Fandom news

When the Starship Farragut Crew launched their series at last year’s Farpoint convention, they also announced plans to release new episodes at the rate of two per year. I was quite impressed by the boldness of their plans and even more so when they actually did it!

I had the opportunity to talk to several members of the group back in February, during this year’s Farpoint. During one such chat, someone, I think it was Michael Bednar, told me they had some big changes in the offing. About the only details I learned were that they would be doing fewer episode length productions, but making up the difference with more short subjects.

The cat is now out of the bag. Farragut Films has announced Starship Farragut-The Animated Episodes. The trailer currently displayed on the site’s home page shows a brief montage of clips from the existing live-action episodes (I recognized at least one clip from “For Want of a Nail“) and then cuts to animated clips done in the same style as the 1970s animated series done by Filmation.

No episodes yet, but I’m looking forward to seeing what they have up their collective sleeve.

Thanks to DaCap for passing along the news!

Links of Interest:

• Starship Farragut: http://www.starshipfarragut.com/
• The Animated Episodes: http://www.farragut-animated.com/
• StarTrekAnimated: http://startrekanimated.com/

Starship Farragut

When Starship Farragut released their first episode last February, their goal was to release new episodes at a rate of two per year. The first episode, “The Captaincy” premiered at the Farpoint convention, so with the 2008 edition of Farpoint approaching, it occurred to me to check whether there were any updates.

Sure enough, when I visited Farragut’s web site (http://www.starshipfarragut.com/), I was greeted with an announcement that a new episode was available for download.

“For Want of a Nail” premiered on October 13 and was released on the web (with a variety of download mirrors) on December 3. I haven’t had a chance to view the episode yet (I may have an opportunity this weekend), but the trailers make it sound quite enticing.

Starship Exeter

After downloading the new Starship Farragut episode, I decided to check the status of another fan series, Starship Exeter (http://www.starshipexeter.com/). Rather than the “all at once” approach Farragut and New Voyages use for releasing their new episodes, Exeter has been releasing individual acts of the episode as they finish the post processing.

The advantage to this strategy is that you get to see new footage a little more often. The down side of course is that when a segment ends on a dramatic note, it can be quite frustrating waiting for the next segment to be released. In the case of Exeter’s current episode, “The Tressaurian Intersection,” it was a year between the release of Act II and Act III. (As frustrating as that might be, it’s still faster than IMPS: The Relentless which is coming up on three years since the last installment was released.)

As with the Exeter episode, I haven’t had a chance to watch Act III of “The Tressaurian Intersection” yet, but I do remember Act II as a classic cliffhanger. I’m definitely looking forward to watching it, though I can’t help wondering whether I should wait for the ending piece to be released.

Every so often I’ll check out Luke Ski’s site to see if he has any interesting projects going on. Visiting the site today and progressing onto YouTube, I discovered a batch of music videos based on his songs. Some appear to have been created with Luke Ski’s direct input, some by his fans.

Check them out if you dare:

Holding out for Hiro

You Don’t Know Jack

Wannabe a Slayer (Only visible on YouTube)

Stealing Like a Hobbit

And then, it appears that somebody took a part of one of Luke Ski’s derivative works and created their own derivative work, “Jedi School Dropout” (featuring an excerpt from Luke Ski’s “Grease Wars”).

The New Voyages team has released their third episode, World Enough and Time starring George Takei as Hikaru Sulu.

At the moment, the episode is only available for download via Bittorrent, though a streaming option is also available. (Check the New Voyages web site for more information.)

I chose the Bittorrent option which took about an hour to download the 370+ MB file. (Your download time may, of course, vary for a number of reasons.)

Two quick notes for those who decide to download it that way:

1. It may be just my download or it’s possible the filename got scrambled at the source. Either way, the file extension should be “.MP4″ and not “.MP4(2)”.
2. As you may have guessed from the previous item, this is not a MPG or WMV or even a .MOV file. To view the downloaded version you’ll need a fairly recent version of the QuickTime player. (I have no idea whether there might be some other viewing option, that’s what worked for me.)

