December 31 2021
We’re hours away from wrapping up yet another year as the wait for Axanar goes on but it may be the last full year of waiting as Axanar is expected to be released somewhere in the middle of 2022.
2021 saw the legal battle between Alec and Paul last the entire year, what was expected to be a swift victory for Alec has turned out to be a long slog in the mud and it could go on for a long while until either the courts decide or somebody folds.
It turns out that most of the critique thrown Paul Jenkins way was because of a green screen shoot that was done in March 2020, the Bridge scenes were not rubbished heavily by Alec Peters or Mark Edward Lewis in the latter part of 2021.
Let’s get through this year and hopefully not miss anything
Axanar announced in February 2021 that an Audio Drama of Axanar was in the works, at the time it was said that “We have already recorded about 50% of this amazing audio drama and hope to have it out by summer” but this obviously did not happen for a variety of reasons.
Axanar released an Axanar update video in March but that video is no longer available to watch.
April 2021 saw the release of Interlude and depending on where you watch it, it is either an Axanar Fan Film or Axanar Continuity, it has had two further adjustments since its premiere with the third version the best.
Axanar released a new update in May and mentions there will be two days on the bridge, shoots in Atlanta and LA but it appears plans have changed since then to be two one day shoots in Atlanta and a shoot over in L.A and nothing regarding the bridge.
Paul Jenkins hasn’t said a whole lot about Axanar since he was no longer part of the production but he dropped by Trekzone in August to talk about things for almost an hour.
Shawn O’Halloran appeared on Trekzone in late August to talk about the time Shawn’s kid now known as Duckman appeared at the Las Vegas convention in front of the Axanar booth, Duckman is now part of AxaMonitor lore with certain members happy to whip up an image of a Duck when talking about Alec.
August saw Reece Watkins appear on Trekzone for an almost hour long show, such a move was considered unusual but in reality nobody really thought to ask “the other side” for their thoughts, it has always been opinions staying on friendly turf.
After the two groups called each other cowards for Shawn and Alec not meeting face to face in Vegas during September, Shawn O’Halloran met Alec Peters face to face at DragonCon in Atlanta, the end result was Alec knocked Shawn’s phone out of his hand, he stopped a video recording, security and police were involved, both had to leave the convention, Alec got a Protection Order from Shawn and Alec was charged with Assault.
Axanar gave their version of events and a later blog crowed that Shawn was found guilty of “Stalking Alec Peters” yet Shawn was never charged with such a crime or went to court to face accusations of such a crime, the headline is misleading.
What happened in Atlanta was going to happen someday, you had two groups of people taunting each other with the coward tag and somebody was going to break the cycle and it was going to end badly, which it did.
Dean Newbury appeared on Trekzone in late September to talk about his experiences on the Axanar set before the lawsuit and what he faced after his exit from the production, it was always strange to see somebody talking after seeing their thoughts in writing for so long.
Carlos Pedraza appeared on Trekzone in September to talk about all the aftermath of what went on in Atlanta, Carlos has been pretty quiet over the last year but he does make appearances time to time.
Studio Tech Scouting was carried out for Axanar in late September as production moved from Ares Studios to a High School that has a nice looking facilities for what they do in school, November 2020 was also locked in for filming.
October saw Axanar Confidential #95 talking about the events that had unfolded (the reason why it is not a video above is because playback has been disabled) this video has Alec and Dale talking about what happened in Atlanta and the court action and the outcome of that court action.
Robert Meyer Burnett appeared on Trekzone on October 20 to talk about his Axanar experiences, this show went for thirty-seven minutes.
Axanar released a Production Log video on October 13, this was a brief video that lasted shorter than 90 seconds.
Lighting and Green screen evaluation was carried out at the previously mentioned school and it was found the green screen needed changing as the walls were determined to be “a little too inconsistent in color“.
After originally agreeing to appear on Trekzone, Alec Peters declined to appear citing a variety of reasons mostly to do with what guests said and he said “nobody watches you” among other thoughts including “most of your videos can’t get 500 views” which is not nice as 175 of Matt’s videos have 500 or more views and a lot of people don’t get that many or make that many.
November saw cameras roll on Axanar for the first time since March 2020, the directorship was split into two, the filming was a couple of characters against the backdrop of green screen and fans weren’t called upon to pay for the shoot.
Axanar’s report is labelled “Axanar Shoot a HUGE success!” though some may remember that the October 2019 shoot had the exact same label minus huge being in capital letters (take -2 off the web address and you get the 2019 report).
Axanar released The Gathering Storm – Featurette Teaser in November this year, this is a re-release as there is the exact same video on the channel that was released
Axanar celebrated the 100th episode of Axanar Confidential in November and this episode featured many guests from the Axanar world.
December saw Interlude being released for the third time, this third time benefited greatly from hindsight and the lack of pressure making it superior to the previous releases though version 2 was just a minor change of version 1.
Joshua Irwin appeared on Trekzone in December, the show lasted more than an hour and Joshua was not psychologically damaged from the ordeal proving it is safe to appear on Trekzone if you’re an “Axanar Supporter”.
One interesting part was the comments section as Alec made a comment on a comment and said “Paul committed copyright fraud, for which we have indisputable proof.” if it was indisputable the court case would of ended so long ago instead of going through 2021.
We finally found out in December what happened to the $30,000+ that was raised in 2020 for Shoots 3 & 4 of Axanar that did not take place under Paul Jenkins.
This is going to be a little complicated as figures were also given for Shoot 1.
$32,210 was raised in Q1 of 2020, about half is said to have gone to pay for Shoot 1 which was said to go budget by 30% and parts went into the December 2019 and March 2020 shoots and expenses for future shoots, the March 2020 shoot was successfully fundraised on Axanar’s private fundraising page in early 2020.
However the Shoots 3 and 4 fundraiser went on into November 2020 which is Q4 not Q1 and it went past when Paul Jenkins left Axanar by a couple of months and there is no mention of the money going to other shoots, that’s the danger of private fundraising.
It was interesting that FFF said in October 2019 that “Alec Peters put $50K of his own money into making this past weekend’s 3-day shoot happen.“ when talking about the October 2019 shoot and Alec said in December 2021 “we raised $50,209 for our Oct. 2019 shoot.“
The October 2019 fundraiser was simply reimbursement because the fan money was not in Axanar Productions hands until afterwards so Alec had to pay until the fundraiser caught up.
If you take a look at this story on FFF you will see $70,000 was the asking price of the Shoot 1 fundraiser, I am sure that $20,000 was later assigned to Ares Studios and that lopped the price tag down to $50,000.
FFF on May 17 2020 said “Axanar had already raised about $55,000 in the previous two private fundraising campaigns: $50,000 for the first major shoots in October and December, and another $5,000 for the smaller shoot in March.” however Alec said that Shoot 1 went 30% over budget.
Finally, how is life at AxaMonitor’s FB group and The Real Truth About Axanar? Well life is pretty much same old, same old, each side appears to think the other side is nuts and they use all the same long worded psychological conditions to describe the others.
Things still go over the top and people just really need to take a few minutes to think through everything, sometimes a message that has a point gets lost in all the comedy attempts and trying to come up with the nastiest description of a person.
So here is where we are now, maybe 2022 will be the year Axanar comes out or it will be another year of delays and differing opinions, who knows.
Until next time, be good to each other.
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