Last week, you might recall me talking about the latest crop of Star Trek fan film releases. Starting in early September, the following all-new Star Trek fan films were released:
September 3 – Star Trek Continues “Embracing the Winds”
September 20 – Project: Potemkin (finale) “Destinies”
September 27 – Trek: Isolation (debut) “Out of the Fire”
September 27 – Melbourne (vignette) “PenPals 2”
September 29 – Starship Antyllus (episode 9) “Ripple Effect”
October 7 – Aurora (final part of episode 2) “Mudd in Your I”
October 13 – The Federation Files (debut) “His Name Is Mudd”
October 18 – Starship Tristan (latest episode) “Be Careful What You Wish For”
Plus there was one that I missed listing last time. It is a low-budget German-language fan film:
September 21 – Star Trek: Euderion (latest episode) “Euderion vs Alien“
That’s NINE–count ’em, NINE!!!–Star Trek fan films released in less than two months! (Oh, and a huge thank you to Barbara Reader of the Star Trek Reviewed website! That woman impresses me to no end with her ability to track down and keep track of every new Star Trek fan film and audio drama that gets released. Her website is an amazing resource for anyone interested in Trek fan productions. And needless to say, I couldn’t have compiled today’s list without her site.)
But wait! There’s more! October is quite over yet. In just the past week, FIVE ADDITIONAL fan films have been released:
October 21 – Star Trek: Raven (debut) “Voyager Continues”
October 21 – The Night Shift (latest episode parody) “The Doomsday Machine”
October 24 – Project: Potemkin (epilogue) “Room Service”
October 26 –USS Danubia (Star Trek/Star Wars crossover) “Force Contact“
October 26 – Starship Mojave (short computer-generated episode with voice synthesis) “Suspicion”
That brings us to FOURTEEN new fan films in just two months!!!
I don’t know about you, but that number just astounds me. I’ve looked briefly through the history of Trek fan films, and fourteen releases in just two months is definitely a record (unless I missed something).
So what does it mean? Are we entering a new silver age of Star Trek fan films where short, low-budget productions become the new normal and get released more frequently than ever before? Or is this just a coincidence that a whole bunch of fan series which had been in post-production all got released at about the same time? I suppose we won’t know for certain until a few more months have gone by.
In the meantime, the one thing that hasn’t proliferated lately is crowd-funding. Most low-budget fan series seem to be completely opting out of doing Kickstarters and Indiegogo campaigns. Renegades still has an active Indiegogo campaign just about $14,000 short of the $150,000 it needs to complete post production on both parts of “The Requiem.” Also, the eagerly-awaited Pacific 201 has an active Indiegogo campaign that’s raised just over $26,000 but could still use more.
Also, Starfleet Studios in Iowa (not to be confused with Starbase Studios in Oklahoma) has just launched a new Kickstarter campaign with a goal of $11,000. It only just went up, so the donations are still pretty modest right now. But I expect those numbers to increase once more folks visit their Kickstarter page and watch the really cool video by David Whitney. (That was a hint, by the way. Go and watch that video…and donate if you’re so inclined. Ignore the Axanar-schmaxanar at the end. It’s all in good fun…and they do it to Renegades, too.) Starfleet Studios just released the 32-minute Star Trek: Raven debut episode “Voyager Continues” and the 47-minute “His Name Is Mudd.” So they’ve now established themselves as a capable fan film production team. Their next film is currently titled “The TNG Project” (David Whitney says that’s the title for now) and features an actor playing Data who looks impressively similar to Brent Spiner. The film will feature a cutting edge approach to compositing rotating green screen actors against moving backgrounds. I really hope it gets made.
Stay tuned to see what else fans manage to produce and release. We do seem to be a force of nature at this point!
copy machine
computers
people do text
computers
and many other machine that do the same thing
maybe that’s why there are shared copy rights in place
even Star Trek needs to be shared with what I don’t know
and they still have not changed the guidelines everybody is looking for a loophole
which do exist in the guidelines