Trek Sim Movies, July 05

So you have live action fan movies like Star Trek: New Voyages and Exeter and fan movies that are live action against virtual reality backgrounds like Star Trek : Final Frontier. The next step is to loose the live action altogether and go into a total virtual reality!

The type of movie that you end up with depends pretty much on the type of computer "VR engine" you use. For example you can make one using the popular game "The Sims". Add some Trek TOS uniforms, an Enterprise that looks like it is made of Lego and a good dose of tongue in cheek humour and you get ...

Sim Trek "Day Exceeding Day"
I thought it was witty. The names, the Kirk impression, the famous McCoy line, the music, even the "cinematography" - it had a real TOS feel about it! My daughter tells me that this is how Sims plays out so don't get too hung up on the uh, expressive body language.
The creator of this, Klingonoprea said ...

I spent my whole spring break making this movie! it includes subtitles and voice overs, all of which were me, because I couldn't get anyone else to do them

What would that be - four weeks? Working by himself, too. Plot, visuals, sound ... you've gotta give the guy his due, he did a reasonable job on all of them and a great job overall.

You have to admit though that group projects end up better since *no one* can be good at everything! Scriptwriting for animation is a specialised form in itself, voice actors can lend a distinctive voice to a character and sound & graphics engineers can be specialists in getting the best out of a production.

This strikes me as the kind of Fan Production that is attainable by an individual. It's meant to be fast paced and spontaneous rather than a subtly scripted drama - they're meant to be fun. I'd like to hear from someone who does them.

Sabotage
Basically a music video with a plot, this Sim movie had more drama and action as Picard and his Sim crew track down a Romulan saboteur. The same exaggerated, expressive gestures work well here sometimes but I nearly choked when Worf did a 'surprised' double take!

Star Trek: The Final War
What could be a new ambitious Sims project has recently surfaced ...

USS Victory We have gotten some disturbing news. It seems that the destruction of the transwarp Hub that the USS Voyager destroyed has only served to inrage the collective minds of the Borg. An Armada in the Delta quadrent has been gathered and the federations only hope to avoid all out war at home rests in the hands of these Delta quadrent allies. In the event that this Armada fails we have been assigned to gain support for this cause. We are to seek help from the klingons, volcans, and romulens. If nothing else this may serve a greater cause and bring a lasting friendship and peace to the war torn region. We have been assigned a state of the art vessel. Our ship is an experimental class designed to fight off any Borg invasion. Well her sheilding and armaments are far from complete one improvement is the use of a new type warp drive that can reach speeds of warp 10 for a very short time and a sustainable warp 9.9. Currently Star fleet is working over time to develope the technology that Voyager brought back and so far research is going slowly but looks promising. We have been told that our ship will be the one they test the new technologies on. Lets only hope for the sake of the federation as we know it that the borg won't be able to adapt to it! Off the record I have heard rumors coming from High ranking officals that they dout that the delta quadrent armada can hold off the borg in the event they launch a full scale invasion. All we can do is hope and pray that between the two armadas we can stop the borg and preserve life as we know it!

Unfortunately when I followed up on the guy's link his new "network" is a shell under construction and there is no mention in his forum of a Trek movie. Worth watching, but I think it's a fizzer.

Know what would really help all these projects? A flamin' spell checker!