Project: Potemkin, a Star Trek Fan Film

[Melonpool]

Re: New Star Trek Fan Film

We've been getting ready for a big garage sale this weekend, so last weekend I didn't do much. I have 5 of the 8 sections in place (the remaining 3 will be the viewscreen), but I need the space taken by the garage sale stuff to have room to finish that up. I've been building puppets in the meantime and rewriting the script yet again. In the last couple of drafts, it looks like we've committed to this thing becoming a feature 00 I just hope the material is strong enough to warrant someone spending an hour and a half of their life watching it... let alone all the man hours we're putting in to it.

Part of the cool part for me is that I think I've found a way to make a Star Trek fan film of sorts that can be marketed -- since it really has nothing to do with being a Star Trek fan film -- other than the way it's being produced... all in all, it's just fun to be making something that I like... if something more comes of it, all the better.

Looking forward to your update. I'll have new pics of mine soon as well!

Steve

 

[Potemkin_Prod]

Re: New Star Trek Fan Film

Have just uploaded to our website a whole bunch of pics from our work over the past two weeks. We're THIS close to being ready to film a short introductory vignette. I expect we will be finished by the end of the July 4th weekend!!!

 

[Melonpool]

Re: New Star Trek Fan Film

Wow! That's great progress! Will have to more to post on mine soon as well, now that the garage is cleaned out. What didn't sell when to Goodwill.

 

[Potemkin_Prod]

Re: New Star Trek Fan Film

Installed two partitions and one-third of the upper deck carpeting tonight. Found the carpeting on sale for $22 for the 6'x12' roll. Now if I can just find three more rolls like that!!!

 

[Melonpool]

Re: New Star Trek Fan Film

Wow! Where did you find it? Any chance that other stores in the chain might have more rolls?

That's one of the perks of doing a puppet film -- no floors!

 

[Potemkin_Prod]

Re: New Star Trek Fan Film

It was a return at the local Home Depot. They had a number of rolls, but there's no way I'm putting mustard-colored short shag carpeting on my bridge. But this grey indoor-outdoor carpeting was perfect. I'm going to try again this weekend.

 

[lennier1]

Re: New Star Trek Fan Film

I'm happy you decided on a design that looks a bit more complex and gives the actors something to interact with.

Do you have any additional plans for the screen area so far?
Not sure about the situation in the US but a country-wide electronics store over here offers an electronics kit for Knight Rider style running lights (example image). If one lets two of those run towards each other, spreads the LEDs wider apart using some wires in-between and backlights some translucent paper with those lights it wouldn't be hard to create those running lights below the movie viewscreens at a cost of less than 40 bucks for the whole array.

Also don't forget that simply cutting some leftover sheets of wood into access panels with rounded edges and gluing them to a flat surface will quickly break up larger areas as well and add additional details at a relatively acceptable cost. A quick look at the stuff around the Excelsior viewscreen should explain it better: http://img819.imageshack.us/img819/9284/starshipexcelsiorstartr.jpg

BTW: Will your doors operate using a cable pulley like the real thing?

 

[Potemkin_Prod]

Re: New Star Trek Fan Film

Thanks, Lennier! While we didn't use your exact color scheme on the center seat, we certainly made it far more artistic than I had originally intended.

We've got someone willing to do the running lights for a price. Not sure if I have the technical skill to do it, and we've been looking for Christmas lights to accomplish that effect. If anyone has a link to a website that sells them, please let me know. We've been scouring the Internet for a source...

Our set graphics/decorator is supposed to come up with those "doo-dads" to put everywhere. If he doesn't, I've actually been saving some odd cuts of plywood for their construction.

We're going to have our local engraving shop prepare our ship's plaque (seen in the bottom right of the Excelsior's screen). We're torn on where to hang it: at the turbolift (port or starboard?) or over the center of the mainviewer?

I hope to use the cable pulley doors, but space is at such a premium, I'm still worried the doors won't open more than 36". Last night, we installed the door partitions. Tonight I'm going to hang the overhead track for the doors to hang on, and hopefully the doors themselves. We used 3/4" plywood on the "dummy" turbolift. They slide manually, but they're as heavy as they can be, of course. They were made of leftover plywood from the original flooring test, but they're fine for what they are.

Our final decision coming up is regarding the "backdoor" to the bridge. In STVI, there's a walkway behind the bridge. You exit through the center and turn right or left. We're thinking the same thing, but originally planned on using working doors there. But we don't want too many doors to the bridge, and the walkway was clever enough. We've got to add a step to it because of the elevation of the carport steps there, but I think it'll work.

Any suggestions?

 

[doubleohfive]

Re: New Star Trek Fan Film

It all looks fantastic, Potemkin!

