowing all this to slide to avoid fan backlash. That (in my opinion) was a bad gamble.
 
in an audio blog post in August, AP and his director spoke of Ares as an asset to be built out with the intention of attracting equity investors and shooting productions to be sold back into the likes of CBS. Even before that, they wrote of plans to build out an end to end pipe of production and distribution for SF entertainment in the pay per view internet/new media environment. Further, they openly and repeatedly admitted they were violating IP conditions of CBS.

are we somehow saying that people who could visualize and articulate all this never once over the same period recognized they were crossing any lines by building a studio with IP-funded products-for-donations, that they just all the way to the end unknowingly frog-boiled themselves, out of superfan enthusiasm?

the questions are great and it will doubtless be part of what CBS asks as they take a crowbar to the accounts.
 
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Shaw's timeline of possibility is well thought out and could indeed be the way events actually happened. But muCephi makes a legitimate point in questioning whether anyone on the Axa-Team* ever recognized the hole they were digging.

I tend to think they just said "screw it" and bought bigger shovels.
 
Ryan Thomas Riddle said:
They do. James Cawley is a professional Elvis impersonator. Vic Mignona is a voice actor, doing mostly English dubs of Anime shows.
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GSchnitzer said:
And the other Producers work at real jobs too--and, of course, dig deep into their wallets zero make these silly things happen without much notoriety.
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OK, thanks. I knew they used to do that stuff, but I wasn't sure if they still were.
I have another question. Everybody keeps talking about the donation perks that Axanar is giving out, but Renegades also has perks, including ship models, and I think possibly even a novel. Is there a difference in the ways they are doing them that makes Renegades OK, but Axanar not?
 
JD said:
I have another question. Everybody keeps talking about the donation perks that Axanar is giving out, but Renegades also has perks, including ship models, and I think possibly even a novel. Is there a difference in the ways they are doing them that makes Renegades OK, but Axanar not?
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As I understand it, it's not ok. However, TPTB are choosing not to go after them, as is their right under copyright law. However, imo, Axanar is their target because of the sheer number of offenses that they are committing against the Star Trek IP.

Also, I think they may be going after AP & co because they effectively spit in TPTB's eye. CBS/Paramount issued a public statement saying that Axanar was not sanctioned or licensed by them & yet AP & co persisted in their project.
This is a quote from CBS/Para from the Wrap on 12/30/15 that explains their point of view:
“‘Star Trek’ is a treasured franchise in which CBS and Paramount continue to produce new original content for its large universe of fans. The producers of ‘Axanar’ are making a ‘Star Trek’ picture they describe themselves as a fully-professional independent ‘Star Trek’ film. Their activity clearly violates our ‘Star Trek’ copyrights which, of course, we will continue to vigorously protect.”
 
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urbandefault said:
Shaw's timeline of possibility is well thought out and could indeed be the way events actually happened. But muCephi makes a legitimate point in questioning whether anyone on the Axa-Team* ever recognized the hole they were digging.

I tend to think they just said "screw it" and bought bigger shovels.
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That they seemed intent on carving out an entire set of ancillary products based on their Axaverse seems to support that. I can see the scope creep with regard to the film and by extension, Ares Studios, but to start selling coffee, etc. while sending C&Ds to people making Ares models on Shapeways is a whole 'nother can of worms.
 
Shaw said:
Let me start out by saying I do have a dog in this fight. I'm a fan of fan films. I really enjoy Continues and New Voyages, I like Farragut, and loved (and tried to help with) Exeter. And yes, I really liked Prelude to Axanar. I want to see more of these productions, even if they are a hit and miss as far as quality. At the same time, Exeter taught me a valuable lesson... good things I want more of might not have a future.

I don't know Alec Peters personally. And besides having seen Prelude to Axanar, I wasn't really aware of the Axanar production and how things were being run. My current interest in this is because this one production has brought undo attention on fan productions and I was curious why?

The following is my opinion on how Axanar got to this point based on what I currently know. If I learn more, that opinion might change... and I do have a ton of questions that I'd love to have answered. The fact that those questions still linger is the troubling part and has influenced my current opinion.


Prelude to...
As I said, I really enjoyed Prelude to Axanar. It was solid, quality work... but also didn't take too many chances. This is exactly what one should expect from this type of demo film trying to show the potential for the production team.

