Comment by throwanem | Hacker News Reader

Comment by throwanem | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure whether, in all the brouhaha over this lawsuit, anyone has paid much attention to the fan film around which it revolves. "Star Trek: Axanar" is currently in production for a mid-2016 release, and the short film/long trailer, "Prelude to Axanar", is a remarkable piece of work in its own right. Don't let the "fan film" label put you off, either; these are professionally produced works, with a compelling storyline and real actors (some of whom will be familiar to fans of the BSG reboot and/or Star Trek: Enterprise), and their take on the Star Trek universe should be a breath of fresh air for anyone frustrated with either Roddenberry's unrealistically optimistic perspective on humanity's future, or JJ Abrams' "lens flare all the things!" brodown.

If you're a Star Trek fan at all, you owe it to yourself to at least give Prelude to Axanar a watch: https://youtu.be/1W1_8IV8uhA

(And as an old Babylon 5 fan, I'm delighted they included a sly reference to that show in Prelude, too. See if you can catch it!)

Wow. Is that really fan film?

I mean... I was just mad that it ended after only 20 mins... I was so hooked I wanted it to keep going.

How does a fan film get those actors? I mean, I can imagine that a lot of ST fans have money, but still.

Thanks for linking. That was awesome.

They had a kickstarter for the preview film (to prove they could do it) and then another for the full.

Also, "fan" might make you think they're amateurs. They're very much not; take a look at the cast and crew list.

Yeah, that why I Was surprised by the term "fan film".

So what exactly does qualify as one? just as long as you don't have the copyright I guess? I mean, at which point is "fan fiction" illegal? is the legality status correlated with the production values and budget?

A fan fiction would generally be a hobbyist film, created without the expectation of profit or even income, financed out-of-pocket.

Basically, all of the things Axanar is not. It's a quality low-budget production, but it's definitely not a fan film.

I dunno. The driving force behind it is Alec Peters, who is basically doing it because he's a huge Star Trek fan. So I think the "fan film" label is not entirely unfair, although in this case it needs the disclaimer I gave it regarding quality.

It doesn't matter that he's a "huge" fan. It matters that he collected outside money to make it, and was planning on making money from sales of the video and licensed products.

Selling the finished film would probably give CBS a stronger basis for suing, but I haven't seen anything to even suggest that Peters or Axanar Productions plan to do so. I'd be interested to know of any evidence to the contrary.

The general line between fan fiction (or any type of fan work) and a professional one is whether the production is trying to make money.

That's why fan films and series are likely to be shut down if they try and market them via Kickstarter or Patreon or a similar service or distribute them on a service where money is involved (like Steam, or as a published work on Amazon).

If they're trying to make money from this Star Trek film and don't have permission from the franchise owners, then it's not particularly surprising that they're being sued. It's a similar situation to a certain Zelda movie that got shut down when it tried to sell tickets to cinema screenings.

There's a reasonable distinction to be drawn between trying to make money off the production, and using Kickstarter to crowdsource the capital necessary to make the production at all. As far as I can tell, Axanar has remained solidly in the latter camp. Is there anything to show otherwise?

Even using Kickstarter to raise capital seems to cause problems for fan works. Probably because while the finished 'product' won't cost money, the copyright owners think of it as someone making money off their property.

Same with Patreon. In the world of Nintendo fan works alone, both Star Fox the Animated Series and Super Mario Bros Z got their Patreon accounts suspended for trying to raise money.

Do I agree with? Not quite, but the general rule seems to be any exchange of money for any part of a fan work is problematic unless the original is in the public domain.

You forgot to link to it: https://youtu.be/1W1_8IV8uhA

I did! Thanks for catching that.

Holy crap! These fan films are getting better and better all the time!

I can see why the studios are crapping themselves. No longer are they competing on mere copying, now they are competing on creativity!

Seriously, if fans can do this with Star Trek, I wonder if they should take the central precepts of Star Trek, make their own entirely seperate universe and to hell with it - the studios who refuse to continue much loved series can be cut out entirely and fans can make their own series.

In fact, they could make their own series but have a central authority to allow for basic continuity but maximise creativity. Now that would be remarkable.

The fans could find their own games and spinoffs pretty nicely too.

Well, in a small way, someone did that:

Star Wreck - In the Prikinning (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0472566/)

available for free here: https://archive.org/details/StarWreckInThePirkining

(These are the guys who then went on to do Iron Sky :D )

And they are also planning a new Star Wreck short film!

http://www.starwreck.com

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