Star Trek - Horizon

artan42

Yesterday (and two days early) The latest semi profesional Star Trek fan film was released.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l94v4YOqxOc

I'm still watching it now, but I have to say that it's far better than 'Of Gods and Men' (not a slight on that film), and 'Renegades' (a slight on that one though). Also the setting of ENT is a very interesting choice as it's far less tapped than the TOS era (with both 'New Voyages' and 'Continues').​​

mirrorchaos

I cant say i am impressed by this fan made film, the storyline was about 2 things, the iconians and the romulans with the iconian plot wrapped up the romulan plot was left without an end. i am presuming this is during the Earth-Romulan war.

however the graphics are not half bad but some of the moves of these ships, the shield and warp effects felt far too fast or not trek enough to be useful. the background images are merged with people and some of the agraphically generated crew on the ship do not look that great.

The Tumarr story is half baked as well, a supposed romulan that was the product of an experiement but ultimately her character had no real purpose in the fan film.

in the end it is just another typical fan made film.

marcusdkane

mirrorchaos wrote: »

I cant say i am impressed by this fan made film, the storyline was about 2 things, the iconians and the romulans with the iconian plot wrapped up the romulan plot was left without an end. i am presuming this is during the Earth-Romulan war.

however the graphics are not half bad but some of the moves of these ships, the shield and warp effects felt far too fast or not trek enough to be useful. the background images are merged with people and some of the agraphically generated crew on the ship do not look that great.

The Tumarr story is half baked as well, a supposed romulan that was the product of an experiement but ultimately her character had no real purpose in the fan film.

in the end it is just another typical fan made film.

^^ This... The plot was contrived, the dialogue awkward and stilted, and only the actors playing Jackson and T'Mar (although she was a massive Sue) actually felt relevant and like Starfleet/Romulan Navy Professionals... Well, at least I now know that Jonathan Archer and Mad Kathy weren't the most incompetent captains in Starfleet's history....

Those gripes aside, I kind of enjoyed watching it, and it was something to watch, thanks for sharing

PS Alec Peters kicked in to the kickstarter I think I enjoyed seeing that credit more than anything else

gfreeman98

Well that was... interesting.

What's with all the overexposed and soft- or un-focused shots? Bit of lens flare wasn't as bad as JJ, but noticeable.

The music was good, a hint of BSG-esque quality to it.

The acting was... fair. The story itself was pretty good, but bogs down with all the touchy-feely scenes.

Overall not bad at all for a fan-made film. Kudos.

artan42

gfreeman98 wrote: »

What's with all the overexposed and soft- or un-focused shots? Bit of lens flare wasn't as bad as JJ, but noticeable.

As far as I know all the backgrounds (or anything that the actors didn't have to interact with directly) was CGI and the soft focus was an attempt to make this less obvious.
It was a bit over the top in places, especially as productions like the Star Wars prequel trilogy and Babylon 5 have a large amount of CGI backgrounds where after a few minutes you just accept it as 'reality' and get on with the story.​​

mirrorchaos

the backgrounds melding with the people was really irksome through out the the entire film. i mean when these people are chatting to each other you focus on the characters head, emotions, reactions and such, your eye cant help but notice how bad it is in some places.

kelador

The plot was off... the acting was not terrible but not great, the backgrounds where awful... they took most of it from Enterprise and usde a green screen and everything just looked blurry all the way through with very bad use of lighting... I'm guessing this was to try and not make the use of green screen too apparent.​​

captainchaos66

I watched about 30 minutes of this film and had to turn it off. While the story of the part I watched was good, the acting Fair, and overall I liked where it was going... the Unfocused backgrounds absolutely KILLED it for me. My eyes are still twitching from the haze effects that seem to be on every scene of the interior of the ship. While building sets was likely well beyond the budget of this fan made film, the Gfx need some fine tuning. I thought some of the space battle scenes were actually really good.. and a couple of " nacelle-cam" shots where actually pretty impressive,, but, alas, the haziness, unfocusedness cancelled all that out.
I will give it another shot at some point, because I want to see where the story was headed. Either way Congratulations to the cast and crew of this fan film! If making movies of ANY quality was easy, everyone would do it! As someone who has dabbled in video editing, and filming I can say its NOT easy, and I although this movie is flawed, I will not discount the effort that went into it. Bravo!

mustrumridcully0

I liked it better than Renegades, despite the "out-of-focus" thin they did.

I liked the crew well enough, even if some of the acting may have been uneven.

When I realized that the woman dying in the beginning was probably a time traveler and going to come back, I kinda hoped for a twist: That she really died there, and that they instead would meet an earlier version of herself - maybe with her being quite aware that this would happen to her, but the only thing she could do to achieve the mission objective.

The thing I didn't really like was that it was another "Save the World" plot in Star Trek. I think that's just become to common in Trek lately.

marcusdkane

My real beef, was the characterizations...

Captain Hawke, for example, was an incompetent with Plot Armor dialled up to eleven...

"I don't know what that shiny light is, what function it performs or what powers it, but I'll fire experimental warheads which have unknown effects at it..."

"I don't know what this shiny box is, and I know I'm hallucinating, but I won't report to sickbay, I'll smash the box and see what happens..."

Failed to shoot Daekon at the first opportunity...

Commander Brookes:

"What're you doing training with our weapons?!"

WTF kind of racist BS and incomprehension is that?? I would've thought that it made sense for an exchange officer to train and certify in the equipment they're going to be using... Oh I forgot, she's a Rommmulannn, and they're all Eeeevil...

