Starship Saladin: Eye of the Tempest

[MikeH92467]

The determination and passion it takes to see a project through to release is to me the ultimate test as to whether someone has what it takes to produce a good product. Without those qualities nothing else matters. We know you have that. The next step is to figure out which criticisms are valid and what you can do to address them. It won't happen all at once, but I have said repeatedly that to me one of the joys of fan productions is seeing them grow and improve. Good luck and best wishes.

 

[Karzak]

Pro-tip: Being overly sensitive to any kind of commentary -- be it constructive or malicious -- helps nobody.

 

[Maurice]

I've said it many times, it takes a LOT of tenacity to finish a film of any complexity.

My first short film was a train wreck, and I admit it. My reach exceeded my grasp. It was possibly salvageable, but I eventually decided that the effort to make it work exceeded the effort required to just do it over, so I just decided to swallow my pride, eat the costs and learn from my mistakes. As my thread on What Happened to Starship Exeter makes plain, I pull no punches even on projects I worked on, and I’ll be the first person to point out mistakes in my own work.

Frame from my abandoned short “Flight Control”​

Ken, by the way, I submitted a correction to IMDB to merge your two entries so that the stray credits will be added to your main page. It doesn’t always work. I’ve submitted several requests to delete some TTI art dept. credits for my own page and they never go through.

 

[USS Intrepid]

I'll wait to see what he says, Nick. I simply posted how I feel about the situation. If I am overly defensive, it is due to my interpretation of the discussion. I'd much rather have a face to face talk with a person than do back and forth posts on the internet because as you said, tone can't be read from words alone.

You've always been a pretty fair guy as far as I can tell. I'm going to wait and see, and if I have misjudged the situation, I'm sorry. Ball is in Maurice's court at this point, regarding all this. And I truly mean no ill will here. I only want to make Trek and enjoy Trek made by others. That's it. I have met Maurice in person and he seems like a nice guy, so that's why I was somewhat taken aback by the tone I was reading here. Let's just see how it goes. I'm not interested in conflict, and if it is a misunderstanding, I'd honestly rather bury the hatchet immediately and get past it and forget it.

I should also say, I'm not in any way suggesting you are being suggestive, just that your posts read that way to me. It's really, really easy to misread tone, and I'm completely aware that what I'm reading into your posts may well not be what you intend.

It's all good.

I've said it many times, it takes a LOT of tenacity to finish a film of any complexity.

My first short film was a train wreck, and I admit it. My reach exceeded my grasp. It was possibly salvageable, but I eventually decided that the effort to make it work exceeded the effort required to just do it over, so I just decided to swallow my pride, eat the costs and learn from my mistakes. As my thread on What Happened to Starship Exeter makes plain, I pull no punches even on projects I worked on, and I’ll be the first person to point out mistakes in my own work.

I'm always struck by the mistakes and limitations in my own work, and I'd be lying if I said it wasn't painful watching others point them out as well.

That said, it's always an interesting experience. Especially those problems I didn't know about.

 

[Raymar3d]

"Ken, by the way, I submitted a correction to IMDB to merge your two entries so that the stray credits will be added to your main page. It doesn’t always work. I’ve submitted several requests to delete some TTI art dept. credits for my own page and they never go through."

Thank you Maurice. I put one in too, to get every stray credit assigned to Kenneth Thomson Jr., so hopefully they'll do it.

Guys, I'm going to apologize again. You all rock.

Sincerely,

Ken

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Hello, Ken:

I've been looking forward to a Starship Saladin production since I first heard about it on the United Worlds (a.k.a. Polaris and Subspace) board. I don't know whether you remember me, because it's been at least six years since we first talked there, but I discussed ranks and other geeky things with you there under the same moniker of CorporalCaptain.

I've watched "Eye of the Tempest" and have considered offering feedback. I have both positive and negative things to say about it, but there are a lot of specific criticisms. Even though I think future productions could be improved by considering feedback that's offered in this forum, I don't want to contribute to an atmosphere, however inadvertently, in which it's perceived that people are ganging up on you or maliciously bashing your project. Like I said, I've been looking forward to this for years, and my motivation would be simply to see future projects improve.

While emotions are running high, I don't want to fuel an unhealthy vibe. But once things simmer down, and people are comfortable giving and receiving constructive criticism, I'd love to participate in discussion further.

