Star Trek Triton Updates

[Andymator]

Hey everybody! It's been quite a while since I've done any updates on my Star Trek project, so I figured I should let anybody who's interested know about some of the stuff that's been going on lately. I will update this thread periodically with progress and fun stuff to look at.

Some of you who frequent this forum might remember it, "Star Trek: Triton", which started out as an animated film idea and for reasons I probably shouldn't get into has morphed into something else entirely; A live-action film project based in Ottawa Canada.

Here's the basic rundown from our current bible draft:

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In 1994, Star Trek was at an all-time high in it's now over 45 year history. The immensely popular Next Generation series finished on a high note with incredible ratings and a barrage of awards recognition, then continued on to release a successful major motion picture. Its spin-off series, Deep Space Nine, had been retooled for a third season and began exploring exciting new creative directions. On top of all that, a new series, Voyager, had begun production and was set to launch at the end of the year.

Triton is, in some ways, a period piece. Our intent is to celebrate and pay homage to that time when the Star Trek franchise was at its peak, while pushing the boundaries with what can be done in low-budget hobby film-making.

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The idea is that everybody and their dog are doing amazing Original Series films, and my team and I want to do the same for The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine and Voyager.

We're planning our first shoot for September, which will just be a simple short scene with two actors and one set. Since all of my experience is in directing animation the hope is that this will give us a good idea of what kind of production challenges we'll face before we tackle a larger piece.

I'll be posting some updates soon so stay tuned!

 

[Barbreader]

Thanks! I was about to write to you for an update, and I have revised your listing at Star Trek Reviewed to fit this entirely new goal. See (P) in http://startrekreviewed.blogspot.com/2009/06/210.html

 

[Andymator]

Thanks Barb! Here's one of the first updates;

When I first started thinking about doing a live action film rather than an animated one, I had to figure out how we were going to accomplish one of the biggest hurdles; the sets.

I loved the idea of having physical sets, but as I tried to start the planning stages it became pretty clear that at this point it would be just too expensive and logistically complicated to construct and store them. I wasn't fond of the idea of greenscreening digital sets, but after a few tests I've warmed up to it.

The challenge then was actually figuring out how to build the digital sets in cg so that they looked real. When we began pre-production on the short scene we're doing as a test run, I dug out my ready room design and got to work! This is the first set that's been constructed so far, with two others in various stages of progress.

It's not quite finalized yet, as we're going with a different design for the captains desktop terminal. We're in the process of building a physical prop of the unused design from Deep Space Nine rather than the Voyager one, and once that is done I'll conform the cg prop to it so we can switch out as needed.

You'll notice there's no chair in there either, and that's because it too will be a live action prop. Our plan is try and make anything the actors interact with a physical set piece, so that it will look that much more tactile and real.

The only things left to do after we finish those is a mock doorway rig, desk placeholder, and a digital corridor for outside the doors.

 

[Kelso]

Sweet!

 

[Danlav05]

Very good!

So this si set in the Enterprise-D era? That will be good as a lot of people these days tend to go post-Nemesis

 

[Andymator]

Thanks Danlav.

Yup, this is set around the end of TNG, and that was the whole reason we wanted to go for that look. There's a whole lot of TOS inspired fan-films, and what few modern trek projects there are seem to mostly focus on a post Star Trek Nemesis type setting.

 

[Captain Randy Hall]

You're right that many fan films are set in Classic Trek or after Nemesis, so I'm glad to see someone do something in the Next Gen/DS9/Voyager era. That's pretty fertile territory, and I'm interested to see what you folks come up with!

 

[Today]

Those sets look great!

 

[Solarbaby]

You're right that many fan films are set in Classic Trek or after Nemesis, so I'm glad to see someone do something in the Next Gen/DS9/Voyager era. That's pretty fertile territory, and I'm interested to see what you folks come up with!

My new series is set in this time as well. I agree theres a lot of TOS fan films- which look great with their sets. But I havent seen a single fan film with actual TNG era entire sets (just lots of unrealistic blue screen)- with the exception of Star Wreck- but that's a crossover spoof.