What surprised me was that the original budget was for about $10,000... but when they raised more than $100,000 to pay for it they found a way to spend all that money. This was not $100,000 worth of quality on the screen, even if people were now getting paid. The production took in way more than they needed, but also needed to come up with a way to break even. And I'm guessing that they started throwing money at anything they could to end up with a net total of $0.00 (or less). In this situation, having money left over would be a bad thing.

This was actors in front of a blue screen giving commentary. So this was basically a CGI showcase piece. And while a number of people contributed to the effects, Tobias Richter was paid some $15,000 for his work (while others worked for free). The costumes cost nearly $14,000 and the makeup was another $7,440. That is more than $25,000 over the original budget for the whole thing.

Honestly, I think this was the start of the slippery slope. While in the past it was understood that people making fan films walk away from their endeavors with less money than when they started, the Axanar team realized that when you have money to burn maybe they could start paying people for their work to help zero out the books.


A fan feature film
Axanar was going to be big... a film length fan film. And was going to need quite a bit of money even if you use pre-existing sets. Peters drove home how expensive this was going to be by originally pledging $50,000 of his own money to help fund the project.

Fans understood the scope of this project and were willing to go along with it... throwing a ton of money at them to do this.

Based on their experience with Prelude to Axanar, when you have more money than you need, but still need to reach $0.00 (or less) in the end, you avoid anything cost effective. But why waste that money when you could invest it in something productive? Sounds innocent enough, and even better than trying to throw that money away... right?


A professional studio
Why not build a standing studio with the additional funds? It would help with the future cost of fan films, right? But as long as it is there, why not use it for non-fan projects too? Those projects could pay for staffing, up keep and maybe make some more money (not encumbered by Trek IP) for all involved.

Again, this sounds innocent enough... as long as you avoid remembering that the startup funds for the studio were made from contributions from fans wanting to see a Star Trek fan film. Ares Studio's start up costs would be provided by Trek fans and when the film was finished Peters and company would have a functioning business ready for other projects.

Remember, they started paying people (breaking one of those unwritten rules of fan films) and nothing happen. No one was hurt, and the fans loved what they produced. How would this next step of having the fans pay for a private studio be any different? If the rationalization worked before, it becomes even easier to apply it again in other situations.


Kick-gogo
I remember when fan films explicitly stated that they couldn't accept money. They requested donations be in the form of gift cards to places where they could get supplies (like Home Depot).

Some where along the line this changed... and I think it was when crowd funding service sites started to pop up. These sites help bring in liquid funds, but also helped justify the accounting of them (because the public could see how much was coming in). And this wouldn't have been a problem if it stuck to a strict donations system. The real problem is when you include rewards/gifts for those who donate a certain amount. This quid pro quo negates the "donation" aspect by piggy backing it on the sales of items.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the system itself is flawed... but for a fan film based on someone else's IP, if those rewards/gifts have anything to do with that IP, then what we have is an exchange of money for unlicensed products. It gets even worse when you start to expand the rewards/gifts systems into an actual store with multiple products.

These sites helped rationalize this sale of unlicensed products by calling them "donations" and "gifts". But once you get comfortable enough with that rationalization, why restrict yourself to just these crowd funding sites? In fact, one could rationalize that it is better for the fans and the production to skip the middle man who would want a cut of the money...uh, I mean "donations".

Again we have something that started out rather innocent and it slowly became much more... as in the case of Axanar Coffee and Ares Digital. Each new rationalization being justified by the success of (or lack of push back from) the previous rationalizations.


As long as we have this space...
So the studio space was rented and paid for for a full year upfront with the funds from fans. But the production itself wasn't ready yet. Besides some construction and fulfillment processing, it seems like a lot of unused space.

And the lead person, Peters, would like to earn his salary by being on site full time even though he has another business on the side... Propworx. Would it be okay to move Propworx into the studio space? Some aspects of Axanar (like domain names) are actually associated with Propworx anyways. Who would it really hurt to have them all under the same roof?

Again, this seems innocent enough and easy to justify to one's self. But Propworx is a for-profit business which originally had an expenditure for paying for rent, but now doesn't seem to have to worry about that. So what we end up with is a business who's rent is paid for by donations based on rewards/gifts based on someone else's IP. So unless Propworx is paying rent to Axanar/Ares, it is directly benefitting from Trek fans' donations intended for something else.


Normalization of Deviance
If you looked at this for the first time with CBS/Paramount filing a lawsuit against Axanar/Peters, it is hard to understand how Axanar/Peters could have screwed up so badly. Even a cursory examination of their practices produces a staggering list of what they were doing wrong, and one can hardly believe they could be doing all this and not realize what they were doing.

