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CBS/Paramount sues to stop Axanar

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BillJ said:
What exactly has Peters done that necessitated a $38,000 salary and $3,100 in union dues?.
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I believe, according to him, this fan film is actually his full time job. People get paid for working. Ergo, he's getting paid to make a fan film. The logic is there, you just need to bend it far enough.

He looses me when he claims he's not making a profit, though. I'm sure he can reconcile the contradictions in those two statements, but I sure can't.
 
BillJ said:
Difference being, no one cares if you spend leftover funds on pizza. Because you're actually going to complete the project you sold. Peters had to act like there was accountability because of all the money he was asking for. But I don't see spending $9,000 on convention appearances and $7,000 on phones as being accountable. YMMV.
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I think you are misunderstanding my intent.
Spending donated funds on non-project related items/expenditures have (up to this point) been mostly ignored or forgiven except in the most egregious cases. Nor has there been any particular push to make sure that projects are run in an efficient and accountable manner. That doesn't make it right, it just makes it a reality.
Having been familiar with various fan productions, I think Alec saw the way donors accepted a certain lack of transparency and accountability and decided that he would distinguish his project by directly explaining where the money went. That way donors would always know how and where the money was being spent - which would add to his "professional" relationship with donors (or "shareholders") who funded the studio/production company that he was building. He would file "annual reports", hire "top" accountants, have the best and most professional everything.
What he didn't think through is that most donors were happy being kept in the dark. As long as the project was completed on time they didn't want to know how much money was spent on feline prophylactics and health care, they just wanted their snazzy DVD/poster/patch/testicular tattoo and the sense of pride felt at being a part of a creative project.
Alec instead thought if he was honest and direct, he could show donors that they were making a wise investment and therefore they would be motivated to make a continual investment, even as the completion date was delayed time and again.
He wasn't completely wrong - more than a few bought into the concept, and made him (briefly) a millionaire. But his inability to complete the project, his continual desire to raise expectations that eventually led to self-aggrandizement and the tiny niggling fact that he continually kicked CBS in their collective groin led to the implosion we are seeing every day.

@Wetworth - screw Alfredo's. They changed their garlic knots recipe, and they won't change it back.
 
Karzak said:
Obviously, the SAG union membership was done solely for bragging rights. Peters has gone on record saying he doesn't want to be an actor, he just wanted to play Garth. By having SAG-only actors in Prelude, it would be then just one more notch he could carve into his little bunk bed to (in his mind) put his vanity project above the rest of the fan films out there.
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I think the SAG deal was more about being able to pay himself for portraying Garth. :lol:
 
Jedi_Master said:
One of Alec's justifiable frustrations is that he was being upfront and honest about his expenditures, while few other projects ever even bothered to tell donors what they spent money on. Of course those other projects didn't collect close to $2 million and they were, um, completed but there is still some justifiable frustration that he was being open and honest about his use of funds and other projects (not just Star Trek fan films) have not.
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I was already starting to question Axanar when they started asking for more money and not producing a movie like they told us they would. However it was when I saw the annual report that I began to really question things. Expenses like going to conventions in my mind is just inexcusable. I mean seriously? They're using donor money to go have a fun weekend? And said donor money is also being used for lord knows what at hotels and wherever else they might deem fit to use it? I mean come on.. >_> We donated for a movie. Not for stuff like this. Not for meals, or plane tickets, or car rentals. We donated for things that would be directly associated with filming and producing a movie. I think that by their being 'honest' (if you can really call it that) it hurt them more than not. Would anyone actually be complaining as much if they didn't know what they used our money for? Probably not.
 
Tellarites4Ever said:
. I think that by their being 'honest' (if you can really call it that) it hurt them more than not. Would anyone actually be complaining as much if they didn't know what they used our money for? Probably not.
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I tend to agree - but the key is if they didn't disclose AND finished the dang movie people would have likely have kept their grumbles to themselves.

C/P might have still taken them to the cleaners though.
 
Wetworth said:
I believe, according to him, this fan film is actually his full time job. People get paid for working. Ergo, he's getting paid to make a fan film. The logic is there, you just need to bend it far enough.

He looses me when he claims he's not making a profit, though. I'm sure he can reconcile the contradictions in those two statements, but I sure can't.
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And he loses me when he declares that this is a full-time job so therefore he should be paid a salary.

You know, a salary that he uses to pay his bills, feed himself and his girlfriend and her cat, fill up his car with gas, and do all the things normal people do with the money they get from their paycheck like going to conventions and traveling and what not.

I saw Alec at Creature Features in Burbank last year when Return to Tomorrow, the book about the making of Star Trek The Motion Picture came out. I didn't talk to him, I didn't approach him. Didn't want to. My friends noticed he was there too, and teased me about it saying I should introduce myself. But like sensible, rational people we preferred to just avoid the drama and ignored him. Thinking back on it and now all of this lawsuit business, I legitimately find myself asking -- did the donors and their Kickstarter money pay for his copy of that book too?

The problem that dear fanboy Alec just can't seem to wrap his pea-sized brain around is that no one associated with, or who holds the authority or power to decide such things ever hired Peters for this job.

He "hired" himself and he paid himself a living wage from the money he fundraised for the project.

I admire the tenacity and dedication it takes to make a fan film. I know and am friendly with several people involved across the spectrum of the various projects. No one though, until Alec, tried to pay themselves for the work they did. No one tried to make it their living the way he has. CBS is going to destroy him. At the very least he and Burnett will be laughed out of this town and industry for their complete pig-headed blindness to the very obvious reality in front of them. They went too far and now they are screwed.
 