Then there was the "I'm sorry I behaved like an unprofessional douchebag, but I have issues, I was bottle-fed and something bad happened to me once, so I can't appologize for everything I said..."

>_< No... That was a cringeworthy üntermenschen who made Trip Tucker look the image of professionalism...

T'mar: Actually an intriguing character, but not sure of Starfleet's rationale in

putting a deep-cover agent from not just a foreign power, but an enemy foreign power, in the very position said foreign power groomed and trained her to achieve... O_o Almost makes me hope that she actually was a double-agent, just to show them

the error of their complacency...

I liked the Pew-Pew though

rahmkota19

I liked this movie. Was it perfect? No. Was that to be expected of anything that has Star Trek in its name, whether it is official or fanmade? Yes.

The story was fun, the characters felt real (especially being incredible racist to the one exchange officer from the foreign power that they are at war with just felt like how we would react). The effects, camerawork and music indeed had a BSG-esque flavour, which is a very good addition in my book.

And all of that on a budget of $50.000. That is one hell of an achievement right there in my opinion.

equinox976

Obviously an enormous amount of time money (considering it came from personal savings) and effort put into this production; very impressive considering its a fan made effort; but it just doesn't have that... 'thing' (can't think of a better word sorry) that makes you want to keep watching.

It still amazes me that despite the paltry budgets of the original TOS series how well they have held up against far newer productions such as this which have the benefit of far superior technology and abundance of cheap set design materials/CGI sets.

Even the worst TOS episodes for some reason still feel superior to this production (and that's not a slight at all again the producers of this fan flick).

Even though TOS had what more more like a B-Movie budget, it never 'felt' like that. I guess it all comes down to a certain kind of magic of actor's (even shatner's ham acting 'fitted' in with TOS), writing and direction.

marcusdkane

rahmkota19 wrote: »

I liked this movie. Was it perfect? No. Was that to be expected of anything that has Star Trek in its name, whether it is official or fanmade? Yes.

The story was fun, the characters felt real (especially being incredible racist to the one exchange officer from the foreign power that they are at war with just felt like how we would react). The effects, camerawork and music indeed had a BSG-esque flavour, which is a very good addition in my book.

And all of that on a budget of $50.000. That is one hell of an achievement right there in my opinion.

Contemporary Humans, maybe, but not Starfleet personnel... I know the crutch has been given to Archer that they were finding their feet, but personally, I don't think that necessarily applies to all crews on all ships. I can understand that it was done for a dramatic tension aspect, but I think it was unecessary, and handled clumsily (because even after T'mar proved her worth, Brookes was still incapable of apologizing properly, just giving her a half-a55ed "I have issues, so there..."excuse...

On a production level, absolutely, a hell of an achievement

gradii

Soo... the sphere builders went to the Romulans and told them the humans were responsible for the future destruction of Romulus?

danqueller

Personally, considering what I've seen of other fan-made films, this was an incredible film.

They didn't try to depend on fans watching because they used established characters (unlike quite a few fan films that put actors who clearly are -not- the characters they portray into their films), they didn't try to re-tell established stories, and they didn't try to limit where their film could go so they could only film in their local real-world area.

Another thing I enjoyed, they treated Trek as a serious story, something that has been completely lacking in both 'official' and fan films quite a bit. There is no levity here, but a war story and an interesting glimpse into the Iconian war and its aftermath for the history we know. Add to that the detail for the sets and ships, and I can't help but wonder if the new Trek series will even come close to this.

Most of all, it had that most precious of qualities that makes Trek what it is. The encountering and exploring of the unknown in the depths of space, and the exploration of our own Human limitations. So many Trek series, movies, and even STO (for reasons of playability, I guess) tend to miss this part of what makes Trek special.

gradii wrote: »

Soo... the sphere builders went to the Romulans and told them the humans were responsible for the future destruction of Romulus?

No.

If you watch the film, you will realize it was not the Sphere Builders trying to manipulate the Romulans, but another Romulan trying to reverse the destruction of Romulus. He is one of the better characters in the film, even if we don't see him long.

khan5000

The problem I have with most fan films is they seem to concentrate on the special effects and not on the story. Most end up looking like someone digital effects reel. Star Trek at it's core was never about looking cool...though sometimes they did....they focused on storytelling...creating relatable, enjoyable characters. As was mentioned before TOS had a shoe string budget and focused more on the characters...than the effects.

marcusdkane

khan5000 wrote: »

The problem I have with most fan films is they seem to concentrate on the special effects and not on the story. Most end up looking like someone digital effects reel. Star Trek at it's core was never about looking cool...though sometimes they did....they focused on storytelling...creating relatable, enjoyable characters. As was mentioned before TOS had a shoe string budget and focused more on the characters...than the effects.

With some of them, I think that is exactly the case, such as Axanar almost certainly being intended as a show reel for Ares Studios... I have it on good authority that Farscape was conceived entirely as a showcase for what Brian Henson could do with Jim Henson Productions, so it's far from an unusual idea

tmassx

This film was written , produced and stage-managed by only one (1!) fan of Star Trek. It contains only one true actor (and of course, it is not the captain of Discovery ). It had 10-30x lesser budget than average ST episode. If you count all those things , so the movie is great. Better than some regular tv episodes.

eldarion79

It achieved what it set out, It was a fun watch. I liked the science officer and the Future Romulan.