After pushing a nearly year-and-a-half copyright battle with fan filmmakers toward a settlement earlier this year, CBS and Star Trek New Voyages Producer James Cawley announced the creation of a Star Trek Film Academy equipped to train interested creators and produce future fan films.
“Learn the art of Star Trek filmmaking from those who made it,” Cawley said when announcing the initiative at the Star Trek Las Vegas Convention this weekend. “From gaffing to costuming to special effects, fans will work side by side with talented Star Trek artists to create short vignettes from beginning to end.”
This marks the first official, CBS-sanctioned fan filmmaking effort in Trek's 50-plus year history. The academy will start business in the fall with the first films expected in Spring 2018. Unlike prior Trek fan films or those made under newly announced guidelines, films done through the Star Trek Film Academy will be able to employ people who've worked on professional Trek productions.
These Academy fans and films will also have access to the New Voyages sets and facilities. New Voyages is a fan-made Web series Cawley helmed from 2008 through 2015, creating about one episode per year. Though the series was not officially a CBS production, sets constructed for New Voyages became licensed as a "Studio Set Tour" beginning in July 2016. Throughout its run, New Voyages featured contributions from major Trek players like George Takei (reprising his role as Sulu) and Eugene Roddenberry, Jr. (as a producer).
Details on exact dates and prices were not immediately available, though the location is likely Ticonderoga, New York, given the New Voyages sets will be utilized. Ars will update this post if further logistical information is announced.
A lesson learned?
The Film Academy stands in contrast to CBS and Paramount Studio's recent interactions with Axanar Productions, a company formed by Trek fans to fundraise and produce professional-quality Star Trek fan fiction films.
Back in 2014, Axanar Productions released a short 20-minute film called Prelude to Axanar, in which retired Starfleet leaders talk about their experiences in the Four Years War, a war between the Federation and the Klingons that occurred in the Star Trek universe before The Original Series began. At the time, the company planned on creating a feature-length story, called Axanar. That project would follow the story of Captain Kirk's hero, Garth of Izar, and ideally premiere in 2016. Both productions were funded on Kickstarter and Indiegogo, raising more than $1.1 million from fans.
But in 2015, Axanar hit a snag. Lawyers for CBS and Paramount sued, filing a complaint for copyright infringement. Despite decades of Trek spinoff films being made by fan amateur filmmakers, this effort apparently skewed a little too close to professional standards.
"The Axanar Works are intended to be professional quality productions that, by Defendants’ own admission, unabashedly take Paramount’s and CBS’s intellectual property and aim to 'look and feel like a true Star Trek movie,’” the complaint read (PDF).
A long copyright saga followed. A motion to dismiss was denied in May 2016, and a federal judge in Los Angeles set the stage for a courtroom trial by denying motions for summary judgements in January 2017. All throughout, CBS and Paramount largely stood by their position—attorneys for the two companies came up with a list of 57 instances of infringement in Axanar work and eventually announced formal guidelines for fan film makers to follow going forward (no unofficial merchandise, alcohol use, or long episodes, for instance). The two entities demanded injunctive relief barring Axanar Productions from distributing Prelude to Axanar and Axanar, as well as "up to $150,000 for each separate Star Trek Copyrighted Work infringed (PDF).”
For its part, Axanar positioned Prequel as a free "mockumentary" and offered to change its script for Axanar as a means of getting around the initial disagreement. The most recent director in the Star Trek film universe, JJ Abrams, seemed to agree things were escalating too far. "We started talking about it and realized this was not an appropriate way to deal with the fans," Abrams said during a May 2016 Star Trek event following the denial of that motion to dismiss. "The fans should be celebrating this thing."
Abrams' comments indicated the case would be dropped or reach a settlement, but such a conclusion wouldn't come until January 20, 2017, just over a week before a trial would have started. Overall details of the settlement remain confidential, but Axanar stated, "we’re not paying anything" and announced the company would proceed with Axanar productions following "substantial changes to Axanar to resolve this litigation.” Any future Axanar Productions works must also be coordinated with the official fan film guidelines.Today, the 20-minute Prelude to Axanar has been allowed to stay on YouTube, while Axanar went from a feature-length production to multiple 15-minute shorts. Any future Axanar Productions works must also be coordinated with the official fan film guidelines. The company has been updating fans on its progress, and it recently moved into a studio, started work on costuming, and stated filming will begin soon.
With this weekend's announcement of the Film Academy, the Axanar Productions team took to Facebook to applaud the move. As spotted by Axamonitor.com, Axanar Executive Producer Alec Peters wrote, "Hey, good for [Cawley]! Of course, we thought up SciFi Film School in 2015! :) I guess Discovery isn’t the only thing taking inspiration from Axanar. :)"
Listing image by Axanar
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