Vintage fan films?

[Lord Garth]

Seven months after taking this forum I'm able to watch over it full-time. FOT/XI was interesting but I grossly neglected this forum unfortunately, which is too bad.

I have a TV background and used to deal with Fan Film threads when I was in TOS. I held onto this forum, for exactly the reason that I might burn out on ST XI. I don't have to worry about that here.

So you'll be seeing a lot more of me around here. On with the topic.

It seems to me like all the fan films I've ever seen have been recent. Things from within the last 10 years. Do you know of any fan flims older than that? Particularly, but not necessarily, from even the 70's or 80's?

Those would be interesting to see.

 

[Mallory]

It'll be good to have you around on a more regular basis LG!

I seem to recall someone here {Starship Polaris?) posting some links a while back to a 1970's/early 80's fan film. But I'll be damned if I can find it using the search function.

 

[johnhazard]

I too would LOVE to see more vintage Trek fanfilms, particularly from the 70's.

I think the "holy grail" of all would be Yorktown II, which we've discussed on these boards before. An unfinished 80's fanfilm starring GEARGE TAKEI as Sulu and ship designs by Andrew Probert! Apparently it's vanished into history, but I know someone somewhere must have some footage. Here's an old article.

Here's something I got off Boingboing recently- a 70's stop motion trek comedy, complete with making of video.

Also via Boingboing: Steampunk Trek! -not from the 70's or 80's, but it looks awfully vintage.

Here's a short that's silly, but it IS from the 70's.

Way funnier- because it's crappier- is the world famous "Turkish Trek".

Of course, none of these, short of the missing Yorktown , really satisfies the vintage fan trek itch. I hope someone comes forward with more.

UPDATE:

Someone just informed me of this one posted about at United Worlds-
Paragon's Paragon!
God, would I love to see some of that!

 

[rich kolker]

This comes up every now and then, and I bring up a fan film I remember seeing back in the 1970s, probably at Equicon. A blond kid played Kirk and it was shot on 8mm. That's all I remember.

 

[Trekwatcher]

I saw a fanfilm shot video from the early 80's at a con in NYC. It was not really good but the novelty factor generated a huge buzz. It was the first I had ever heard of or seen something like that.

This con had a forum for homemade films, one of which (about chasing an alien on 20th century earth) was well made and I can still remember it clearly to this day.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Here you go:

This is something I've wanted to mention for quite a while, but I couldn't find my visual reference. Well, going through some boxes of papers this evening I found a few stray pages from a trade paperback I bought back in 1981 -- "Film Magic" was the name of the book, and it was a collection of articles that had appeared in the pre-Starlog, Don Dohler-published CineMagic magazine.

One such article was about a Trek film titled "Paragon's Paragon" which had been made in the late 1970s by a young guy named Jon Cosentino. It was all shot on Super-8 film, I believe, and the sets were constructed in Cosentino's basement. He built his own aerial optical printer in order to do the effects, like beaming and so forth.

I've never seen the film, nor have I ever been able to track Cosentino online. He did build one of the monster suits for Dohler's first low-budget movie, and that's the only Internet reference I've found.

Anyway, here's a scanned page from the article:

This has impressed Hell out of me for a quarter of a century.

 

[Trekwatcher]

I suspect these are lost to the ages, although it would be great to see them again.

 

[SeerSGB]

Starship Polaris said:
Here you go:

This is something I've wanted to mention for quite a while, but I couldn't find my visual reference. Well, going through some boxes of papers this evening I found a few stray pages from a trade paperback I bought back in 1981 -- "Film Magic" was the name of the book, and it was a collection of articles that had appeared in the pre-Starlog, Don Dohler-published CineMagic magazine.

One such article was about a Trek film titled "Paragon's Paragon" which had been made in the late 1970s by a young guy named Jon Cosentino. It was all shot on Super-8 film, I believe, and the sets were constructed in Cosentino's basement. He built his own aerial optical printer in order to do the effects, like beaming and so forth.

I've never seen the film, nor have I ever been able to track Cosentino online. He did build one of the monster suits for Dohler's first low-budget movie, and that's the only Internet reference I've found.

