Fan-Produced Film News

While waiting for the release of Star Trek XI, don't forget to check in on the various fan-produced films and projects.

As reported by Star Trek: Phase II, one of the things that can happen in a fan-produced production is that an actor will become unavailable, necessitating a search for a replacement.

When Ben Tolpin, Phase II's Spock couldn't continue with his role, Phase II had to find someone to portray the role of Spock, and their pick had a little Star Trek XI experience. Brandon Stacy will be playing the pointy-eared half-Vulcan. He had been a stand-in for several months for Zachary Quinto on the Star Trek XI set and while there, Stacy met Phase II's James Cawley. "I expressed interest in 'New Voyages/Phase II.' We stayed in touch and I had intended on being a guest star of an episode. Eventually the role Spock opened up, he thought I would be perfect." Stacy will play Spock beginning with the Enemy Starfleet episode of Phase II.

Vulcans aren't the only aliens being cast for Star Trek fan films as reported by Luton Today. Actor Keith Batt, who appeared previously in Star Trek: Of Gods and Men will be returning to the United States from England to appear in New Voyages, where he will again play a Klingon.

"I've been a Trekkie forever," said Batt. "It started when I was a kid. Then it progressed to the convention circuit. Now I'm the UK coordinator. I do personal appearances and I've also taken part in a couple of spin-offs." According to Batt, making a movie "involves hours of boredom, moments of terror and seconds of glory. But his involvement with Star Trek "has been good to me," said Batt. "It's taken me all over the world and cemented some fabulous friendships. You get away with murder in costume - it releases something inside that enables me to walk down the street being outrageous. I'm doing all the things I ever dreamt of doing."

Making fan-films isn't all fun and games though. Things can go disastrously wrong at times. From Star Trek: Lexington's creator Joseph Bonice comes the bad news that "We've suffered a bad hard drive crash, causing a catastrophic ninety-eight percent loss of our live-action footage on 'All in the Appearances'. We've attempted to recover the files but the drive is too badly damaged to recover any footage. To use our backup system and return to our state of post-production pre-crash would require at least four to five months of full-time work by more people than we've got."

To go forward, Star Trek: Lexington will shuffle the order of a few episodes while refilming All in the Appearances. Fool's Paradise the original second episode, will become the first episode and the new pilot. That will be followed by The Mudd Puddle and the third episode will be the redone All in the Appearances.

Star Trek: Lexington also has expanded their technical and writing crews, and has recast most of their roles, including Keith Harris as Captain Alexander McKnight and Sally Morriss as Commander Angelica McKnight. The new pilot, Fool's Paradise, is currently in pre-production. Star Trek: Lexington's website is located here.

To read more, head to the article located here, here.

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