Congratulations on finishing your first production. I have nothing but respect and admiration for you having seen it through! I also look forward to future episodes.

 

[Maurice]

So, speaking of constructive feedback...

Kenneth mentioned re-editing upthread. If that's so, I have several suggestions.

AUDIO

DIALOG. Normalize the dialog levels. Shut off all the sound effects and music and just watch the meters and make the sure the mean average for the dialog stays around 12db. Right now parts of the story are hard to follow because you just can't hear what some people are saying.

SFX (Sound FX): Reintroduce the sound effects, but make sure they don't drown out the dialog. Right now many of them are much louder than the dialog. The scanner bop bop and the medical scanner are two of the biggest offenders.

SYNC: Some of the SFX start and stop weirdly. The scanner on the Saladin bridge, for instance. Maybe the idea was that it turns on or off at that moment, but regardless it just feels like the audio sync is messed up.

Which relates to...

SFX OVER CUTS IN A LOCATION: This one's tricky. If officer A is at the Spock scanner, that SFX clearly needs to be there, but when cutting to the Captain, if the scanner is still running, the sound effect should not stop, just be dialed waaaay back as if heard from across the room.

MUSIC: Again, levels. Also, it feels like there's too much of it, and there are too many different styles (TOS/TMP, etc.). I'd suggest paring it back.


EDITING
My gut is that the show would be vastly improved just by cutting it tighter. There are all these dramatic pauses between lines that don't work because they just suck the life out of the conversations. It'll shorten the show and pick up the energy.


Hope that's helpful.

 

[Raymar3d]

Hello, Ken:

I've been looking forward to a Starship Saladin production since I first heard about it on the United Worlds (a.k.a. Polaris and Subspace) board. I don't know whether you remember me, because it's been at least six years since we first talked there, but I discussed ranks and other geeky things with you there under the same moniker of CorporalCaptain.

I've watched "Eye of the Tempest" and have considered offering feedback. I have both positive and negative things to say about it, but there are a lot of specific criticisms. Even though I think future productions could be improved by considering feedback that's offered in this forum, I don't want to contribute to an atmosphere, however inadvertently, in which it's perceived that people are ganging up on you or maliciously bashing your project. Like I said, I've been looking forward to this for years, and my motivation would be simply to see future projects improve.

While emotions are running high, I don't want to fuel an unhealthy vibe. But once things simmer down, and people are comfortable giving and receiving constructive criticism, I'd love to participate in discussion further.

Congratulations on finishing your first production. I have nothing but respect and admiration for you having seen it through! I also look forward to future episodes.

I sure do remember you! Good to see you again! Feel free to chime in here. We're past the misunderstanding now. What did you like and what didn't you like?

 

[Raymar3d]

So, speaking of constructive feedback...

Kenneth mentioned re-editing upthread. If that's so, I have several suggestions.

AUDIO

DIALOG. Normalize the dialog levels. Shut off all the sound effects and music and just watch the meters and make the sure the mean average for the dialog stays around 12db. Right now parts of the story are hard to follow because you just can't hear what some people are saying.

SFX (Sound FX): Reintroduce the sound effects, but make sure they don't drown out the dialog. Right now many of them are much louder than the dialog. The scanner bop bop and the medical scanner are two of the biggest offenders.

SYNC: Some of the SFX start and stop weirdly. The scanner on the Saladin bridge, for instance. Maybe the idea was that it turns on or off at that moment, but regardless it just feels like the audio sync is messed up.

Which relates to...

SFX OVER CUTS IN A LOCATION: This one's tricky. If officer A is at the Spock scanner, that SFX clearly needs to be there, but when cutting to the Captain, if the scanner is still running, the sound effect should not stop, just be dialed waaaay back as if heard from across the room.

MUSIC: Again, levels. Also, it feels like there's too much of it, and there are too many different styles (TOS/TMP, etc.). I'd suggest paring it back.


EDITING
My gut is that the show would be vastly improved just by cutting it tighter. There are all these dramatic pauses between lines that don't work because they just suck the life out of the conversations. It'll shorten the show and pick up the energy.


Hope that's helpful.

