LIEF Productions

Saturday, February 11, 2006

New Voyages, news snips, new trailer

Whitney Matheson in an interview published in her "Pop candy" Blog asked George Takei about his projected appearance on "New Voyages" ...
Isn't that amazing? This is the 40th anniversary of the show, and there's still this vibrant, intense interest in Star Trek. This young man, James Cawley, apparently has access to a lot of money. He negotiated with Paramount and got the right to do his versions of the original Star Trek, on the condition that he not charge for it. And so he's going to make it available to all the fans via the Internet.

That's really taking technology into your hands -- that's something we never dreamed of in 1966. He's been able to bring together a lot of people who deeply love Star Trek, including people that bring various technical, artistic and writing talents with them. We're supposed to commence filming sometime in September in New York.

An article by Mark McGuire titled "Fans at the helm" is about the most in depth I've seen, give some insights into the past history of New Voyages and James Cawley that I'm sure haven't been in print before!

Just a couple of teasers ...
As you might imagine, this story really begins with childhood fandom. Like many kids in the 1970s, Cawley collected action figures and models from what's referred to in "Trek" circles as "TOS (The Original Show)." As an adult, he went to conventions, and started amassing actual artifacts, particularly uniforms. Cawley has one of the costumes worn by the original Captain Kirk, William Shatner; Cawley has heard of similar costumes selling for $150,000.

On the "Trek" convention circuit, he struck up a friendship with William Ware Theiss, the costume designer for TOS. Cawley signed on as a freelance tailor, and for two years in the late '80s did piecework for Theiss on "Star Trek: The Next Generation."

Around 1995, Cawley decided to take his fascination with all things "Trek" to another level, and started building a re-creation of the Enterprise's bridge in his grandfather's Ticonderoga barn.
... and a legend was born!

After the announcement last month of David Gerrold joining the new Voyages team, the pool of production talent contributing to flagship of trek fan films just gets bigger and richer.

On the 17th, the two executive producers, James Cawley and Max Rem, announced the writing team for episode three, "World Enough And Time" will be Marc Scott Zicree and Michael Reaves. Marc, who will also be directing the episode, gave us some background information on how they had come to make to make the pitch to Cawley and, more importantly, some hints as to the storyline! Rather than give spoilers here, checkout the feature on the NV website or keep tabs on Michael Reave's blog.

On the 22nd, James announced that he had heard from from Ron B. Moore...
StarTrek’s visual effects supervisor for more than 18 years. After speaking with New Voyages VFX Guru, Max Rem, Ron contacted James to tell him how much he enjoyed New Voyages. While complimenting the cast and crew on what they’d accomplished, Ron said, “I would love to be a part of it.”

"Who am I to say 'No' to Ronald B. Moore!" exclaimed James.

Not to be confused with Ron D. Moore (writer, producer, director), Ron B. Moore is perhaps best known for his visual effects supervision of Star Trek’s: The Next Generation, Deep Space 9, Voyager, Enterprise and the feature film, Generations. His film credits include: Ghostbusters, 2010, Frightnight, Solarbabies and Moonstruck.
When asked on the NV forum as to the "division of labour" between Ron and Max Rem - the pseudonym of their visual effects supervisor for "New Voyages" - Mr. Cawley said, "Max calls the shots when it comes to the VFX. Ron is a Great guy, He contacted his friend Max, and then they contacted me."

On Feb 27 they released their trailer for the latest episode, "To Serve all my Days", on their website. Or should we call it a teaser? The snips of action that we saw just seem to make it that much harder to wait until "Summer, 2006" for it's release! To keep our attention they have just released the first of the planned vignettes, "Center Seat". Both of these are available for free from their Downloads page.

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