But here is the thing... they didn't just jump to the final situation. They eased them selves into this with a long series of rationalizations. Each one not seeming any worse than the one before.

How did Axanar/Peters end up in hot water? I'm sure you guys know the boiling frog anecdote. No fan production in their right mind would do what Axanar/Peters were doing, not even Axanar/Peters! When they jumped in to the water, it was just fine... and then they slowly turned up the heat on themselves to get to this point. Little by little, they cooked themselves without realizing it until the end.


Zombie Fans
Okay, while I don't actually believe that Axanar fans are mindless, the primary common trait among them seems to be cognitive dissonance. Logic, facts and reason have all taken a backseat to an emotional connection. We are talking about people who put their own money into this, and most likely spent some effort promoting this to friends. And for the longest time they only heard how this project they invested in was going to be the best Trek film (fan or professional) ever.

Honestly, why would any of us be surprised to find that emotion trumps logic, facts, reason or even personal self interest. Nobody wants to hear that they were wrong, that they were taken by someone or something they trust. And yeah, their first reaction is going to be to shoot the messenger.


What's next?
From my vantage point (here in the cheap seats) a lot of this could have been avoided by not mixing some of these endeavors. Keeping Axanar Productions separate from Ares Studio could have meant that Axanar would have been a pretty standard fan film using CBS/Paramount IP with Ares insulated from that. Of course the problem would have been that without Axanar (with CBS/Paramount IP) few would have contributed to the building of Ares. Ares was only possible on the coattails of Axanar.

I can take an educated guess at what might happen next in the lawsuit. If I were CBS/Paramount, this is what I'd do first...
  1. Ask the court to put the Ares Studio location under temporary seizure and have the court assign an outside auditing firm to do a full accounting of assets.
  2. Ask the court to put any accounts (within the past 18 months) associated with the Kickstarter campaigns, Indiegogo campaign, Ares Digital/Studio and Axanar Productions under temporary seizure and have the court assign an outside auditing firm to do a full accounting of all funds. I'd include a notation that because the defendant's legal counsel is being supplied pro bono that this shouldn't incur any undo hardship on them.
  3. Ask that the accounting firm determine the minimum amount of funds needed to supply and complete fulfillment obligations and maintain the studio site, then ask that the court hold all other liquid assets in a trust pending the outcome of the trial. Again noting that because the defendant's legal counsel is being supplied pro bono that this shouldn't incur any undo hardship on them.
  4. Once access to the Ares Studio location is returned to the defendants, ask the court for an order restricting the defendants from the removal or sales of any of the physical assets on the site found in the accounting until the outcome of the trial.

Though I know I would never get answers for these, here are a few of my wish list questions that donors/backers/volunteers really should be asking of Axanar/Peters...
... about Prelude to Axanar:
  1. In the production of Prelude to Axanar (PtA) there was nearly $14,000 spent on costumes. The costumes themselves could be considered assets, why wasn't their value (minus any depreciation) noted in the final Income and Expenses report?
  2. There was $2,000 spent on a TOS Bridge Chair for PtA, which I was unable to spot in PtA. This set piece could be considered an asset, why wasn't it's value (minus any depreciation) noted in the final Income and Expenses report?
  3. Being a fan film, people working on such an endeavor are usually doing so as fans. While it is understandable that members of some unions are required to receive a minimum salary, other contributing artists should be donating their efforts. A number of people contributed to the CGI effects on PtA, but the report shows $15,000 going to Tobias Richter. Why was Richter getting paid? Why weren't others?
  4. Being a fan film, people working on such an endeavor are usually doing so as fans. Why was there $7,440 spent on make-up?
  5. In general, why weren't the value (minus any depreciation) of any of the physical assets accounted for at the end of production? Why weren't these accounted for as being transferred to Axanar budget?
  6. Who is the owner of these remaining assets?

