Farragut Forward Got Another Pass
Case and Sam are joined in this episode by many of the people behind the independent Star Trek fan production, Farragut Forward! Tune in for interviews with Dave Moretti, Paul Sieber, Johnny K, and John Broughton!
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Overview
In the latest episode of "Another Pass," hosts dive into the intricacies of the independent Star Trek fan film project, "Farragut Forward," a labor of love that has spanned nearly 20 years. Key discussions include the challenges of independent filmmaking, covering aspects like budget constraints and the collaborative spirit of passionate crew members. Interviews with key figures such as executive producer and set designer Dave Moretti, screenwriter Paul Sieber, and director Johnny K shed light on creative solutions for set design, character development, and directing under constraints. The episode also explores post-production challenges, costume design, team dynamics, and the broader impact of Starship Farragut within the fan film community. Wrapped up with reflections on personal growth and lessons learned, listeners are encouraged to engage with Farragut Forward on platforms like YouTube and follow updates on future projects.
Notes
Introduction to Farragut Forward (00:01 - 11:39)
Hosts introduce the podcast "Another Pass" and the topic: Farragut Forward
Farragut Forward is a Star Trek fan film project
Case Aiken has been involved with Starship Farragut for almost 20 years
The project has been ongoing for about 20 years
Recently released Farragut Forward, set in the movie era of Star Trek
Independent Filmmaking Challenges (11:39 - 22:51)
Discuss the difficulties of independent filmmaking
Limited budget and resources
Case was a producer and production manager on Farragut Forward
Many crew members contributed their own money and resources
Emphasize the collaborative nature of the project
️ Set Design and Production (22:51 - 33:52)
Interview with Dave Moretti, executive producer and set designer
Dave's background in community theater
Challenges of building sets in limited space and time
Creative solutions for set design and construction
Emphasis on creating depth and realism in the sets
️ Visual Effects and Set Pieces (33:52 - 44:57)
Discussion of favorite set pieces, including the Klingon Bird of Prey bridge
Challenges of creating believable sets on a limited budget
Use of creative techniques to enhance the visual appeal
Importance of volunteer efforts in set construction
Screenplay Development (44:57 - 54:47)
Interview with Paul Sieber, screenwriter and actor
Paul's history with Starship Farragut and fan films
Development of the Prescott character
Evolution of the story from previous Farragut episodes to Farragut Forward
Character Development and Lore (54:47 - 01:03:59)
Discussion of the Prescott character's backstory and evolution
Explanation of the Mirror Universe storyline
Development of other characters in the Farragut universe
Balancing fan expectations with original storytelling
Directing Farragut Forward (01:03:59 - 01:12:10)
Interview with Johnny K, director of Farragut Forward
Johnny's approach to visual style and cinematography
Challenges of shooting on limited sets and timeframes
Balancing fan expectations with creative vision
Production Design and Challenges (01:12:11 - 01:22:13)
Discussion of set design and construction challenges
Time constraints for shooting on temporary sets
Balancing creative vision with practical limitations
Importance of safety on set
⏱️ Time Management in Filmmaking (01:22:13 - 01:29:38)
Challenges of shooting complex scenes in limited time
Strategies for prioritizing essential shots and coverage
Balancing creativity with practical constraints
Importance of planning and adaptability
Team Building and Collaboration (01:29:38 - 01:40:11)
Discussion of assembling the production team
Importance of finding skilled and passionate volunteers
Networking within the fan film community
Balancing different skill sets and personalities
Creative Problem-Solving (01:40:11 - 01:50:09)
Examples of overcoming production challenges
Adapting to unexpected issues during filming
Importance of flexibility and quick thinking
Balancing creative vision with practical limitations
️ Post-Production and Editing (01:50:09 - 01:59:14)
Discussion of the editing process for Farragut Forward
Challenges of working with limited footage
Balancing pacing and storytelling in the edit
Importance of maintaining the overall vision during post-production
Costume Design and Production (01:59:14 - 02:08:28)
Interview with John Broughton, executive producer and costume designer
Discussion of creating accurate Star Trek uniforms
Challenges of producing movie-era costumes
Importance of attention to detail in costume design
Project Management and Leadership (02:08:28 - 02:17:39)
John Broughton's role as executive producer
Challenges of managing a large volunteer team
Importance of clear communication and motivation
Balancing creative vision with practical constraints
Story Development for Future Projects (02:17:39 - 02:24:46)
Discussion of the writing process for Farragut 2024
Collaboration between multiple writers
Importance of creating a strong story foundation
Balancing fan expectations with original ideas
Fan Film Community and Legacy (02:24:46 - 02:34:43)
Reflection on the impact of Starship Farragut
Discussion of the wider Star Trek fan film community
Challenges and rewards of long-term fan projects
Importance of passion and dedication in fan filmmaking
Future of Farragut and Fan Films (02:34:43 - 02:44:31)
Plans for upcoming Farragut projects
Discussion of the evolving fan film landscape
Challenges of maintaining momentum and interest
Importance of innovation and quality in fan productions
Personal Growth and Lessons Learned (02:44:31 - 02:54:58)
Reflections on personal development through fan filmmaking
Lessons learned about leadership and collaboration
Importance of managing expectations and relationships
Balancing passion for the project with real-life responsibilities
Wrapping Up and Recommendations (02:54:58 - 03:16:16)
Final thoughts on Farragut Forward and its production
Encouragement for viewers to watch the film on YouTube
Discussion of other podcasts and projects
Closing remarks and future episode teaser
Transcription
00:00
Paul
So I will tell your audience though they did not get to see the post credits scene I wanted to add. I did write a post credit scene for Farragut Forward which was rejected by management.
00:12
Johnny
Aw.
00:14
Paul
So. Well, what it was.
00:15
Case
Well, Sam, wait. Let's hear what it is first.
00:18
Johnny
You wanna hear what it is because.
00:19
Paul
You may not like it.
00:24
Case
Welcome to certain POVs, another Pass podcast with Case and Sam. This week is a fifth episode, so we're talking about a movie that overcame adversity. Let's celebrate the creativity of the filmmakers. Hey everyone and welcome back to the Another Past podcast. I'm Case Aiken and as always I am joined by my co host, Sam Alicea. Hi. And Sam, you know what is crazy? This show has been going for a long ass time and we have had the chance to interview some really cool people in that time and we've made some cool connections including to a group that. Well, okay, we're just going to be cards on the table. This is an episode that is a little navel gazy. I want to talk about Starship Farragut. Yay.
01:13
Sam
I really enjoyed it. So I'm down.
01:17
Case
Yeah. So Starship Farragut is a project that I have been a part of for almost 20 years now, which is terrifying to say out loud because it has been as an adult, but it is a project that I've been a part of for a long time. And it has been going for a long time. It's been going for about 20 years. And I joined up only a couple years after it started. And it is a Star Trek fan film series that has been running for a while. We have been going strong. We took a little bit of a break. We had sort of a send off to doing original series content about five years ago.
01:53
Case
And then more recently we came back and we did Fair Get Forward, which is jumping into the movie era of Star Trek and that has come out recently and I was really involved in that production. And you know what, we've talked about this before, but independent filmmaking is hard.
02:15
Sam
It's hard. It's hard.
02:16
Johnny
Yeah, it's.
02:18
Case
It's real hard. And a lot of stuff goes into it and a lot of hands go into it and when you don't have a budget because you don't, you know, like we had an Indiegogo in the case for this one so we had some money but like I was a producer but I couldn't contribute via Indiegogo. And because I was part of the actual production Team. Like, like, I just reimbursed people for like lights and craft services and stuff. Like, I was just like, all right, well, I guess I'm paying you back for this. And that's it. Like, just, you know, when you're making an independent movie, do you call in favors where you can scrape everyone's credit cards, where you can. You squeeze it out when you can. It's a lot of work.
03:05
Case
And, and I, so I had a very first hand experience with that because I was the production manager and a producer on Farragut Forward. And you know, before we go much further, considering the fact that it is an independent movie, let's just tell everyone you can find this on YouTube. If you search for Farragut or Starship Farragut, it will pop up very quickly. Now there's a prologue that we put out as a way of getting a, you know, a barometer on, you know, how popular this was going to be. So there is a little bit of a, a, a teaser video that's a few minutes long. The one that is the movie is 55 minutes long. So it's Farragut Forward is what it's called. Not, not Farragut Forward prologue. So that's the one you want to check out. Check it out. It's really good.
03:49
Case
The, the general consensus after I show it to people, watch it, besides that they love me and support me as a person, is, hey, that was better than I thought. Which is really high praise for a thing that is generally for people who are really invested in Star Trek.
04:05
Dave
Right?
04:06
Case
It looks really good. It looks fantastic. And I, I, I wanted to bring people in to talk about it because I have connections on this one. And so today we are doing a special episode. This is a fifth episode, for the record, I probably should have let off with that one, but I established that it was kind of navel gazy. So, you know, I feel like people are kind of aware that this is going to be a little bit of a weird episode. But it's a fifth episode where we talk about movies that had production issues and how they overcame them. And in the case of an independent film, the production issues are all across the board, every part of it. There's production issues and we had to be very creative to get around it.
04:48
Case
And so we are going to cut from us to a couple of interviews and we're going to buffer these. So we're going to set up each person. So the first interview we did is with one of the executive Producers. And the problem with. With fan films is everyone has a lot of roles on it. So he technical director, master of sets, the person who made everything look really good in terms of locales. Dave Moretti, who is just an awesome guy, Very prolific theater person in the D.C. Area and also was in a movie that about on this podcast, he was in A Dirty Shame, which we talked about, I believe, on the last fifth episode. So that was fun to have him on. Way to go, Papa Bear. Before we get into the interview, anything that people should know about it?
05:36
Sam
I think that this is going to be, like, a fun. I think all the interviews are a really good look into what every specific person has done, and you see how many hands are in it. I think people should just enjoy the storytelling because this particular one, there's lots of weaving of stories, and I think that, you know, genuinely, it's very interesting to, like, just hear the way that things come together. So. Yeah.
06:08
Case
Anyway, so without further ado, why don't we get into the interview with Dave Moretti? So there you go. Hey, everyone. And we are back. And now we are talking with Dave Moret, one of the executive producers of Farragut Forward. Dave, you are a wunderkin who approached me. I remember very early on in the production of Farragut Forward about helping out with the sets, and you made yourself indispensable on this whole thing. So thank you for being here.
06:43
Dave
Well, my pleasure, Case. Thanks for having me today.
06:47
Case
So, Dave, we are discussing Farragut Forward and how it is difficult to do independent filmmaking. And you came in and you. You have a lot of titles on this whole production. Ultimately. Was TD one of them?
07:02
Dave
No, I don't think. I don't think I actually got that listing in there. But, yes, I ended up wearing more hats than I thought I would in the production. It was really. I mean, well, it's a curse, I tell you. It's a curse because I've been working in the local community theater scene for well over 20 years, and it's just. It's a different genre, but I jump in with both feet. And, you know, if I see something that needs to be done, I try to help out through the best I can. Multiple hats. Even. Even some of my credits in the film aren't under my name. They're under my grandfather's name because I don't like to see my name up there too often.
07:45
Case
So how.
07:46
Dave
Let's.
07:47
Case
Let's back up because I. So I know how you approached me initially about getting attached to Farragut forward and that's because we are constantly looking for people when you're doing independent filmmaking. But from your perspective, let's start with your interest in Star Trek and then moving into getting attached to this project in particular.
08:04
Sam
Yeah, because I don't know. I want to know.
08:08
Dave
I mean, I mean I've been a Trekkie for years. I mean in the 70s growing up, I would watch Star Trek, I'd watch Lost in Space, I'd watch Ultraman, all those things are on the local channel 20 was, you know, was something that I was always following. Big fan of the original series and I remember that I was in high school when the original motion picture came out and I actually did an article for the newspaper on it. So I guess I was like, I'm sure there were others who were interested in charge Star Trek, but I just happened to make myself known for that.
08:39
Dave
But over time and over the years, you know, I've always followed the show, was very excited as, you know, original series moved into movies and then with the Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, I mean, there was a small group of us that were always watching it every week as it was, you know, broadcasting over the years. So it was definitely something that's always been in the back of my mind as something that I, you know, I see, I liked what it was. I, I took the campiness for what, you know, the original series was and the production values and it didn't make a difference. You know, it was still. There were great stories in there were some clunkers as well, but I just really enjoyed it.
09:22
Dave
So over the years, you know, it's like, you know, as people have come and gone, I, I have a bathroom here in my house that we call the Star Trek bathroom because the house was built in the 50s and it's got this great wallpaper on it, this space wallpaper on it. So I started taking all the things I'd collected over the years and mind you, I don't collect like the really like valuable type stuff. I've got stuff like Starlog magazine and I've got, you know, the little models you get and I got this little figurine of Spock, you know, that I got from somebody over the years. And then my godson worked for one of the fulfillment houses and got me like this, the Enterprise pizza cutter and the bathrobe, you know, that, you know, looks like a uniform and stuff of that nature.
10:11
Dave
So over the years we've just been collecting stuff and so there's always been that, you know, always been that fondness for it. And then, you know, as time has gone on, I realized, you know, I, I started to find some of the films, the fan films that were out there. And I remember coming across Star Trek Continues, and I just was floored because here it was. It wasn't, you know, coming from a production studio and everything. This was made by fans. In the process, I just really was like, I. I mean, the sets were beautiful. You know, the stories, you know, I loved how they reached back and connected to the original series. So when I saw that, I, you know, at first I was like, oh, that's really cool. Everything.
10:54
Dave
And then I had a chance to go over to the sets up in Ticonderoga, and I just really. It was like, it was always like, just there in the back of my mind. I mean, I'm. I. Again, I mentioned the fact that, you know, community theater is where I'd been for the last, you know, 20 plus years, and, you know, building sets for them, producing, directing, being on stage as well. So this was just a really interesting diversion as it came up and came into play. And I blame Wes Johnson because it was when Farragut published the makeup proof of concept and got him in his makeup, and he posted that and passed along. I had done a movie with Wes, you know, 20 some years ago.
11:34
Case
Yeah, A Dirty Shame. That was actually our last fifth episode on here.
11:37
Dave
Yeah, that was. Yes, exactly. Dirty Shame. Wes and I were, you know, were both apostles for Johnny Knoxville. It was a lot of fun. And when I saw him in this, and, you know, and I've run into Wes before also at the Capitalist Games, because, you know, he's. He's at the Capital Game, so we go to those. But I'm like, oh, I'm going to donate to that. That looks like fun. How exciting is that? And so I donated the $100. It got me on the list. And then case, you asked for volunteers to help, and I'm like, you know, I'm tired of building hotel rooms and kitchens and boring stuff in the community theater world. Let's go build a starship. And that's how I got. That's how I got looped into it.
12:21
Dave
And from there it was like, you know, the fateful day up in Lancaster when I went up for my first the Help that one weekend I'm up there, Lancaster, and Scott, who is sort of running his project manager at that point in time, I guess, you know, you guys had lost the other designers you know, who was sort of putting stuff together. And here we are, you know, two and a half years later. So good times. Yeah.
12:45
Case
That's the wild part about fan productions. Like, they take so long and being labors of love. Like, sometimes that love dries up or circumstances change. Like that happened to me when we had my daughter. I wasn't able to continue being like a direct. Like, I'm here, I'm going to make sure that at the very least, like, things are done by the very end kind of spot. And like that is just a fact of life. Like the production crew just changes over like crazy. And that opened up a window for you to come in and like really revamp the way that were approaching set design because you have so much experience in that. So let's talk. You say you've been doing community theater forever. Talk about that. Like, what's your background in theater?
13:33
Dave
Well, I mean, it's like, you know, I can go all the way back to high school, which was many years ago. When I got back into the D.C. Area, you know, I had done some theater in high school, done some theater in college, then took a break because my job didn't really give me the, or afford me the opportunity to do anything for a little while. But then when I got finally settled back in the D.C. Area, I got cast in a local production of the Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. Much like many of the local community theater groups do. It's like when you get involved with one of them, they are always starving for people to step up, join the board, help make it go.
14:10
Dave
I mean, they're volunteer organizations as well, so there's a lot of alignment to what, you know, what was going on, you know, with my participation in Farragut with the community theaters. I, you know, one show led to the next one. Gave me the opportunity to be creative because I was doing a lot of marketing work for them as well as being on stage because I, I do enjoy performing on stage as well. Over the 20 years, you know, I've, I've been the president of the board, I've been the treasurer of the board, I've been technical director a lot of it, you know, here in the D.C. Area, mainly the Arlington area, working with those groups that are out there. So it's just always, it's a creative outlet.
14:51
Dave
I mean, it's, I got my full time job, you know, I made the decision after a dirty shame that I was not going to Pursue acting. That's like, I was not the ingenue type. That's that's not who I am. But I know that from a creative point of view and that artistic side that I need to do. I could balance out what I do, you know, during the day, regular job type thing, analytics and technology and stuff like that. But then I could put it into a visual sensibility that is going to help tell the story. And that's how I've always approached it, you know, especially as I did more and more producing, actual directing myself in the world of set design, it really was the opportunity to say, how can I provide the cast a playground so they can do their best work?
15:38
Dave
You can put four walls up and call it a hotel room, or you can, you know, put four walls up and you can add switches that work and you can make sure that, you know, they're on a, on a real be or something of that nature. And there's a certain amount of realism to it. And that's always the approach I had always taken, always pushing the envelope, saying, hey, you know, we might be a community theater with no budget, but we can do some things just as well as what they're doing in the regional theaters. You know, community theater is, it's a passion. You go in, you work hot and heavy on a project for usually four to six months. It goes up, it strikes, and then you move on to the next one.
16:16
Dave
This idea of like, you know, looking at this from a short term type of thing was really different in the film side of things. Because then as I started to transition into that. Yeah, it's like, oh, well, you've done this one. You know, you've set the bar now with these, with this first film shoot, how many more are there? And all of a sudden it becomes, you know, an extended project. But it just was really a good fit. And I remember the conversations early on about the set. I just brought the same approach to it. It's like, you know, oh, you want, you know, the scene is this individual walking down a corridor. And you just want a couple walls up there so they can film the individual walking down. I'm like, no, no, that doesn't help tell the story.
17:00
Dave
That doesn't help bring a richness to it. You need a curved corridor that, you know, you could be in front of them, they can walk down and people can see that this is a real thing, this isn't cgi. And that's really what sort of set the stage for What. What we would do with Farragut because it was going to be as authentic as we could make it with the budget that we had. And so, yeah, that's how theater led into the movies. And me bringing, you know, bringing forward those, you know, that passion again, for giving the right playground for the cast to do their best work.
17:35
Case
So you've been credited with working a lot of wonders on Farragut Forward in terms of creating the aesthetic that really just people have very much praised about the entire production. What is a scenario where you were tasked with something that you felt was possibly outside of the production's capabilities, shall we say, for budget reasons or for otherwise? I'm just kind of curious. Where did creativity really strike you to make the impossible possible?
18:05
Dave
The biggest challenge of the production was not having the. Not having a place to build the sets. This, the. The actual studio space where were filming everything was roughly about a 36 foot by 45 footprint. That was it. That is in a working warehouse where our benefactor for where the studio activities occur during the week had a business to run. So we're talking like, full shipping and, you know, items coming in, items coming out, stuff of that nature. So they need access to the bay doors.
18:48
Case
Yeah, it was basically the loading dock, like.
18:50
Dave
Exactly, exactly. That's exactly it. So you were in this warehouse space that they have been very generous to say, sure, you can build your sets here, but they can't stay. So it became a. It became an exercise in thinking through scenes like. Like I would for a normal show and saying, okay, what components do we need to build? What's flexible enough that I can move stuff around and then how do we make it work? So, you know, building, you know, the foundational pieces. Just like I would do a regular theater set, you know, four by eight flats for the walls, and then having different pieces that could come in and come out and be easily sorted, pieced together, LEGO together, if you will. That's part of the challenge.
19:33
Dave
That's part of the excitement also, though, because now you're like, how do I make A, this work and then B, flip it into something else? So it was always like, I just can't design one set at a time. Because all of our shoots, with the exception of the bridge, were always multiple sets in the same space. So we had to come up with ways to easily flip them to fit everything in so we could. So we could get everything in there that were supposed to. So that made for probably the biggest challenge and the biggest opportunity for creativity. And fortunately, with this, you know, with. With a starship, it's. It's a lot of what I call rinse and repeat when it comes to these elements. Because, you know, bulkheads, you know, we.
20:19
Dave
We lined the volunteers up, and it's like, you're going to do this, you're going to do this. And when we're done, we've got eight bulkheads that we're using. And we did that for the Klingon bulkheads. We did that. The corridor bulkheads, we did that for the bridge bulkheads. Okay, walls. Well, here we got all our walls together. Great. Oh, wait. The Klingon walls have got to have this really nice, you know, distressed texture on them. We're going to go ahead and we're going to cover our walls with a sheet of Masonite, because for $14, I can put a fresh sheet on there and not ruin the good paint job, you know, for the Federation. But I also can bring in the depth that I want for the Klingon Bird of Prey bridge that we needed to do.
