"Enemy Starfleet!" Release Date: Thursday, October 21st, 2010
- Thread starter GSchnitzer
- Start date
I have to agree. Better to be the whole finished product so you guys don't have to go back and release another verison later on.
Sounds like you're doing the right thing, Greg. Hitting release dates is important when it comes to maintaining credibility, but it's not the be all and end all. I really can't think of anything that would hurt credibility worse than having the distribution system crash on premiere night. None of us involved in fan productions want to be dismissed as not worth someone's time to find us and a dead link is not going to help win over skeptics. Good luck!
They already posted on their own forum that that is unlikely... vis: http://forums.startreknewvoyages.com/index.php?topic=11595.0 . There is further discussion in other threads on that forum. I think it's quite clear at this point that there will be NO RELEASE this weekend. It takes them a few days, after it's completed, just to get it up on the servers and test it. No word that that is happening translates into no release.
Let me just say this. I index Star Trek Fan Films, (and now, Star Trek Audio, although I have a single page on that with much less information on each production) and I try to be 'on top' of releases. There is A LOT in the works. We had many, many films released at the end of 2009, and my impression is that most of those films have follow-ups in the works. I expect a more active year in 2011, and an even MORE active on in 2012.
Several things lead to a very slow year this year:
1) Hidden Frontier stopped production. HF represented something over 30 per cent of all releases, perhaps fifty per cent of all live action films... maybe more.
2) A lot of people wanted to get their films out for the crowd who got interested due to the DVD release of STXI, and for better or worse, a lot was released in Nov and Dec of last year.
3) STXI threw a crowbar into the Trek community. Previously, while there were Trek fans who loved one series to the exclusion of others, and there were those who hated Enterprise because of it's cannon revisions, (I enjoyed it, but thought it's approach was inappropriate for the time period. If it was going to be 100 years before TOS it should have kept to small themes, a planet which is facing a disaster... does earth's new space ability mean humans come to the rescue, or do they develop the Prime Directive? Individual visits to individual planets. Not a 'time war'.) Anyway, JJATrek has created a lot more confusion in the fan community.
Finally, creating a fan film costs a lot of money. Economic hardship encourages people to put that money toward basics instead.
Let me just say this. I index Star Trek Fan Films, (and now, Star Trek Audio, although I have a single page on that with much less information on each production) and I try to be 'on top' of releases. There is A LOT in the works. We had many, many films released at the end of 2009, and my impression is that most of those films have follow-ups in the works. I expect a more active year in 2011, and an even MORE active on in 2012.
Several things lead to a very slow year this year:
1) Hidden Frontier stopped production. HF represented something over 30 per cent of all releases, perhaps fifty per cent of all live action films... maybe more.
2) A lot of people wanted to get their films out for the crowd who got interested due to the DVD release of STXI, and for better or worse, a lot was released in Nov and Dec of last year.
3) STXI threw a crowbar into the Trek community. Previously, while there were Trek fans who loved one series to the exclusion of others, and there were those who hated Enterprise because of it's cannon revisions, (I enjoyed it, but thought it's approach was inappropriate for the time period. If it was going to be 100 years before TOS it should have kept to small themes, a planet which is facing a disaster... does earth's new space ability mean humans come to the rescue, or do they develop the Prime Directive? Individual visits to individual planets. Not a 'time war'.) Anyway, JJATrek has created a lot more confusion in the fan community.
Finally, creating a fan film costs a lot of money. Economic hardship encourages people to put that money toward basics instead.
To our dedicated Star Trek Phase II fans and viewers--which, of course, includes our entire cast and crew:
Back in October, we announced over on our Star Trek Phase II forum (here: http://forums.startreknewvoyages.com/index.php?topic=11470.msg134802) that we were delaying the release of our latest episode "Enemy: Starfleet!" by a few weeks to Thanksgiving weekend. The reasons for the delay are profoundly uninteresting--final edit not quite done, final sound not quite done, huge IT upgrades to handle the increased web traffic not quite done, yadda, yadda, yadda.
