If you’re thinking of going out and renting a big giant building to build Star Trek sets on, don’t do it.
For starters, you can’t make money on replicating Star Trek sets unless your name of course is James Cawley, he can, and you can’t thanks to James snagging the rights to running official set tours.
The costs of a studio are massive, for example if Neutral Zone Studios gets no donations, they’ll need 71.42 days of shoots every year just to cover its yearly bill of almost $50,000 and considering most fan films are 15 minutes and under, it is hard to gauge just how many fan films are needed to hit the mark as it can be anywhere from 72 to 35 or 24 fan films per year if all shoot for three days, two days or one day but it is definitely a mixed bag.
Their latest report states ‘This year we are asking attendees for a donation of $20 per adult. It is not mandatory, but greatly appreciated.‘ this is from their latest newsletter regarding the Fan Appreciation Weekend.
Neutral Zone Studios recently received just over $19,000 in donations for their ‘Help Neutral Zone Beat the Heat…‘ fundraiser so you can see just how expensive it is to keep up with events like heat, covid and facility upgrades and repairs.
Ares Studios stated in January 2023 that they had about $4000 of expenses per month to pay so they must be in the neighbourhood of $48,000 a year, fans pay about half of that amount through Patreon.
Ares Studios is mostly idle, so they aren’t getting the fan films in like NZS does though Ares Studios reportedly has a couple of fan films being readied to be filmed there that will eat into that idleness.
Potemkin Pictures hoped to raise $2000 for 2023, that is about a twelfth of the total of one of the other two studios, Potemkin of course is smaller than the other two, but they have a transporter room, a bridge, briefing room and sick bay etc. plus lots of places outdoors so they can make a fan film just as good as the other locations just less room to step.
Paramount Global doesn’t seem to have guidelines on how much a studio can rake in through donations, back in the day it used to be a case of fundraising for whatever a you needed to make a fan film and making the fan film itself now you can fundraise for stuff to be done at a studio and fan films, makes the waters a bit murky.
You can’t go out and make merchandise for your studio with a big image of the NCC-1701 on shirts or sell Blu-ray discs of your fan films though Axanar has said they’ll do the latter despite it being prohibited so it is really hard to make an income stream to try offset expenses.
If you want to make your Star Trek adventures, do so at home or if you feel up to it, travel to one of the studios and make your fan film there because setting up a studio for yourself is just a money pit exercise and the pot of gold days of fan films when fans eagerly covered any and all expenses for a production are pretty much over and owners are now expected to pay a sizable portion of costs.
Mentioning Trekkie Mentions 
Potemkin Pictures has the advantage of filming in a 2100 sqft basement that has been turned into Studio 4 (bridge, sickbay, briefing room, transporter room, Klingon Bridge, shuttlecoupe). The $2000 raised in our annual fundraisers helped defray the costs of new uniforms (many of the cast bought their own), lumber for construction, makeup, lights, etc. Most of our sets were reconstructed from those of previous studios. We actually have no plans for a fundraiser in 2024 as we have all the sets that we can fit into our current space and plenty of props and costumes on hand.
Studio 3 in Pelham AL was in a 1000 sqft boathouse (bridge, transporter and lounge) and about 500 sqft of a basement (sickbay, officers quarters).
Studio 2 in Leesburg GA was a 2000 sqft warehouse with a bridge, Transporter Room, brig, engine room, corridor, office, dressing room, bathroom. Rent was $200-$250 a month, and the cost was defrayed by Stellar Video Services, my company, we did videography (e.g. commercials, depositions, etc.).
Studio 1 in Albany GA was a 500 sqft carport, and had a bridge and turbolift.
Honestly, as someone who ran a printshop for 20 years, I try to make sure that all our decisions regarding Potemkin Pictures are financially sound. If they’re not, then we wouldn’t have been able to do this since 2010 when we started.
We are quite happy making our low budget fanfilms. We’re not the big guys. We’re the other guys who are doing this for fun on a shoestring budget, a wing and a prayer.
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The Potemkin Pictures model is the best model for the current Fan Film climate.
The big fan studios were raking in the big cash primarily because aside from the three movies there was no regular Star Trek for some 12 years and fan films filled that gap.
Now we got plenty of Star Trek on TV, the need for a Star Trek fix is now less dependent on fan films.
The fan film guidelines brought the fun back into fan films, egos are now smaller in size, there’s no race for celebrities, everybody now has a shot to go out there and make something.
The big locations cannot last forever in this current climate, we recently saw NZS having to replace sections of their sets because of Mold that didn’t look pleasant, they can’t operate in the heat, they only got just over 50% of what they needed in their last fundraiser, there’s just no big reason to pour money into those studios year after year, crisis after crisis.
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Hi, It’s cool. We have also similarly sized “studio”. Around 220m2/2350sqfm with the quite reasonable rent (unused floor of the kindergarten) with the annual payments around 5000USD which we are capable to pay together with our friend as “an expensive hobby” for fun and additionally to invest to some cameras/lenses/lights which is my hobby anyway.
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I rather pay $5000 a year than pay $40,000 or so a year.
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