Wednesday, June 17, 2015
Look what’s coming! An Axanar Phone App for iPhone and Android! And hopefully it will be ready by the time we launch our next crowdfunding campaign. Axanar CTO Terry McIntosh, Tech guru and Convention Director Bill Watters, and artist/web designer Aaron Harvey are hard at work at this great bit of tech that will help all you Axanerds stay in touch with Team Axanar!
Meanwhile, after I stopped by Universal Studios (which is down the street from where I live) for their prop & costume sale, which turned out to be a total waste of time! No big deal, I was then off to the studio where I met with Roger Latin, the rigger who has been helping us plan out our power needs. Basically, we have plenty of power coming into the studio stage area, but it isn’t the type we need! Meaning we need 2 transformers to get the voltage down to a usable form. So that is another $ 10-15,000 investment! UGH. (Thank god for you amazing donors who help make Ares Studios possible!).
What’s up with Rob and the super, not-so-secret first day of production scene? Well, here is some news from Rob:
After sending Tobias the “lock-off” shots from the Vulcan Shoot, you can imagine the electric anticipation I was feeling to see exactly what he’d come back to us with. I’d come up with a very specific place where our scene occurs, with very specific needs… but I didn’t really know what it would LOOK like. And unlike his starships and space vistas, creating a photo-realistic environment for actors to exist and interact in certainly isn’t easy, and is orders of magnitude more difficult than convincing space shots. Tobias had already come through for us with the Archer Arena in PRELUDE, but that was dark and didn’t need much detail in the close ups. But an afternoon on Vulcan in the middle of ShiKahr city? Let’s just say we’d be pushing Tobias to the edge of his abilities.
And then, unexpectedly, I got the first finished composite from Tobias the very next day. A close-up on Soval. Since we’d been planning this shoot for weeks, I probably shouldn’t have been surprised by this…but I was. Once again, Tobias Richter blew me away. The composite was so detailed and so amazing, and so far beyond anything we’d seen in the Vulcan arc on ENTERPRISE, that I could only shake my head in wonderment.
I was meeting with Milton later in the day to look at my rough cut of the scene so he could consult with Tobias on the composites, but after I showed him the first, finished comp, his jaw hit the floor. He looked at me and said, “Oh…Tobias has GOT THIS.”
Yes…he most certainly does.
LLAP
Alec
please keep me posted on the release date for the iPhone app.
Sweetness once again. Since y’all are excited, that just makes me more excited… Come on July so we can see the teaser .
Just listening to Tobias Richter in #18 again.. you asked him what would be a challenging FX shot he would like to see. He mentions their first three TOS series Movies.. but not a lot after that. One shot I’ve thought about from TOS and the Animated series.. and barely replicated in Enterprise or NxGen was a ‘long shot’ Force Perspective of the Warp Drive Bearings or Injectors.. in the Old Series.. it brought gravitas and Credibility when Scotty was looking up into the Force Perspective horizontal Warp Core or Relays between the Nacelles.. and they Glowed cherry Red.. then Hot Red and Bright Red as if shifting through the Black Body Radiation Spectrum.. like the Krell Metal in Forbidden Planet when under attack from the ID Monster.. almost to the breaking point.. the melting point.. we get to Sympathize.. with Scotty.. and understand even greater than Kirk .. just how close they are to total Catastrophic disaster.. I can almost imagine the meltdown of the reactor core.. the shearing apart of the components shared between the nacelles.. like the engine block in a V-8 engine.. tearing the engineering section to pieces.. and ripping the ship apart. Surely in fighting a Klingon D-7 one of the Aries class ships will actually ‘exceed’ it design specifications.. and we’ll get an opportunity to see ‘just what Scotty was fearing…’ and then.. over the horizon.. comes the calvary.. the Constitution Class.. born to the occasion.. born of Fire and Ice and ready for Battle.. ready to settle all accounts.
I. Love. You. Guys. <3
Will the app also be available outside the U.S.?
Wow sounds pretty awesome 😀
Awesome! I love that Tobias is still astounding us. I am always amazed at what Tobas can do!