20:57
Dave
It's like layers on top of different platforms and stuff. Repurposing a lot of things, looking for a lot of, like, those little hero pieces. A lot of Craigslist freebies, to be honest with you. I mean, it's. I. I look on Craigslist, like, every other day. I'm looking on Craigslist now for. For Farragut 2024. Then, you know, the next episode, you know, it's expensive. Things got really expensive after Covid. Like, really expensive wood, and everything was double in price. So you could get, you know, traditional Luan, you know, for less than 25, 26 bucks a sheet. So you're using Masonite, which doesn't have the same rigidity. So then you're having to build additional frames. So while it would have been nice in some cases to use the more expensive stuff, it just, you know, it wasn't always there. But that's, like, the biggest challenge.
21:46
Dave
You know, those. And those are some of the opportunities in there. How do you be creative? How do you build in as much as possible to what you have and how. And how can you just flip it and make one thing look very different? How do you change the Klingon interior scenes? The brig and the lab? That weekend shoot was all the same components, but we just reconfigured them. Yeah, the brig was a square. The brig was a square room, but then the lab was a triangular room. And that triangular room was kind of exciting because in something like that every room, you know, every piece of it then is a corner. And so it also adds to some of the tension of what the scene was supposed to be.
22:29
Dave
So we try to make sure that, you know, whatever the thing is, we're talking to the director, we're finding out, well, what exactly do you want? What degree do you want on this? And then how far do I have to take it, and what stuff do I want to do and put in? Because it's, you know, I want to make sure it looks good, and then what are some of the other things that don't? And the bridge scenes were probably the biggest. Fortunately, Rodney Garrett, who was our master carpenter, you know, knocked out those consoles and got the base consoles there. You know, it was a matter of graphics and lighting everything up. So trying to find monitors to put in there with everything. Getting the graphics from Joe up in New York. He did a beautiful job on getting all those together. And.
23:11
Dave
And that's where the artistic side, you know, that I like to think that, you know, I bring with some of the other stuff, we're able to see the big picture so that when it all does come together and then you literally only have, like, a week to actually assemble it and put it in there, you cross your fingers, you flip the switch, and you hope that it, you know, delivers exactly what you were looking for. And there's, you know, I won't give away some of the trade secrets on some of that stuff, but, you know, they always like to say that in theater. You know, a lot of stuff is held together with gaff, tape and a prayer. The same holds true in film, because there were definitely some of those elements that we built were. There's. There's, you know, there's. There's one component.
23:51
Dave
It is pool noodles and tar paper, roofing, tar paper. But if you put it together the right way and you paint it, and you don't just paint it one color, but you give it some texture. That was one thing I always told. I was telling the folks, the volunteers who came and painted stuff, when we did that Klingon set, we could have just painted the walls a flat color, but it wouldn't have given it the depth and the richness that it needed. And that's what you have to do sometimes, is you can't just be like, oh, I'm going to paint this wall and I'm going to stick it up there and hope it looks good. You have to think to yourself, what would this wall look like?
24:23
Dave
And, yeah, it might take an extra Two or three hours to put, you know, an extra layer, drag a color over it, or spray, you know, spray a color on it. But it adds to the final product. And that's what we endeavored to do with everything was to add as much depth and realism to it. So it just didn't come across as a two dimensional set.
24:45
Sam
Yeah, but you did amazing job. Set looks great.
24:49
Dave
Well, thank you. But there was, I mean, the nice thing is that there's a lot of volunteers, you know, I mean, I, I did do it by myself. Yeah, I was probably the one who kept all the cats herded, you know, and kept moving forward. But it was actually one of the things I would tell Scott. I was like, you know, I joined the team because I really like to build. I like the creative side of that. But then it was such an ambitious project with so many components. It worked out great. I mean, we would get 13, 14, 15 people at a build day. But they're not builders. They're, you know, they're volunteers like everybody else who are coming out, who haven't excited that they want to participate in this.
25:30
Dave
So you have to almost think ahead of it and say, okay, well, what can I have this person do? What can I have this person do? So that way they' successful and they see what they've done and like, oh my God, look what I've done. I'm like, yeah, you didn't need to be a painter for that, you know, or no, you know, techniques and stuff like that. But you give them a process.
25:49
Dave
And that's really what my role ended up being for a lot of it was saying, okay, we have today we have to build bulkheads and you break it down into individual components and you're going to sit here with this router and you're going to follow this and then you're going to take, you know, the staple gun and you're going to staple this together and then put this on top of it and then you're gonna paint it this color, you know, and that's how we're successful. That's how we're successful is being able to not put it one or two individuals, but having multiple people there to help and making sure everybody feels that they're part of it, because that's why we're doing it. It takes a village. We have one young lady who's been coming and helping us. She started when she was 13.
26:31
Dave
I just went and saw the show that she's working on it with her high school the other day. She's doing tech on the backseat on the backside of things. So she doesn't want to be on stage. But. But it's those types of young minds and those young creatives that you want to bring into something like this, just like within theater. Because then they're like, wait a second, I can still participate and I can still create. I don't have to be on stage. But I did that. I helped work on that. So it's very rewarding in that sense when we're able to do that.
27:01
Case
So speaking of rewarding, what piece of, what set piece would you say you're most proud of from the production?
27:09
Dave
The Klingon Bird of Prey bridge was the most beautiful thing I feel that I've ever pulled together. I mean, the Federation Bridge is okay, but it's, you know, it's consoles with blinky lights and stuff like that. That's great. But the Klingon Bird of Prey has personality. It was a full 360 degree bird of prey bridge that I feel helped tell the story. It look, and it's very authentic, the design of like the two consoles directly behind the chair. Rodney built the chair. You know, he gets all the credit for building that beautiful chair. And then we just painted it. But those two consoles right back behind there.
27:54
Dave
And then the door, the k Swoosh door as we called it, you know, the Federation one was a swoosh door that they were coming and out, but the k swoosh and then the two, those two pistons that stand up behind it, there's just really a great satisfaction on how those came together and the visual. And when you watch those scenes, you feel so connected, I think, to a Bird of Prey, you just don't feel again, like you're in some, you know, two dimensional space. It's got depth, it's got some authenticity to it. And I feel that, you know, the cast who was on that one felt it as well and that's why they rocked it, you know, in the final piece there. So. But yeah, Bird of Prey is.
28:37
Dave
It was probably the one that I was the most proud of as far as concept, pulling it together and final visual look. And the bridge, of course, the Federation Bridge is awesome as well. So Bird of Prey, Klingons, they rock.
28:52
Case
Is there one that you're surprised you pulled together?
28:56
Dave
Probably the corridor? Well, because that was the first one and that was like the shortest time and that was the one where it was like, okay, this is going to sort of set the standard for what we're doing. And we had so many problems with it because, you know, if you think of those corridors are a series of what we call bumpers that trail all the way down, and they're curved. So it's like, oh, my gosh, I got to worry about math. I hate math. But I got to curve these things. They've got to have angles that come up and over. They've got to all fit together in some way. They can't be permanently screwed together. So how do we do that? Are they going to look okay? And I was really surprised when it finally did and they.
29:38
Dave
And they all, you know, and they. And they finally were up and you could book down that corridor. You know, I, I, of course, see every imperfection. So it's like, you know, I was looking at it saying, oh, I could have done this different. I could have done that differently. And quite honestly, that's why we're. We're retrofitting the entire corridors for the next one. We're going to be redoing some of that stuff. But it came together, it looked good, and kudos to Johnny and the lighting team and stuff like that for taking it and being able to give it what it needed. Because that, with the medical bay right next door looked great.
30:07
Dave
I feel like that's sort of like, again, that was the first one out of the gate, so my confidence grew as went along, but that was the one that I was the, you know, for me, it was sort of like the big first test, especially for, you know, the executive production team, you know, Johnny and John and yourself, you know, you guys, you know, are the ones that, you know, are like, who is this crazy Moretti character and what is he doing? How is he putting it together? So hopefully, you know, you didn't see as much of it sweating as I did. As were.
30:36
Case
I. I might have seen a little bit more than some of the others just because I was actually be intimately involved in the assembly of it. But, but that. That's because when push comes to shove, like, there. There's a lot of hands that need to be on.
30:49
Paul
On.
30:50
Case
On deck at all spots. So the. Yeah, and it was wonderful working with you on that one. Yeah. Sam, now that you've had a chance to see Farragut forward, do you have questions for Dave?
31:01
Sam
Oh, man.
31:04
Dave
No.
31:04
Sam
I feel like he thoroughly answered a lot of my questions, actually. I. I actually thought it was really fascinating because really good I mean, you know that it's fan made and all of that stuff, but it's fairly polished considering, like, you know, like, this is like a, A labor of love, really. Right. I feel like so much was answered because honestly, like, what was your favorite set? Probably would have been my question.
31:32
Johnny
Yeah.
31:33
Sam
And you already asked that. Case.
31:37
Dave
I will say, while you're thinking, Case knows this. I have no problem sometimes just talking. So my apologies if I'm.
31:44
Sam
No, no, no worries. No, no.
31:46
Dave
But I will say I feel like the success of the final product is while the sets are, you know, above average on every par. What I've said all along is that it's not just about the sets the same way, it's not just about the costumes the way, it's not just about the acting. Our three legged stool on this, every single component is at the same lover. It could have been. You could have ended up with a very two dimensional set and you could have had the best acting in the world with the best costumes in the world, but it would not have sold it.
32:24
Dave
So the fact that we as a design team could keep ourselves all sort of in that same general area and push ourselves, to me was where the success and the richness of the final product actually ended up coming in. I. I feel that, you know, again, that first one was such. As was such a baseline of what we could do. I think I overwhelmed Johnny a bit because I don't think he was expecting.
32:51
Case
Oh, no. So I think we should elaborate a little bit on the corridor shot. So the scene right at the beginning where Holly walks through this corridor, like, so building that corridor was this massive project, but lighting that corridor was an even bigger one because, like, if you have a roof that you can see or a ceiling that you can see as people walk through, like, so where are the goddamn lights? And so all of a sudden it became this huge project just to get it so that we could do the shot that we wanted to do where Holly walks through the corridor into the elevator. Like, you know, this was like our. Hey, look at the production values we're putting into this thing. And then it was like, all right, so how do we see her?
33:37
Dave
Right? That's not my. I don't worry about lights. That's not my style.
33:42
Case
But all of a sudden it was like, okay, so it's taking X amount of time to build this whole thing. Now we actually have to like, that additional complexity means that we have additional complexity. On top of that, the Lighting area that Rommel masterfully handled. Yeah, it's just a fascinating project, but one that really stacks onto the difficulties as you make every tier of professionalism that we're jumping up, everyone then feels the need to match that, and it makes it more work, but it really shows in the finished product.
34:15
Paul
Right.
34:17
Sam
So since all the design elements are on the same page and I'm more of an outsider than Kate, how often did you consult with your other, you know, the other departments in design, you know, like, costumes and things like that? Because I know, like, light's not your deal, but still, like, how often do you guys sit down? This is a volunteer project. This is labor of love. How often did everyone get together to kind of be like, this is the direction we're moving into?
34:46
Case
It's funny, I can actually answer that myself because I was the one running those meetings up until Grace was born and then Dave. Did you fully take over that at a certain point, or was that more.
34:57
Dave
I did. I. I just. I kept. I kept in my. In my lane on a lot of the stuff. I mean, most of my conversations were always, you know, I mean, Johnny, obviously, from the. For the talent side and the delivery and what he was looking to shoot and stuff like that. As we move through and continue to move through stuff, Johnny lives, like, two miles from me. So, you know, it was very easy. It's like, you know, I need to. I need to have a conversation with you about this Klingon brig. This is what I'm looking for, looking at. And he and I had some great collaborative sessions where he was able to help, you know, help me steer into the right direction of what he was looking for.
35:38
Dave
And then I think he regretted it because he's like, I really want this Klingon bridge and I want this 360 and everything. And I gave it to him. But then he's like, I don't know how to shoot this 360 bridge because there's no room for the camera. I'm like, well, that's your. That's your, you know, thing to have to deal with. You know, even though the walls. I can take a wall out for you. All you gotta do is tell me it's easy enough to take a wall out. You know, he. You know, working with him directly was probably the other design point person, because costumes, you know, costumes are pretty much, you know, they had established themselves. You know, we knew were getting some. Some really kickass monster maroon costumes. The Klingon costumes, you know, were all authentic as well and stuff.
36:20
Dave
Like that. So. So it really was not focusing more on the scenic development was a lot of coordination with Johnny and Rommel and them as were doing it, because they ultimately had to, you know, this is the angle that I want, you know, Johnny's like, I want them to walk down the long. The long neck of the bird of prey into the bridge. And so you got to figure out, well, how the heck am I going to do that when I'm in this, you know, small space? But we made it happen. You know, we. We literally designed the set around a storage cage that had a walkway in it. And we just got lucky and were able to orient everything. So they had that 20 foot run that they. You could see them walking up and then right into the bridge.
37:03
Dave
So it was a beautiful thing. Yeah, I mean it's, you know, so there's, you know, you get to the point where you're setting when the next shoot is going to be and then from there it just, it's like it's not regular meetings as much, but it's just that ongoing. It's like, okay, this is what we got planned.
37:20
Case
Yeah, I mean, generally speaking it was. And it may have changed a little bit after I was. After I backed off from the project a little bit. Although I know it at least had picked up by the time I was back. But were doing bi weekly when it was outside of like ramp up time right before shoot and then weekly when it was like getting close to it.
37:38
Dave
Right.
37:38
Case
And that was usually like a lot of like checking in. Who needs like, who needs help like where. Like, who needs like a build party or a sewing party? You know, our props guy often had issues with like his 3D printer. And like, who else had access to a 3D printer for doing, you know, such and such because like there was just so much stuff that we were building and making that at any given time. Like someone needed resources somewhere.
38:00
Dave
Yeah. And that's, I mean, and that's pretty much the cadence we have now with Farragut 2024. We did bi weekly meetings over the summertime. And then as we got closer to when our first shoot was going to be, which was back in October, went to weekly and we're currently in weekly meetings now where everybody comes together. And you know, this is what I have to. With set and props has got their stuff and makeup and hair is poised for what they're going to need to do. And it's very much a. In the next episode. I'm sharing. I'm co producing, line producing with Jonathan James. And so he and I are trying to keep the moving forward, trying to get ahead of a lot of stuff.
38:43
Dave
We call, we say we don't want a Yosemite samit where we don't want to be shooting from the hip all the time. So we're doing everything we can to be ahead of the game. Josh Irwin, who's directing the next one, he's like, filmmaking is 80% troubleshooting. So I'm like, we're going to have the 20% as nailed down as possible. And with Farragut forward, we did a good job. Everybody worked together. There was always a lot of respect as we move forward on a lot of the stuff and tried to coordinate with each other. So nobody felt like they were at a disadvantage or anything like that. So that was good.
39:16
Dave
But yeah, you get to some of those shoot days and you know, you'd be looking your at your watch and it's 2 o'clock in the morning and you know you got to flip the set for the next day. That's when you start to like, ask yourself, why did I say I wanted to do this again? So. And there were a lot of late nights because again, the complication of the sets were that again, if you had to look at the biggest challenge, it's not having the space to be able to set everything up and just have people come in and do stuff. So people are waiting for you to flip a set over, then lighting has to go in and do their thing and you got talent who are in there, you know, waiting.
39:53
Dave
So when you actually get in to do it and you start to see the magic happen and then you're like, oh, wait, I want to try this or I want to add this. The next thing you know, it's a, it's a 16, 17, 18 hour day. You gotta be back in six hours to, you know, with a little different configuration or to do it all over again. I don't think any one of the sets stayed the same from day one to day two. Even the bridge set, because the bridge set, we had to flip it from the Copernicus, which had a couple walls placed to give it a different configuration. I mean, the bulk of it was the same, but we had different railings, we had different things. So we had different chairs that had to be done.
40:32
Dave
So a lot of that stuff, the sets were not the same from day to day. And I learned a lot. We're getting ready to do our first studio Shoot on the next one in January. Everything is an evolution. We will build everything around the last shot. So all we have to do is continue to take stuff away so there's not a lot of redoing stuff. And then the lighting will be sort of kind of where it is. So yeah. Yay. Yay for learning.
40:59
Case
Well, I guess my last thing is since this is a scenario where you can learn and take it forward to your next project, talk a little bit about Farragut 2024, give some plugs, talk about the future of Farragut and then talk about where people can find you and follow you.
41:17
Dave
All right, well, so the Farragut universe or the Farragut movie era was, you know, if, when you talk to John Broughton, our executive producer, it was always meant to be a three story arc. And with that we are always seem to be paying sort of an homage to, you know, to the movie era in there. So the first one was very Wrath of Khan, our vengeance film. The second episode is more of a very, it's a light hearted, fish out of water episode. We wanted something that wasn't as heavy as Farragut forward. So we are, we're borrowing from the idea of the Voyage Home where we are doing a little bit of time travel back to Washington D.C.
41:57
Dave
So it gives us the opportunity to have a story here in the nation's capital where we're doing this and show off the great sights of Washington D.C. So we've got some exciting, some location shoots that we're really excited about to add some authenticity to it. And so you really know that you are truly in Washington D.C. And not in some sound stage on the West Coast. So that's very exciting. But it's a combination. The challenges with this one are going to be that we're doing on location, we're not doing everything pretty much in the studio. So there's definitely some new frontier for us to have to deal with on that. But we've got one of the four projected shoots in the can. It happened back in October. It was a good day. It really helped us sort of bring everybody together.
42:46
Dave
Our director for this one is Josh Irwin and for those who do follow Star Trek fan films, Josh has done a lot of work with the Avalon Universe and done a lot of filming down in the old Farragut. You know, the old Farragut sets that were down in Kingsland, Georgia, which have now moved up to Sandusky. Sandusky. So that's a work in progress happening there. We're really excited to have Josh join the team. Team. We've got a lot, you know, a lot of, almost everybody will be back. We've got some new characters for it. I actually that is the one thing when you get sort of sucked into a new project with a new group. John came.
43:22
Dave
I was doing actually a production of Cabaret locally here and so I was playing Air Schultz, John and his wife and some folks came to come see it. And after the show John said, hey, you could act. And I'm like, well yeah John, I do. I've done community theater for so many years. I can, and I can sing and I can kind of dance also. And so he's like, I really want you to be part, I want you to be in front of the camera for this one. Not just building the sets, but I think you could really bring an interesting character and some comedy to it because again, we want this one to be very light hearted. So my character, his name is Artisan Reigns. I started out in the early portions of the script.
44:05
Dave
I helped to write the original story with Jim Brooks, screenplay writer. Jim has worked actually he worked on Deep Space Nine. So he's got some Star Trek creds on his resume as well. But he, John and I sat down for about three months and went through a storyline for this and put it all together. Then Jim put the, you know, put all the dressings and everything on it to get it to script state. But Artemis has gone from being more of a hairy mud space pirate to a rogue Starfleet engineer.
44:37
Dave
I like to say I'm bringing a lot of my, the fact that I'm a boomer, the fact that I am a big fan of Burning man and have gone twice and survived, but also that, you know, I just like this idea of having a very light hearted comedic character to put in front of everybody. We're going to have a good time with it. So that's very exciting. We, we have some new folks also. We bring you back some folks. Dee hatcher, who was Dr. Bishop in one of the original Starship Farragut episodes is coming back. She's coming back, reprising her role for that. And she was a little bit of a love interest for John. Who knows, maybe that's in it, maybe that's not. We've got a new Vulcan who's joining us on this one. That's local talent up here in the D.C. Area.
45:21
Dave
That's the other thing about sort of having this pool of community theater talent that's out there, I've had folks. We actually built the set not just in Frederick, because we didn't have a space to really spread out and do it in Frederick. We actually rented space in Arlington County. They have a scene shop down here. We rented that for several weeks, so we could spread out and we could have a consistent space. Because that's the other problem. If you don't have a place to build, you find yourself in somebody's garage or in somebody's, you know, front yard underneath a tent if it's raining. So having a covered space that has all the tools and everything to actually do your job, The. The Arlington county scene shop really was a great place to do it. And that's where I've worked for the last 20 years.
46:06
Dave
So it was. It was a natural, you know, partnership on that. As other builders who are working on these other shows in the community theater world have seen me building this stuff, and they see it. They're like, oh, can I help? And so we've. We've managed to actually hook in some additional volunteers who have been, you know, very helpful in getting some of these things over the. Over the hump when we're trying to, you know, get things done. And we've. We're also starting to look you. To look at the talent. We did some local auditions. We've got some people who are. Who are joining in on it, and we're giving people the opportunity, just like myself, you know, taking that step from theater into this world of film. They are looking for something new.
46:47
Dave
So I'm excited that we're sort of, you know, expanding the net so that we can keep to tell the, you know, the Farragut stories, as well as some additional ones. Because there are a series of. Not just the three, the trio of the main arc, but we also have in the works, we want to do some shorts, anything from about five to eight minutes. I mean, we've got this beautiful set. We've got these beautiful costumes. We've got this talent. So let's not limit it to three larger, epic type of things. Let's put some. Let's put some additional things out there. And that's where I think I might get to, you know, take my next elevation in it. I'm kind of looking forward to doing maybe a little bit directing on some of these, but also editing.