... about Axanar/Ares/Propworx:
  1. When looking at donations, I wasn't able to find records of donations outside of Kickstarter/Indiegogo sources. How are more direct contributions recorded? Why weren't these funding avenues included in the financial report?
  2. When the project was started there was a promise of $50,000 from Peters. There is no listing of this contribution, but there is a listing of Peters receiving $38,000. Are there records showing how Peters went from giving $50,000 of his own money to the production to getting $38,000 of fan donations to the production?
  3. Being a fan film, people working on such an endeavor are usually doing so as fans. Why was there $15,000 spent on make-up? Why was this major expense paid for before the start of filming?
  4. There was a listing of $7,000 for PtA costs. Shouldn't that have been off set by assets transferred from PtA?
  5. There was a listing of $20,598.44 for equipment. Is that coming out of Ares Studio's budget or Axanar Productions'? In the end, who owns this equipment?
  6. There was a listing of $49,674.48 for building renovations. Is that coming out of Ares Studio's budget or Axanar Productions'?
  7. There was a listing of $36,372.56 for set construction. Is that coming out of Ares Studio's budget or Axanar Productions'?
  8. There was listings of $9,163.62 for auto and $9,018.29 for travel. Why are these included, were they essential to the film's production?
  9. There was a listing of $196,510.41 for rent. Propworx has been operating out of the Ares Studio location, has Propworx been paying Ares Studio rent for this space? If it has been, how much and why wasn't it listed as income?
  10. Ares Studio (a for profit venture), Axanar Productions (a fan film, and assumed non-profit endeavor) and Propworx (a pre-existing company) are occupying the same space and appear to share many of the same resources. Is there an accounting of which funds/assets/labor are going to each? Are proper boundaries and guidelines set up to keep these entities from intermingling?
  11. Why weren't the funding campaigns for Ares Studio and Axanar Productions conducted separately? How are the funds divided between these two entities?
  12. If the film had gone forward to completion, who would have had final ownership of all physical assets remaining at the end of production? Would their value (minus any depreciation) been noted in a final statement? Who decides the final disposition of assets at the conclusion of the film?
  13. What aspects of the studio, offices and equipment are listed as being part of Ares Studio verses Axanar Productions?
  14. Are salaries coming out of Ares Studio's budget or out of Axanar Productions' budget? How is work done on Propworx differentiated from Axanar/Ares?
I really don't think a lot of this was well thought out before they started, and I'm not sure they would have been welcoming of anyone asking hard questions that would have made them reconsider their strategies. Still, I just don't see malicious intent behind this. Between rationalizing questionable practices and the scope of the project ballooning so quickly on them, by the time they started seeing that they had gone too far they were too deep to back out or change course.

Sadly, when some of this started to come to light last summer, rather than attempting to be pro-active and fix some of the issues, Axanar banked on CBS/Paramount allowing all this to slide to avoid fan backlash. That (in my opinion) was a bad gamble.
Click to expand...

Some fantastic questions, Shaw. I've been poring over that annual report myself and had many of the same. One thing for you to note, however, is that there is no legal entity called Ares Studios. There are only Axanar Productions (which, contrary to your assumption is not a nonprofit venture, it's a registered for-profit California corporation) and Propworx (also for-profit). Ares was Peters' hoped-for venture for future productions, and by all accounts was to be funded on top of the Axanar seed funding raised using CBS' intellectual property. They apparently planned to seek crowd-sourced equity investment, which is now legal — though, I suspect, may not be for Peters once all is said and done with this lawsuit.
 
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I gather that AP plans to start the equity crowd-funding as soon as the law goes into effect. From reading a summary of the law, and from what others more knowledgable than I have said, it's something that's not just a 3 yard field goal.

But that point is probably moot.
 
