Fan Trek Productions
From Fan Film Wiki
| Production Group | |
| Fan trek Productions | |
| |
| Number Of Productions | 1 |
| Production Names | Dark Armada |
| Latest Production | Dark Armada |
| Location | Netherlands Belgium |
| Active | March 2005 - ... |
| Website | http://www.darkarmada.nl |
Fan Trek Productions is the production group behind the Star Trek fan series Dark Armada.
Contents |
How It Began
The idea of creating an own fan film is something many 'trekkies' dream of, but not that many get the chance to do it. One of these dreamers was Robin Hiert. With his game clan, United Empires, he started out a basic storyline over here. Normal people stop at this stage. He didn't and contacted multiple other game clans, such as StarTrek-Gamers and UFDF. They liked the idea and supported him with ideas and gaining people. On Mar 24, 2005, 8:02pm, a forums was started. Very soon, a site was hosted for free by starbase86.com. Unfortunately, the game clans didn't spend that much time to the project. So Robin thought he needed more active people out of the Star Trek world, preferably out of the Netherlands.
This was the moment he contacted the Dutch fan clubs The Flying Dutch and The Federation and the Belgian Fan Club Belgian Voyages Club. The clubs didn't take him that seriously at that moment, though some people that were interested went to his forums and signed in, because that can't hurt. A list of names you might be familiar with:
- Anneloes Kip, Mar 26, 2005, 8:07pm (Left Dark Armada)
- Jonathan Oppeel, Apr 18, 2005, 9:50pm (Actor of the character Du Pain)
- George Bosveld, May 7, 2005, 8:52pm (Made the intromovie, left Dark Armada after participating more than one year.)
- Martin van Buuren, May 14, 2005, 1:12pm (Actor of the character P'Daal, Organisation, PR, editing, sfx, etc)
- Benno Sassen, May 30, 2005, 1:15pm (Actor of the character Smith, Music)
- Dennis Suijkerbuijk, Jun 4, 2005, 9:32pm (Prop master, left Dark Aramada after participating over two years)
- Robin van Steenbergen, Jun 10, 2005, 7:52pm (Actor of the character Richman)
- Kasper Nijhoff, Jun 20, 2005, 2:55pm (Writer)
- Iris Janse, Jun 24, 2005, 1:28pm (Actress of the character Katina, helps also with the Make-up.)
- Gwen Demulder, Jul 9, 2005, 5:13pm (Modeller, Currently not active anymore)
Note: Not all staff member have been mentioned
More people joined in time, and some left. At Aug 25, 2005, 1:18pm, Jeroen Steenhagen joined the organisation and became webmaster of our current site, [[1]]. Some banners and short introduction movies were created. Soon we realised we had no experience at all, so we decided to make a short episode of a few minutes first, in which we could learn a lot. Around this time, the TFD offered us to join them at the Screen Heroes 2005 convention in Utrecht (Netherlands), where we got a stand next to star trek actors like Robert Picardo, Marina Sirtis, Dwight Schultz and Richard Herd (to mention some of them). You can guess how the crew felt, as being just a starting fan film project. Later that year Dark Armada got a presence at the Utopia VI , where we talked with Denise Crosby, also known from Star Trek.
Going To The First Episode
As mentioned above, we decided to begin with a short movie to gain experience. A script was written by Robin Hiert, so a storyboard could be made from it. Four other people began working at a storyboard. In the mean time, George and Gwen were modelling the starships that would be used. Karl-Heinz van Hardeveld of The Federation helped us, where we could shoot this episode at Januari the 7th, 2006. Fortunally, other helpfull people like Gert Kracht, Arjan Ordelman, Jacco Borg and Igor Smits were able to bring pcs, camera, light and costumes with them, and all crew was there on time. So we began shooting with the following rule:
- We don't reshoot anything. Everything must be recorded in only one day!
We did it, but don't ask how. The post-production took a long time. All 3D must be shot, and all people had to be pasted in the environment. And that was a job. The sound didn't went that well, so we had to do an audio recording day to record all voices. As always, not everybody could be there. Well... no problem. Hiert did the lines for Jona and Benno too, and after processing it with some computer programs, it didn't sound like him at all... (not!) At this moment, we've got their lines properly spoken by them. We can use it for a next episode. Finally, music of Justin Durban was added to the episode, and had its premiere at September 12th, 2006 at a TFD convention in Amersfoort (Netherlands).
And The Second...
After These Are The Voyages..., Fan Trek Productions wanted to do a pilot. This time in the future. A script has been written by Robin Hiert, and currently, the crew has made storyboards for this pilot episode called Nightfall. For this episode, Marco Groen has made our own combadges and ranking pips. This episode will also have its own costumes. Probably, the final result will be downloadable somewhere in 2008. Or that was the plan. Since there were a lot of location shoots, we realized in the spring of 2008 that we couldn't make it. We decided to shorten the script and postpone the deadline for a year. Meanwhile, we deceided to create a few short episodes so that we could release stuff from time to time.
The End of our Worst Nightmare
After a small three years, in November 2008 we started with the recordings of the first of the just mentioned three shorts, called Worst Nightmare. With this progress we showed the world that we are still working on productions and are improving in time. The total running time is almost a quarter, and the general public's opinion was quite positive. (Source: Just search the web for 'Worst Nightmare'.) Since one of our contraints for the episode was to have something on the shelfs as soon as we could, we kept the number of actors to a minimum. The main two actors were Hiert and his girlfriend Iris Janse, two people who are almost round the clock available for the shootings. This episode also featured Frank Maurits, who we came to know via the Flying Dutch. The two extra's, Robert Suijdam and Matthijs de Boer live nearby the recording location and we're also widely available. Also the post production department existed out of a lot of new faces. The editing was completely done by Ronald Janse, who did most of the effects as well. For this episode we also got a new animator, Ryan Carhart. At the moment of writing we're working on the other two episodes of the triology called Choices Part I and II. These two shorts will feature a wider scala of actors. We expect the recordings to wrap somewhere in this summer. The postproduction at is split in two parallel teams, one who concentrates on Nightfall and one who concentrates on Choices. The Choices team also produced the episode of Worst Nightmare.
The Parallels Story
Parallels is another fan series in The Netherlands with Gert Kracht as its project leader. Because many people were in both projects, Hiert and Kracht merged the projects under one name, called Fan Trek Productions. A few months later, the organisation of both projects had a different opinion about how to make the two projects. In all opinions, the best way was to split again and keep it the old way. The crew of Dark Armada kept the name Fan Trek Productions. Both crews are still good friends. Later it seemed that nobody found time to work on the Parallels project. Kracht decided to cancel the Parallels project formally in 2007.