I agree 100%. All those things are valid and on the agenda for the re-edit. Thank you sir. -- Ken

 

[CorporalCaptain]

I sure do remember you! Good to see you again! Feel free to chime in here. We're past the misunderstanding now. What did you like and what didn't you like?

Great!

OK, here are some thoughts that are ready right away.

As far as the positives go, in broad strokes, I was impressed with the animation, especially of the space creature. After reflecting on the different elements of the story, I have a sense of how it might fit together, particularly how all the various interdimensional elements might relate to each other. There are clearly some interesting directions this could go in, but I'll defer commenting on that more and on the story structure until after running through it again.

As far as the negatives go, Maurice has already mentioned the pacing, which is something I noticed right off.

Here's a specific kind of problem that I noticed relating to pacing that happened many times: a character turns away from his or her station, replies to the captain, and then turns back to their station. That puts in two extra unnecessary beats every time it happens, the unnecessary beats being the turning away and the turning back. If you'll notice, on the original show, during critical periods such as during red alert on the bridge, the characters often talk to each other without making eye contact. For example, Spock will be talking to Kirk while he's staring into his scanner. Or, Sulu is facing forward working the helm. Sometimes the others will turn to face Kirk, but sometimes not. When characters are busy working their stations, breaking their attention away from what they're doing isn't necessary to reply to orders, and in fact you'd think it would be counterproductive. But, given that the characters do turn away from their stations a lot of times in your footage, to tighten it up, I'd suggest simply lopping off the front end of the footage of them speaking their line, the back end, or both, so we don't have to simply watch their heads turn, and wait for a head to finish turning before there's another line of dialog. It occurs to me that playing just the soundtrack with the video turned off might be a good exercise to help isolate these unnatural pauses in the conversations.

I'll try to work on getting more thoughts written down. Once again, Ken, I'm glad you finished this.

 

[Maurice]

^^^The scene on the Saladin bridge right after the shuttle vanishes is rife with these. As an experiment, I actually grabbed that scene and cut out most of the dead air, shortening it by almost a 5th.

 

[MikeH92467]

I'm going to make a crazy=ass suggestion: the opening title sequence has garnered a lot of criticism. Why not simply eliminate them altogether, then work backwards to see if anything in that sequence is absolutely necessary? That would certainly leave some blank spaces in the narrative, but I don't think it's always good story telling to answer every question. For instance, if you compare Frank Herbert's "Dune" stories to the sequels by his son and co-writer, the thing that drove me crazy was that the younger Herbert and co-writer was they went into excruciating detail about every damn thing, such as the hood ornament on the Imperial carriage or the exact technique one character used to kill another. It was just too much. Of course, going too far in the other direction will make a mess of things as well, but think how many times you've enjoyed a movie where you were trying to guess at a character's motivation or place in the narrative only to be flabbergasted by a plot twist that was actually in plain sight all along? "The Sting" is a great example. Just a thought and I hope it was coherent enough to make sense and be of some use.

 

[USS Intrepid]

I'd have to watch it again, but as to the opening sequence, I'm not sure there's really much in there that's relevant beyond "we're on a mission to rescue a Commodore and the shuttle he went missing aboard." Personally, I'd record a short log entry to set that up and leave it at that.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Besides going on a mission to rescue the Commodore, I suspect that being in an area of space where other craft have gone missing is also relevant. But, yeah, I'd think that it should only take a log entry 30 seconds or less to cover all the bases and set everything up.

 

[DCR]

I would also suggest that if you do shorten the opening to a log entry it will also help with one of my personal issues, that it was over 6 minutes before we saw a character speak on screen.

I think getting someone on screen and speaking earlier will help build viewer identification faster.

 

[Karzak]

Oh, absolutely there is no doubt at all that the title cards go on for far too long here.

I'd humbly suggest editing them down to no more than two individual cards (checked for grammar and tense consistency) and chucking the rest.

I'd also move the tribute to Nimoy, Whitney, Horner et al to the very beginning of the show for a quick five second blurb rather than in the middle of the otherwise hodgepodge opening of the film.

We've all heard the opening themes from Search for Spock, Wrath of Khan and Motion Picture before, so there's really no reason for that opening to drag on so, so long before we get to any actual dialogue or people on screen.