47:34
Dave
You know, in my theater world right now, I've moved to more multimedia support. So I'm doing a lot of graphics and animations and things like that to support theater groups who are Using multimedia as part of their scenic design. So let me see what I can do and have some fun with it. So just all a good thing. But yeah, the Indiegogo campaign, you know, we just launched that for Farragut 2024. So if folks go to the YouTube channel for Darshan Farragut, they'll see the link in there. Please donate again. It's all volunteers. Nobody is getting paid. You know, the Home Depot bill, it's easy to rack up a couple hundred dollars just going in to get the basics. And while I'm good when it comes to my Craigslist, you know, sourcing, we still need the basics sometimes.
48:22
Dave
You know, I can only use so many oops paints in our story and if people want to get involved, you can go ahead and. And if you donate, that's great. We are open to having people who want to volunteer and stuff like that go onto Facebook and track down the Starship Farragut website that's on there and shoot us a message, reach out because tomorrow we're going to be up in the studio tomorrow doing a build day on stuff and I can always use the extra hands. Again, you do not have to be a skilled builder. You're not had to be a skilled painter. That's where you get an opportunity to learn and to grow and to walk away feeling that you created something that you didn't think that you had in you, but you do.
49:08
Dave
You know, hop on Facebook, hop on and get us, you know, get us a message or perhaps through the Indiegogo campaign or something like that. You'll get on the, you get on the updates list, we'll send you emails and updates and stuff like that. You know, come be part of the fun. Covid. We, we had our chance to sit at home and be in our own little cocoons in Covid. You know, break out and come out and be part of something where you can create and walk away saying, hey, I helped with that. Don't worry about if you're too young or you're too old because you know, we are all part of this together. We all walk away having a great time.
49:43
Case
Very well said, Very well said. Yeah, I think that really covers a lot of that. Everyone should check out the Indiegogo for Farragut 2024. Dave, can they find you on social media?
49:55
Dave
I am on the Facebook. I haven't moved over to Blue sky or any of the new ones that are out there. I'm just on Facebook. So look for Dave already. Feel free to ping me in a message or something like that, if you need to get a hold of me and stuff like that. So I am on social media.
50:11
Case
People should find you and check you out. Yeah, find you and say hello.
50:16
Dave
Say hello. So it's like. And if you're, and if you're the D.C. Area. Yeah, if you're in the D.C. Area especially, we love new faces, we love volunteers, and we love making people walk away again feeling like, hey, I've done something. I've done something great.
50:32
Case
Nice. Well. And again, so we're talking about Farragut Forward, but of course, Farragut24 is on the horizon. Check out the one and stay tuned for the other and support it as much as you can if you like the former, because it's a really cool series that I'm really proud to be a part of and I'm really glad to have connected with you as a result of it.
50:53
Dave
Absolutely.
50:57
Case
And we're back.
50:58
Sam
Yeah.
50:59
Case
Yeah. So that's a great interview. I, I, I, I really love Dave. I, I think he's such a wonderful storyteller. He's so fascinating. He's such a theater person with so much going on. It's so cool how he alludes to various things that he's got going on all the time, for sure. And is just so much fun to work with now. So that's sort of like the set perspective on everything. Next up, we wanted to talk to someone who had a lot of perspective on the general arc of the series, Starship Farragut, but also on the script itself. So we talked to one of the screenwriters for Starship Farragut and specifically for Farragut Force, Paul Sieber, who is also the villain of the piece.
51:41
Case
And so he has a lot of perspective on characters and on the general world of Starship Farragut and particularly with Farragut forward. So this is our interview with Paul Seeber. Before we get into that one, I should note Paul is actually the guest from, I believe, episode three, or possibly four of another pass, the infamous original Star Trek JJ Abrams movie, the Star Trek 09 episode. So this is his redeeming time because, man, we had some production issues on that one. So it ended up being like this chopped mess because of, like, I lost a whole chunk of audio that we had for them. So here we have him back again, and it's been too long. All right, and we're here live with Paul Sieber.
52:28
Paul
Hello.
52:28
Johnny
Hello.
52:29
Paul
How is everybody?
52:29
John B
Everybody, welcome.
52:32
Case
Paul, it's great to have you back on the show. It's been since the first couple of episodes. The first batch that I recorded before the show even came out, I recorded an episode with you and we haven't had a chance to sit down and chat again since. So I'm really glad to have you back here.
52:48
Paul
Well, it's great to be back on and to talk about something that's so exciting of what we just did with Farragut Forward.
52:54
Case
Yeah. So again we're talking about Farragut Forward still and we are discussing the, everything that kind of goes into it. But, but we're talking about the fan film series in general and all that. And you have been a huge creative force behind Starship Farragut which led into Farragut Forward. Can we talk for a minute just about how you got involved in Star Trek fan films in general. And then we're gonna go into like Farragut Forward specifics. But, you know, like, who are you and why should people care what you have to say about Starship Farragut?
53:25
Paul
Well, you know, I, I first met John around 2005. I decided to go to a science fiction convention up in Baltimore, Farpoint. I hadn't been to a sci fi convention in years, and when I found out there was one in Baltimore, I said, hey, you know, let's go check this out and have some fun. And I started talking to a couple of folks I had met that were doing Star Trek for New Voyages up in New York and sitting through one of their presentations, watching one of their episodes. And I had seen that and Exeter's first episode online. And I met John. So we start gabbing and John says, like, we know, hey, I'm in the D.C. Area. He goes, I want to do one. And so I want to do one here.
54:04
Case
So.
54:04
Paul
And I said, you know what, that sounds great. How can I help? And that was probably my first mistake because when we made the first episode, the cap. Well, first off, we made what I think of at this time as is a horrendous trailer, a potential series trailer. This was before I had my weight loss surgery. So I was this colossal 400 pound guy and a girl trying to run around in the Star Trek costume. It was the most ridiculous thing you'd ever seen. But then we made the captaincy and so went to do that one and John was very ambitious and were going to go up to New York and use the sets up there for a few scenes.
54:36
Case
Let me, let me just pause right here. Just because we are interviewing both Johnny K and John Broughton. So we're talking about John Broughton. John brought, just to be clear, for anyone at home, very good point. There's two Johns and it's easy to get those two mixed up.
54:49
Paul
So anyhow, so when we want to do this, John and I not having any, you know, any filmmaking experience whatsoever, I decided to try to take the reins as writer director. I'd never written a screen pray in my life. I'd never directed a soul in my life. It's probably the last time I've ever directed anything and the last time I probably ever will direct anything. I'm not a director, I'm an actor and a writer. But it did inspire me enough in both of those areas to go and get additional training. So I started taking acting classes. I started taking some screenwriting workshops so I could do stuff better. And so, you know, John, we continued with the series, you know, we did for one of the nail, then we continued with that one.
55:26
Paul
And I'd always had this really big storyline in play about this whole concept of like a mirror universe. But. And so that's when we ended up making the Crossing. So I had been out of Farragut for a while and came back. And then John says, I said to John, I said, hey, what if I write that Crossing story for you about the mirror universe? My only part of it is I gotta die. I want to kill Prescott off.
55:51
Case
Yeah, we should probably have mentioned this part. So in addition to being a creative force behind it, you are the part of Prescott who is a, a Byzantine character in the scheme of Farragut lore. Like Farragut has like not that many entries relative to the greater Star Trek canon. But Prescott is a character. When you try to explain it to someone, they will googly eyes in a fantastic way. So. So yeah, so Prescott dies in the Crossing, yet he's also the villain of Farragut forward.
56:19
Dave
So.
56:19
Paul
Well, you know what was interesting? So when John and I first started, you know, talking about when I was writing the Captaincy, writing the first episode, were kind of crafting what the characters were going to be, even like down to their names. And when I had created the character Prescott, I said to John, I said, you know, I don't want to play first officer, science officer, I don't want to play. I said, I want to play the security guy. I said, because I can't imagine that a quasi military organization like Starfleet, and it is because they have ships with ranks. So it is a military type organization, doesn't have some clean marine in there, some by the rules kind of, you know, person that sits there and quotes the rulebook. And that's kind of where the Prescott character came from.
56:58
Paul
So when I wrote the Crossing I had thrown to John, I said, I'm going to do a little twist in the story. And the little twist was, it turns out the he that they keep talking about through the whole thing and all the mirror universe people keep talking about Prescott was me, but it was the other me. So the idea was to bring in, you know, at the end of the film, have, you know, good Prescott and Matt Prescott both die, but good Prescott sacrifices himself for, you know, that kind of a thing. But the irony kind of came down to is John kept trying to find a way for me to not kill good Prescott. He wanted that magic transporter rescue at the end, which is why we do the magic transporter rescue with the empty pad at the end yet.
57:39
Paul
But I gave him the twist and I started working with our special effects guy. We've been working with NEOFX at the time like that. And we threw together the post credit scene with what was left of the ISS Farragut being grabbed by a Romulan ship with the potential it's like, oh, is Bad Prescott still around? And then that kind of sat there until John, you know, and then we kind of had finished off. I then I wrote, you know, Homecoming, which was the finale episode of Farragut. And that was pretty much it. John had talked about Farragut Forward.
58:09
Case
Well, so I, I want to back up on this one because this is one where I can speak specifically to like some of the process there, because you and I rode back from shooting the Crossing and we hashed out details. Obviously you wrote the script, but there were a lot of details that we hashed out and then pitched it to John on the drive because it's what, like a 14 hour drive, y'all?
58:29
Paul
It was ridiculously long drive.
58:31
Case
And I remember us going on speakerphone.
58:32
Paul
With them saying like, look, I got this idea, I'm talking to Case. Case got some thoughts too. He said, what if we did a story just that we. Because he felt like the crossing was the end of Farragut. And I said, well, no, you really need a conclusion, you know, because you have to give everybody a kind of end thing. And so his conclusion really was going to lead into Farragut forward. And so there's like a little Farragut forward scene. You see the new ship at the end of Homecoming. And you know that, yeah, there's.
58:58
Case
The whole Shakedown line.
58:58
Paul
There's the whole shake.
58:59
Dave
Yeah.
59:00
Paul
And you know, you got 18 months till shakedown. And so that was all kind of set up. And then after that, I think all the crap started with fan films, with Star Trek fan films. We had the whole Axar debacle where it created the fan film rules. And then all of a sudden it was nothing more than 15 minutes. And then, you know, nobody was willing to donate money or anything like that because once again, the well had been poisoned. You know, when you have somebody raise a couple million dollars and then produce a five minute top head, if anybody is Axnar fans out there, you can go ahead and be mad at me. But it changed fan films, at least as far as Star Trek was concerned.
59:38
Paul
And I think that took John's joy out of it, John Bron's joy out of it, to me, and I think that was kind of the big thing was why it took a while for Farragut Forward to get moving. But then when he said he wanted to go back to it, he wanted to do this like, let's just do a little what if trailer, like a three minute thing, because we probably can't do the whole thing. We'll just do that. I met this guy, Johnny K. And we'll throw this guy. So we threw that little prelude together and it got such a reaction from Trek fans, and particularly from fan film Trek fans. And they were like, well, when's the episode coming out? When's the whole story coming out? And that was it. That was, that was the whole thing.
01:00:18
Paul
And John had a general story concept. I fleshed it out. And then me, him and Johnny K. Sat down and really that's where the screenplay kind of came out of the three of us. John's idea, my story. And then the three of us kind of created this draft of the whole screenplay out of it. And that's where Farragut Forward kind of came to. And the biggest thing for me was we just had kind of thrown in three episodes of Farragut, the hint that evil Prescott wasn't dead. Evil Prescott wasn't dead. Evil Prescott. Now we find out, no, he isn't dead. As a matter of fact, he's had 12 years to think about how he was going to kill everybody. And the challenge, I think, was to not make Wrath of Khan, but make Wrath of Khan, if that makes sense.
01:00:59
Dave
Yeah.
01:00:59
Case
I mean, that's the obvious comparison for any sort of movie era film or any sort of Star Trek film in general. I mean, there's the whole joke that Like TNG was trying to, like, capture the lightning in the bottle of Wrath of Khan with almost every entry in that franchise, particularly First Contact and Nemesis and not succeeding. And then also with the Kelvinverse stuff, also trying to do Wrath of Khan, even going so far as to doing Wrath of Khan.
01:01:26
Paul
I think the biggest trick was when we started talking about Farragut Forward and John said, look, I really do want to do this evil Prescott mirror universe Prescott revenge story. He loved the idea. The original thought was were going to do. And I know Jon still plans on three fairy tales, fair good films. The was gonna. We were gonna do the Prescott on the third one, kind of build up to it. And then John said, no, because we don't know if we're going to be able to continue fast. Let's go for it. Let's go for that Wrath of Khan type story. So the real.
01:01:59
Case
This is the Death Star scenario, for the record.
01:02:01
Johnny
It is.
01:02:01
Paul
It is definitely. You blow up the Death Star, then you're trying to think, well, what do I do now? So the. So the. So really we're trying to think about what to do. And I said, well, how do we do this and not make it Rathicon? You know, we don't want to. People are going to make the comparison. No matter what we do, they're always going to say, like, oh, it's a revenge story kind of a thing. And I said to John, I said, you know, I think the thing that we have that's different is Prescott is not Khan. He is so different in that way. Khan was regal and, you know, he was a king. He was just. There was something special about it. And he was about, you know, I'm going to get even with you.
01:02:39
Paul
I'll leave you buried on that planet. And I said, you know, when I decided, because I really didn't have much, I'd had, I had what, 35 seconds of screen time with Mirror Prescott before that. So we really didn't know what he was like. And I said, john, I. I don't think the Mirror universe people are just like an evil version. I think that there's just something different. Like if you look at original series Mirror and you look at Spot, Spock's really the same guy in both universes. It's just his loyalties to a different group. So that's the thing that's different. So what can we make different about Prescott? And I said, what if we take that clean Marine, that super disciplined guy, and take away the off button? That's who Evil Prescott is.
01:03:21
Paul
So he's not really that different, except for the fact that he has absolutely no conscience. It's. It's. It's his. His is. He's a true.
01:03:30
Case
He's unregulated.
01:03:31
Paul
He is completely unregulated. There is. There's no off button. What he wants to do. He does what he wants to say. He says. And with that, John and I said, like, oh, okay, we can do this. It's not Wrath of Khan, because Prescott's not about getting revenge on them. Prescott's about torturing them. He wants to inflict pain. He felt like they took something from him. And he wanted to hurt them for it. Not just hurt them in the way that Khan did. Khan would have been happy if he just killed Kirk. That kill Kirk, somebody else can shoot him. I'm fine. Prescott would never have settled for that. He wanted his hands on them. He physically wanted. That's what. If you think about what he did to tack it's just absolutely the most horrendous thing. He tortured this guy that had him patched up.
01:04:21
Paul
Up. Then he tortured him, then had him patched up. Then he tor. He just kept doing it over and over again. And then the ultimate torture to his wife, of course, to shoot him, make his wife see it. I mean, it's just this is. This is. He's a true sadist. I mean, and that one of the difference with Khan, too.
01:04:39
Case
I mean, look at the torture that he did to. To Captain Carter. He. He put him through the ringer and then quaffed his hair.
01:04:45
Paul
Yeah, exactly. And his hair will still look fantastic. So that was, you know, really the thing we wanted to do was to try to make it not Wrath of Khan. And the other thing was, is, you know, Khan was an opportunist. Just so happened the Reliant found him. Lucky break for him. Otherwise, he never would have gotten his revenge. But this with. With Prescott, the difference was he had a decade to plan it. And when you think about it, when you watch the movie, I think one of the beauties of the whole story is he won. If it wasn't for his ego. Yeah. And honestly, he would. He so well crafted his revenge, he anticipated every single thing they were going to do. What he couldn't anticipate was his own ego.
01:05:32
Paul
And that was going to be the death of him in any universe, if you will. But particularly now, because he was. He was mad at that point. He was mostly not human. He'd been and blown up and had parts Replaced. And I don't know if anybody caught the subtlety of this one noted scene. I specifically wrote it that way. But when the Farragut gets into the cloud and they scan. When they find out, you know, we've got the yellow brick road and they find. From the eusebium, they find the ship and they scan. You'll note that the. The science officer says they found two human life signs which Prescott. There should be three.
01:06:18
Case
So are we going to talk about the, like the canon or like. Or the secret canon of Prescott right now? We can.
01:06:26
Paul
There. There always. There was a little bit, you know, that I had played with in the thought of making the. The third movie when we originally were talking about it. And part of the secret canon is, well, this version of Prescott we see in Farragut Forward. He's been so augmented and had so much replaced, we don't know how much of left of him really was human or how much left of him was actually the original Prescott. I mean, he was intended to be that, that. That built over. The man should be dead. The fact that he was still alive is where the secret, the background story that never gets revealed is. And this was. You and I had talked about this concept was. Was my original thought was Prescott was an Augment.
01:07:09
Paul
I took it out of the story because I didn't want the Wrath of Khan comparison. But my original intent with the Augment story was actually meant for good Prescott. That part of the reason why he is so disciplined is that it would have been very easy for him to snap and become what evil Prescott is. So that was the whole kind of a thing with that one, that, you know, he basically was not a regular guy in the first place, if you will. That was, that was. That was my little background story. Now I never, it never came to fruition with anything on screen. I never really used it. And any of the stories, like I said, my real intention was there was actually.
01:07:50
Paul
Had the Starship Farragut series, had I stayed with them and I had written any more episodes, had John decided not to close the series out, had I done another episode with Prescott. My intent was to. I had a story that I was actually crafting something that would have brought out the fact that his mother died when she gave birth to him, because basically he would have been stillborn. But what happened was they opted for a genetic augmentation and then gosh darn those people on Deep Space 9 and went and did the same thing with Dr. Bashir and ruined my whole thing. So I ended up abandoning it completely.
01:08:24
Case
It's funny how. How such great ideas kind of keep coming. Keep coming together that way.
01:08:29
Paul
Yeah. So I will. I will tell your audience, though they did not get to see the post credit scene I wanted to add, I did write a post credit scene for Farragut Forward, which was rejected by management. So. Well, what it was.
01:08:46
Case
Well, Sam, wait. Let's hear what it is first. You want to hear what it is.
01:08:49
Paul
Because you may not like it. You may go like crap. So what it was. It was, you know, after they're back on the show ship, Carter's pretty beat up. Tackets, you know, kind of walking with crutches or whatever and that. And they meet in Carter's quarters and Smithfield says, hey, your Klingon friend sent this over. He found it in Val's stuff. He had taken it from Prescott. And it was some kind of like a, if you will, like a memory stick kind of a thing, like, something that had been recorded on this. And so he said, okay, let's play it. And when they go to play it's a staticky screen. You hear a voice Go, 3, 2, 1, 7, 0, 4, 7, 5. So go like, what is that? What is that? What, What. What is this voice saying?
01:09:35
Paul
Let me try to clean it up. It sounds like coordinates. And then it repeated the coordinates and then it goes back like it's beginning the cycle again. Says Prescott to Farragut. And it repeats the number sequence again. And they said, what is this, some kind of sick joke? And Tackett starts playing around with, you know, the computer doing tackity stuff. You know, he's science guy. He's playing around. Goes like, this was recorded a month ago. That was my end credits scene.
01:10:02
Case
Oh, wow. I don't think I read that draft then.
01:10:05
Paul
No, it was written as a separate thing. So the whole point was it might in. In this scene is good. Prescott's not dead. He's over there. So evil Prescott's been in our universe in a Romulan prison for a decade or more. Good Prescott's in the mirror universe.
01:10:24
Case
Oh, in the mirror universe in a.
01:10:26
Paul
Prison or something of that kind of a thing, or trying to escape or something like that. And the coordinates he gave them to a way to try to get himself back. So that was kind of what it is. And that had gone into my. My original story cup, that John has another writer for it. So my story won't be used for Farragut 3, but I had written a story at Farragut 3. And my storyline I was going to do for Farragut 3 was actually going to revisit everything we had done through the original Farragut series. There was basically this spatial anomaly that was starting to like eat solar systems. It says basically this growing thing, if you will, like antimatter ball that was just starting to eat solar systems. And as it turned out, it was the rift that was completely out of control.
01:11:14
Paul
So it was the rift from the crossing and it's completely out of control. And my story had Starfleet having to reach out to all these other races because they had to do a joint thing to try to stop this. And my thought was at the end of it, they would have all these ships from the Gorn and the Folians and all these different, you know, Star Trek races. A lot of the ones that we see become part of the Federation and the next gen. But this is kind of like where the next gen boost would be. This would be the kind of the event that they all had to work together.
01:11:43
Paul
But the whole, the final thing on what, there was a small ship there as well, like almost like a pod kind of a thing that kept trying to contact them and give them information about what frequency to use. And so finally that comes at the end. The rift blows up. Boom, boom. Ships all over the place. They have a big thing. They still find this escape pod floating and they pulled on board and there's this bearded guy, long haired, bearded guy in it, and it's Prescott. And so I was going to actually bring myself back to life. Even after I insisted on killing myself so many years ago, I was going to bring myself back to life and that was what was going to end as, you know that we have the original Farragut, whole Farragut crew back together at the very end.
