The LIEF Erikson

Sunday, July 17, 2005

Trek VR Movies, July 05

ST: Unity for WA's Ch 31?
Hot news just off Trek United's Forum is that negotiations are under way for a SciFi night on a West Australian community TV channel that might feature "Star Trek : Unity"! ST: Unity is a maverick, wild card in the Fan Production community at the moment since they sprang from the TU forum a few months ago. I can find little concrete about them other than their website. Evidently it will be a totally Virtual Reality movie but the real McCoy this time, something like "Reboot", "Jimmie Neutron" or the Barbie movies (uh, my daughter watched them and I ... just happened to be in the room at the time!).
We have just received an email from Access 31's program co-ordinator who has informed us that we have a green light to proceed to the next stage of program proposal. This means that the station is interested in our pilot episode and that once it is completed, they will review us further.
A reincarnation of a previously established Trek website, TREKZONE.org, is the broker in negotiations with a West Australian community TV station for a sci-fi program in which ST Unity could take an anchoring part. Access 31's program co-ordinator has given the green light to proceed to the next stage of program proposal. The project is awaiting a response from Paramount Pictures International who they hope will see channel 31 for what it is - free-to-air and not-for-profit.

There is a precedent for showing fan films on community TV in Australia. In May this year a show called "Revenge of the Fanfilm", which was an hour and half of films in their entirety with cast/crew interviews as segues, was aired on "The Short Film Show" on Channel 31 in Melbourne and Adelaide. The program probably didn't hit the copyright wall because it featured a Star Wars spinoff called "Imperial Chopper" and Lucas is on record as being favourable towards SW Fan Films.

TU Australia's Aussie Trekie has found that Brisbane has a similar outfit at their Ch.31 called "The Short Film Distillery". Space Marine, from AusSciFi, did a little research into Ch.31 in Sydney and found that the group that was operating the community TV there lost the broadcast license to a rival group. This group is now trying to get their operation up and running although they only have until the end of October to accomplish this. Links are : http://www.slicetv.org.au/ and http://www.tvs.org.au/

The burning question is - will Paramount see that allowing Fan Films to be shown on non-profit, comunity stations with a small viewer coverage is free advertising for their core franchise! The publicity caused by such a program would reverberate through the mainstream media. People who can't pick up Ch31 will be saying - "Hey, that sounds interesting! How can I get it?"

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