 

[USS Intrepid]

Besides going on a mission to rescue the Commodore, I suspect that being in an area of space where other craft have gone missing is also relevant. But, yeah, I'd think that it should only take a log entry 30 seconds or less to cover all the bases and set everything up.

You're quite right, that had slipped my mind.

 

[Maurice]

I agree with the above.

The dedication should be the first thing that appears. Get 'er done so we can get on with the story.

The opening intertitles are unnecessary. If you think it's stuff some of your potential audience wants to see, make it a little separate short "The Saladin Primer" or whatnot that you can link to with an annotation on YouTube for those who want some backstory.

Just dive into the action. You can always use the narrative shortcut of a log to explain what happened AFTER it happened. "The shuttle disappeared? WTF?" is a grabby opening. Pre-explaining that we're in a Bermuda Space Triangle only leaves "Okay, so just what is causing this?" which is a far less dramatic hook.

You might even just move the opening titles to after the shuttle disappears and treat the shuttle chase as a teaser.

 

[Bixby]

I watched Eye of the Tempest for a second time just to get a better feel for it.

I will say that I can tell Raymar and George genuinely love Star Trek, and I commend them for their energy and drive.

If you'll allow me, I would like to make a few professional comments:

I've mentioned it and some others have as well, but your film would hugely benefit from a trim down. Personally if I could, I would cut out most of the first six minutes of the episode and start right where it is at the 6:30 mark with a Ext. planet shot with a slow truck-in towards it, then cutting to a wide planet surface shot with the shuttlecraft on the ground (to establish the shuttle's start position) overlaid by a short voiceover containing the absolutely essential parts from the backstory. Then continue from there...

I agree with Maurice, there are quite a lot of ''dead air'' bits, pauses at the beginning or ending of shots until a character speaks.

Raymar, we've discussed before about the back-and-forth between Captain Martin and the Commodore about the M-5 conflict, and frankly I would cut that whole bit out, as well as the Captain Tracy part. It's just that those, as well as the casual mention of the Mind-Sifter at the beginning just don't make allowances for the new viewer who is not a hardcore Star Trek fan. I'd have no idea what a Mind-Sifter was until the near end of your episode where its more clear it's a mind-wiping\torture device...

You've said the previous connection between Martin and the Commodore is important, but that also is mentioned very casually, without really any conflict or anger from either character, so why bring it up, really?

Looking at your film, if I had a chance, I could probably cut about 15 minutes from its running length to make it more leaner and faster-paced.

Your exterior space shots I liked quite a bit, though sometimes there was a need for some two-shots just to get a better idea of the distance and relation between ships.

Finally for your future episodes, one thing that bothered me was the confusion in camera direction often. For example at the 8:00 mark on the Saladin bridge scènes, there would be shots with the lady commanding officer looking off to the left towards the science officer, cut to the latter but she would look back to the left as well when she should be looking to the right. Then the Comm officer would look forward to the right to the helmswoman, but she would look to the left instead of behind her right shoulder.

Wish you luck with future épisodes, it gets easier...

 

[Raymar3d]

I watched Eye of the Tempest for a second time just to get a better feel for it.

I will say that I can tell Raymar and George genuinely love Star Trek, and I commend them for their energy and drive.

If you'll allow me, I would like to make a few professional comments:

I've mentioned it and some others have as well, but your film would hugely benefit from a trim down. Personally if I could, I would cut out most of the first six minutes of the episode and start right where it is at the 6:30 mark with a Ext. planet shot with a slow truck-in towards it, then cutting to a wide planet surface shot with the shuttlecraft on the ground (to establish the shuttle's start position) overlaid by a short voiceover containing the absolutely essential parts from the backstory. Then continue from there...

I am in at least partial agreement with this. It is too long. I think it relays at least some necessary information though, so while I may alter the way I do it, it will need to be present in some form, as it is connecting this to some other films and so I will need to give it some long and hard thought to see how I may still do it but keep it shorter. I know that I can shorten it in the amount of time it takes by a considerable margin with a better edit.

I agree with Maurice, there are quite a lot of ''dead air'' bits, pauses at the beginning or ending of shots until a character speaks.

I agree also. I will correct this in the new edit.