01:12:25
Case
That was my Leonard Nimoy of you.
01:12:27
Paul
Very Leonard Nimoy of me guess.
01:12:29
Case
Yeah. So in the writing process and you know, I know that it's going back and forth between everyone involved. Okay, so you kind of actually like hit one of the questions I was going to ask, which is like, were there threads that you explored that then ended up getting cut. And you know, we've got the, we've got both the like the longer play for Farragut stuff and then specifically the post credit thing there. Was there anything else that you were thinking of as like a theme or just like a plot thread that you wanted to like explore that you didn't Get a chance to.
01:13:00
Paul
The Price of Anything was originally a two hour Farragut movie called oh, I Remember. That was intended because at the time were still kind of associating ourselves with the New Voyages people. When I originally wrote the original Fathers and Sons.
01:13:15
Case
Wait, pause. Ju, ju. Just a note. So the reason why I shouted out, oh, I remember is I was supposed to be in it. And then by the time it, like, got together and was reconfigured into Price of Anything, I was living in New York and hadn't been in touch with the Farragut guys for a few years. So, like, just wanted to throw that.
01:13:31
Paul
Yeah, so. So it was originally. And there was. There was a big Prescott story that I had written for myself. And the whole thing was, is in my Prescott backstory. Because whenever I. Whenever I do any screenwriting, what I think I do is I create a backstory for a character. So even if it's something that doesn't appear on screen, I like to know more about that person because it may influence what I write about the character or how they talk or while they do things, or why they react to certain. Certain way. Part of my backstory for Prescott was his father was a teacher. They mentioned in the Captaincy in the very first episode that almost every one of them had gone to Prescott's dad's class, military history. Everyone was required to take it. He was a tough guy, tough teacher.
01:14:13
Paul
So when Prescott was in Starfleet, his dad decided to go out of retirement and go back to active shift duty. He joined the Enterprise as a crew member on the Enterprise. And when they reach the barrier at the edge of the galaxy, he was one of the ones with the highest brisket that was killed. And so Prescott always blamed Kirk for his dad's death. That's where the fathers and sons storyline came from. And that's why there's actually a scene that most people don't understand in the. In the Captaincy at the end where Prescott sends a gift to Captain Kirk and it's a Klingon dagger. It wasn't meant as a complex element. It was actually always intended to be I hate you. Because Prescott's dad's favorite student of all time was James T. Kirk.
01:14:57
Paul
So there was animosity automatically from his son toward this guy who was kind of a pseudo other son, if you will, as far as his dad thought. And that's the guy that got him killed. And so that was the animosity. So that was in the longer story. It was a crossover with the Enterprise and the Farraguts. So once again, it was intended that time to be the New Voyages team would have been a crossover storyline with both ships. And it was a much bigger story. And was the whole thing too, about the Prescott was like the C story was him trying to come to terms with having to work directly with this guy who he blamed for his dad's death. That never came to fruition. Prescott actually appeared on New Voyages when John and I kind of broke up for a little bit there.
01:15:40
Paul
As far as fair goes, I actually played Prescott on New Voyages for a couple of episodes, mostly as a smaller role. Katumba actually was a bigger role for him, but that didn't get official release. So that was really kind of was with a much bigger story. Never really came to fruition. The same way my Farragut movie version thing is never going to come to fruition either, which is, you know, the rift eventually becoming a galactic threat. So. But hey, you know, if you don't come up with those ideas, you don't come up with the other one. When John wasn't working with the New Voyages folks anymore, and they had built all the beautiful sets down in Georgia, and he was telling me about him, I said, I'd like to write you a screenplay. Once again, I wasn't acting on Farragut anymore.
01:16:23
Paul
And I said, but I'd like to rate you a screenplay, Johnny, because, well, we could use some. You know, we're looking for some new stuff to produce. And so that's when I wrote Price of Anything and made the whole focus on what was the A story in the first place, which was the whole thing with Carter and his dad. And then. Because once again, remember, the original bigger one was Fathers and Sons, but I focused on Carter and his dad. And then the B story became Tack it in the Neutral Zone. I wrote it, you know, with the intent of being. That was a one off. I was going to write this for Farragut and, you know, hey, I just really wanted to write this for you guys.
01:16:55
Paul
So that was the longest I'd ever take because that screenplay went through at least a dozen drafts before I came up with that short, you know, shorter story. I think it's what, 35 minutes long? When I'd still consider one of the best Farragut episodes.
01:17:08
Case
For anyone listening who checked out Farragut Forward, because I, you know, we're going to recommend at the start of the episode that you check out Farragut Ford. It's an. It's amazing and like, it's also not terribly long. And you know, it is just a wonderful work and is obviously the subject of this episode. But like, if you checked out Farragut Forward and you're like, oh, wow, that was better than we thought. And I. I should probably check out some of these other ones, especially like this TOS era stuff that weird doing. Price of Anything is amazing. The Price of Anything in the Crossing, I think, are. Are my 2 favorite of the Farragut slew, just because they're production issues of the earlier ones, just by virtue of.
01:17:44
Paul
The fact our experience and so forth. But, you know, I think so. So, you know, so we did the Price of Anything. And I know John had a script for the next episode, Conspiracy of Innocence. So that was already in there. And I said, and that was when I started talking to him about, you know, hey, I'd like to do that break that Mirror Universe episode I was telling you about all those years ago, that this Crossing. And I said, you know, I'd like to write that one. And he goes like, oh, but I want you to come back as Prescott. I want Prescott back. I said, well, what if we make that part of the story? Why was Prescott gone? He took a desk job, which was probably the biggest mistake of the man's career. And just completely.
01:18:23
Paul
He's not the right guy to sit at a desk. It's not the kind of person you do that to. I said, so we could make that part of the story. This guy trying to get back into it. And he liked that. And I said, well, you know, if we're going to do that, I said, I want to take this Mirror Universe thing a little bit further. Star Trek has created original series created in Deep Space Nine and a lot of the other series created a lot of interesting stuff about Mirror Universe. Deep Space Nine showed us that in the future the Empire fell apart. And they kind of credited back to what Kirk did, that he caused, you know, the Vulcans to revolt and all that kind of stuff.
01:19:00
Paul
And I said, well, you know, if we know in the future that the Empire's dead, why not kind of play that in this one? What if we got somebody coming over desperately trying to save the Empire? And that was where the whole the kind of storyline of the Crossing kind of came from. I wanted to pull from the mythology that Star Trek itself had created, that the official product it created, but also the pull from the mythology that Farragut had created with for one of a nail. But one of the things I think that works so well in the Crossing is when we show the flashbacks from one of a nail and throwing that sepia tone on him, which was okay because it was filmed so badly, you know, older cameras and such, but. And the actors were all so much younger.
01:19:37
Paul
It looks like it happened in the past. It was just, you know, it's like it ended up working out really well. But, I mean, overall, I think that thing that was fun about it is you can watch it without having seen these other things. But if you've watched for one of it Nail, which, you know, the Farragut. Sergeant Farragut episode for one of a Nail, which about, you know, the George Washington thing. And you've seen the original series Mirror, and you've seen the Deep Space Nine stuff where they talked about the mirror universe. You can see how it all kind of. It all kind of meshed together, you know, and it allowed us to create, I think, a little bit of a deeper story that was a lot more fun to write. The hardest part with that one was keeping it short.
01:20:14
Paul
There's so much story I wanted to tell, you know, and it kept getting longer and longer. Longer screenplay I've written other than my Frankenstein treatment, which I can't get anybody to produce. But other than that, it was, you know, it was really fun to kind of take for fans of Starship Farragut if they watch it. There are so many little subtle things that we hinted to, you know, that had happened in Starship Farragut in the series.
01:20:37
Case
Yeah. Let me. Let me just throw out for the audience so that I. My understanding of. Of the Easter eggs that build up ultimately to Farrar forward. So there's the captaincy which, aside from the introduction of Prescott and the main cast, isn't necessarily too much in, like, the deeper lore of everything. So then we've got, for want of a nail. And at the end of it, the revelation was that the way that they time travel back into the revolutionary era is actually sidestepping dimensions. And so the implication is that the Farragut unwittingly creates the mirror universe by accidentally disrupting this, like, sidestep dimension that was supposed to be just like ours, but just not technically ours. So were able to observe it by the way that time travel worked. And so they accidentally create this time.
01:21:24
Paul
Very pre Marvel, by the way. Pre Marvel multiverse, same concept.
01:21:27
Case
We did it before, and it was like a fun Easter egg where at the very end, George Washington is sort of writing a letter that implies that he's going to be a king and not the first president and he puts a knife in an apple. And like, that's supposed to set up. It's like, oh, yeah, this is the mirror universe. And it's like a fun thing for everyone just to, like, roll with as it goes. And then. Let's see. So then after, for one of a nail, we've got the Animated Series stuff, which I don't think really sets up anything necessarily.
01:21:54
Paul
It does set up Prescott leaving.
01:21:56
Case
Oh, it sets up Prescott leaving.
01:21:57
Johnny
Okay.
01:21:57
Paul
That was. I think that in the comic book actually are what set up Prescott kind of leaving the ship. When you see what kind of happens with Smithfield's ancestors. And then I think those are the kind of that. That that storyline is kind of the thing that made Prescott like, I need a break.
01:22:12
Case
Okay. And then we've got the shorts that also, I don't think necessarily set up too much because it's mostly just, like, character stuff for individuals.
01:22:20
Paul
Oh, yeah.
01:22:20
Case
Well, we do get a lot of the, like, the Mike and Holly stuff.
01:22:22
Paul
For, like, the Tackett and Smithfield stuff. That was really, you know, and that actually went all the way back to the captaincy I had wanted to apply to the fact that, you know, when we originally wrote that, the fact that, you know, Carter was able to pull together the people he wanted for his crew. Obviously you're a captain, you get to pick some crew members that the newer. Is going to be an issue between the two of them because they had a relationship and that didn't end well. So that was. That was the implication that they'd had a relationship and it didn't end well. That, you know, she started dating him after her husband died and that somehow didn't work out. You know, so we. We. Yeah. So you want to go in the backstory. We can actually go back that.
01:22:59
Case
Yeah. So that. That does get the backstory for. For their.
01:23:01
John B
Their.
01:23:02
Case
Their stuff in it. And then I. Price of anything is next, I think, in the list of movies, which, of course, brings Frank into the Starship Farragut.
01:23:12
Johnny
Yeah.
01:23:12
Case
Mold. Even though he's going to be playing a different character. And all the later stuff. But I don't think there's any Prescott stuff here. You mentioned there's the New Voyages stuff where Prescott does appear, but it's. It's then Conspiracy of Innocence, I don't think has anything Lore related. And then it's the Crossing, wherein. And we. We've got all kinds of stuff, but finally that Mirror Universe subplot comes back together and we've got Mirror Universe Prescott, and we've got an invasion of the Federation by the Mirror Universe. And at the very end of it's implied that Prescott survives or Mirror Universe. Prescott survives in our universe. And then in Homecoming, we get the end credits where he's in the Romulan prison. So it just like, keeps on going, that whole thing. So we. It's impressively seated when you consider the fact that.
01:23:55
Case
That it starts off as being, like, just little fun things. So for. For listeners at home, Paul is a fantastic Dungeon Master and D guy. He's a little rusty, but he can tell fantastic stories about his D and D experience. And this is the kind of world building that, like, a true DM has. So I just. I need to shout that out for anyone who's, like, wondering, like, what. What's it like creating fan films? It's a lot like, just like all the crazy bullshit that we come up with for our D and D characters just writ even larger.
01:24:26
Paul
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And, and that was, you know, the whole thing was, like I said, when I started writing the Crossing, I really wanted to see what I could pull off. I mean, one of the things that I kind of insisted on at the end of the Crossing there was the whole implication, obviously, that. That Smithfield and Tacket are together now. Yeah. Good morning again. Thought you'd stay for breakfast. We know there's a relationship now. You know, they finally had gotten past the barriers. But I wanted to imply that wasn't the end of it. So, you know, when he transports back to the. To the Constitution at the end, I don't know if you notice she's wearing an engagement ring. Most people don't catch the subtlety of that because we don't want to make a big deal like her going, oh, here's my ring.
01:25:05
Paul
It just. It was kind of like, you know, you see her when she touches her face, you see an engagement ring. And so that was one of the other things. Like, you know, when went to write the. When I started crafting out the first draft of the screenplay for Farragut Forward, I immediately said. I said, they're married. And John said, do you think I said, it's been years, you know, it's been many years. They're not going to have this relationship and not be married by that. And he goes like, well, we can't make it two tackets. I'm like, well, no, she doesn't have to take his name. They're professionals who believe it at Smithfield.
01:25:34
Paul
So we wanted to do that one But I actually had a couple other scenes in that too, that were also kind of to show that passage of time, like you said, that kind of implied not only we have them married. There was the first scene when she comes onto the bridge. We have Frank there. You know, he's sitting on the bridge. He was talking to another officer about his grandson. And that got cut from the screenplay that he was actually having another conversation. So that my grandson was just. He was just all over the place, kind of perpetuating thing that he's got a life too. They've all got lives. That's not just the ship. Even though they're family to each other. But I understand kind of why Johnny Kay wanted to take that out, because he wanted their family focus to be more on.
01:26:13
Paul
On the ship. And he was worried that if I started saying too much about family off the ship, then it wouldn't make someone like Frank maybe want to make his character want to risk himself for them when he's got, you know, a wife and child and grandkids. You know, why would he would be foolish to go off and, you know, go to save the Farragut, you know, when he has all that waiting for him somewhere else. So taking that out made a lot of sense. I think, once again, the emphasis being that the Farragut crew are, you know, family to each other in a lot of ways. And that was actually where part of the story in Homecoming came through too, is obviously for Carter. His dad's dead. He had this childhood, great relationship with his mother. I took that away from him.
01:26:59
Paul
So it almost re. Emphasized the Farragut being his home. So in a lot of ways, there's. Even in Homecoming, there are things that kind of push towards the Carter that we see in Farragut forward who's, you know, dedicated to Starfleet. That's his life. Doesn't mean that he's not a fun guy. He doesn't go out and have nice trips or vacations and date or whatever. But the ship is his home. These people are his family because they're the ones who've always had his back, even when his own family didn't.
01:27:27
Case
Yeah, it's a wonderful arc that's been conveyed and it's. It's been fascinating for me having this, like, insider knowledge of it all. Like the fact that you are so easy to talk to and that we can get into the sort of, like, here's like, crazy ideas and either for the future or what ones we had for the past. It's wonderful stuff. And you can see how it just. It all comes together so well with Farragut Forward. Like, there's this economy of storytelling. So, like there's all this lore and background stuff that exists that fleshes out the world. And a lot of it is informed in people's performances or just in general. It truly is this, like, wonderful collaborative work that came out of it.
01:28:05
Case
So, Paul, thank you for giving us so much time chatting about the creative process of the start of Starship Farragut, of Farragut Forward and all that. Where can people find you, follow you? What projects have you got going on?
01:28:20
Paul
Well, I've actually been taking a little bit of an acting break. I do a lot of dinner theater when I was in dc, so before I moved into Delaware, I did a lot of murder mystery dinner theater. That would be actually one of my main gigs that I've been doing for a while. Kind of focused on a little bit of writing. I'm working on a couple of screenplays right now. I've kind of taken a little bit of a step back from acting. I haven't had the opportunity since we moved here to Delaware. I've been remodeling my house and so forth. So I've had a lot of background stuff going on. So I took a step back. But I will be in Farragut 2024. Not as Prescott. Prescott is dead. And John. But is he back to life?
01:28:52
Paul
Well, John won't let me bring him back to life, so. But no, Prescott's dead. I will be playing the new for now, but I will be playing the new chief engineer on the Farragut who's an Aphrosian. So if you remember that. If you remember the character was on the Saratoga, he had white hair. And then the president with the Federation. The guy who plays the dad on that 70s show.
01:29:14
Case
Yeah. Oh, yeah.
01:29:15
Paul
Kurt was he. He played in a Frozen. Well, they have the white hair a.
01:29:18
Johnny
Little bit of a.
01:29:19
Paul
They're actually similar to. It looked at Klingon stuff with the white hair kind of a thing. But the interesting thing about the characters that basically is they. They don't see like we do. There were a lot of ways, kind of like what they were doing with. On Strange New Worlds with the engineer. And basically for all intents and purposes, he's blind. So, you know, so it's a little bit different. They can see. But everything that they've written in the documentation, a lot of role playing game stuff for that. When I went to look up with the Euphrosians. But so he'll be wearing glasses a little bit like Matrix style. That basically to allow him to be able to see things now. Not quite a Jordy level, but you know, I'm coming back. It's, it's a small role.
01:29:53
Paul
It's not, you know, I'm, no, I'm not going to be one of the principal casts background role with a few lines, but it's just fun to be involved. You know, I said he wants to do with more with them in the third episode but I, you know, focus on the main people especially if you're not gonna let me bring me back then, you know, I even have the beard for that final scene now and the long hair, you know. But so that's really the main thing. So like I said, my main focus right now is I'm working on a couple of things. I, I, I've been sitting on a Frankenstein, a modern day Frankenstein retelling for a couple of years now. I just need to find the right filmmaker who's interested in it.
01:30:28
Paul
I originally had written a part for myself in it, but I no longer want to play the part. I'd rather just kind of have somebody else play it, but love to be able to get that one out there. And I have a couple other two other screenplays that I'm working on right now. And I have a short story in a book called in the Blink of an Eye based on the my late friend Eric Myers movie Butterfly Kisses. It's a bunch of short stories set in the universe of that film. I have one of them in one of the shorts in that book is that I wrote. So that was my first, that's my first official published work. So I was happy about that one.
01:31:02
Case
Oh, that's fantastic.
01:31:03
Paul
And I'm looking at, now that I'm in this area, you know where I'm at in Delaware, I'm looking at getting back in some live theater, I think. So it's been a while. I'm a little rusty. Hopefully I'll catch back up. But yeah, so nothing solid in the works right now, but a lot of hopes in the future.
01:31:21
Case
So are you on any of the socials?
01:31:24
Paul
I am on Facebook. I don't do Twitter and Tick Tock and was it not Twitter Now X or Tick Tock or X Blue Beam or you know, all these other one. I, I don't really do much. I do Facebook. People can find me on Facebook. You'd find out some of the other films I worked at on IMDb. I've had quite a few projects in the past that I've worked on. If you go on Amazon prime, you can find me on a couple of movies. You find me a couple on Tubi. There's actually a movie that's ranking very high in horror films on Tubi right now that I'm in called Beneath the Old Dark House. I'm in a segment that's, it's anthology film and a segment called the Bride.
01:31:59
Paul
I play a guy named Donovan who's quite creepy and decides that, you know, parts of waitresses would make a good girlfriend. Very different part, not quite a Prescott part. I got that one. And another movie that's the Henchman's War. I play Hitman Billy Moss in that one. Let's see what else is. There's a few other ones out there I'm sure you can find me on the web.
01:32:21
Dave
Yeah.
01:32:21
Case
So again we're talking to Paul Sieber right now, one of the writers of Farragut Forward and a, a creative voice behind Starship Farragut as a whole. A man who has shaped the fan film community. It's easy to say, well, that's.
01:32:35
Paul
A heck of a compliment.
01:32:36
Case
Well, no, Farragut is a, a, a fantastic entry in the fan film landscape. Like we've done things that no other fan film production has been able to do. And the, you know, the fact of the matter is like, you've been a tremendous part in shaping that.
01:32:49
Paul
Well, thank you for saying that. I do appreciate, I think the fun thing about Farragut and I know other fan films played other ships in the Federation, but playing that universe, but being honest to that universe, but not constantly referring to stuff other people did. I mean, yeah, we did mirror universe, but the emphasis wasn't on Kirk in the mirror universe. The emphasis was on the Farragut crew and the mirror universe. The one thing that was fun about Farragut is we've always had those characters be the center of attention. Yeah, we know these other things are happening, but that's not important. What's important is this crew's doing what this crew does.
01:33:30
Paul
I think that's one of the things that, you know, has really made Farragut stand out, that we kind of over time created our own mythology, our own backstory, our own, you know, long term storyline that it's carried through from, you know, both from the live action to the animated to back to the live action now to the, you know, to the movie era stuff. I think it's just kind of a phenomenal thing that, you know, that the Farragut team has been able to do and fun for me because, you know, we get to play Star Trek without, you know, I'm not Spock, I'm not Kirk. I don't want to be those people. I want to be somebody else that exists in that world in that way. I'm kind of glad that Fathers and Sons never got written the way it did.
01:34:11
Paul
It was too much emphasis on those other people, you know. So I'm kind of glad it never happened. So sometimes, you know, some of those things happen for good reason. Reason. Frank not talking about his talking about grandkids on the bridge of his ship. That would have taken something away from something later in the story. So sometimes those things happen for a good reason. But Farragut's really given us the opportunity to do something that, you know, few fan films do. I mean, you've got Intrepid out there, I'm over in Scotland. There's another group that's been able to kind of create their own universe that plays within the Star Trek universe, which I find very impressive. You know, John's always wanted to do a crossover with them.