Nice work you have done so far. I was looking forward to an animation- but live action is cool too

 

[scifib5st]

This looks very good! Great job.

 

[Picard Alpha]

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[DEWLine]

Either way, this is going to be a bit of a challenge. But I wonder how many people might be willing to volunteer time and supplies for this anyway. We may be in for a pleasant surprise in answer to that one.

(And also wondering if there's sufficient space in any of the industrial parks around Ottawa.)

 

[DEWLine]

One of the blogs I currently co-administer is the "ottawa_sf" community blog at Livejournal. Would you mind if I set up a link to the Triton blog there, to draw additional attention to this project? You might get a few extra qualified pairs of hands for set-building.

 

[Andymator]

It's about time for another update! Things have been quiet over the last month or so while we prep a whole bunch of stuff for filming our first scene. I'll do a post about some of our casting soon, but until then here's something to take a look at;



One of the things we really wanted to do was use physical filming miniatures for our FX shots instead of going fully CGI. Not that there's anything wrong with great CGI mind you!



Like everything else on this project we kind of had to figure out how we were going to tackle it, and whether or not it would actually work. My partner and producer Jason Marshall handled the build on this preliminary test model. And it turned out great! The next step is doing a more refined one to do some test footage with.

 

[JMar]

What? I have to build more???

 

[Andymator]

Mwahaha it will NEVER END.

 

[Kelso]

Cool!

 

[Andymator]

As promised; here's a post on our casting! This process was so fun! Probably because Jason did most of the work with organizing meetings and casting calls and all that stuff, I just showed up and chose from an embarrassment of riches, heheheh. The Ottawa indie film scene is really awesome and there were so many actors who are great passionate people I got to meet. It was really inspiring. I'm so excited to get to work with these great folks and make something cool.

Dan DeMarbre as Captain Barret



When we knew we were going to do a live action film one of the things I was worried about was finding our captain. I thought that the reality of doing this kind of no-budget genre film making is that it would be easier to find a younger actor that has the ability, physicality, desire AND availability rather than an older one. My answer to that was to develop the Young Captain concept, a guy on his first command with a lot to prove and a lot to learn. He's not yet a James Kirk or Jean-Luc Picard, but he's on his way to becoming one.



It's such a hard role to cast because the character is so important to the Star Trek format, and Dan just feels like Captain Barret to me, a likable, unassuming, and hard working guy.

Kidist Tadesse as Lt. Commander Devon



While Commander Devon is initially a foil for the Captain, she's not necessarily the antagonist. They're both dedicated to doing what's right as they see it from their point of view. They're both protagonists, just coming from different perspectives.



I saw Kidist in another film early in Triton's development, and she just stuck in my head. A great actress that has the ability to really pull off this character.

There are two more lead characters I'll get to in another post, but they're not in the initial test scene we're going to film. That scene will just be Barret and Devon, and we're just waiting on costuming now... so it'll be shot very soon!! I can't wait!

 

[Andymator]

Hi everyone!

Our costuming hurdles are almost over with! So far that's been the hardest part... There's some crazy cool stuff that we're going to show in the new year, and we'll finally get to start filming! A couple of things I wanted to throw out to anybody who's interested:

1) I would like to bring a CGI artist onto the team. We're doing a lot of physical miniature work for our effects, but there's still a lot of stuff that has to be done in CG too. I use Softimage XSI, so it would be really great if somebody also used the same software, but it's not a requirement. It's hard to find anyody else who uses XSI online heheheh.

2) We're looking to find somebody who might already have a screen-quality cardassian costume / prosthetics to appear in the film. Hopefully that would be quicker / cheaper / easier than having to create one from scratch. You don't have to be local. Does anybody know someone who might be interested in doing this?

3) We've got a facebook page over here:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Star-Trek-Triton/239684042801883?ref=ts&fref=ts

Give us a like and come hang out! Feel free to leave any comments, questions, or ideas or whatever.

 

[DEWLine]

MInd if I pass this along to the larger Ottawa SF fan community's online forums?