Raymar, we've discussed before about the back-and-forth between Captain Martin and the Commodore about the M-5 conflict, and frankly I would cut that whole bit out, as well as the Captain Tracy part. It's just that those, as well as the casual mention of the Mind-Sifter at the beginning just don't make allowances for the new viewer who is not a hardcore Star Trek fan. I'd have no idea what a Mind-Sifter was until the near end of your episode where its more clear it's a mind-wiping\torture device...

You've said the previous connection between Martin and the Commodore is important, but that also is mentioned very casually, without really any conflict or anger from either character, so why bring it up, really?

There are a few reasons it is in there. One, it establishes Commodore Enwright led the M-5 research and development team. He also leads R&D at Jupiter Station, and this will be even more important in the next story. If I do not plant the information here, then it will appear out of thin air in the next story, and it is my opinion as the writer that I need to set up the next part of the story. And yes, though Martin is not showing anger, he still feels it and is at least taking the man's reaction to the news to help him judge his character. I think it is important. Our acting skills may not have relayed this. I wish I was a better actor. But the writing is intended to convey this. And since I am definitely going to do a story expanding the M-5 incident, either in audio or comic format, I feel that it is an important scene. I might reshoot it for the new edit and see if I can do a better job with it this time around. As for the Mind Sifter, it is something that is connected to Kor on multiple fronts. He used it on Spock in "Errand of Mercy," and planned to use it on Kirk. Ultimately he did in Star Trek New Voyages "Mind Sifter," to which this is at least loosely, if unofficially, connected.

It is interesting that you suggest I should work to make it easier for the casual fan, or consider them the primary audience. When I pitched scripts for Star Trek Voyager, we proposed a script that involved Neelix getting a replacement lung from Kes. They passed on it for the same reason you mention. It required confidence in the audience's ability to remember details from previous episodes. I am aware of the idea of what you suggest, but I counter with this: Continuity of the story needs an anchor of some sort. If it is just episodic without any connection to the world in which things take place, or the events that happen in that world, the story loses something in my opinion. I have confidence that most TOS fans are going to relate to these connections. As a fan film especially, it is not designed for the casual fan quite so much as the rabid fan of continuity within Star Trek fandom. Is that fan service? Possibly. Things do get revealed in the story within this 'bottle' setting that are important to understand. Even if no one had ever heard of a mind sifter, it sounds like a nasty device, and then it does get revealed that it is a torture device by the characters. It is not critical that they have seen the other stories, but if people remember them, then it maintains a continuity with them that is a good thing. To me, making things that lack continuity is something that we have seen with the JJ Abrams films, and not something I want to advocate. If it is obscure, I'll do my best to make it less so if I do it again in the future.

Looking at your film, if I had a chance, I could probably cut about 15 minutes from its running length to make it more leaner and faster-paced.

Your exterior space shots I liked quite a bit, though sometimes there was a need for some two-shots just to get a better idea of the distance and relation between ships.

Thanks. I had plans to do more, but ran out of time on my self-imposed deadline. Maybe on the re-edit/special edition version I can do that. I can certainly visualize exactly what you're talking about.

Finally for your future episodes, one thing that bothered me was the confusion in camera direction often. For example at the 8:00 mark on the Saladin bridge scènes, there would be shots with the lady commanding officer looking off to the left towards the science officer, cut to the latter but she would look back to the left as well when she should be looking to the right. Then the Comm officer would look forward to the right to the helmswoman, but she would look to the left instead of behind her right shoulder.

I'll have to take a look at that. The characters as far as I was visualizing them were in their standard positions/duty stations. It is a difficult process making a virtual set feel as real as a real set, and it is really hard for an actor. Perhaps tighter editing I can alleviate some of that. But the science station is forward to Randall's right. Sha'Ress did get up from her seat at one point, and so she was to Randall's right standing next to her. The thing that most bothers me is the lighting on that sequence is too orange/brown for the rest of the bridge. I'm going to correct that too. I ran out of time again. The curse of a deadline is that you have a drop dead date. The blessing is that it makes you release it. And then the additional curse of imperfections strikes again. After a certain point in time, you weigh the situation and like triage, have to decide on the trade-offs. Release or wait? If I had done more to the edit, probably still would have fallen short of expectations, but at least this way it's out there, and you guys can have some feedback for the special edition.

Wish you luck with future épisodes, it gets easier...

Thank you very much!