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BillJ said:
I think the SAG deal was more about being able to pay himself for portraying Garth. :lol:
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Oh I'm sure that was part of it as well. If he did Taft Hartley himself to get in, it fits perfectly with his persona that he'd insist that he's the only person able to do the job of portraying Garth. :lol:
 
Tellarites4Ever said:
I think that by their being 'honest' (if you can really call it that) it hurt them more than not.
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Its not being honest with CBS to claim that "make no money" means "have no money left after you've spent it all on whatever you feel like, including assets for your future". Its not being honest with CBS to imply that making that money off of their IP is ok because you "openly" said to donors you were going to do it, and they donated. Its not being honest with anyone to call this all "nonprofit" or "not for profit", which have clear meanings NOT equal to "a profitmaking corporation that has no net cash in the bank after expenses and asset acquisitions".

"Disclosure" is not even a factor in these issues. In fact, its a method of throwing sand in eyes. "Look, we told you some numbers, how could we survive that if we were not honest?". May work for some fans...
 
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The thing of it is, yes, crowdfunding has rather minimal accountability levels.

Don't like it? Call your congresscreature or state senator (good luck during an election year, though) and mention your concerns to them. Someone or another might be interested in floating a bill if there's enough interest and/or they feel people are being screwed. I am not specifically talking about this project but about crowdfunding in general. After all, there was a Kickstarter to make potato salad.

It would also be kind of nice to investigate why these are so popular. What is in our society which makes them attractive and necessary? Not so much for making potato salad, but for paying funeral expenses or for a pet's medical bills or the like. I know people love to gamify stuff, and that's part of it. However, maybe it's a little disturbing that so many people these days are turning to a fancy form of imploring in order to stay out of debt.
 
No sushi but lunch is on you donors.

P.S. Crysstal Hubbard is an Actor/Producer at Supergirl/Unburdened(fan film) and not the actual official Supergirl show on CBS. Don't get too excited that Alec Peters is in any way dating someone important.

alecpaid_zpslj0ecmed.jpg
 
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jespah said:
The thing of it is, yes, crowdfunding has rather minimal accountability levels.

Don't like it? Call your congresscreature or state senator (good luck during an election year, though) and mention your concerns to them. Someone or another might be interested in floating a bill if there's enough interest and/or they feel people are being screwed. I am not specifically talking about this project but about crowdfunding in general. After all, there was a Kickstarter to make potato salad.

It would also be kind of nice to investigate why these are so popular. What is in our society which makes them attractive and necessary? Not so much for making potato salad, but for paying funeral expenses or for a pet's medical bills or the like. I know people love to gamify stuff, and that's part of it. However, maybe it's a little disturbing that so many people these days are turning to a fancy form of imploring in order to stay out of debt.
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I think the popularity comes from the fact you can give in micro - amounts (What's $10 between friends?) and that you can give directly to a cause of your choosing. When you donate to a large charity you know you aren't just helping horses with cleft palettes eat their oats, you are also paying for the secretary, the light bill, and the CEO's insurance plan. Direct donations allow dollars and cents to go only to the donor, not to an infrastructure.

Just a minor digression, I think we are starting to see a reversion to the earliest days of mass charity. Throughout human history charity has oscillated between being the purview of institutions to the purview of individuals. The "institutions" have tended to be religious in nature or occasionally a society of wealthy individuals. However, during the 19th century when it became possible for a single individual to control more wealth than an entire nation, a charitable hyper-wealthy individual could not possibly process all the requests for help he received, nor could he ensure that money he gave away was going to someone who honestly needed it.
So there was a need to employ individuals who could process the requests for help and ensure that money was well and dutifully spent. Thus the origin of the charitable foundation - the first of which was the brainchild of none other than John D. Rockefeller.

As foundations and secular charities have proliferated and grown in scope, the personal touch, the "I'm helping someone in a direct way" has slowly been lost. When we as humans give, we often yearn for that direct connection, so giving a buck to the Red Cross may be easy, but it isn't all that fulfilling.
That's why I think that all these Kickstarter and Indigogo campaigns to give Momma a new kidney are so popular.
However, there is a touch of hidden commercialism to these projects that I don't think most people realize. The websites take a cut if you meet your goal, and therefore they are going to aggressively seek more and more customers and court large scale projects that contribute more to their bottom line. So now you have someone who makes a living collecting charity, and that I think will lead to more and more problems.
 
muCephi said:
Axanar Productions ‏@StarTrekAxanar Mar 3
[ image shown in feed]
Ares orbiting two colliding black holes in honor of the discovery of Gravity waves.


CBS, and the "nonprofit" thesis. And just like in the real world, nothing will help them and they can't run fast enough given the imminent event Axanar chose to orbit.
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Jedi_Master said:
In all seriousness though, the only thing that keeps Kickstarter or Indigogo funds from being misused is the personal integrity of the person(s) running the project that is soliciting donations.
Obviously, there are ways to punish a complete scam artist, but in most cases there is no way to ensure that money is not wasted even if it is ALL spent on the project.
Not everyone is savvy enough to know how to avoid wasting dollars, and the more dollars there are, the more opportunities there are for waste/misuse.
One of Alec's justifiable frustrations is that he was being upfront and honest about his expenditures, while few other projects ever even bothered to tell donors what they spent money on. Of course those other projects didn't collect close to $2 million and they were, um, completed but there is still some justifiable frustration that he was being open and honest about his use of funds and other projects (not just Star Trek fan films) have not.
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True, however the money raised from outside Kickstarter (merch sales, additional donations via Ares Digital, Retroactive Donor funds) does not appear to be listed anywhere on the Annual Report. That's not exactly being "open and honest", not to mention all the other shifty things listed in this forum thread.
 
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