5 replies to this topic

[Sybeck1]

Star Trek Beyond Official Trailer

CULTURESTAR TREK
As the force behind the reboots of both the Star Wars and Star Trek franchises, J.J. Abrams is arguably the most powerful man in the Hollywood sci-fi community. In his world, an off-the-cuff comment can have the force of law.

Last Friday, at a fan event to showcase the forthcoming Star Trek: Beyond, Paramounts latest entry in the franchise, he declared the studios lawsuit against the producers of the Trek fan film Axanar was over. Abrams, an executive producer on Beyond, told the crowd that this wasnt an appropriate way to deal with the fans. He and Beyond director Justin Lin, who had previously tweeted support for Axanar, went to the studio and pushed them to stop this lawsuit. Within a few weeks, itll be announced that this lawsuit is going away.

Within hours, Paramount and CBS issued a statement declaring that the studios were in settlement talks and were also working on a set of fan film guidelines.


Star Trek Beyond Official Trailer

CULTURESTAR TREK
As the force behind the reboots of both the Star Wars and Star Trek franchises, J.J. Abrams is arguably the most powerful man in the Hollywood sci-fi community. In his world, an off-the-cuff comment can have the force of law.

Last Friday, at a fan event to showcase the forthcoming Star Trek: Beyond, Paramounts latest entry in the franchise, he declared the studios lawsuit against the producers of the Trek fan film Axanar was over. Abrams, an executive producer on Beyond, told the crowd that this wasnt an appropriate way to deal with the fans. He and Beyond director Justin Lin, who had previously tweeted support for Axanar, went to the studio and pushed them to stop this lawsuit. Within a few weeks, itll be announced that this lawsuit is going away.

Within hours, Paramount and CBS issued a statement declaring that the studios were in settlement talks and were also working on a set of fan film guidelines.


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Erin Ranahan, the lead attorney for Axanar Productions, confirmed that settlement talks were in progress, telling Newsweek, Were definitely grateful for the announcement on Friday night by J.J. Abrams. Were in settlement discussions. Weve attempted to settle this case from the get go and were continuing to do that.

For those who missed the first few episodes of this series, the producers of Axanar had raised over $1.3 million over the course of several crowdfunding campaigns, and were facing the wrath of Star Trek owners Paramount and CBS, who sued Axanar Productions and its founder, Alec Peters, claiming they were infring[ing] Plaintiffs works by using innumerable copyrighted elements of Star Trek, including its settings, characters, species, and themes.

The Axanar team had already produced a short film, Prelude to Axanar, and planned a feature-length production based on the adventures of Garth of Izar, a character Treks Captain Kirk referred to as Starfleets greatest warrior in one episode. Axanar Productions brought in a pro bono legal team, and vowed to fight on, much as Garth apparently did at the Battle of Axanar. Earlier this month, however, a judge denied their motion to dismiss the case, setting the course for a trial that many legal experts felt could only result in victory for the studios. The judge, in his ruling on the motion to dismiss, invoked Treks mythology, stating that the plaintiffs case could live long, though he couldnt assure them theyd prosper.

Then J.J. Abrams beamed in.

Given Abrams stature, its not surprising that Paramount publicly acknowledged the settlement efforts within hours of his proclamation. What is potentially game-changing, however, is the idea that, for the first time, Star Treks owners are considering issuing official guidelines for fan films.

For decades, producers of fan films have had to work in a legal gray area, relying on their own instincts, advice shared over internet forums and back channel communications with the studios.

Fan producers have, for example, adopted fairly consistent language to declare their lack of ownership of Star Trek properties, and the non-commercial nature of their work. One popular fan series, Star Trek Continues, opens its website with a statement that everything having to do with Star Trek is solely owned by CBS Studios Inc., and that their own work is non-commercial and intended for recreational use.

For the most part, the strategy seemed to work. Fan films proliferated, with some featuring actors from the official Star Trek world and six-figure budgets fueled by crowdfunding campaigns. Fan producers lovingly constructed detailed reproductions of original Star Trek sets, and made liberal use of everything from uniforms to props to plot lines based on elements of the original Trek series and its many spin-offs.

