Whatever happened to Starship Exeter?

[Lord Garth FOI]

Holy Crap!!!!

Lord I wish we could have found some way to help Exeter keep going after this. I would have been thrilled with one episode a year (estatic with two or three)

 

[Maurice]

Post-production is always the killer on projects like this. The Phase II guys can testify to that, as they're experienced with it. Once everyone's on-set and shooting you make rapid progress, but the stuff that has to happen after is, in a way, the bigger job, because it's a smaller number of people with a bunch of BIG tasks: editing, color-correction, ADR, foley, sound effects, scoring, visual effects, etc. If you can make it your full-time job it goes pretty fast. If you're all-volunteer, any hiccup or delay in the chain can affect the whole thing.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Hi guys!

 

[Maurice]

Hi guys!

And hello to you, too.

 

[Ah Forgive!]

​

That picture makes me feel funny. Like when we used to climb the rope in gym class.


Boy did I ever love this series. How much would we have to raise to make a new episode feasible someday?

 

[Maurice]

Boy did I ever love this series. How much would we have to raise to make a new episode feasible someday?

Something over $20,000 for starters.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

And that's assuming that you could get that kind of stage space and professional lighting support for free, again.

 

[Kirk here]

[/QUOTE]

Boy did I ever love this series. How much would we have to raise to make a new episode feasible someday?[/QUOTE]

With all due respect to the whole volunteer effort on this, the word "series" implies more than one episode, at least three actually.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

At least two, actually.

 

[HarryM]

I really liked the feel of this one, seemed to get the TOS vibe correct, I look forward to seeing TTI completed someday.

 

[Kirk here]

At least two, actually.

I was thinking mathematically. You need at least three terms to be able to guess the pattern. No offense.

 

[GSchnitzer]

At least two, actually.

I was thinking mathematically. You need at least three terms to be able to guess the pattern. No offense.

For what it's worth, the Emmy Awards has the following eligibility criteria:

"Rule 13a. If a comedy or drama series is canceled or discontinued and five or fewer episodes first aired in
the current eligibility year, the series is ineligible."

So, for Emmy consideration, a "series" needs six episodes. (I think fewer than that and it would have to be considered a "mini-series" and would only be eligible in that category.)

 

[Captain Robert April]

So, would we have 1 3/4 pilots so far?

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Emmy criteria are about as relevant to fan films as Oscar, Hugo and Nebula criteria.

 

[Captain Robert April]

Isn't there a Hugo category for fan films? I seem to recall fanzines getting something.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

There are 'zine, writer and artist awards (as well as a "semiprozine" award, which sounds like it was probably an effort to "promote" a couple of expensive fanzines out of qualifying and winning the fanzine award year after year). Any film has to compete in one of the two Dramatic Presentation categories against professional productions - outside of a virtually impossible logrolling effort, there is no chance for a fan film to win either category.

 

[Captain Robert April]

Well, maybe it's about time there was a fan film category.

After all, it's not like there are only Star Trek fan films being made, and the production standards have come a long way since the day when you took the family Super 8 camera, slapped a hand drawn insignia on that ugly orange sweatshirt and filmed yourself in the backyard with the alien creature that bore an uncanny resemblance to the family dog spray painted green...

 

[Therin of Andor]

the day when you took the family Super 8 camera, slapped a hand drawn insignia on that ugly orange sweatshirt and filmed yourself in the backyard with the alien creature that bore an uncanny resemblance to the family dog spray painted green...

You saw that? We had fun filming it.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Any film has to compete in one of the two Dramatic Presentation categories against professional productions - outside of a virtually impossible logrolling effort, there is no chance for a fan film to win either category.

Yeah, but World Enough and Time was nominated for Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form, 2008 Hugo Award, although it lost to Doctor Who “Blink”. Isn't a nomination a significant milestone, at least?

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

It's a nice thing. I was nominated for a Nebula back in the mists of prehistory, and my prize is that I get to drop that in conversation for the rest of my life every time I feel like attracting undue attention to myself for no good reason - as a deep-dyed narcissist, I find that very satisfying.

As you say, though, it lost. Not only WEAT lost to "Blink," so did all of the professional competition in the category. There is no second place award and no consolation prize. As the old in-joke goes, "it's an honor just to be nominated."

OTOH, there's always the Golden Globes. Paging Ricky Gervais.

WEAT is the only Trek fan production I've seen that meets all of the minimal standards of competence for a professional production across the board - everything. Some parts of it are quite good; the worst parts of it are good enough, IMAO, to actually be on television.

As much as I admire a lot of fan films there's not one besides WEAT I've seen that you can actually say that about - the best fall down in one area or another, and my personal bias is that it's most likely to be in the writing. DS9Sega has a good thread going about addressing a lot of the shortcomings in fan films that I believe is currently focusing really nicely on camera angles and editing.

I guess I should always qualify that by saying Trek fan films, because I haven't seen a lot of the others - I hear real good things about Browncoat Redemption, for instance, but missed my chance to buy a copy of that this weekend so I can't proffer an opinion.