I’ll reserve judgement until I’ve had a chance to watch the episode in it’s entirety, but what I’ve seen so far is quite impressive. They’re getting quite good at the visual effects and the acting keeps getting better.

The episode’s somewhere around an hour long which is about 18 minutes longer than any normal length “hour long” episode on TV.

New Voyages has announced that the premier of the new episode, “World Enough and Time” will take place on August 23. The event will feature a special streaming live video broadcast from Beverly Hills with George Takei, James Cawley, Marc Zicree, Michael Reaves and others involved in creating the series. The premier event will be followed by a streaming broadcast of the episode.

An advance screening of the episode will take place during the Shore Leave 29 convention.

Surviving a Zombie attack is tough enough, but what do you do about the cleanup afterward?

Stormbringer Films has launched a new short subject, a commercial for the Umbrella Corporation’s Zombie Disposal Unit

I can’t help thinking that the clean-up technicians must be moonlighting from their regular jobs as Starship Security officers.

Previous Stormbringer productions inclue Imperial Chopper and Red Shirt Diaries.

Starship Farragut premiered their first-ever episode this past Friday as part of the Farpoint convention in Hunt Valley Maryland.

The first episode, titled “The Captaincy,” is set in the same time frame as the original Star Trek series and introduces the new crew of the Constitution Class starship, USS Farragut. In this first episode, the Farragut is dispatched to investigate the loss of a survey vessel and its crew and a possible Klingon incursion into Federation territory. At the same time, a new captain and crew must learn to work together.

Despite a few rough edges, it’s still a wonderful first story and doesn’t drag at all. The 48-minute runtime feels like barely half that. It’s that engaging. The only large complaint I had was a one-sided battle where it seemed like the one side never realized their opponents weren’t defending themselves. On the other hand, it was interesting to note that this episode made very little use of indoor sets, spending most of its time outdoors. (Either that, or else the film crew went to a great deal of trouble to create a quite realistic indoor forest.)

Likewise, the CGI effects are fantastic. Clearly the Starship Farragut crew has learned from those who have gone before them. The attention to detail paid off with the result that starships looked real without any obvious “computer edges” and weapons fire that seems quite believable.

A bonus item to watch for is a cameo appearance by the cast of another fan film series. Perhaps we’ll see other crossovers in times to come.

The episode is scheduled for web-release on February 23. Starship Farragut reportedly plans to release additional episodes at a rate of two per year. The series stars John Broughton as Captain “Jack” Carter; Mike Bednar as Executive Officer, Commander “RT” Tacket; Holly Bednar as Chief Engineer Lieutenant Commander “Mike” Smithfield; Paul Sieber as Security Chief Henry Prescott; and Tonya Bacon as Communications Officer Lieutenant Alissa Moretti. The recurring villain in the series, Klingon Commander Kruge is played by Mark Hildebrand.

It’s a terrific first outing for Starship Farragut. We can only hope for more of the same.

While cruising the web this morning, I discovered that on Thanksgiving Day, New Voyages had released their new episode, To Serve All My Days. A few months back I had an opportunity to see an incomplete version with several of the exterior shots missing, so I was curious to see what had changed. (more…)

Visiting the Pink Five site recently, I was delighted to learn that post-production on Volume Two of Return of Pink Five is coming along nicely (Volume 1 is already available on Atom Films). Reading a little further, I learned there’s even more to come!

Return of Pink Five was already set to be the longest of the three parodies, and so they’d made the decision to split it into two parts (thus the Volumes One and Two). Well, it turns out that there’s even more film than they’d realized. So along with the other two, there’s also going to be a Volume Three.

So the good news is, even more Pink Five. The bad news is, we have to wait for it.

Recently, fan films have been getting a lot of attention from the main stream media. DaCap passed along the news today that Starship Farragut has received some coverage on the evening news via an Australian ABC affiliate.

The segment is just over seven minutes long and can be viewed online.