Anyway, here's a scanned page from the article:

This has impressed Hell out of me for a quarter of a century.

Bit of nuBSG Baltar look going on there with the Captain :laugh:

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

This was all built in Cosentino's basement, BTW. He had no blueprint references to build his sets from, no patterns for the uniforms, or anything - just some photo reference, and it's probably hard for folks who don't remember the 1960s and early 70s to imagine just how meager those resources were.

 

[Thalek]

rich kolker said:
This comes up every now and then, and I bring up a fan film I remember seeing back in the 1970s, probably at Equicon. A blond kid played Kirk and it was shot on 8mm. That's all I remember.

I remember that one, kinda. Legos(tm) for the control panels, and one of those low-pressure colored alcohol toys to demonstrate the alien's powers . . .

That same Equicon had a stop-action animation done for humor using G.I. Joe(tm) figures. "There is no pain. There is NO pain. Arrrrrrrrrrgggggghhhhhh!"

Never saw either one of them again, unfortunately.

 

[Buck Rogers]

well let me pipe in,and I'm also interested to have the producers of these vintage films,because I run the Video Room at Shore leave so next year the Con will be our 30th year event. A;so and update to Fan Film Catagory, Tom Donnelly who is our Club President is now taking over the Fan Film section of the Video Room so if anybody wants me pass any links,e-mail addresses of fan productions,please do PM me with the specific contact information,and I'll see to it that Tom get that information.

That is all
Signed
Buck Rogers

 

[Therin of Andor]

The first Australian Super 8 fan film I saw was from the Melbourne Star Trek Club, Austrek, called "City on the Edge of the Yarra" (as in Yarra River) and it had some rather bizarre "Rocky Horror Picture Show" influences when Kirk and Spock stumble across a science fiction convention. There was also a SF film made - but never finished? - by Sydney fan John Parks. It featured some "Star Wars" parodies, such as robots C-Me-P.O.Q. and RU-One-Two, and a life-size Dalek race, if I recall correctly. I did eventually see snippets of the raw footage, and it was fun recognising the early work of several fan colleagues, performed years before I'd discovered active fandom, and met all these people, in 1980.

My club, Astrex, in Sydney, had one group of enthusiastic members who made some fan films with me in the 80s. I've mentioned several of them here before. Mostly, our fan films were videoed parodies of then-contemporary television game shows, as performed live at fan gatherings. These were then edited, given opening credits, and sometimes had reshoots and SPFX added. Some of our efforts were made as proper short films, though, and had scripted dialogue and even storyboards, etc.

Our fan films included:

* The Australian Science Fiction Media Award-winning "Sale of the 23rd Century", hosted by Therin and Tharrah the Andorians, and Tackee the green Orion slave girl. (This was many years before Senator Therin Sr cameoed in "Starship Exeter: The Savage Empire".)

* "Starfleet Blankety Blanks", hosted by Grol the Tellarite and Tackee.

* "Cometcon Blankety Blanks", hosted by Strop the Visitor and Tackee.

* "Timewarped" - Doug and Tony of "The Time Tunnel" arrive in Sydney, Australia, just in time for a science fiction media convention. Ann twiddles some knobs but is unable to assist them.

* The Australian Science Fiction Media Award-winning "Perfect Botch", hosted by Reed, Sue and Johnny of "The Fantastic Four", complete with an inserted segment about Spock and T'Pring's romantic date, which they'd supposedly won in the (phantom) previous episode. Segment had Therin and Tharrah as chaperones. Live "mystery guest" contestants were Tackee and The Thing.

* "Free Maltz", the post-"Star Trek III" story of Maltz's escape from a Vulcan prison cell. A standalone short, but also used as introduction to:

* "The Nearly-Wed Game", hosted by Maltz and guest-starring pro actor Brian Croucher of "Blake's Seven" as Travis!

* "The Naked Never" - a Season One TNG skit videoed on a full-size TNG bridge (mocked up in one weekend out of huge sheets of corrugated cardboard).

* "Star Trek 5.5" - the making of the film they were never game to let William Shatner actually direct, and on a shoestring budget even less than "Star Trek V: The Final Frontier".