01:34:47
Paul
We were talking about trying to do something with a little time travel thing with him and his new chief engineer on the shuttle craft. And of course we'd have to go over to Scotland and film with Nick, which would be terrible. You know, I don't know who's gonna afford that one. That'd be a heck of a fundraiser. Send me to Scotland. But I mean, but you know, it's just, it's fun playing in that. It's, it's fun that we take it seriously and don't take it seriously at the same time. Time I'm looking forward to Fair Good 2024 because I'm looking forward to the light hearted episode. We try to do a little bit of that in some of the episodes that I tried to make the onboard shift stuff a little bit more humorous.
01:35:26
Paul
Security chief, crazy people around, you know, trying to find, you know, what's going on. And Holly getting all ticked off. You know, a few inside jokes there.
01:35:35
Case
Yeah, like that car ride back from Georgia, you and I were just like rolling in our seats laughing at the idea of like, oh yeah, everyone's sick because the food processors were damaged during. In the firefight.
01:35:46
Paul
You got people all over the ship puking, you know, I mean, it's just like it's not for Star Trek at The same time it's like, yeah, I mean, this, you know, I, I, I think the thing that's made Fargo different than other fan film series overall is long term character development and consequences. There are consequences for what people do. There are consequences of what happened. I wrote several episodes of Starship Farragut and pretty much in most of the ones that I wrote, I beat the crap out of the ship, you know, and the price of anything, I beat the crap out of the ship. I mean, obviously they get shot by, you know, Romulans several times in the crossing. I, well, I blew holes in it. Not even as dramatic as what the original intent was.
01:36:27
Paul
Original intent was those holes are gonna be a lot bigger. There was gonna be a lot more damage. So when it came to the end of that, people going like, oh, why isn't the fair get a connie reef like the Enterprise was. When I was talking to John that were talking about, you know, were finishing homecoming, I said it shouldn't. Not every ship is going to make a refit and we beat the crap out of this ship episode after episode. We beat the living tar out of this ship. They're not going to take that and try to fix it. They're going to say, that's enough, put it away, let's do something else. And so there were consequences for that there were consequences for characters growth like, you know, Tackett and Smithfield being put around each other again.
01:37:10
Paul
The eventual consequences be that they did fall back in love and got married. So there were consequences for these characters with this relationship. There are consequences that she was widowed and her husband died and that became something in the Crossing. I mean, everything has, you know, characters age, people change, they develop. And we let the characters do that. That, you know, that was part of what was important in, you know, in Homecoming. For me, as writing it for Captain Carter's character was, I felt that Captain Carter needed closure because this is a guy who at that point in time should be pretty bitter. You know, I mean, he's had some lousy breaks as much as he's had a good career. He's had some crappy stuff out of his dad died in front of him to save a plant, find that his mother's a spy.
01:38:00
Paul
These are things that are going to wear on you. I mean, they're definitely going to beat you down. We wanted to kind of show that. I think it was nice of John to give me as a writer the opportunity to show that time passes, that we do get older. We do change. I mean, there was the throwaway line that I added about Tackett when they're in the Klingon brig about his retirement. He's been in Starfleet for what, 40 years. He's ready to retire. You know, it's time over. And if he retires, she'll probably retire too. I mean, that's the kind of thing that you should be talking about. You know, this is. Remember Farragut Forward is like 10 to 15 years after Starship Farragut. So these people have been, you know, the ranks have to change.
01:38:42
Paul
I mean, the fact that you have promotions of different characters on the show, you have, you know, people moved around to other shows. Those are all the consequences of time. You know, even the fact that, you know, characters have gray hair now. Nobody tried to hide the fact that we've gone gray over the years. Matter of fact, we let it go. I mean, it's important to show the passage of time. Absolutely. And the people that makes them who they are. And I think that was one of the things that Farragut, particularly with moving into Farragut Forward, has given us the opportunity to do. Given me the opportunity to do as a writer, as an actor. Actor. But it's mostly given the fans the opportunity to see the change in time and people and how they mature and how they grow up.
01:39:24
Paul
Not just in the production values of our show, but more in that these characters are people and that makes for compelling television. And that was the intent.
01:39:35
Case
It certainly shows how matured the production has become and all meanings of that. So, Paul, thank you again. We are going to jump back to us in the editing booth again. Everyone should check out what the movies Paul has worked on, check out his IMDb page and support. But thank you again for coming on. Back to you, Case.
01:40:01
Sam
Back to you, Case.
01:40:06
Case
And we're back.
01:40:07
Sam
Wow. I love Paul's stories, honestly.
01:40:11
Case
Yeah, man. So it's, it is wild the amount of time that I have spent in a vehicle with that man. Just the font of creativity. Like. So we used to drive down to Georgia where like Starship Farragut was filming for many years. And so we would do these like it's like a 10 hour drive from the D.C. Area and I one shot it and just discuss story ideas. Like we talk about that. There, there was this infamous call that Paul and I had after we had spent this time hashing out the story ideas for what became Starship Fair Homecoming and calling John Broughton, the executive producer of Starship Farragut as a whole and convincing him to not end the series with the Crossing, but to do Homecoming and make that the actual swan song of the series. Very fun guy to just chat with.
01:41:03
Case
Like we said, just a really compelling perspective on the, on the story as a whole.
01:41:08
Sam
Yeah.
01:41:09
Case
So next up we have the director of the piece. He's also one of the screenwriters and was a one man film crew. I shouldn't say one man, but was powerhouse of a film production person. Johnny K. Is just an incredible director. He did the Oath. We interviewed him actually also on this to talk about the Oath for a fifth episode of Another Pack Ass. And he's just a really fun, charming guy who.
01:41:35
Sam
Wonderful guest.
01:41:36
Case
Such a great eye. Yeah, yeah. Like super polite and just, just a delight. And yeah, we really got into the story perspective and then just what it go. What, what you're doing when you are the man running this, running the set running, you know, when you are recording everything and figuring out what we have, if we've got it in the camera and got it in the can to like move on or if we can, if we have to stop because of production issues, like you're the person making sure you can actually edit a movie together. And like we've had that issue with Starship Farragut. Like, I don't want to get into like nitty gritty, but like there have been times where like in the editing booth it's like, oh, we don't have this scene.
01:42:16
Case
We have to like cut, you know, chunks of a storyline or something because you just can't make it work with the footage you have. And Johnny did a fantastic job. Like he is the editor also for, for Farragut Ford. And you like look at Farragut Ford. It is so well paced. So yeah, let's get into that interview.
01:42:33
Sam
Yay.
01:42:39
Case
All right. And we are here with Johnny K. The director of Farragut Forward. It's an incredible work. Like, let's just start off with that one. I, I know I have expressed that to you in person. I, I have, I've said wonderful things about it. But you've done like just a fantastic piece. Fargo Forward is a testament to what fan films can be.
01:43:00
Johnny
Thank you. That's huge. Huge words coming from you know, your way around a fan film or two. So that means a lot coming from you. And it was a team effort. You know, I'll take the. Thanks, but you know, that's on behalf of 100 or so folks that work their butts off for the last few years, as you know. So appreciate the it.
01:43:18
Case
Yeah. Well, so we've got you here and I wanted to talk to you about making Farragut Forward. I mean, we had you recently on talking about the Oath and you know, some of the challenges of making a fan film, making what is a labor of love that doesn't have that kind of financial backing that would go into, you know, a studio movie. You know, like from your perspective, let's start talking about like the challenges of making Farragut forward. Specifically. Like what, like, I guess let's back up for you. How did you get involved in this production? And then, and then we can get into all the ways that it was derailed from what you envisioned.
01:43:54
Johnny
Yeah, it's all John Broughton's fault. And I say that lovingly.
01:43:59
Case
Yeah, that's a through line for everyone.
01:44:01
Johnny
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. No, I mean, you don't get Farragut without John. Yeah, John and I, you know, we've known each other a bunch of years and once I got into filmmaking, he had seen my first short that I did and then the second short I shot actually starred his son Xavier. And John and I just kind of kept close through that. And then when the idea came back around for him to actually go ahead and move forward, pardon the term with Farragut forward, he called me up or he came over, he said, hey, do you want to direct this? What I'm thinking, and I'll quote John, what I'm thinking is a two minute teaser just to kind of test the appetite and we can shoot the whole thing in one weekend and it's just going to be a two minute teaser.
01:44:41
Johnny
And how he got me other than that is he said, and it's going to be set in the movie era of Trek. It's going to be, you know, not the Primary Colors 60s stuff, but we're going to go straight to Wrath ofon and Undiscovered Country. So how can I say no to a two minute piece that's set in my favorite era of Star Trek? And as I told John on at the PRemiere, to Farragut Forward, that was the longest two minutes of my life because it went on after that for like two and a half years. Because obviously once we made the little two minute, what became the prologue is what we ended up calling it Launched Then there was an appetite to do a full, what I call a feature, even though it was about 52 minutes.
01:45:23
Johnny
And there was an appetite to go ahead and do that. And then that proceeded to be the next two years of many of our lives. So. But that's how it started. It's all. It's all John.
01:45:32
Case
He gets you to come over. And what was the thought process in terms of making the Prologue, which I hope people who are listening to this episode have checked out. If you haven't, and you did see Farragut Forward, it sets up specifically the dynamic for where we open the film. What's the first thing that you're thinking about when you come into this? Where do you go in terms of reference? Like all that? Like, go.
01:46:00
Johnny
Yeah, no, I mean, there's. Oh, man, there's so much there. Prologue was a little bit of a different beast. I think we shot prologue on about $800. So were limited in terms of, like, esthetic and all that, but just the whole project in general. Prologue and Farragut Forward, the feature, my. My brain went right toward Undiscovered Country. You know, I wanted to see the coup de grams and that era of Star Trek movie making. You know, I've said before, unlike other interviews, if you watch Wrath of Khan back to back with Undiscovered country, completely different production designs, completely different set designs, different aesthetic.
01:46:32
Johnny
And that's one of the decisions we made pretty early on, is how much do we want our bridge sets and all that and our lighting, for that matter, to look like Wrath of Khan, which was, you know, produced in 1981, released in 82, versus, you know, how much do we want to. To, you know, future proof it and show the movie era a decade later and maybe make it look a little more like Star Trek 5 or Star Trek 6? And, you know, I kind of held to my guns. There were a few opinions on that, and I kind of held to my guns and I said, you know, if we ever want to make more of these.
01:47:03
Johnny
And this was a conversation we had like three years ago, said, if we ever want to make more of these, I think we're going to better served if we go ahead and go all in with the. The Akudagrams and the Star Trek 6 aesthetic. So that way we're future proofing it, right? Because in my opinion, like, you watch Wrath of Con now, I love Rathicon, but you can see that it's dated, you know, the technology. There's knobs. Some of those knobs look like, you know, the dryer. The dryer knobs and Maytag dryer stuff. I grew up with like, it just has, like that dated aesthetic. I love that movie. And then when you watch Star Trek 6, I mean, those consoles, that looks just as good as anything that's on Sci Fi Channel today, right. In my opinion, because it looked that good then.
01:47:41
Johnny
It was ahead of its time. Time. And of course, they borrowed a lot from Next Generation and all the stuff going on production wise. So that was one of the first decisions we made, was to really kind of future proof Farragut and go ahead and start in that Star Trek 5, Star Trek 6 era. And then my brain, as you know me, case, like, I went right to, like, lighting, cinematography, like, how can we get a really moody feel out of this? And I love Undiscovered Country. It has such a kind of a cool, moody tone. I love the dark, like Klingon stuff, you know, which fed right into what were doing. We happen to have a lot of dark Klingon sets in the prologue and Farragut forward. And that's kind of my sweet spot.
01:48:18
Johnny
Like, filmmaking wise, I want to turn those lights down. I want to get, you know, a little. A little deep and dark into these shadows. Let the imagination play and just kind of let, you know, that aesthetic out. And I'd never really seen that. I've not seen a lot of Star Trek fan films, by the way. Like, I'm an outsider better when it comes to the Star Trek fan film community. So I really don't know what else is out there. All I can speak of are the ones that I've seen. And I'd really never seen a Star Trek fan film that kind of tried to capture, like, the dark aesthetic of, like, Undiscovered Country. And that's kind of the challenge that I had.
01:48:49
Johnny
I wanted to kill the lights and see if we can make something that look a little different than other fan films have done.
01:48:55
Case
Yeah. I want to circle back to a point that you made at and then moved quickly, which was the use of the Klingon stuff. This is just a detail, which combined with the discussion of the budget in terms of what the prologue had to use for it. Listeners, if you want to do your Sci Fi piece and it happens to be in the Star Trek universe and you need some aliens, there are a lot of Klingon cosplayers that you can reach out to in the world. And that can be a serious budgetary consideration when you're working on those kind of things.
01:49:26
Johnny
Yeah, absolutely. The Clint. Yeah, the Klingon costumers, those guys, like you said, a lot of them were Cosplayers. Not all of them, but a lot of them were. And not only did they come with their own costumes, but the beauty is they could get themselves dressed and also they can get themselves in makeup. So you're bringing like one person on and you're not having to burn three or four people to get them dressed. You know, put the wig on them, put the makeup on them. Like, these guys do this stuff at conventions every weekend. So they're kind of like. A lot of our Klingons were kind of self contained. They could show up, get themselves dressed, get themselves ready and be camera ready in a couple hours. So we took advantage of. Of as many shortcuts like that as we could find.
01:50:04
Case
What's the process in terms of the prologue specifically? And like, where. How much of the script was there before you came on? How much input did you have in terms of the actual story of the prologue specifically? Specifically.
01:50:17
Johnny
Wow, you're taking me way back now. Prologue, I don't remember. I know, I know John already had an idea for the story, and I know I. I think the script was already there. I think John came with that for Prologue. I had a lot more input on the actual Farragut Forward feature. I think when Prologue got to me, I think it was already pretty well developed. It was, you know, just going to be in a prison cell, you know, kind of for budgetary reasons if nothing else. And also ease of shooting, it was going to be the big reveal of Prescott, you know, who was the villain coming back. I think the script for the prologue, as it was pretty. The best.
01:50:52
Johnny
I remember I'm going back three or four years now, but I think that was pretty well set when it came to me. But it was kind of up to me to figure out how to shoot it. Like, I had the idea, and John brings this up a lot when we talk to interviews, on other interviews. But I kind of had the idea to shoot the prologue through the eyes of Tacky, which is Mike Bednar's character. You know, that's why we open up the prologue on him. The very first frame of prologue is his eyes opening in the prison cell. And I actually, I don't know if anybody noticed, but I use that exact same trick for Farragut Forward. The first frame of Farragut Forward is his wife, Commander Smithfield. She's laying in bed and her eyes open.
01:51:27
Johnny
So that was my little bookend to myself there. I wanted to start both of them off with kind of a Character waking up to a situation. And with Prologue, yeah, I just wanted to kind of shoot it through Bednar's eyes. Through my. Or through Commander Tackett's eyes. Eyes. Captain Tackett's eyes. Just let him be kind of our. The audience's window into that world. And then next thing you know, the Klingons are marching Captain Carter in and. And ripping the hood off and the music gets scary and all that.
01:51:52
Paul
So.
01:51:53
Case
So question for you before we move away from the Prologue. Is there anything that you regret about it that. That you could have changed at the time?
01:52:01
Paul
Not.
01:52:02
Case
Not the stuff that you can't do anything about or the things that it's like. Well, you know, we only had $800 to spend, but, like, is there anything specific that you, like, just learned along the way or just. It always, like, nagged at you?
01:52:14
Johnny
Yeah, well, I mean, I try not to focus too much on that stuff. It's what's done is done. If I had to pick one thing, I think I always kind of had an issue with Prescott's wardrobe. I never thought that, you know, that was. I think we could have probably paid a little more attention to that or a little more time, spent a few more minutes on kind of getting that exactly up to par with the rest of it. Again, I try not to dwell on little stuff like that because you can always find, you know, filmmakers can find any. Any nitpicky floss stuff in their work. I think Prescott's wardrobe, I wish we had probably spent a little more time on for the prologue, we obviously fixed that. Moving into Farragut Forward, we gave him a whole new.
01:52:49
Johnny
A whole new wardrobe of clothes for Farragut Forward. Just little stuff like that. You know, I was happy with the lighting. I was. I was happy with the script, the tone, the atmosphere, love the music, happy with all that stuff. The room, the set was what it was. We shot prologue in, like, one 12 by 12 foot space, period. So there's not really much we could have done with that. So, yeah, if I had to pick one thing, probably just a Prescott wardrobe.
01:53:11
Case
Okay. All right, so then what is the process going from. From the prologue into actually, I mean, so this is a fan film. And. And so a big part of this was crowdfunding. I. I was a big part of getting that campaign together and running post while that was going on.
01:53:26
John B
What.
01:53:26
Case
What's the. What's the first conversation that you have with John Broughton? What is the. Like, where do you come in looking at a script? Like, what is that transition for You?
01:53:38
Johnny
Yeah. So the script, Farragut Forward, was co written by three of us, myself, John Broughton and Paul Sieber. And by the time the script got to me, the bones of it were there. I think I polished a little bit of it, what I remember of it and talking to John and Paul about this. And again, my memory going back a few years ago, the original script, when it came to me, you know, it was obviously a rescue mission. That's where we left off. Prologue that. That our two captains were in danger and clearly needed to be rescued. And in Farragut Forward, when I first saw the script, the rescue mission was actually successful.
01:54:11
Johnny
Like it worked like they were able to, you know, rescue them, beam them back over to Farragut and then the whole Act 3 of the movie was shot on the planet. It was set on the planet anyway. And we go down and fight and duke it out. And my kind of thought there was, wait, what if we make it look like the rescue mission is going to be successful, but then it's not. What happens if it fails? And this has been Prescott's evil plan all along. Like the whole thing was an absolute massive trap and he was luring them in and we're going to end up on the planet duking it out anyway. So why don't we just put a little spike there and have a redirect. Otherwise, I think a lot of the scripts, you know, I just had.
01:54:48
Johnny
It helps being a co writer of a film you're also shooting and directing, because I could kind of visualize the script and visualize some of the scenes as I was writing it just kind of for me, shorthand for me to, you know, cue myself, hey, future Johnny in the edit three years from now, you know, do this and put little words in just kind of for me to kind of trigger me for what I was thinking and it worked. Actually, I would see things that I wrote in the script three years ago when I was doing the edit and be like, oh yeah, I know exactly why I phrased it like that, because it puts my brain in a certain gear to kind of visualize it in the edit the same way I did when we wrote it.
01:55:25
Johnny
But yeah, that transition was John and Paul worked the script, they bounced it back and forth between them, came over to me. I definitely had some changes on it, went back to them, we kicked it around a few more times, and then after that it really didn't change. The only thing, and this will jump us into production just a little bit, but the only thing that I mentioned really did change as a. As a result of those awesome sets that we had. You know, we ended up with a sick bay set because it was critical for the story, it was critical for the ending of the film. And I'm looking at the set and I'm thinking, we have to have more action take place on this amazing sickbay set.
01:55:57
Johnny
So the line in the script said we cut to different parts of the ship that are taking damage. Like, that was the line in the script. And in reality, you have this whole scene in sickbay where Dr. Durham is barking orders and we've got burnt, you know, crew members and we got people with spikes sticking out of their shoulders and people are being, you know, helped around and carried through, you know, all that. None of that was on the written page. We. We literally shot that just to take full advantage of that sick bass set. So.
01:56:25
Case
Yeah, and I think we also lucked out with Rakia being such a fantastic actress to sort of like anchor that specific scene.
01:56:33
Johnny
Oh, yeah. And I was giving her mouthfuls of lines that she had never seen game before. Like, two actors love it when you do this to them. Hey, an hour before you go on, here's like some techno babble. It's not even just lines. It's like, it's like Star Trek techno babble. It's like, hey, I need you to, you know, say this about hyper sprays, cortical stimulators, and request of, you know, something, the cargo bay to be used as a emergency triage. I mean, it was just techno babble stuff. And yeah, Rikia was a champ. She. She got it. She rattled those things off. And, and it helped that it was a stressful scene because I think she might have been a little stressed and unnerved, but that was kind of the point of that scene is she should be stressed and unnerved.
01:57:09
Johnny
So it all worked out and she was a champ. She did awesome.
01:57:13
Case
So looking at the script and then figuring out, so you've worked on a couple of short films at this point, what is the process for you as director, working with production and sort of figuring out the budget that we have and what we can potentially race before, like going into the Indiegogo campaign. Campaign?
01:57:31
Johnny
Yeah, that was just kind of talking through, okay, what. What can't we make the movie without? Well, we know we need a bridge. You know, the question was, how much of a bridge can we get? You know, do we get half a bridge? Do we get 2/3 of a bridge? Do we get 3/4 of a bridge. So there was kind of those conversations and then, oh, wait, we need two bridges, right? Because we have the Copernicus Bridge and we also have the Farragut Bridge. So, okay, what can we do to redress these? Redress the same set to make it look like it's actually two sheets ships, which involved, you know, changing the seat colors and moving the turbo lift doors and some other things budget wise. We kind of started with, okay, what must we have?