A question though -- will you be cleaning, or covering the original bucket seat for the captain's chair? I assume you will be doing something, but if I may be so bold, Amazon sells bucket seat covers relatively cheaply and would work perfectly on the seat you incorporated in to the set. Obviously a black seat cover would gel well with the already-in-place black color-scheme of the seat frame and the rest of the set. Perhaps something like this?

 

[Potemkin_Prod]

Re: New Star Trek Fan Film

Thanks!

Hmmm. I haven't given any thought to cleaning the seat. Do you think it needs it? The gray paint, burgundy highlights, and even black contrast are visible in the chair. Still, that black seat cover might look really awesome on the chair...

Gotta think about that! Thanks for the suggestion!

 

[Melonpool]

Re: New Star Trek Fan Film

That might be a good option for different ship redresses -- Remember how they used to put a different seat back on the Captain's chair in TOS? Heck -- they even did it to differentiate between Reliant and Enterprise in TWOK.

Maybe you could use the seat cover for a different starship in some of your episodes?

 

[doubleohfive]

Re: New Star Trek Fan Film

The only reason I suggested the seat cover was simply because, well, to be blunt, the seat could use a thorough cleaning. Sure, you could probably spend a day and a small fortune on a couple cans of Resolve and some scrubbing and vacuuming, but a black seat-cover would solve the problem nicely and save you the time and aggravation.

You could always take the seat cover off if you need it to look like the bridge of another ship.

That said, it's justa friendly suggestion

 

[Potemkin_Prod]

Re: New Star Trek Fan Film

Actually, we took it to a local car detailing shop and they thoroughly cleaned it for us for free. Perhaps it's the fabric reacting badly to the video camera's settings? I remember Johnny Carson used to have this jacket that drove the video cameras nuts...

Will take a look at seat covers this weekend, and see if a change would be in order. And definitely will go with that option for other ships.

 

[lennier1]

Re: New Star Trek Fan Film

Concerning the viewscreen area:

If you don't want to build running lights based on something like this you could always opt for additional display mount points like the Galaxy battle bridge had.
That way you'd only need to take care of the Red Alert indicator and that can be done with a piece of acrylic class with red translucent paper glued to its back and a cheap LED array behind it to light it when needed,

 

[Potemkin_Prod]

Re: New Star Trek Fan Film

Our set graphic/decorator is working on the red alert light. The ones from ST:TMP and forward are simply red lit domes of clear plastic which alternate back and forth. Not as dramatic as the original series I suppose, but will definitely be in line with what we see in the movies.

The running lights continue to be a concern for me. I want two of them, two foot long, with the lights running toward each other, and hopefully in sync. I need to talk with the fellow who offered to do those for me...

 

[DestinyCaptain]

Re: New Star Trek Fan Film

There is an idea that I have been toying with for a while. Digital picture frames have the ability to run a slideshow and video. I have one and I played around with loading jpegs of a crude TOSera blinky display. The blinkys changed position and color from image to image. When you run then in a slideshow they appear to be a live display. You could also record a running image like the round red alert logo from the TOSmovies to an avi file and run it on the device. These things are cheap, at about 100 bucks, they don't require an extensive computer system to run. They come in several sizes. You can control them with SD cards. They are easy to remove from their little frames. You could position a few in key places and change them as needed. Something to think about...

http://www.pandigital.net/search.asp?Mode=Type&TypeID=25

These are like the one I own. Any brand should work.

 

[Melonpool]

Re: New Star Trek Fan Film

I've been toying with that idea as well -- though I have a 7 inch one (the $100 model from a couple of years ago), and it seemed kind of small. My plan is still to use two 19-inch LCD computer monitors on my set, but have been waiting for a sale.

I have a couple of ideas regarding the scanner light. If I come up with something that actually works, I'll post about it.

 

[Potemkin_Prod]

Re: New Star Trek Fan Film

We've actually be looking at making one of our control panels "hot" in that it could be used for any given station. The LCD picture frames are what we're looking at, especially when they can run images off of a jump drive.

Let me know about the scanner lights...

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Re: New Star Trek Fan Film

The digital frames are expensive for what you get, IMAO. Picking up flatscreen computer monitors on ebay or even Good Will stores is pretty easy now - people upgrade sizes all the time, so even 22-inch flatscreens have become relatively cheap - 200 dollars, say, as opposed to 100 dollars for a 7-inch digital frame in your example. 15-inch monitors are mainly under 100 dollars.

 

[Melonpool]

Re: New Star Trek Fan Film

Speaking of which, does anyone know the mechanics of installing a flatscreen monitor on a set -- like was done on Phase II? I would think there would be some sort of rigged support bracket on the back, but if anyone has any first-hand knowledge of ways to accomplish this, I'd love to hear it -- I'm almost to this step on my set.