I think the "leak" was on purpose.

[Jon1701]

I do.

Lets look at the evidence.

1# The photo's don't really show us anything new. A mining shuttle? A close up of the delta shield? Hard Hats? Its hardly the Enterprise crew and I don't see Leonard Nimoy anywhere. No Time travel portals and no pictures of Simon Pegg wearing his Academy ring or cutting his middle finger off.

2# Look at the buzz in the net. The internet is bursting with junkie trek fans desperate for a fix. "Have you seen the pics? Where can I get my hand on the pics? I'll sell my mother for the pics".

3# How did they get out? Those pictures look fairly good quality to me. What happened to security? These were clearly taken from somebody "onset". Whoever is responsible seemingly has forefitted their paycheck.

4# The photo's have been pulled down after a "request" from paramount. Just a fleeting glimpse. What? Didn't seem to mind last week when we had space cars and blue screens. No nasty phone calls when Quinto was walking down the street with the ears on. Suddenly these pictures are the holy grail.

This is a marketing ploy. And a good one at that. This place has been like a ghost town since they pushed the date back.

Hopefully when Cogley is around later he can cast his legal eye over proceedings, but I do believe this is a carefully staged ploy by Paramount and/or Abrams.

 

[number6]

I do.

Ya think??

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

3# The photo's have been pulled down after a "request" from paramount. Just a fleeting glimpse. What? Didn't seem to mind last week when we had space cars and blue screens. No nasty phone calls when Quinto was walking down the street with the ears on. Suddenly these pictures are the holy grail.

Those photographs were taken in public places, and Paramount can't do anything about them. These were taken on a closed set, and quite possibly private property.

That's all the difference that's necessary to explain everything.

These simply aren't the kind of thing you release if you're trying to drum up general interest in a movie - and they know they don't have to get Trekkies interested.

 

[Jon1701]

God dammit, let me have my conspiracy theories!!!

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

My wife had the film from her camera confiscated on the Paramount lot back in the 1990s for taking unauthorized pictures of the outsides of the soundstages.

The guards were really considerate about it - they developed the film and sent us the negatives to every photo that hadn't been taken on the lot.

 

[Samuel T. Cogley]

My wife had the film from her camera confiscated on the Paramount lot back in the 1990s for taking unauthorized pictures of the outsides of the soundstages.

The guards were really considerate about it - they developed the film and sent us the negatives to every photo that hadn't been taken on the lot.

Even the naked ones?

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

My wife had the film from her camera confiscated on the Paramount lot back in the 1990s for taking unauthorized pictures of the outsides of the soundstages.

The guards were really considerate about it - they developed the film and sent us the negatives to every photo that hadn't been taken on the lot.

Even the naked ones?

Even those - well, the ones they weren't in.

 

[Samuel T. Cogley]

3# The photo's have been pulled down after a "request" from paramount. Just a fleeting glimpse. What? Didn't seem to mind last week when we had space cars and blue screens. No nasty phone calls when Quinto was walking down the street with the ears on. Suddenly these pictures are the holy grail.

Those photographs were taken in public places, and Paramount can't do anything about them. These were taken on a closed set, and quite possibly private property.

That's all the difference that's necessary to explain everything.

Dennis is right. (It had to happen, eventually.)

These simply aren't the kind of thing you release if you're trying to drum up general interest in a movie - and they know they don't have to get Trekkies interested.

Traditionally, anyway. But Abrams doesn't normally go with traditional methods of hype.

I'm with jon1701 on this one, to an extent.

If I were Abrams, I would drop little bits like this every month or so as we get closer to the movie. Does he need to do that to keep us interested? Of course not. But I think he would do it just because it's fun. For him and for us.

Plus, it gives the more "rigid" fans a chance to take baby steps toward the new look, and work through their issues before next summer, if they can work through them at all.

It also give Abrams and Co. some feedback. Not that they would alter course based on rabid fans, but feedback is always valuable if you can read it correctly.

And jon1701 is right in that this is pretty trivial stuff to show us. It whets our appetite. Feeds our frenzy. And they haven't really given away anything at all.