01:58:06
Johnny
And then went right to the what would be nice to have. And in the early days of Farragut Forward, you know, were talking about building the transporter room, right? There was a scene written in the transporter room, which ultimately didn't end up being filmed there because we didn't have one. And I'm glad we didn't, honestly. But we wanted a transporter room. We wanted a partial engineering set. We wanted a torpedo room where Chief Dupree could be performing surgery on a photon torpedo. Those were all the things that became kind of nice to haves. But we realized, no, let's focus all our attention on the bridge for sure. The Klingon bridge got a lot more complex than I think any of us expected.
01:58:43
Johnny
And then the set guys, you know, ended up surprising me with a full 360 degree, partially enclosed Klingon bridge with a ceiling on it, which was insane. And then the sick base set that I've already mentioned, you know, everybody went above and beyond on that sick base set. And the corridors, you know, just having a network of corridors that we could use. And then we redressed some of that for the crew quarters. So once we got to that and once we saw that our, you know, regardless of what our crowdfunding goal was, if we kept building sets like that, were just going to knock it. We're just going to blast right through it. And at that point we said, all right, we can do this without a transporter room. We can do this without a torpedo room.
01:59:21
Johnny
We can, you know, redress part of the bridge for the torpedo room. What was going to be shot in the transporter actually ended up being shot in the turbolift. It was just a quick scene with Smithfield, Chief Dupree and Frank Hernandez's character, Foster. And it was originally going to be the three of them in the transporter room. They walk out into the hallway and they have a walk and talk. And we shot all of that in the turbo lift and then, you know, dumped them right off onto the bridge. And honestly, Case, I think that helped us because instead of Having a walk and talk. Like the classic Star Trek walk and talk scene where they're coming out of a transporter into the hallway corridor. Now they get on a turbo lift. We were much more urgent than that. Right.
01:59:59
Johnny
We just got them in the turbo lift, got the scene done, and then they walked off and they're right in the bridge. And I think that helped us keep a really fast pace with Farragut Forward. I had always wanted the movie to be go, go. Like, I wanted it to be very urgent. And when I look back on it, I think if we had actually had a transporter roof room, that probably would have slowed down just that little part of the movie. And this was as, you know, like, this is a movie that never needs to slow down. Once it goes, it's gonna go until the credits roll. And I think it helped us out not having all those extra sets. I have no idea if I answered your question.
02:00:30
Case
No, no, it does, because, you know, I. This is one of the. The truths of fan films, especially sci fi kind of fan films, like to do a Star Trek thing where you're like, here are the sets that we want to show off. Like, like there's so much of a visual appeal to be like, look at the things that we can do that people want to put forth there. But then you have to be judicious in what you actually have, the time and the budget and the story reasons for.
02:00:56
Johnny
Yeah, absolutely. And like I said, like, we ended up. And I didn't even name all the sets. You know, we had the Klingon bridge, we had the Klingon prison cell, which was a whole new set. It wasn't the same one we used for Prologue, which was my garage, by the way. Way we had a Klingon laboratory, you know, where we introduced, you know, Prescott for the first time. And also Wes Johnson's character, Valal, you know, so there are a lot of these little sets. And just one thing, while I'm talking about sets real quick. And this goes to a challenge that's kind of specific to Farragut Forward, even more so than most Star Trek fan films. You know, almost every other Star Trek fan film has been shot on a static set that's existed for a long time.
02:01:31
Johnny
And that's those original series sets, you know, that were down in Kingsland, Georgia, and. And I know there's some. Some movement of those now, and I don't keep up with it, but I know stuff is going on with it. But a lot of the sets built by Farragut guys, Mike Bednar and others, all those fan films were shot on those same sets, which means the set, you know, the sets were static. They stayed there. I assume there was something like a permanent lighting grid up top where you could have somewhat consistent lighting. Yeah, well, like juxtaposed that to Farragut Forward. Our bridge set for Farragut Forward stood for 96 hours and then it was torn down. So you talk about a stress fest. Like, there is no.
02:02:08
Johnny
There is no, like, well, if we don't get it, we'll just come back next weekend and get it then. No, the set's coming down. You got 96 hours. And that was a generous 96 hours for the bridge. Most of those other sets for the film, including sick Bay, stood for about 12 hours. Right. Sick Bay was up for one day. That was a 12 hour shoot. The lab set was one day. The Klingon Bridge cell was one day. The corridors were one day. And some of these were the same day, by the way. So. So probably some half days in there. But I think that's a challenge. That was really specific to Farragut Forward that we only had 96 hours on that Federation Bridge to shoot 75% of the movie. And that was. That was a little bit stressful.
02:02:49
Johnny
A little bit stressful on my side of the camera.
02:02:51
Case
Yeah. I mean, I remember most of these shoots. So obviously I went on paternity leave during the filming of this. So the big bridge set, I only was able to come in and help gaff for about an hour and then had to leave. I remember the stress of were putting the sets together as it was coming, as you were lighting it, as the shots were getting set up. And it was like, okay, we've got as much detail as we can get on here and it is time to go. So let's talk about time because then that is a big factor in fan films. You know, it's the whole like, quick, easy, cheap, pick two scenario. And like, easy is often one of the ones that gets thrown out.
02:03:34
Case
Cheap is also often one of the ones, you know, you just have to deal with it sometimes. And so easy. I would factor in on like the time scenario. And, and yeah, so why don't we start with glaring ones? What stands out to you as the most time sensitive shot or shoot that you had, like where you were down to the wire on it all, like the most brutal of it. And then what were some of the ones that you had to cut because of time?
02:04:00
Johnny
Yeah, the. I guess the first question. It's a tie between the bridge, the Starfleet bridges, and also our whole Act 3 of the movie, which was exterior shot down in Hopewell, Virginia at a paintball facility. It's a tie between those two with the bridge shoots. And I say that was a four day shoot. We shot the Copernicus Bridge on the first day and then we shot the Farragut Bridge. Yeah. For the next three days. And then that was a combination of normal lighting and red alert lighting. And then were also tearing the set down as went. Right. So and what I mean by that is the ship was coming under attack.
02:04:36
Johnny
So, you know, if we're shooting sequential, so if a beam falls down from the ceiling in the bridge and you know, deposits debris all over the floor of the bridge, well, once that's out, like, we can never shoot anything before that. Right. Everything we shoot has to be after that happens and then something else will happen. A console will blow up in the back. Okay, well now, you know, we have to shoot certain things that can only happen after that because we can't go back. We don't have the time to go back and redo any of that. So were literally tearing our bridge set down as we shot it to simulate the ship being torn apart in combat. And that's, that was a huge pressure because you're, you don't just have one point of no return.
02:05:16
Johnny
You're having, you have like one point of no return per hour. And Rommel and I, you know, first A.D. Rommel Panzal, like he and I were just huddling in closets or wherever we could find some privacy and just looking at our storyboards and looking at the shot list to say, okay, before we move on, did we absolutely get every piece of coverage we need? Because once we blow that console out in the back of the bridge, like, there's no going back. So we really had to look almost every hour to be like, yes, we have everything we need, or, you know, we have just enough, or we think we have just enough, which is typically what you'll find on a really rushed film set. We think we have enough coverage, but we really won't know until the edit. And that's how that was.
02:05:58
Johnny
I can tell you the bridge was a little bit more relaxing than the two night shoot we did exterior down in Hopewell, which was the whole Act 3 of the movie. This was the big fight scene. We shot it after dark. We lit up our, you know, these towers on a paintball facility that one I knew for a fact when we called rap at about 3am I knew that we didn't have everything we needed. And that was heartbreaking breaking to me. And I, and I saw that coming about three hours and I just prioritized, okay? I have to absolutely prioritize, you know, getting every piece of dialog from these actors in a close up, right? Because we're not going to have time to get a wide and then a couple mediums and then a close up.
02:06:38
Johnny
It's like, no, I have to go ahead and just prioritize these close ups. So at least I will have that, if nothing else. And you know, this is kind of nerdy stuff. You'll probably only ever hear from me because I'm the only guy that notices it or knows. There are no wide shots of William as Koroff on in Act 3 of Farragut Forward. All of his stuff we got in close ups in about two takes at about three in the morning. And some of the last stuff we shot. Okay, William, just give me this line, okay? Now just give me this line. Did we get it? I hope so. And if not, you're my neighbor. Maybe I can get you dressed back up as a Klingon and shoot it in the backyard and cheat it, I don't know. But we got to keep moving.
02:07:12
Johnny
So we didn't get a lot of the stuff in Hopewell that I wanted to get. I was determined to get my Klingon drummer, you know, just to explain why the soundtrack is drums down at the End of the Planet, which also, by the way, is a. Is a bookend back to Prologue. It's the exact same drums that we use in Prologue I brought back and used at the end of Farragut Forward. But I actually wanted to show a Klingon guy there banging on drums just to kind of have that in there, give it a little bit of flavor. Stuff like that, you know, that gets thrown away real quick because that's not a priority. That's a nice to have. I ended up getting it anyway. But I shot it in Mike Bednar's backyard yard and I got my Klingon drummer in there.
02:07:47
Johnny
Same thing with Martia. John Broughton's wife Tanya, you know, played Martia from Star Trek 6. There was just no point bringing her down to Hopewell for one shot of her. A couple shots. So I knew I was going to do some backyard shoots later to get a lot of that. But I guess in summary, like, no filmmaker on the history of this planet has ever had enough time to shoot the movie they want to shoot. It's always a compromise. You're all, you're never going to have enough time. That's even. That's amplified even more in the fan film world because we really don't have time, because time is money. You know, one more night of shooting on any of those sets would have been another 15 or 20 hotel rooms, which none of us could afford.
02:08:24
Johnny
I mean, it all comes down to time and money. There's never enough of it. Even if your. Your budget is significantly higher than anything you've had before or higher than others. Like, you always, you know, it just goes so, so quickly, and you always just end up having to just prioritize and get the bare bones necessities.
02:08:40
Case
Yeah. I mean, you bringing up both the outdoor shoot for the third act, like, and, like, the sick base sets, you're giving me, like, flashbacks to, like, all the stress of, like, oh, my God, we're running out of time. The outdoor shoot specifically, like, I know we, like, you specifically were cursing the fact that it was daylight savings, that it had just.
02:08:57
Johnny
Oh, yeah, that cost us an hour. Yeah, we shot that in March. We shot it right after clocks went forward. Right, Spring forward, fallback back. We shot that in March, right after clocks went forward, but, like, by one week. And that cost us one hour of daylight. So instead of us shooting at, you know, being able to start rolling cameras at 7 o'clock, we had to wait till 8 o'clock or whatever the deal was. And, yeah, that cost us an hour. And you can't mess around, like, I'll keep this short, but you also can't mess around with people's safety. Right. And you know that, like, I've said that before on this podcast, like, just because we're indie film and fan film doesn't mean we can take shortcuts on safety. Right.
02:09:33
Johnny
So what I had to have in the back of my mind is we've got 75 actors, many of whom are really heavily made up with prosthetics, all this stuff. If, you know, if I'm still shooting at 2 in the morning and think we need another hour, so now we're going to go till three in the morning. You know, if I say, all right, we're wrapped at three, yeah, the person who's applying the makeup and taking that makeup off, that means they're not going to get out of there till five in the morning or. Right. So everything just kind of stacks up. And safety always weighs really heavy on Me. So I was, it would have been very easy to keep shooting and rolling cameras till three in the morning.
02:10:06
Johnny
But I knew if I did that I would still have makeup people on set at six in the morning trying to, you know, leave out of there and drive back to their hotels on no sleep at all. And you know, I just, I didn't want to go there. So some of those nights instead of, you know, shooting that extra hour or two, even though we could have done it on the camera side and the actors would have done it, I just, I could not keep those crew there until five or six in the morning and then, you know, risk some, you know, somebody have an accident on the way to the hotel or something like that. So.
02:10:31
Case
Yeah, and I mean we honestly saw one of those happen like the night before the last night of the shoot, Wes Johnson slipped. Did he chip his tooth on that one?
02:10:40
Johnny
He definitely broke his glasses. Yeah, I think. And then I think you and Heather were behind me. One of those nights, you know, coming out of there at 4:00am you know, I turned the wrong way on a wrong way street in downtown Hopewell trying to get back to the hotel. And I mean that was, it was a good reminder to me to you know what, be mindful of safety. Safety is more important than any Star Trek fan film, you know, and we don't need people. I'm glad it was me that accidentally drove down the wrong way of a one way street, you know, rather than somebody else. But it was a.
02:11:08
Case
Good wake up call for the record, it was like 4:30 in the morning, there was no one out. And he immediately realized the issue and turned into a gas station. So everything was fine.
02:11:18
Johnny
Yeah, but I, it was, that's not something I do like that was 100 drowsiness. That was 100 just being worn out. And I mean that was a, that's just a wake up call and it probably happened to other people too and I just didn't know about it. But yeah, safety, safety.
02:11:32
Case
Yeah. All right. So talking about time and the fact that it's always rushed on that one. Were there any triumphs that you had like moments where you got, where something went smoother than you expected?
02:11:47
Johnny
Yeah, William, I mean William J. And there were several, not just him, but he comes to mind first actually William, Wes and Paul, all three of those guys, the exterior shoots, you know, I was expecting. Let's go ahead and get some wides and Then we can get at least a medium or two and then I can get close ups. And you know, we ran out of time, so we only had close ups. We're actually shooting two cameras. So I did have some wides to be able to use from a different camera. But close ups. I was, I was probably planning to spend about an hour with William on his close ups and just get all those lines, get them, you know, done the right way. And I planned about an hour and William knocked him. He just nailed it in like one take.
02:12:28
Johnny
And I've never shot anything in one take. Like it gives me the. I break out in hives if I get something in one take. Like it's too good to be true. I gotta shoot it three more times just in case. And I probably did, but something that I planned like an hour for with William. And I think I did the same thing with Wes Johnson and Paul. I planned like an hour and a half for all of that. And next thing you know, it was done in 20 minutes. And that was such a huge boost to like, okay, now I've got, you know, more time to screw around on Klingon drummers or something like that, you know, because I didn't expect to, you know, just have everybody knock it out in one or two takes. But Wes knocked his stuff out.
02:13:01
Johnny
You know, there's a great scene at the end where it's actually spoiler, right? It's. It's Valal's death scene, right? He gives this great monologue to Paul Sieber's character and then Paul chokes him. That monologue, man. I think Wes know that in two takes, like, that's another one. I counted on an hour to spend on that and I think we got it like in 10 minutes, which is unheard of. I don't think we got anything in Farragut. Farragut forward one or two takes. And when were doing it, those guys were doing it at three in the morning. They were tired and they were able to knock out their monologues in one or two takes. So yeah, those were definitely some kind of triumphant boosts we had along the way.
02:13:39
Case
All right, so let's look at the other or another part of the equation there. So let's look at price. Were there any things that you were like priced out of doing aside from like full on set construction? Because we've already talked about those kind of things. Any particularly areas that like either bothered you or that you worked around and you were proud of the way that you worked around it.
02:14:01
Johnny
I don't think so. I don't think so. I mean, John Broughton, he prided himself, he said this to me several times during production that he didn't ever want to say no to anything. He wanted me to have all the tools in the toolbox and he prided himself on that. If I had, you know, asked for one more Monster Maroon, you know, at some point John was, you know, putting people in enlisted jumpsuits or in the bomber jackets or in, you know, just different types of things. And I keep saying, you know, monster maroons, Mustard Maroons. I want Logan in a monster Maroon. Let's get everybody to Mustard Maroon. And I think John was probably cranking out a few more Monster Maroons maybe than he had wanted to. But no, he was super good with me.
02:14:39
Johnny
I don't know that he ever really said no to anything or. No, that's out of our price range. If it was something that he could tell I really wanted or I thought would make the movie that much better, you know, we would find a way to get it done. I don't know that there's anything. The stuff I mentioned earlier, we really didn't need a transporter room set for Farragut Forward. It would have just slowed the movie down. We would have shot it if we had it. But when you think about it, we didn't really need it. Didn't really need a designated set just for the Klingon or for the torpedo room. There's really nothing that pops in my mind that I wish we had the money for and we just didn't. I don't, I don't. I really can't think of anything.
02:15:15
Case
Okay, all right. So then, like, I guess part of my curiosity with this is you must have learned a lot in this whole process. What is some advice that you would impart to amateur filmmakers or to aspiring filmmakers who want to, you know, do something of the caliber of fair, good for it. Like there's like a lot of energy and a lot of effort is on screen.
02:15:43
Johnny
First advice I could give is whatever you're planning, if it's a two day shoot or if it's a two hour shoot, just go ahead and double, just double everything right off the bat. There were some things that I, I was sure we could shoot in four hours and it took a 16, you know, and that's not even doubling, right? That's quadrupling. But plan very conservatively, I guess. Just be Prepared to double or quadruple drupal your. The time it's going to take you.
02:16:10
Dave
And.
02:16:11
Johnny
And the reason I say that is because it'll help you just kind of dial in and perfect certain things that are. It's going to take extra time, but it will end up making the final product that much more memorable and that much better. But you have to be able to give yourself the time to do that. So if you think you can get out and shoot something in an hour, go ahead and schedule it for two or three hours. Right? If you think it's going to take you one night to do something.
02:16:35
John B
Something.
02:16:35
Johnny
Well, what if it rains? You know, plan for two nights, right? So just always plan for. And that's just project management in general. Right. Just always plan for it to take a little longer, cost a little more than what you actually think it's going to. Other piece of advice, you know, find yourself some really talented people to surround yourself with. A lot of indie filmmakers, they're in a position where they feel like they have to do every single thing themselves. And, you know, on Farragut Forward, like our budget and any Star Trek fan film, you can't do this by yourself. Right. You have to have a person leading the charge with. With costumes. You have to have people. Person or people. You have to have people leading the charge with, you know, makeup, prosthetics, sets. That's its own thing. Right.
02:17:14
Johnny
So I guess that's some advice that I could give because I started in that same boat where I was like, I was just going to do everything myself on. On previous projects, and you get to something that's the scope of Farragut and it has to be a team. It has to be a team effort. Right. You have to. To surround yourself with super talented and passionate people, and you're going to get a lot more done together.
02:17:32
Paul
Yeah.
02:17:33
Case
So you actually brought up the, like, the thing that I wanted to get into next, which was the team, like, in. In terms of. I'm thinking about this because I'm working on, like, a business plan outside in my. And like my day job kind of thing right now. And it's like, what. What are the, like, priority people, like, when you're putting together a film like this, like, who do. Who do you reach out to first?
02:17:52
John B
What.
02:17:52
Case
How do you build your team?
02:17:54
Johnny
Yeah, well, mine's, you know, Farragut was. Was a little different because it comes with so many legacy players. Right. So obviously for Farragut forward, were going to start with the same team that Did Starship Farragut. Right. So for sets, you know, one of the first calls I think John made was to Mike Bednar, say, hey, we're getting the band back together. Do you want to come back and do some set stuff? And. And Mike Bednar had the. Had the common sense to say, no, I'm just gonna be in this movie. I'll help give some advice where I can, but I'm not going to spend every weekend of my life building sets. And nobody can blame him. Like Mike. Mike has put in his time. Right. So nobody blamed him for that. Yeah.
02:18:29
Case
I think he's built the bridge of the Starship Enterprise like three times in all scales.
02:18:34
Johnny
Right? Every scale. He's a master model or two. But, you know, with Farragut, it was. It was. You go back to that legacy crew. You know, were super, super lucky to run into Dave Moretti, who just kind of fell into our lap and. And just ended up being an awesome utility player and co executive producer in the end. And just Scott Einholf, all those guys just ended up, you know, being so great for the sets. Farragut's a little different for me just because it came with its own. It almost came with its own crew on board. Right. Like yourself as well. You know, Rommel, like all these folks had all been involved in some of them, you know, 20 years of Starship Farragut.
02:19:08
Johnny
So the Farragut forward phone calls didn't have to go real far outside the, the family, because the family was already established for other films, like films I'm working on now, which have nothing to do with Farragut. Yeah, that's, you know, it's. Farragut was a huge networking opportunity for me because I've met so many, like, really skilled wardrobe people and production people and makeup people through Farragut that I didn't know otherwise that now they're. They're in my Rolodex, Right. They're going to be the first calls that, you know, I make when it comes time to, you know, stepping into the next thing I'm getting ready to go do. But, yeah, it just goes back to what I said a minute ago.
02:19:41
Johnny
Like, if you're an indie filmmaker, like, surround yourself with talented people, if you're lucky, a lot of them will volunteer their time and, you know, you guys can do good stuff together and you'll find people you click with. You know, there's. There's folks that I worked with on Farragut that I can't imagine making a movie without. You Know, Romel Punzal being one of those. Like, we shot the Oath together. We shot prologue together. Then we shot the last two years of Farragut Forward together. So, like, the next time I go to make a film, like, you know, whether he's working on it with me or not, I'm gonna be looking for him. Like, where's Ramel? Like, isn't here? Is he in the parking lot? Like, where is he? I need. I need help.
