After the “Origins” teaser, I showed our first Kickstarter video and talked about how that campaign set the trajectory for Axanar. We followed that discussion up with a screening of the trailer for Prelude to Axanar.
To keep the momentum up for the next panel, we started things off by watching “Prelude to Axanar” and then followed that up with a Q&A with fans.
Famous Scfi Fi author David Brin is a huge Axanar fan!
Of course everyone wanted to know about the lawsuit!
Since I can’t talk about the case, I basically just said everything I’ve been saying on the blog and in social media. We want to resolve the case and get on with telling our story, but the legal process has to be given time to play out. Our prolonged discussion of the technicalities in the case was probably boring for the people who were more curious about Axanar itself, but it seemed like everyone was behind us and excited to see a positive resolution for everyone involved.
I know that is something I have said many times – and I’m going to keep on saying it until we get everything worked out.
Not only do we support fan films more than any other production, (we even have a weekly Fan Film Friday blog highlighting a different production each week on our website), but we firmly believe that coming to a positive resolution resolution on this lawsuit could be a positive step for all fan films.
Why?
Because right now there are absolutely no guidelines for Fan Films from CBS (the rights holder).
Unlike Lucasfilm, who actively promotes fan films and even has a fan film contest, there are no guidelines from CBS, who won’t even tell you what you CANNOT do. When you talk with them, they make it very clear they will tell you neither what you can nor what you cannot do … only when you cross the line.
Of course, they don’t tell you where the line is!
We hope that one thing that will come from this suit is more brightly colored line drawn around what is and is not permissible for fan films in the future.
So keep the faith Axanarians and we’ll keep goin!
LLAP,
Alec Peters
Here is the question I have (since people keep bringing up the Lucasfilm fan films being a great thing… etc etc): Does Lucasfilm allow fan films to raise funds, via Kickstarter/Indeigogo/Whatever, under the banner of “Star Wars Fan Film”? I honestly do not know the answer to this. At the end of the day, is the main complaint that CBS has with these “fan films” be that individuals are raising funds online to support what they are doing?
I am not opposed to this as I have contributed to both STC and Axanar. I would be a hypocrite if I said they shouldn’t allow that. Are ALL Star Wars Fan Films made by fans w/o any contributions and/or fundraising?
Lots of Star Wars fan film Kickstarters have been done. Here’s a link to one of them that generated nearly $30K:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/treystokes/the-final-chapter-of-the-pink-five-saga/description
Also, there have been dozens of Star Trek-related crowdfunding campaigns (see the entry in the “Fan Film Blog” section of this website), some of which have generated well into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. If CBS/Paramount was simply upset about crowdfunding, they could have gone after Renegades back in 2012 or Star Trek Continues or Ne Voyages or any of a host of other successfully crowdfunded films/series.
Thanks Jonathan. I’d seen plenty of Trek ones (obviously), but never looked for Star Wars ones. Thanks for pointing that out.
Hey Alec!
…that’s some good stuff! you gave some very nice delivery from the observation deck! 😉
(that guy playing Finnegan is pretty good too!) =P
is it supposed to cut out when young Kirk arrives at Starfleet HQ?
I guess you’re going to have to sit on the Heroes vignette for now…? =(
Yeah it ends abruptly.
That is why as per player limitations; the number of game servers for Blade and Soul also appear restricted.