Whoever took those pictures took their sweet time taking them. There's no blurry, taken-from-the-shadows, rushed spy stuff there. Which, of course, cuts both ways. Was it so easy to take them because they were taken on purpose by TPTB? Alternatively, if they were staged, wouldn't Abrams make them look more blurry and spy-like, to add to their "authenticity"? Or was it so easy to take the photos because this was a low-priority set with not as much security?

Is Paramount still going after every website that is hosting the photos? Or did they stop at AICN? If they stopped, why? Are they just being realistic? Or did they just not really care about the damage, minimal as it was? Or was this all part of the viral campaign?

I'm pretty much squarely on the fence. Either argument is equally convincing.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Was it so easy to take them because they were taken on purpose by TPTB? Alternatively, if they were staged, wouldn't Abrams make them look more blurry and spy-like, to add to their "authenticity"?

Good point. Remember what the deliberately-released photo of Abrams blogging from the Bridge set looked like?

Is Paramount still going after every website that is hosting the photos? Or did they stop at AICN? If they stopped, are they just being realistic?

I'd guess there's a point at which they have to be realistic. AICN gets huge traffic compared to sites like TrekWeb or TrekBBS.

 

[Samuel T. Cogley]

I'd guess there's a point at which they have to be realistic. AICN gets huge traffic compared to sites like TrekWeb or TrekBBS.

Playboy's lawyers are relentless. They will fire off cease and desists to even the tiniest of websites.

I use that as a yardstick. The Paramount people could have at least kept after the main Trek sites, even if it looked the other way for the smaller ones. Trek BBS is still fairly large on the radar, no?

Then again, Playboy's livelihood is far more dependent on not having its photos appearing all over the internet.

This particular "leak," intentional or otherwise, will likely help the final product, or not affect it at all. So Paramount has less reason to be ruthless than Playboy does, especially since doing so might actually chill interest on the part of the fans.

 

[Akiraprise]

Was the leak on purpose? Probably. It's likely TPTB saw interest diminishing in their film and released some pics for the fanboys to discuss. Maybe to possibly get some early feedback from the forums.

 

[Samuel T. Cogley]

I don't buy the "diminishing interest on the part of the fanboys" argument. That makes sense from our perspective, because we want to see more. But not from theirs. Fanboys are guaranteed to go. They can feed us or ignore us. It doesn't matter. If anything, we are more likely to turn on them the more they feed us.

If they leaked it on purpose, I think it was for the fun of it. Or for some minimal feedback. In other words, just to see our response. (Predictable as that response has become.)

 

[Jon1701]

I just think this is a good leak. No plot has been given away, there's nothing of substance. Remarks thus far have been positive, generally speaking.

If this wasn't a leak, then TPTB have done well out of it.

My interest is certainly peaked again, I've posted more times in the last 3 hours than the last 3 weeks.

 

[Samuel T. Cogley]

My interest is certainly peaked again, I've posted more times in the last 3 hours than the last 3 weeks.

So maybe Trek BBS leaked it.

 

[Jon1701]

*points finger randomly*

 

[Akiraprise]

Well, right now us fanboys are really the only ones who care about the film. Sometimes our loud protests make it into the main stream, which equals free publicity for the film makers. So if we've lost interest, and have only "Who can fart louder, Quinto or Pegg?" posts to talk about, nobody else is going to be talking about StarTrek either.


That's not to say the fanboys have nothing of worth to say. If I was running this new movie I'd want to hear what we have to say. If only for the entertainment factor. Who else knows the ins and outs of Trek lore better then us?

 

[Samuel T. Cogley]

If I was running this new movie I'd want to hear what we have to say. If only for the entertainment factor. Who else knows the ins and outs of Trek lore better then us?

I agree 100% about the entertainment factor.

But not because we know so much about Star Trek.

We tend to generate an entirely different sort of entertainment.

That's why I would leak it, if I was Abrams.

 

[Akiraprise]

^ That's true.

I could tell something happened with the movie when I first logged on this morning and saw 80 some people viewing the Trek XI forum, when it's normally in the 20s. So there is something to be said for leaking pics and drumming interest up in the project.

 

[Michael]

That's why I would leak it, if I was Abrams.

So what you're telling me is that you are not Abrams in disguise?

 

[Samuel T. Cogley]

That's why I would leak it, if I was Abrams.

So what you're telling me is that you are not Abrams in disguise?

No comment.