02:20:14
Dave
Yeah.
02:20:14
Case
I think every movie is better by having Ramel Punzel as a part of it. In fact, every project is better. He was my D, and he was in a D and D game that I ran for many years. And he was fantastic. For one thing, he was my bookkeeper. So if I had to be like, hey, what did happen in the last session? He'd be like, well, here's all my notes.
02:20:31
Johnny
Yep, get yourself a Ramel. That's what everybody needs. Get yourself a Ramel.
02:20:35
Case
Johnny, thank you so much for being here today. Is there anything that you wanted to bring up about the production of Farragut Ford? Like, any anecdote or anything that we didn't have a chance touch on today?
02:20:46
Johnny
Man, I don't think so. We talk safety. That's a big thing with me. Timing. Yeah. I don't. I don't know. Not unless there's something specific that. That pops to your head. I don't know of anything else I have to. To add on it. We didn't burn any buildings down, and we didn't. We didn't kill anyone. So those are huge pluses.
02:21:03
Paul
Yeah.
02:21:04
Johnny
Fair. Maybe that's. That's something worth saying, you know, maybe it goes back to safety. But, you know, filmmaking is dangerous. Right. And fair. Good. Forward. When you look at it like, that was a dangerous movie to make. We had live flames, open flames. We had people dressed in burlap and, you know, very flammable things. We had people up on ladders. We were working inside a warehouse with the, you know, permission of the owner. We had some, you know, sparklers and things like that were using inside. It's. It's. I guess it goes back to safety, right? Like, there's a slippery slope there where you want all this stuff in your movie, but you just gotta kind of keep an eye on safety. Right. Make sure.
02:21:45
Johnny
I'll say it again, like, just because you're indie film or just because you're fan film doesn't mean you can cut any corners on safety. Right? So I just maybe put that out there. That, you know, we. We did attempt something very big and were very lucky that we pulled it off. But I will, you know, take some lessons with me that I learned on Farragut to future productions, which is even if you think you're being as super, super safe as you can be, there can always be something that happens that you don't plan for. Right. And I'm always just going to take, you know, some lessons like that with me to future productions because that was. That was a pretty big, dangerous thing that we just attempted and pulled off. And, and I'm glad we did it.
02:22:23
Johnny
I'm glad we shot for the stars, and I'm glad it worked out as well as it did. But there's probably about a half a dozen times that things could have gone differently and it helps me plan for the future to make sure I always know that we do have contingency plans in case, you know, something were to. To go wrong on set.
02:22:41
Case
Yeah, I, I do want to. To sort of echo this, which is that were extremely safety conscious on set, but also it was a set where there was multiple instances of open flames. And so there were lots of moments where, like, no one got hurt, but there were scary moments where, like, the wind blew the fire in the wrong direction kind of stuff. And you just need to be aware of that. And it is stuff that, like, just keep. Just keep getting better. It's a Sisyphusian task to be as safe as possible on set, but we just need to keep on striving towards it. I, I don't want anyone to take any sort of comments that were being unsafe on this production, like, absolutely not. But you can always learn to better.
02:23:21
Case
And there's always circumstances that can allow for a greater measure of safety. And we are constantly moving forward and, you know, we. Safety is a theme that we've talked a lot about on this show on these fifth episodes where safety was. Was kind of overlooked on certain productions, like, say, wizard of Oz or the Crow. You know, the. There's still a strong production that comes out of it, but we. You, you know, you have to hold filmmakers accountable for not being as safe as they should have been. Really want to emphasize that were doing the best job that we could. Not only because I was one of the guys in the safety vest trying to make sure the fire was put out on time. I, I was very much admiring the dedication you had to safety on set.
02:24:01
Case
So I don't want anyone to take your concerns as any sort of comment against it. Yeah. You have always shown a huge commitment to safety in any of the shoots that I've been involved in.
02:24:15
Johnny
Well, you have to, right? I mean, we made the decision not to shoot green screen and when you don't shoot green, you know, there wasn't a single frame of green screen in Farragut Forward and I'm proud of that. I'm really proud of that. But when you don't shoot green screen, that means you have real life risks. You have real life, you know, people on ladders and you know, slippery surfaces and all the things that come with not shooting in front of a green screen. You, you said it best. Yeah, were super safe. We had designated safety officers throughout the whole production with, you know, great aspirations come great risks. Right. So that's just a more advice for indie filmmakers out there. Just always make sure you're keeping, you know, people's. People's safety is far more important than your mobility movie, I promise.
02:24:54
John B
Yeah.
02:24:55
Case
That way you get to keep on doing these things and that's a great part of it. So on that note, Johnny, thank you again for coming on. It's great having you on again. Just to, it's. I realize it's like kind of self indulgent to be like, hey, here's the movies that I've worked on and I, I know the people who worked on them. Let's like come on my show about movies to talk about them. But at the same time, like, Farragut Forward is a true achievement. It's. There's so much effort and so much blood, sweat and tears on screen that, you know, you can't help but just like, look at that with awe. And you were the directive force on that one. Like, you made it happen.
02:25:30
Johnny
Thanks, man. No team effort. You know, I'm just thankful to John Broughton. You know, he, he let me hold his baby and I didn't drop it in the parking lot, I don't think. But yeah, Farragut was always going to be a Farragut Forward was a partnership between our two companies. He's got Farragut Films, I've got Chaotica Studios. And we knew we could probably achieve something really special if we put our brains together and came up with something. It took about three years, but I couldn't be happier with where we ended up with it. Super proud of it.
02:26:01
Case
Yeah. For anyone who wants to find you. So you mentioned Chaotica Studios, but where can people find you, follow you? What are all the socials that people should be looking for.
02:26:09
Johnny
Yeah, you can get me personally at that Johnnyk guy on Instagram and X and then. Yeah, Chaotica Studios. K A O T I C A. We're all over YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, X and other places like and subscribe. It helps out little indie film studios. The more you like and subscribe and comment. Everybody says that, but it really is important. So appreciate it.
02:26:31
Dave
Awesome.
02:26:32
Case
Well, again, thank you for coming on. Everyone should be on the lookout for whatever comes next for Chaotica Studios. Go watch. Very good. Forward again. We'll go watch the Oath again. Like go do all that. Check out the killer grassy ridge support. Johnny K. And back to you, me. And we're back. Yeah, Johnny, just super charming guy and.
02:26:59
Sam
Always, you know, such a great guest.
02:27:00
Case
Such a creative person.
02:27:01
Sam
Yeah, yeah, always have fun with him.
02:27:05
Case
So next up, this is where it gets a little confusing on this production because the two top tier people on the production were both named John. When, when were doing the pre production calls, it was me as production manager running the calls. And then it was Johnny and John. It was the calls. It was just, I, I, I would have to be like John B. John Johnny. Just to keep it clear. It was, it was so difficult sometimes I'd have to be like, just brought in, bro. Next. Next up we have John Broughton, who is the executive producer for Farragut Forward. He was also the costumer for Farragut Ford. He was not the sole person working on costumes, but he was the lead person working on costumes. It took a lot because those monster maroons are very difficult to make. That took a village.
02:27:54
Case
But John, who taught himself to sew in part to do Star Trek outfits for Starship Fairy, has become quite the seamstress, is able to make all manner of outfits. He's amazing, fantastic in that regard and it's great talking to him about that. It's great talking about Farragut Ford. And then we start talking a bit about the next Starship Farragut production in this call. So everyone tune in for this. All right, and here we are with John Broughton, the executive producer of Farragut Forward. And it's fair to say the person behind the Starship Farragut franchise as a whole. John, welcome back on the show.
02:28:38
John B
Thank you. And thank you guys for having me.
02:28:41
Case
Yeah, so we've talked about a lot of the things that go into fan films, but for everyone we've talked to, we've kind of gotten into the start of their fan film experience. And so for you, a lot of that, I imagine, is the story of Starship Fairy Farragut. Why don't we give how you got involved in fan film production and then get into the early challenges before we get into Farragut Ford itself.
02:29:07
John B
Sure. So around 2003, 2004, I saw, and this is all pre YouTube. There's no YouTube in the world. Starship Exeter. And in 2003, then, I think about six months later, I found Star Trek New Voyages. And I was like, wow, these guys are doing some amazing work themselves. And at the time I had a lot of props and costumes, and I hadn't, where I lived in display cases. And Mike Bednar helped me kind of build a lot of the props. And, and I was talking with him, I said, you know, I've got all this stuff, why don't we put it to use and make our own films? And Mike just kind of looked at me like the Spock eyebrow going up, like what? And he didn't really see it. And, and, but I was stoked.
02:30:00
John B
And I started to pen the whole pilot, the whole concept of Starship Farragut. And at the time it was Starship Excalibur. And there was another guy out there that had something with Excalibur and he was calling it Star Trek Excalibur. He reached out to me and said, hey, I saw that you were, are advertising this. You're doing this. I'm wanting to do my fan film project on Excalibur. Would you mind picking one of the other ships in the fleet? And by doing so, I will provide you with all the ship patches you'll ever need. So I looked at, on his website, I looked at all his ship patches that he had for the other Constitution class starships. And being a Navy guy, I, I was drawn to Farragut. But what sold me was the fact that the patch was an oval.
02:30:50
John B
And I said, I think that'll be very easy to sew. So it kind of sealed the deal. And, and that's how we got. And initially it was going to be, I was trying to rebuild that magic of the Kirk, Spock and McCoy, that recipe with Kirk being the, you know, the Triad, if you want Will being at the center, leveraging Spock for logic and rationale, and then McCoy, the emotionalism part, and then being able to bring the best of both worlds into his decision making and leveraging those two concepts. So I had Mike Bednar. Initially, he was going to be the chief engineer, and Rob Turner, he was going to be the science officer. And we did our little pilot, a little three minute video in 2005 after Mike had seen that. Oh, so Mike wasn't, he said, you know what?
02:31:50
John B
Acting isn't my thing. I don't really get it. How about my wife Holly, who is already working with the Tobacco Players and the Black Box Theater and Indian Head. And so she took on the role and as a nice nod to Mike, I just, you know, changed the name to Michelle, but we just called her Mike. So that was how Mike and Smithfield came about.
02:32:15
Case
Oh, it's very cool.
02:32:16
John B
Rob Turner did the, did the little pilot, the series trailer. We, were smart enough to know case that we didn't know a whole lot. But we knew if we did a, a proof of concept, a teaser trailer, then we would learn pretty much everything that we needed to know to do a bigger film. It would just be, you know, grander in scope.
02:32:37
Case
This is a thing that's going to echo in the future.
02:32:39
John B
Yes, yes, painfully so. And so we got Rob Turner. He did the pilot and after it was done, he said, you know, I had fun, everything, but I can't do this on a regular basis. And it was going to be as, you know, a web series with the intent of more and more films, at least in my mind. I was thinking we'd be able to pump out two a year. And for a while we did some. Pretty much were on even keel with that. So I was like, oh God, I gotta replace science officer. Then Mike, I mentioned it to Mike having seen the series trailer and he's like, you know what? I'll do it know. He saw the realization of what I was trying to convey and totally came on board. So he became R.T. Robert Turner. R.T. Tackett.
02:33:32
John B
That was, that was the nod to him. Initially I just wanted to have my two best friends as part of the series. So, so it worked out well. And then Paul Sieber saw that I posted online. He said, hey, I'm in the dmv. I like to help you. I have a lot of acting experience. I also build sets and together we, I think we met in person up at the Shore leaf Convention in 2005. And that essentially that was our initial, that was our like kickoff. So it's our official launch date, if you will. Our birth date for Farragut is the Shore leave convention in 2005 when we started officially everything was in pre production before then and everything. But we kind of launched it and Paul and I met with Dennis Bailey who had worked with Exeter.
02:34:22
John B
He wrote their second film, which was still being made. And that's where I met the Duff brothers in person. And I'd seen them before, but never really talked with them.
02:34:34
Case
And we should back up and just mention that all these are people who are major supporters of the fan film community.
02:34:40
John B
Yes, yes, exactly. And Dennis Bailey had written an episode of TNG called Tin man, which is a good, solid episode. So that. So we. Paul said, hey, I'd like to be in it. And he said, I'd like to do this. This security chief. And I think he. He called Impress Scott. And he said he wanted him to be kind of like Patton. And I said, well, what if? What? And I knew someone like what the Prescott character became, but I said, I, who was very much tightly wound. You thought maybe he might go ballistic in the office, he might go postal. I mean, he was just. He was like Tackleberry. And I explained that to Paul. I said, what if he's a little bit tightly wound like Tackleberry from the Police Academy?
02:35:32
John B
And so that was kind of incorporated that the guy was just always quoting regulations and had less social skills, interacting with people. A great guy and everything. But we both kind of collaborated on that character and brought something forward. Paul made it his own, of course. And we made our first episode, the captaincy, in 2006. And we. Immediately after we launched that, we immediately went in the second episode, the Forewent of a Nail, which was written by. By Mark Hildebrand. And that was our time travel episode. And that. Our first one. And that essentially that story was able to segue into many different things.
02:36:14
Case
Yeah, we talked with Paul about this and how this sort of becomes the. The beginning of the through line of the Mirror Universe story and the fact that we've got Prescott introduced and so forth. And it's sort of like the. The background of getting that ultimately to the Crossing and then that leading into the stuff with Farragut 4.
02:36:30
John B
Exactly. Yes. It all comes full circle.
02:36:33
Case
Well, okay, so I guess we should get into the nitty gritty, the deep down dirty of fan films. So what are some of those challenges? Like, what are some of those lessons you learned in filming that first trailer all those years ago?
02:36:48
John B
Star Trek fans are a devilish bunch. So we have those types of fans that are very much into Star Trek, and then we have those that are much more easygoing with it. They understand canon, but they don't get bent out of shape.
02:37:03
Dave
But they.
02:37:04
Case
Yeah, it's like the type that they make fun of on SNL vs Like the more accurate sort of representation of it. But like there are those like those extreme like examples of star like Star Trek nerds.
02:37:15
John B
Yes. And I think, but I think all Star Trek fans, they respect the fact of future you if you're doing a Star Trek fan film. And I always felt that we, the costumes needed to be like Bill Tice had them. They look like they were painted on. They were tailored uniforms of a Space Navy. They were, we tried to do that as much as we can. I got some good tips from James Collie on getting that signature V neck.
02:37:43
Dave
Yeah.
02:37:43
Case
So this is a thing I wanted to bring up because what is not necessarily as well known is that you are not just the man behind Starship Farragut as a whole, you are quite literally the person behind the wardrobe of Starship Farragut. And I, I wanted to get into that a little bit.
02:37:58
John B
Sure, sure. So that was not something case I wanted to do. I saw, I went back to the tailor I'd been seeing many years, even when I was back in the Navy and I brought a Star Trek moss maroon uniform pattern. I had the fabric and I was like hey, take my measurements and make this. My tailor looked at me and like no, I do alterations. I don't make garments from scratch and no, I'm not going to do this. So I had to learn how to sew myself. I took classes, I read books, self taught and I was determined to make those uniforms exacting as they were on the show and form fitness and luckily I was able to get some tutelage from James Collie on that signature neck. And, and it was a simple, I'm glad it was a simple costume.
02:38:49
John B
It's basically a raglan sleeve and you can use those sleeves to take it inside out. And something I figured out on my own very early on was that you could put the shirt on backwards and just follow those seams and bring it in. And, and that was kind of like how I got all the uniforms to fit. I invested in high end equipment. I learned early on that a lot of the machines being made were just plastic and they were garbage. And you know, I invested in the higher end machines and they.
02:39:20
Case
Higher end sewing machines, right? Yes, yeah.
02:39:22
John B
And bought other equipment to do the blind stitch so those hems would look just like they did on the show. And so that's how everything started. Yeah. With the costumes.
02:39:34
Case
Yeah. And were moving on to props.
02:39:38
John B
So props. Mike Benor, he and I been for many years. We would get Together over the weekend. And we would do props or models. And he taught me a lot in terms of how to fill seam holes. And he was just a master at making props and making them just like they would on the show. Show. So you couldn't, you know, between him and I, in terms of props and costumes, we pretty much had that covered. So hence comes our sets. And this is something I pulled my dad in to help build some of the sets. And if you remember, when we did the Captaincy, which you were in some of the, I think the corridor scenes, we built a simple corridor, captain's quarters to be able to tell the story, because I knew that we could. Could.
02:40:25
John B
The intent was that we would build sets progressively with each film effort, and with that we would just grow and build upon. Because it didn't make sense to build a whole. You know, it wasn't about the sets. It was about storytelling. And so we cheated. We were able to leverage James Collie's sets for the transporter room and bridge scenes in the Captaincy as well as in the second film. But I got my dad to build the sets, and he transported them out here indian Head, Maryland, to film in Mike Benar's father's garage. And Paul Sieber made sets as well. So the two of them built the sets that we used in our, I think, initial two films.
02:41:10
Case
Now, let's talk a little bit about the transition from shooting up in New York to moving down to Georgia. So what was sort of the process like that? I mean, that's. That's really like making an investment in Farragut Films. And I'm curious about that. Like. Like, the series had been running for a little while, but it was sort of like a volunteer effort with a lot of, like, people, like, contributing. Like, people who owned equipment were, like, loaning the equipment for the use and so forth. Like, I'm sure there's some rentals and stuff like. Like that, but then, like, to actually go ahead and like, acquire your own space. Like, where's that conversation going?
02:41:45
John B
Well, certainly. Let me. Let me address the equipment piece. There was no equipment rentals. I had taken out a loan against my 401 or I took out money out of my 401 10k to purchase all the camera, all the video and audio equipment without any knowledge of how to use it. I had gotten some people who I thought would lend their labor and their artistic talents. We had a guy who kind of punted on that, did not show up. Up. So Paul Sieber and I, we Opened up the box and we started shooting and we hit. And that's how things in terms of the equipment started. As we made more and more films, we got other people involved that brought their own equipment and. And what have you. The Kingsland, Georgia place. So I've been looking for some time in.
02:42:39
John B
In the Montgomery county, the DMV area. And real estate, as you know, is a premium. And I wasn't. And a lot of this was on me, the finance. Right. So I couldn't afford anything based on our requirements or the space that we needed. And luckily for me, Holly, I did. I'd been expressing my frustration and Holly mentioned that one of our best friends, Kim Watson, down in Georgia, actually was a realtor. And they did a lot of work with a construction company. And he had. He had a building that was ideal and that was in St. Mary's and it was a smaller building than what it was. The first place that we had all of our sets, which was perfect. It was just big enough for all that we needed.
02:43:25
John B
And it came to a point after we'd filmed the price of anything that he had sold it. So we had to vacate that building. We were able to get a larger building working in partnership with Vic Manana and Draco Gin, Stephen Dangler. And we got that building that everyone knew and I think they were calling it Neutral Zone Studios. We had sold the sets to.
02:43:50
Case
Vic, can you back up and talk a little bit about the finances here? When you say we like is like there are Farragut Films LLC that's involved here. Like what's.
02:44:02
John B
So we filmed the Crossing, which was our big hour and a half episode and it was going to be our swan song. And Mike and I were done with classic Shrek. This is in 2014, and we had the Farragut Fest and Vic had talked to us about. We were kind of done. And I was already in pre production for Farragut Forward at that point. And that being a swan song, Mike didn't want to like be killed off or. But he wanted his own ship. So we had him at the end, depart the Farragut and take the helm of the Constitution. And that was going to be it. And as you know, and I think you and Paul on the way back were. Paul had ideas about the next episode?
02:44:46
Case
Yeah, he and I got into a really active conversation and like spitball it. And like there. There was this like major like phone call that we made to you. We're all driving back from Georgia and we're like, he and I Are just like so excited. We're just like pitching you ideas.
02:45:00
John B
Yes.
02:45:00
Dave
And the.
02:45:01
John B
And when we sold the sets in 2015, I think it was in February, the. I had it in the contract that we would, after one point a year from the point of sale, we would be able to leverage the studio one time for a week, gratis, and be able to film. What I wanted to do was a documentary on Farragut Films. There was a lot of great things that came about over the years. We had 10. We had 10 years up in that point. We had people that had met and got married, got engaged on our bridge set. A lot of positive things. And as you know, that we had a 10,000 square foot building and all the sets were faithfully built just as they were on the Paramount lot, you know, over 60 years ago. And it was quite an achievement, I thought.
02:45:51
Case
Yeah, it was incredible. Like, the first time I came down to the Georgia sets, I was just floored. Like, for one thing, you can actually, you're. You could actually get lost in those sets. Like, yes, like they were. There was that many like corridors and pathways and so forth. But for another, there were multiple times where I had to like get up in the scaffolding to like adjust lights and so forth. And you just see this huge vista where you can see the whole ship. And it's just amazing.
02:46:16
John B
It was a phenomenal experience working on those sets. So you guys, you and Paul were talking to me about homecoming and. And then I started to think, well, maybe this could be the bridge between Farragut Forward. I mean between Starship Farragut and Farragut forward. 60s TV Trek to 80s movie era Trek. So that was kind of the. The gist. We were able to get Stan Lee to do a cameo. We filmed that and then while were in post production, the fan film guidelines lines dropped. And thankfully that everything worked out the way it did. I think God was kind of looking over us because were protected.