In some cases, however, the lack of formal guidelines left fans trying to reconcile seeming inconsistencies in the way the studios enforced their rights. James Cawley, considered by many to be the father of modern Trek fan films, has cited his good relationship with Trek's owners, and even had a starship named in his honor in Paramounts Star Trek: Enterprise. Some episodes of Cawley's Star Trek New Voyages: Phase II series have used scripts penned by established Star Trek writers, including one based on an unproduced Star Trek: The Next Generation script by classic Trek scribe David Gerrold, who reworked his script for Phase II and directed the episode based on it.

Yet, when Cawley made plans to shoot an episode based on an old, unproduced script that sci-fi author Norman Spinrad had sold to Star Treks original producers in the 60s, CBS warned him that he wouldnt be allowed to proceed. Cawley complied. Im not going to do anything that might be questionable, he told The New York Times. Gerrold, comparing the situation to his own work with Phase II, commented, I dont understand CBSs thinking on this at all. They didnt care then. Why do they care now?

http://www.newsweek....an-films-463542

[Sybeck1]

Sorry I think I posted some of this twice as I was doing this from my phone. Seems the good times might soon be over as the suits will come down on the hobby. I for one eagerly lap up any fan offering and will watch it the day it comes out, yet will roll my eyes at the thought of a new CBS Paramount offering. Terrible it's come to this

[Alteran195]

Star Wars has guidelines for fan films, and there have been some good ones recently. I don't see how it can hurt Star Trek if they're fair. Blame Alec Peters for being a douche about fan films in the first place, not CBS/Paramount.

[Alex]

Star Wars has guidelines for fan films, and there have been some good ones recently. I don't see how it can hurt Star Trek if they're fair. Blame Alec Peters for being a douche about fan films in the first place, not CBS/Paramount.

Oh believe me, I've been blaming Alec Peters from day one for being a complete dick about the way he handled the entire Axanar fiasco. However, CBS/Paramount made it pretty hard to side with them when they threw everything imaginable at the entire Axanar production rather than trying to settle out of court early on, and to just slap Peters on the wrist and make the whole situation go away quietly instead of becoming the quagmire that it's been, and that would have distracted from the two new official Trek properties had Lin and Abrams not stepped in on the side of Peters rather than the side of their bosses. My "beef" is that Lin and Abrams shouldn't have had to step in at all, the suits at CBS and Paramount should have realized that Axanar was going to be a distraction, and should have reprimanded Peters quietly and allowed Axanar to fade from public consciousness if it sucked, or be as good as Peters claimed it would, and subsequently put him to use in the future.

 

Having said that, my concerns are with the difference between how Star Trek and Star Wars fan films have evolved over the years. SW's fan films are limited to five minutes in length, and Disney/Lucasfilm has always encouraged them in some capacity as Lucas himself saw them as a way to spot new talent to potentially hire in the future. Trek fan films on the other hand have been a very different beast; most have been roughly 20–22 minutes in length, some have been episodic and extended beyond a single film, and one (Phase II/New Voyages) even had a Roddenberry involved with it. Most have already been "epic" enough in terms of scale to require crowd–sourced funding, and the general agreement of "don't turn a profit" was working just fine before Peters broke that rule. If the guidelines just clear up inconsistencies like the ones James Cawley ran into, those would be welcome, but if they wind up neutering the entire way Trek fan films have evolved, it'll just kill the art entirely, or drive the stuff we're used to underground onto shady torrent sites where only people with deep pockets and decent gear and experience will be able to continue producing it.

 

What I'd really like to see though would be CBS/Paramount using fan films as a way to spot "fresh blood" to bring into Trek proper. Maybe a handful of fan filmmakers are really the cream of the crop and are able to outdo what CBS's own people do, in which case they'd be insane not to try and grab them, but that's unlikely. More likely would be having a couple of aspects in different fan films stand out, at which point it would make sense to grab the people who made specific things stand out, especially if they're outdoing CBS's own employees, and to either use them as interns/consultants, or to hire them outright to contribute to the new show (or in Paramount's case, movie,) in a small capacity. If someone actually working on the series retires, take one of these people and promote them to fill that void with someone whose shown they can produce a high quality fan film and put them to use in an official capacity. Most fan filmmakers probably wouldn't fall into this category, but some inevitably will, and it would be insane not to tape their skills when needed.

