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Fans Attempting to Pay for Enterprise
An anonymous reader writes "What started of as a suggestion to pay for season 5 of Enterprise has actully snowballed into a project that no one has ever attempted before, that of getting fans to pay for the production costs of a tv series. It has brought on board a raft of people including lawyers. I wonder if the quoted $50 to $80 million is reachable." I gotta say that Enterprise has been better this season, but I feel like it's still only mediocre. Battlestar Galactica might be the best SciFi airing right now. And I woulda chipped in for more Firefly in a heartbeat.
Star Trek has been kept running on the popularity of the mythos, of the franchise. It has always been self-sustaining, through its own quality. If a Star Trek show is in such a bad state that it needs to rely on fan charity to survive... it isn't worth keeping.
The coolest voice ever.
The commercial-free distribution costs would be insane. It would be cheaper to mail a set of DVDs to each fan.
The unofficial
After 9/11 when Amazon starting taking donations they only made $6.8 million dollars, and that was a big thing where over 170,000 people donated. They expect Trekkies to pay more just for a show?
In the unlikely situation that the money is raised - an individual, or registered organisation that represents the fund would have to enter into a contract with Paramount. At this point they become an investor in the franchise and its development. What happens if Paramount fail to produce the show? Legal action? What also happens to the advertising and syndication revenue? Are people investing purely to finance a vehicle that will make the franchise owner money - or would they seek to recoup their investment? That's just the beginning. I can't see Paramount taking cash from the fans in this way.
You've got to be kidding. Everyone tells me what I should do with my money. The governement is the worst. They have guns and prisons for me if I don't spend my money in ways they accept.
If they owned the right to it, maybe they would be allowed to ditribute it themselves independantly of the studio
I'm thinking legaly on bittorrent would be really cool
"In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act." - George Orwell
May we assume you are following your own advice? Whenever you are about to buy a luxury good you stop yourself and donate the money to the poor instead?
Seriously, do you accost people queueing at the office box and ask them to give their movie money to tsunami aid? If it is ok to pay $10 for a movie, why can't I donate $10 towards the next startrek without being attacked by do-gooders such as yourself?
Money doesn't work like that.
You remind me of the guy who said the Penny Arcade Christmas fund money should have gone to a more deserving cause. It's just a totally bizarre statement. Go out and raise money for whatever good cause you want; it's got absolutely nothing to do with this. (Money doesn't disappear when it's spent).
In other words, in order to get them to go for this, you'd have to cover the lost advertisement revenue AS WELL AS the production costs. That's probably going to be over $150 million at least.
So it's selfish when I pay $2400 for a Powerbook G4? Or when I spend $900 on a nice flat panel monitor?
If I can't spend any of my money on myself, and on things that I like, WHAT'S THE POINT?
Every good person has their own way of giving back to society and the planet. I volunteer at an animal sanctuary; others donate lots of money to charity, and so on.
But I still feel we should have the right to spend money on ourselves without being called "selfish". Sheesh.
-Z
Beer is not a luxury.
my password really is 'stinkypants'
It seems you are forgetting that fiction has an important role in society. It looks like you think that anything fictitious is not worth any effort whatsoever.
But in fact, science fiction and other forms of speculation DO have an important role to play. If you watch PBS a lot (as do I) you know that they will frequently run documentaries on subjects such as the Apollo lunar program. While the documentaries will focus on the 'how it was done' aspect and interview scientists and researchers and other individuals who worked on those projects, they will also sometimes mention the inspiration for them. And it's important to pay attention to those things.
Take the case of Jules Verne, for instance. Verne was a prodigious science fiction writer who imagined Project Apollo to an amazing degree of accuracy -- his ship looked roughly like Apollo's command and service modules, was roughly the same size, carried a three-person crew, was named Columbia, and was launched from the coast of Florida. This is almost exactly how the Apollo program operated by the time the first actual manned lunar mission was launched in 1968 (Apollo 8; no landing actually occurred until 1969.)
Now, while it is true that many people did not believe such a thing was possible (Robert Goddard was laughed at for believing that a rocket would function in a vacuum, for instance) and Verne's stories were dismissed as fantasy (nuclear-powered submarines!? Are you crazy!?) they came true, in time.
