I think it's unfortunate the degree to which HF has transitioned to audio, and now it's even moreso with this being the last filmed release. The audio transition seriously damped my enthusiasm for Federation One; I think I tried listening to one episode but it's just much harder to pay attention and care. I still haven't tried Henglaar MD.
Nothing can last forever, but I felt HF Productions was really gearing up into an interesting place a year or two ago, and now it's fizzling. Not sure what happened there.
The film will be the "last" release, although there will be one more HFP video release (unless things have changed dramatically and no one told me) - a "remastering" of the original
Voyages of the USS Angeles film was underway around the same time filming was wrapping on this project. The two releases would "bookend" the video saga.
As for audio ongoing and the "fizzling" of video...I'll give you my particular perspective as an "outsider" to the video team but who has taken lead roles in support of HFP's wiki, forums and its longest-running audio series.
Barb put it pretty well, I think - people have lives. If you factor in
Angeles, some people, Rob included, have volunteered well over a dozen years to these series. As a long-time volunteer myself, people change, they burn out, they want to move on to other projects or interests, particularly after that much time doing the same thing. Heck, I picked up producing audio dramas after a dozen years as an international volunteer event producer. New challenges and such.
Also, while these series are free to view, they were not free to make by any means, even with the contributions of money and materiel that the fans made over the years. Given how the economy soured over the latter phase of HFP's video productions...I have no doubt that had an impact on how things developed.
FED has had its share of difficulties, not the least of which was its transition to audio. Having worked on the last two audio releases of that particular series, I am aware that there's a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff that went on. But I'm not going there.
I will say that FED was originally planned to be something of a "mini-series" in video which was to have been expanded upon being moved over to audio. That part of it didn't exactly come to fruition as planned (only four episodes in the first audio/second season - I believe the plan was originally around twice that number). There are enough story arcs and such to permit a third season should FED's showrunner opt to do so. Right now, the show is on "hiatus".
As with all such efforts, there's always another generation to pick up the proverbial torch. With the HF props and costumes are now pretty much spread to the four winds, audio is the logical continuation of the stories we started telling, at least in my mind. It is far cheaper to produce and permits a broader selection of actors and potential environments than the video "model" did.
Since I started producing
Henglaar, M.D. in 2009, the only money I've spent has been optional (picking up a copy of Final Draft 8 and upgrading my computer to better handle Audition CS5.5). As for casting, I'm not limited, as the video productions were, to people in the L.A. area or those willing/able to travel for the shoots. I've got actors in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United Kingdom working on the show. We're also not limited in terms of where we can set our scenes. While HMD tends to being a "bottle show", as we'll be proving in our season finale and subsequent two-part season opener, we can go to other worlds, possibly more convincingly than could have been done with green screen.
Personally, I'd like to see HFP audio grow. Aside from FED and HMD, we've had audio episodes of
Angeles and
Odyssey. I think that's just a taste of the possibilities. There's ten years of HF/
Intrepid canon out there (on top of the original canon), a lot of plot points that could be synthesized into new stories, not to mention just new stories that could be told. As has been noted here, the interest in audio is less than that for video. I would hope, however, that if we tell a good story, video or not, we'll eventually reach our intended audience.
Will someone pick up the video "torch"? I don't know. Pulling together the necessary equipment, props and costumes would be an undertaking to say the least and that's before you get to writing solid scripts and casting solid actors.
Intrepid, to me, is the logical successor/continuation of the HF legacy, especially given its roots. Could there be more than that? I hope so. Trust me, I know enough people (myself included), who would try to reassemble things were we to win the lottery tomorrow. Otherwise...we'll see.