I'm not sure if the parody game shows "It's in the Beg" (performed live in New Zealand, hosted by The Flash) or "Tribble Lotto", featuring Walter Koenig (also performed live in Sydney), were actually preserved for posterity.

My production team was known as Harpic Productions. Yep, flushed with success, our films made us blue in the face. (And had some toilet humour.)

I also once participated, as script contributor and makeup artist, on a film short made by a group of Macquarie University film students in the 90s. It was called "Lost in Fantasy" and is perhaps closer to an Australian docu-drama than a true fan film.
More info, and I'll add pics, dates and details there when I can.

 

[rich kolker]

Another category are videos of fan presentations done on stage at various conventions over the years. I have a bunch of those. Others probably have more.

 

[Therin of Andor]

Yep. You shoulda seen Therin presenting the "Kirk for the Galactic Senate campaign", complete with Tackee, Saavik and Tharrah the Andorian as cheerleaders...

"Hey Jimmy, you're so fine, you're so fine you blow my mind, hey Jimmy!" (To the tune of "Hey Mickey".)

 

[Forbin]

I've posted this before, but since the subject has come up again...

Here I am as helm in my friend Frank's 1982 college film project:

It was done in Super-8, of course, on some proprietary sound system that no longer exists. So I think all that's left of it is this photo! We weren't portraying Kirk & co., we were the crew of the destroyer USS Lucifer.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

One thing that "Paragon" and other late 70s/early 80s fan films should make us all appreciate a little more are the technological and marketing innovations of the last few decades as they concern hair product.

 

[sturmde]

Someday I'll be successful in tracking down Ed Hickman, who in 1980 put a group of students at Dothan High School together in producing something called "Star Trek: The 8mm Motion Picture" with a subtitle of "And So Shall Ye Reap..."

Since he was the band director, we had the band room to use a corner of during the summer to construct the bridge set. It was done very "efficiently" since little of the action took place there: we built the elevator alcove, Uhura's station, Scott's station, and Kirk's chair, and the rails. Sulu and Chekov were simply sitting in chairs, you got a "perspective" shot as they pretended to be at a console that wasn't there...

An old ROTC rifle range worked perfectly to construct a multi-purpose set, first staged as the transporter room (where quite a few of the scenes were set), then with the platform removed, and wall extended it became the briefing room, and then a corridor. Then reconfigured again it became sickbay. And yes, of course, we had trombone mutes in the medicine cabinet, just like in the original TOS.

The rest of the action took place planetside. So, not having any planets, we did location shooting on Earth. Heh. A ballroom in an old building stood in as a 'throne room' comparable to what was used in "Bread and Circuses". The balcony seating of a stage doubled as an "emperor's window onto a large room."

Forbin: you guys at least have photos. For some reason, we didn't think of that until after the fact.

 

[thegreatunknown]

HI RICH (I'm a big AP alimnus)
I would love to see those tapes of the sundae shows. Maybe trafer them to DVD or even youtube?
My cousin got a copy of ST:TMP, added some other footage & sounds and made "Star Wrek: The Commotion Picture" She even took out some boring V'ger cloud footage and had the "Chubby Checkov's greatest screams" commercial, which Koieng showed at some of his appearences. She only showed it at cons b/c she didn't want to get sued.

 

[Supervisor 194]

Cosentino had a great eye for the designs, given his resource limitations--would love to see this one.

 

[Maurice]

Not a "film" per se, but a group in L.A. many moons ago did an extended skit called "James T. Kirk Superstar: A Spock Opera", in which they used Andrew Lloyd Webber music for a musical version of City on the Edge of Forever, opening with miniskirted Yeomen go-go dancing as Kirk sings into his communicator, the Guardian as the narrator, Spock singing "I Don't Know How to Love, Jim", and Kirk trying to save Edith (now a 90's self help guru) by convincing Khan to give up his plans for world domination for a career as a TV personality.

The end song includes these lines:
James T. Kirk
Superstar
More of a man
Than Jean Luc Picard

I have it on video. I'll have to find out if the people who did it are willing to put it out in public (if it isn't already).