Going back to Project Apollo, you may or may not remember that the first few crews to visit the Moon were quarantined upon their return to make sure that there were no dangerous organisms on them or their clothing or in their spacecraft. The fear of a possible contamination of Earth was raised, in part, by Michael Crichton's novel The Andromeda Strain, as well as by points raised by the scientific community. As a result, quarantines continued until we had enough experience with returning Apollo crews to believe that they were no longer necessary. (Apollo 12's recovery of Surveyor hardware, and the subsequent discovery of terrestrial bacteria surviving on some of that equipment, proved that organisms could survive for long periods of time in space.)
We have also been influenced by other major works of science fiction (War of the Worlds' radio broadcast, for instance, has long been held as an example of how we might react to the idea of hostile alien life, and ET is an example of how we could react to more friendly aliens.)
For something to happen, it has to be imagined first. Sometimes, that takes the form of science fiction stories. Not worth it? Far from it. We'll be forever stuck in the present and never stop to imagine what might come in the future without the ideas that come from those who dare to say "Hey, what if this was possible?"
i am a soviet space shuttle
I was immensely against this series before it aired, and most especially because of the changes to Starbuck, which I felt like was akin to rewriting the bible and making Jesus a woman.
I will however be the first to admit I was completely wrong about BS:G.
So far it has been nothing short of brilliant. What has especially impressed me is the overall tone of it. I think it was Ron Moore who said (paraphrasing) that the original series wasn't true to it's own premise... in the original, within a week or so of Caprica being devastated, they were in bars on other planets with other humans, having a blast, generally not acting like the future of the human species hung in the balance. I never thought of it before, but damn it if he wasn't right! I still love the original series, but I do view it in a different light now. The remake has really gotten this right, in the extreme. There is a truly palpabale sense of dread throughout it, and that is fantastic as far as I'm concerned.
But...
This is NOT the best sci-fi show on the air today. It's third, near as I can tell, behind Stargate SG1 and SG:Atlantis. SG1 has been the best for some years now, ever since Babylon 5 went off the air actually. Atlantis has come on unbelievably strong this first season, and I predict here and now we're going to be hailing it's greatness 10 years down the road when it's still chugging along. And it wouldn't surprise me it SG1 was still producing new episodes then too!
And if B5 is still airing in your market, than IT is the best show on TV today.
None of this takes away from how good BS:G has been though. It has completely proved me wrong. Hell, I'm even getting used to the new Starbuck, I think the actress playing her is doing an excellent job in the role. If they can keep this up, it's going to be a fantastic and long ride!
If a pion (n-) collides with a proton in the woods & noone is there to hear it, does lamdba decay into the source pa
Cost of distribution model.
David Lynch and a few others not withstandaing, it's very unviable to run a production company on a download or subscription model.
Take for instance, thousands and thousands of hours of decent content which is produced regardless if anybody watches it or not. Yes, I'm talking about independant film. Hundreds of films get made around the world every year, some end up at film festivals, some stay highly regional, some make it to Sundance in the USA and other prestigious film fests for indy films.
Very few of these films are torrent-able. A tiny, tiny margin - maybe 1%, probably less. There isn't enough bandwidth or storage space to encode them all, even though the filmmakers are looking at nothing but profit if they participate in the process instead of letting the canisters rot in their attic. Still, it doesn't happen.
Now, cut out the distribution methods in your model. These networks greenlight projects, review them for quality, and decide if they will bankroll them. Take that away, and you have anarchy.
Seriously, what would happen over time is an insane S/N ratio. Hundreds of small production companies would vie for your dollars. Here! Bankroll this, we'll sign Shatner! Seriously, we'll put his fat ass in a rubber suit and make him recite King Lear! Pay here!
A few companies would eventually emerge, just as in the game industry, where the barriers to entry used to be low, and an EA or Microsoft would try and step in as the content "management" provider, and you'd just substitute the bogeyman you hate, with a new and more manevolent one.
It all seems very democratic or populist, but it doesn't play out that way. The market abhors a vacuum.
Lets stop pussy footing around. There are no ownership or copyright issues.
You start with a plot outline, create a shooting schedule, line up some actors, start filming, put the thing out there.
The quality of the visuals will NOT be up to Star Trek vehicles to date but the writing could be much better, the acting could be better.
Even the set could be a digital one to allow 'transportation' at no cost (think of the techniques used for the "Polar Express".)
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