[1701D]

I think this is a good thing.

I think it's a great thing for Lin and Abrams to be seen as siding with the fans and ultimately I think out of this mess and confusion with what you can and can't do as a fan doing a fan film will come a structured set of guidelines and hopefully a better relationship between fans and studio with contests and prizes for those fan films that show creativity and imagination.

[Alex]

1701D, I really think it depends on what the guidelines are, and if they're just clearing up discrepencies or making the entire process more restrictive. These honestly seem like a solution in search of a problem though, as everyone except Peters seemed to be capable of adhereing to the "old" guidelines of "don't turn a profit." There has been no "mess and confusion" with what you can and can't do as a fan filmmaker, and the fans have typically had a great relationship with the studio. Back when Enterprise was in production, set pieces designed by fans and used in fan films were borrowed by Paramount for In A Mirror, Darkly, and everyone was pleased with the results. The issues mentioned above were few and far between, and could have easily been a legal snag between who ultimately owned the script that the studio asked that one filmmaker not to adapt, vs. who owned the script that they didn't have a problem with allowing an adaptation of. Of all the other numerous fan–films that have been produced, only Axanar has been a problem, and it's been a problem because it wound up turning a profit, which was never supposed to happen. The problem wasn't CBS/Paramount reprimanding Peters, it was them doing so A) before his fan–film was released, rather publicly, with terrible timing that made the entire incident a distraction from the two official productions that are in the works, and C) that was carried out in a manner that made it look like the big studios were being petty and just picking on a fan filmmaker instead of actually showing a valid concern for their intellectual property. Had CBS/Paramount hit Axanar with a lawsuit a day after it was released, nobody would have had an issue, had they slapped Peters on the wrist after he sold "Axanar Coffee," and just hit him for that, it would have gotten the message across and nobody would have thought that CBS/Paramount were being petty or desparate. The problem was that suing Axanar's production team before the film was released effectively was flipping off anyone who donated to it as their money was going to go to paying legal fees instead of producing a fanfilm. The problem wasn't that Peters was reprimanded, it was how CBS/Paramount went about reprimanding him, and the timing of said reprimand. Everybody else was already playing by the rules, what's to say that this new set of guidelines won't just wind up being revised to be even more restrictive after the next Peters decides the rules don't apply to him or her too?

 

I'd have been fine with CBS/Paramount making Peters "work it off" after Axanar was complete, either as a low or no–wage intern effectively performing "community service" for his misdeeds, or with CBS having control of the studio he was building as a way to recoup any losses Peters caused them, but I wasn't fine with just hitting him with everything imagineable over a fan film. It was different when Samsung and Apple threw everything imaginable at each other, because they were both large corporations on equal footing that were slugging it out, (and even in that case, the Judge made them pare down what they were arguing over and threatened to throw the case out if they didn't,) and the fight while petty, was at least somewhat fair. CBS/Paramount goinng after Peters on the other hand was like pitting two Borg Cubes against an Oberth–class ship with no shields, and wondering why the Oberth–class ship got assimilated. CBS/Paramount could have just done something like what I suggested though and everyone would have gotten the message about turning a profit. My worry is that we're going to go from a really diverse line–up of fan films, some which span multiple episodes, to a handful of films produced under guidelines that all start to look the same after awhile because "don't do X, Y, and Z" are going to really limit anything that might push some creative boundries. Axanar's concept of a feature–length fan film is an excellent idea; it's problem lies squarely in how its producer handled the finances for it, and the fallout of said producers actions.

 

To be clear though, I'm not saying that some really loose guidelines can't be helpful, but I do think that Trek's fan films have been a sort of "blueprint" for what other fan films should look like largely because they've been able to really experiment without any real significant restrictions.