As Thanksgiving approached, we were hopeful that we would still be able to meet the release date one way or another. In fact, as late as November 11th (two weeks ago), we even announced on our forum (here: http://forums.startreknewvoyages.com/index.php?topic=11595.msg135897) that the release of Enemy:Starfleet! was still officially set for Thanksgiving.
Well, first of all: Happy (United States) Thanksgiving Day to everyone. As Kirk would say: "On Earth today, it's Thanksgiving. If the crew has to eat synthetic meat loaf, I want it to look like turkey."
But now onto the bad news, if you hadn't heard yet or haven't deduced it by now....
Enemy: Starfleet! is still not ready for release. We had hoped it would be--and, of course, our ace in the hole was going to be that we could simply release some kind of "not quite perfect" version of the episode with not-quite-done sound or not-quite-finished visual effects as a stop-gap measure if we really need to do that.
But in the end, the episode isn't quite finished and we decided not to put out something that's not quite done. We get grief from our fans when we miss a release date, but we also get grief if the episode goes out in anything other than the final finished state (which is what we did with our last episode "Blood and Fire, Part 2). So, this time we're trying the other approach: we've decided to simply miss our self-imposed deadline and then apologize to our fans and supporters with promises to do better in the future. (As I have said before, the only people who hate not having the episode ready for viewing more than our fans are the Producers.)
So, Enemy: Starfleet! isn't ready this weekend--and having decided to not fall back on some kind of stop-gap, half-assed version (and with the holidays and associated family responsibilities ahead of us), realistically, I don't think we'll get Enemy: Starfleet! released before the first of the New Year. (It's so darned close to being done, but those of you who know about the Pareto Principle know that the last 20% of anything consumes 80% of the time and resources.)
Although the number of fans who dislike it when we miss a release date is just about exactly equal to the number of fans who dislike it when we stay mum about our anticipated release dates, we'll probably be a little more coy in the future about when we expect episodes to be released. I think Lao Tzu said it best:
"Those who have knowledge don't predict. Those who do predict, don't have knowledge. "
But that being said, look for Enemy: Starfleet! probably shortly after the first of the year (unless we sneak it out sooner as a surprise). And don't forget that we also have "The Child," "Kitumba," and our "Origins" episode waiting in the wings in various stages of completion.
So again, on behalf of the cast and crew and, of course, the Production team, I'm sorry that our next "expensive to make, but nevertheless free to you" Phase II episode isn't ready quite yet.
As always, we welcome any questions or concerns or comments. You can reach me via PM or via at GSchnitzer at aol.com.
Best wishes and enjoy your synthetic meatloaf.
I realize this is one of those "damned if you do" and "damned if you don't" situations. I don't think anyone is going anywhere before you are happy with a release version of "Enemy Starfleet."
And who needs synthetic meat when you can have Andorian feather-beast instead? While it is blue (what on Andoria isn't?), it actually tastes more like chicken than turkey.
And who needs synthetic meat when you can have Andorian feather-beast instead? While it is blue (what on Andoria isn't?), it actually tastes more like chicken than turkey.
As a fellow video producer, I fully understand where you're coming from. You set a deadline, then something happens and you realize you're gonna miss that deadline. Of course my problems are most likely not the same as yours, but it's still a bitch missing it.
However long it takes, it's definately better to have it perfect than half-assed. Just don't make us wait too long.
However long it takes, it's definately better to have it perfect than half-assed. Just don't make us wait too long.
At least it sounds like it's not the Exeter kind of delay.
I'm just glad someone else said that...
I for sure don't mind waiting longer either. Just as your guys give us a good final product and something to look forward to. I'm not going anywhere so I'll still be here.
Wait, HF is on hiatus? Their website seems to indicate their next production on the Odyssey series to be out be Christmas. Mind you, there's been an awful lot of audio releases which suggests "Stopgap" to me...
Mark
Mark
My understanding is that HF is releasing one last crossover film and one last Odyssey film, and after that they will do audio only.
I would rather wait for a quality piece of work from the Phase II crew than to have to redownload it again. Any of the fan productions are worth the wait given the quality so far. Patience is important, like downloads.