Shaw said:
Though I know I would never get answers for these, here are a few of my wish list questions that donors/backers/volunteers really should be asking of Axanar/Peters...
... about Prelude to Axanar:
  1. In the production of Prelude to Axanar (PtA) there was nearly $14,000 spent on costumes. The costumes themselves could be considered assets, why wasn't their value (minus any depreciation) noted in the final Income and Expenses report? That would be listed in a balance sheet, not the pseudo P&L he posted aka the "Axanar Annual Report". He didn't provide a balance sheet.
  2. There was $2,000 spent on a TOS Bridge Chair for PtA, which I was unable to spot in PtA. This set piece could be considered an asset, why wasn't it's value (minus any depreciation) noted in the final Income and Expenses report?That would be listed in a balance sheet, not the pseudo P&L he posted aka the "Axanar Annual Report". He didn't provide a balance sheet.
  3. Being a fan film, people working on such an endeavor are usually doing so as fans. While it is understandable that members of some unions are required to receive a minimum salary, other contributing artists should be donating their efforts. A number of people contributed to the CGI effects on PtA, but the report shows $15,000 going to Tobias Richter. Why was Richter getting paid? Why weren't others? It was a professional production, not a fan film. They were volunteers, likely in violation of California labor laws.
  4. Being a fan film, people working on such an endeavor are usually doing so as fans. Why was there $7,440 spent on make-up? It was a professional production, not a fan film.
  5. In general, why weren't the value (minus any depreciation) of any of the physical assets accounted for at the end of production? Why weren't these accounted for as being transferred to Axanar budget? That would be listed on a balance sheet, not the pseudo P&L he posted aka the "Axanar Annual Report". He didn't provide a balance sheet.
  6. Who is the owner of these remaining assets? 100% Alec Peters as the sole shareholder of Axanar Productions, Inc. A private for profit California corporation.
... about Axanar/Ares/Propworx:
  1. When looking at donations, I wasn't able to find records of donations outside of Kickstarter/Indiegogo sources. How are more direct contributions recorded? Why weren't these funding avenues included in the financial report? We don't know. We asked and were ignored.
  2. When the project was started there was a promise of $50,000 from Peters. There is no listing of this contribution, but there is a listing of Peters receiving $38,000. Are there records showing how Peters went from giving $50,000 of his own money to the production to getting $38,000 of fan donations to the production? No.
  3. Being a fan film, people working on such an endeavor are usually doing so as fans. Why was there $15,000 spent on make-up? Why was this major expense paid for before the start of filming? It was a professional production, not a fan film.
  4. There was a listing of $7,000 for PtA costs. Shouldn't that have been off set by assets transferred from PtA? That would be listed in a balance sheet, not the pseudo P&L he posted aka the "Axanar Annual Report". He didn't provide a balance sheet.
  5. There was a listing of $20,598.44 for equipment. Is that coming out of Ares Studio's budget or Axanar Productions'? In the end, who owns this equipment? There is only one legal business entity - Axanar Productions, Inc. Ares Studio is a "pet name" not legally registered with the California Secretary of State as required by law. Everything falls under Axanar Productions, Inc. In the end Alec owns everything, unless he files for 501(c)(3) non profit status, then everything would belong to the charity being supported and a board of directors would be ultimately be responsible for disposal of assets.
  6. There was a listing of $49,674.48 for building renovations. Is that coming out of Ares Studio's budget or Axanar Productions'? There is only one legal business entity - Axanar Productions, Inc.
  7. There was a listing of $36,372.56 for set construction. Is that coming out of Ares Studio's budget or Axanar Productions'? There is only one legal business entity - Axanar Productions, Inc.
  8. There was listings of $9,163.62 for auto and $9,018.29 for travel. Why are these included, were they essential to the film's production? Auto and travel can be legitimate business expenses. Who knows if they were essential?
  9. There was a listing of $196,510.41 for rent. Propworx has been operating out of the Ares Studio location, has Propworx been paying Ares Studio rent for this space? If it has been, how much and why wasn't it listed as income? If so, then it's not listed in the "Axanar Annual Report". We don't know. We don't know.
  10. Ares Studio (a for profit venture), Axanar Productions (a fan film, and assumed non-profit endeavor) and Propworx (a pre-existing company) are occupying the same space and appear to share many of the same resources. Is there an accounting of which funds/assets/labor are going to each? Are proper boundaries and guidelines set up to keep these entities from intermingling? Not that has been made public. Who knows?
  11. Why weren't the funding campaigns for Ares Studio and Axanar Productions conducted separately? How are the funds divided between these two entities? There is only one legal business entity - Axanar Productions, Inc.
  12. If the film had gone forward to completion, who would have had final ownership of all physical assets remaining at the end of production? Would their value (minus any depreciation) been noted in a final statement? Who decides the final disposition of assets at the conclusion of the film? Unless Axanar Productions is reorganized as a non profit, Alec would own everything. Who knows? It's a private for profit corporation and is not required to reveal financial data. Alec, unless it is reorganized into a non profit.
  13. What aspects of the studio, offices and equipment are listed as being part of Ares Studio verses Axanar Productions? There is only one legal business entity - Axanar Productions, Inc.
  14. Are salaries coming out of Ares Studio's budget or out of Axanar Productions' budget? How is work done on Propworx differentiated from Axanar/Ares? There is only one legal business entity - Axanar Productions, Inc. We don't know.
Click to expand...
Sorry if this post is wonky, my answers are bold and in italics. Lots of good questions, though!
 
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