02:46:54
Case
Yeah, we already filmed everything, so we.
02:46:57
John B
And the sets wouldn't have been, you know, when Vic acquired the sets, he. The intent was to be Captain Kirk indefinitely and make as many episodes as he could. The fan film guidelines capped that. It limited that a lot of things. That was in the year of the election. You had the case against another filmmaker for fraud. And I just was kind of done. I think I was just so burnt out. And I literally hated Star Trek. So I tabled the Farragut Forward project and we had costumes in development. We had a few bridge. My dad was I had sent him blueprints to make the helmet navigation console. I had been talking to Johnny, who was my Klingon subject matter expert about could we build a Klingon Bird of Prey in my two car garage and what would that look like?
02:47:55
John B
And it's crazy now because there's no way, I mean that there's no room in my two car garage for the set that we ultimately built. But I was reaching out to him and yeah, so we tabled that for five years.
02:48:08
Case
Yeah, so, so let's talk about that. Like so far Starship Farragut like kind of hits this point where it had its send off. And while we teased at the end like we there, we did like a promo shot with like a bunch of people in uniform. Like it wasn't, it was just, here's the tease of the future. But there was, it could have just kind of gone away. So let's cut to you decide to do the trailer yet again to do the trailer here for Farragut Forward.
02:48:37
John B
Yes. Okay. Okay. So yeah, five years flash forward.
02:48:41
Case
How do you even start that process?
02:48:43
John B
Okay, so I had, and keep in mind I literally hated Star Trek. I gave away costumes and props and I had even threw away stuff, I sold stuff and I, I, I became, I, I kind of focus in terms of fandom. I focused my attention to James Bond. And during that time case I took these classes because I wanted my own suits and I wanted them fully tailored like James Bond. And so I took this British sewing, I forget what it was called bespoke British sewing. And but it was to make a suit jacket, a waistcoat, a dress shirt with some of the features that British shirts have, pants, the trousers and through that process. And this is during COVID too our or just it was before COVID and I had, I learned how to do everything.
02:49:43
John B
And were, when Covid hit, were already the last class which was a suit jacket. They saved the most complex thing for last was the suit jacket. And we'd gotten most of that all done. There was, we had gone through the rope sleeve heads and how to do the hair canvas.
02:50:01
Dave
Hair.
02:50:02
John B
The hair cell or horse hair canvas. And we had most of it done. So I, this is like five years later. It's, it's the summer of 2021. I'm thinking in about, I'm kind of reflecting back. You know, I wish that we had done just the teaser concept for Farragut Forward. And so I thought, you know, I got my costume still left. I have some elements that I could be used. I could use for Mike Bednar. And so I started to think about what. And then so I reached out to both Paul and Johnny on Facebook messenger and I said, hey, guys, you know, and. And Johnny had already done the Killer of Grassy Ridge. And I was blown away that for his first outing, he hit a grand slam.
02:50:51
John B
I mean, I was most impressed and how novel and how smart he was about going out making his first film. He only had like two actors. Two or three actors. And then it was a good premise and the story itself. It's to me, again, I can't. I can't emphasize this enough. It's got to be a good story. And I feel like that is a fail point with many of the Star Trek filmmakers, is that they may have all this great CGI and special effects, but it comes down to the story. And let me circle back on story case. So I reached out to Johnny and Paul and we wrote the three of Us, or I think I shared a draft of the teaser, which became Prologue. Essentially financed. I provided all the sets.
02:51:42
John B
Johnny got the Henry brothers together for the Klingon, and of course, William J. As Korath. And we did. I think it probably cost less than $600 to produce for the sets. And I got my dad to help, Doug Kapret to help, and Ramel to help kind of detail the sets that we. That we used. Before we even launched Prologue, Johnny did some test footage of me in the monster maroon uniforms. And when he put out that picture, it broke the Internet. I mean, people were like, you know, and I knew that based on that reaction, I knew that. I knew, okay, something's here. Because I had always wanted to do movie era. No one had been in that pond doing movie era. And. And for a good reason. It is the most complicated of all the franchises. Those uniforms are just, you know, they're.
02:52:41
John B
It. It is creating suits. You're. You're creating garments, not costumes. These items, the jackets are fully lined. The. The pants. There's nothing that can be purchased off the shelf. Like, for classic Trek, were able to get black pants and modify them. No, everything with the movie era, Trek is all from scratch. And so I knew that Prologue would be well received. It was. We. We launched our. After we launched it, I think it was In January of 2022, February 1st, I think we had our crowdfunder. And then, you know, it took us two years, I think, to get the film done on. And that was because everything was from the scratch we had to build sets even on the bridge. The chairs themselves had to be created from scratch.
02:53:31
John B
And no one, up until that point, to my knowledge, no one ever even faithfully recreated that or a movie era set with the railings and everything that you saw and all the acudograms and graphics and everything. We just, it was a monumental. Like, like Johnny and I have said, this is the, probably the most ambitious Star Trek fan film out there.
02:53:53
Case
Yeah. So let's back, back up for a second. So in terms of getting the level of authenticity both for the original series and that now for the movie era stuff like what is your, where do you look for source material? Are you looking, Are, is there published material that you can reference? Is it a lot of like referencing pictures? Where, where is the process?
02:54:16
John B
You know, thank God for the Internet. I mean Google and you've got, and you network with enough people working in the industry like Doug Drexler, James Collie, Darren Doctorman, there's a lot of subject matter experts out there, but there's also a Trek zone which has a lot of the high res DVD captures and now Blu Ray captures of all the films. So, so yeah, it was pretty much the same process as it was for the classic Trek. I mean I reached out to that network of SMEs and Google and the research. I mean the Internet is just full of good resource material as it relates to the sets. I mean the patterns are the patterns for the uniforms. Those have been out there forever.
02:55:01
John B
The sets they had McMaster's, a guy who drew up some blueprints, but they weren't, they were a good baseline but they had to be accurized. And Mike worked with, that, worked to do that with Matt Busey who was a cinematographer for both Star Trek Continues and for Farragut initially when were down in Georgia.
02:55:23
Case
So then let's talk about the logistics of this all in terms of figuring out. So you shoot the prologue. Was that ultimately in your garage or was that Bednar's garage?
02:55:35
John B
Prologue was in Johnny's.
02:55:37
Case
Johnny's garage.
02:55:39
John B
Johnny's garage. Which was. It's, it's not really the width of a. I mean you can get a car in there but not much else. But it was very small. But Johnny, through his talents was able to extend that in the way that he filmed it. It made it look like it was four times as big. Big.
02:55:58
Case
Yeah. It's really impressive when you know just like how much tight spaces go into like assembling like these sets, like you. It looks like, oh, hey, we have this whole bridge. And it's like, no, that's literally all we had. Like, we. We had the camera, like, squeezed in here.
02:56:11
John B
Right.
02:56:11
Case
So on that note, let's talk about, like, some of the. The craziness in terms of. Of what, ha. What it takes to make a production like this on the budget that we're talking about. I mean, so it's fair to say that a lot of. Even. Even with. With a crowdfunding effort and all this, like, it's still a lot of people, like, extending favors. It's people putting in a lot of time and effort into this all what goes into sort of rallying that. I mean, you're the executive producer on this and you have led a team into producing this testament, the Star Trek fan film, this actual movie set in the movie era of Star Trek. What is your process in terms of building that team and assembling?
02:56:55
John B
Well, initially, building a team consisted of identifying the talents and capabilities of others and then leveraging that. And I initially started out with family and friends and then just kind of grew on that and then networking, meeting other people, getting the word out about our. Our films. And then you. You connect and meet with new people that are somehow involved in the industry and then leveraging them and barter, steel trade. I mean, there's a lot of things that go in then. You know, it's finding that motivation of someone. Why do they care? I mean, a lot of them, the people involved love Star Trek.
02:57:33
Case
That's.
02:57:34
John B
That's part of the, you know, the carrot, if you will. And there's others that are supporting their significant other and they're involved. Like, Ari brings pretty much everyone from his family. He's quite a testament. He's like our Moses. He just brings them in. And, you know, he had his wife Stacy, he had his daughter, his brother, his neighbors. I mean, he's. He's brought a lot of people into our project. And then through the years we've gotten fans who then also wanted to be involved. And a lot of those people. We have people within the DMV that work with us on, locally on the sets and help with some wardrobe. But we have other people that. Our director of wardrobe, Frank Scone, I was finally able to let someone else lead the charge. He lives in Chicago.
02:58:28
John B
Our cinematographer for this one resides in Bentonville, Arkansas. We've got some talent that will be. Dr. Durham will be returning. She's from Georgia. Our line producer, Jonathan James, he's in rural Pennsylvania, as well as Chris Morningstar, our property master. So you've got this Farragut Network, if you will, is extended quite further out. And we have talent, people that want to just be in the film and a guy that lives in Arizona who, and I'm probably going to pronounce his name wrong, but his name's Frank and he lives in Arizona. And he came out and he was part of the Copernicus crew for our first film. And we had Eric Olds who helped us with some of the props. He loaned us the field jacket which he made.
02:59:20
John B
And he made the engineering jumpsuit for Chief Dupree that was also worn by Chris Conkey in our movie and donated that. So he lives out in Southern California and he came out for the shoot. So you got people that are willing to come out on their own dime and be involved in the project.
02:59:39
Case
People, people just like see that you're working on this project and it's so exciting. I mean, like, I remember for ME it was 2007 and you had put out a call for people to come and be part of a Star Trek project in the D.C. Area. And I was like, hell, yeah.
02:59:55
John B
So if I could circle back now. So we've story, it all comes down. Story, story. I collaborated with Paul and Johnny on Farragut Forward. The process involved, I guess me drafting something, kicking it to Paul, he reworked it, then he gave it to Johnny, he reworked it, came back to me and it was kind of like that where were just floating, one handing off from one person, the other. And I, on this go around for Farragut 2024, I mean, we spent a lot of time for Farragut Forward getting a solid story. And it exceeded all my expectations of what I wanted visually and my vision for the first outing. For this one, I knew that we had all this intense drama, Death, revenge. I mean, Farragut Forward was our Moby Dick revenge story inspired by obviously Star Trek the Wrath of Khan.
03:00:57
John B
Prescott was our con, if you will, in the Farragut universe. And, and for something we can't, we need to kind of deflate for the second, for the sequel, we need to kind of take it down several notches. And so this one is a light hearted, time travel, fish out of water story, obviously inspired by Star Trek 4. For that story we had, I was able to bring in my friend Jim Brooks, who also wrote for Star Trek the Next Generation. He wrote the episode the Rightful Heir and he and Dave Moretti, the three of us. And the reason Why I pulled in Dave was I saw him do a theater production of Cabaret. And I was blown away because I've only up until this point seen Dave, you know, with his circular saw and painting sets.
03:01:51
John B
And I'm like, this guy can act, he can sing, and he can dance. I said, he's an actor. I said. And I started to think about, you know, Carter didn't have. He needed a Harry Mudd character. And I thought, God, you know, he could be. And I started to think Artemis, arty reigns, and reigns spelled R E, I G, N S as a nod to Harry Mudd, Mud being, you know, with water and dirt equals mud. And I was thinking rains, the rain and water. And so Artemis already reigns came about and we. I. I wanted to have kind of like the guy that got under Carter's skin but was still a likable guy. He's not really. He's not evil. He. He's just kind of, you know, he's. He's a con man. He's trying to get one on over and get, you know, make.
03:02:45
John B
Make money and. But he's. He's not really an evil person, if you will. So. And he provided. He provided a lot of comedic relief for the Enterprise crew. So I wanted to have someone like that in the Farragut universe. So Dave, Jim Brooks and I, for a period of six months, once a week, for an hour and a half, we worked on just the story. So it was an outline, it was not a script. It was the story treatment in an outline form. And once we felt like that was solid, then Jim Will went forth and started work on the dialogue, and then we. For another two months, or. I'm sorry, it was probably four months for the story treatment and another two months that we worked on the. The dialogue and the script.
03:03:31
John B
So, well, over six months, we've invested and were consistently meeting once a week for an hour and a half, we consistently got together and we've got a very good story that I think people are going to appreciate. Now, to me, it'll be apples and oranges for folks that are wanting to compare. But in terms of the quality of, again, what you visually see, the sets, props, costumes, it'll be just as good. And I think we've got a great director. Josh brings well over six years of Star Trek fan films, and if you haven't checked out of his work, his platform is the Avalon Universe. Very talented guy, but I think when you see this episode, hopefully it'll. It'll make you laugh. It'll be A light hearted adventure that you'll be able to just go with the ride. But again the story is just.
03:04:28
John B
I think a lot of these Star Trek filmmakers, they just can't connect that. And I think that, you know, I didn't know a lot about filmmaking but I knew that story was paramount because I don't like watching something and then at the end of the film feeling like I just wasted an hour and a half or two hours of my life investing in someone's story and then just being disappointed. So I, I think that's another thing for Farragut. We've, we've set the bar up pretty hot, pretty hard from day one. If you look at the captaincy for one of a nail the crossing, conspiracy of innocence that the price of anything. I think that they're all great stories.
03:05:13
Case
Yeah. Last thing before we wrap up. What is the hardest lesson you learned working on Farragut? Forward.
03:05:20
John B
Oh. Oh God. For me personally.
03:05:24
Dave
Yeah.
03:05:25
Case
Yeah.
03:05:26
John B
Probably to calm. Having knee jerk reactions to things. I put so much time, effort, money, there's time away from family. You just invest somewhere. I mean it becomes your life and you can have a love hate relationship because at times you feel you put so much of it in there. And when others aren't delivering or aren't committed, it can be frustrating because you're like, well why aren't they? But they are, they're just. But you know, I have to sometimes temper their responsibilities and their time commitment is never going to be what mine is and the expectation should not be there. So I think for me the hardest lesson and I've got great people and I think obviously I've been able to motivate people to do this thing because we're still doing it 20 years. Yes, yes.
03:06:22
John B
At the end of the day I just hope that people enjoy not only the end product but the experience of making it that they've had a fun time and I think most people have. So just for me personally recognizing that no one is going to have the same level of commitment and the expectation should not be there.
03:06:43
Case
Yeah, well that I think is a good bit of advice to go out on. So John, where can people find you online?
03:06:52
John B
You can go to YouTube, we have a starship Farragut channel and you can find all of our stuff there through the years because were. Keep in mind folks that we've been out there longer than YouTube and through fans of ours, they have put a lot of our, they've taken our DVDs and they've. What do you call them? Rasterize them. And they put them up on their own YouTube channel. So if you type in Starship Farragut, you're going to get a lot of different content from different sources. But our Main Starship Farragut YouTube channel, look for that because you'll find all the official. And things aren't broken up. Initial days of YouTube things, you had a limit and such. Now you don't have that. But just go to starship Farragut on YouTube.
03:07:38
John B
We also have a Facebook page dedicated for both Starship Farragut and Farragut Forward, where we advertise a lot. And please see our Indiegogo crowdfunder. We currently have one up for Farragut.
03:07:52
Case
2024, which will be running when this episode is out, because this one's coming up a little bit faster in the timeline than what most of our episodes do. So this will be out great.
03:08:03
John B
Thank you. And if you can't support it, hopefully you can. But if not, please just spread the word because it's extending that net, it's growing it out further and by people just spreading the word, the wider the net gets. So it all works.
03:08:20
Case
All right, awesome. Well, John, thank you for coming on. Thank you for spending some time staying up late to have this chat.
03:08:28
John B
Thank you, Case. And thank you, everyone.
03:08:31
Case
All right, back to me. And we are back. And that is it for our. Our conversations about Starship Farragan. It was great having John on again. He again, he of course was on a couple of times now. He was on for Star Trek the Motion Picture way back in the three to six episode of Another Pass range. And then more recently he was on for Star Trek 3. Just a really great guy. The vision and the energy to put together Starship Farragut is, is a testament. Like people were saying, only John Broughton could make film era Star Trek. And it, you know, he is a compelling person who somehow gets all these people to work on a project for free because you can't make any money when you're doing fan productions. And he has been this leader for us for two decades now.
03:09:29
Sam
Certainly it is a talent to convince several people to work on something for free. That is a very strong talent, possibly even more so than being able to sew those magnificent costumes. Although honestly, everything looks so good in this film. It's really well done, especially for the budget that it was done at.
03:09:52
Case
I do have a quick sad note to add in the wake of that interview, which is that Stacy Murphy, Ari's wife, who we reference in the interview. Interview. She unfortunately passed away shortly after the premiere of Farragut Forward. So it's very sad. But I. I felt it's an awkward note that we specifically call out the Seaman family and the. They just experienced this tragedy. So my heart goes out to Ari and his family and. And yeah, so just wanted to mention that part. It's very sad.
03:10:26
Dave
But.
03:10:27
Case
But aside from that, I do really think fondly about this production and I highly recommend it. I mean, Sam, would you recommend this movie?
03:10:36
Sam
I do think that everyone should check it out. I watched it. I really enjoyed it. I do like Star Trek, so, I mean, maybe. But I'm just saying if you enjoy Star Trek, you should check it out. Even if you don't, you should check it out.
03:10:51
Case
Yeah, that's the big part there. It's not just that you should check it out, like, because you want to support us. Like, you should check it out if you like Star Trek because it's a Star Trek movie. Like, it's a legitimate, like, movie era Star Trek film. I mean, we are talking about, like, incredible production values for what is being done. And sure, there's limitations. You know, we're. It. It is a fan production, like, but it looks legitimate.
03:11:20
Sam
Yeah.
03:11:20
Case
In a way that, like, I don't think people would expect when you hear that we're talking about a fan production.
03:11:24
Johnny
Production.
03:11:26
Sam
Yeah, for sure. The sets look amazing. They look different from ship to ship. The costumes are incredible. Like, the Klingons look great. Check it out, guys. The lighting's good, the pacing's good, and it's only 55 minutes. Like, you're not really. I mean, in the grand scheme of time, Scream of things, that's a lot of time. So if you have a 55 minutes, you. You can sit there and watch it. I think you'd enjoy it. It's on YouTube. So easy, so accessible.
03:11:57
Case
Yeah, yeah. And again, so Farragut Forward can be found on YouTube. So again, look for Farragut Forward or Starship Farragut. It'll pop up. It'll be the first thing it's. And it's the 55 minute thing, not the prologue that we released about a year before. Oh, and I should note that we shout out the indiegogo for Farragut 2024 in this episode.
03:12:16
John B
And.
03:12:16
Case
And it is unfortunately already closed at the point when this episode is coming out. So unfortunately you are not able to support this current production of Farragut. But there will be more stuff in the Future. So just keep a lookout and keep a lookout for Farragut 2024 when it comes out, you know, Then head over to, let's see, our Discord server where people can find us and interact with us directly. You can find links to that in the show notes or on our website certainpov.com while you are there, you can check out awesome podcasts like I'm going to shout out, gonna shout out Reignite, which is going strong right now.
03:12:54
Case
They've got a lot of activity going on the Reignite chat at the moment because Dragon Age the Veil Guard came out and so people are back in the Dragon Age world at the moment. So that's a really fun show to check out. It's currently they are playing Dragon Age 22 in that one, but they are doing a playthrough of major BioWare games. So they started with Mass Effect and now they are in the Dragon Age series and they are eventually going to be on the current game, but at the moment they are on Dragon Age 2, which is an interesting ride considering that I have not played that series and I do the show art. So I have to get them to explain to me what they are talking about and then I have to figure out how to make artwork for them.
03:13:33
Case
So it's a fun show. Check it out. I enjoy it even though I am not playing the game. So if you have played the game, you can definitely enjoy it. Go there. In the meantime, people can find us on the interwebs. Sam, where can they find you?
03:13:47
Sam
They can find me here when we post podcasts and also occasionally when I remember our Discord exists, you can find me there. I don't think I said anything tonight that anyone should have complained about, but if for any reason you have any questions about Farragut Forward, you should find Case at.
03:14:12
Case
Well, you can find me. I'm going to plug Blue sky as my main one at the moment. Like let's focus on Blue sky at the moment. I'm kind of done with X. It's like I'm not going to nuke my account but like it's. It's just hard for me to like really like spend time there.
03:14:29
Paul
So.
03:14:30
Case
So Blue sky, if you're looking for the social or Instagram is also good. Instagram, you can find me at quetzalcoatl5, whereas blue sky, I'm at Case Aiken, Bsky Social, whatever it is. Bsky Social, I think. So those are those two handles. But otherwise, yeah, you can find me here at another pass and Sam what is up on the docket for Another Pass?
03:14:53
Sam
Well, next time we'll be talking about Highlander 2 the Quickening. But if you enjoyed this. Until then, if you enjoyed this, pass it on.
03:15:04
Dave
Thanks for listening to Certain Point of View's Another Pass podcast. Don't miss an episode, just subscribe and.
03:15:11
Case
Review the show on itunes.
03:15:12
Dave
Just go to certainpov.com Another pass is.
03:15:17
Sam
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Paul
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Johnny
Join us for our minor character spotlights.
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Case
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Sam
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Case
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