8 posts tagged “blog entries”
Happy Star Trek Day! Today in history Star Trek The Original Series first aired 41 years ago at 8:30PM EST! It was only fitting this special day would be the day that we release the cast list for Star Trek: The Continuing Mission.
Star Trek: The Continuing Mission has launched an updated version of the website at www.continuingmission.com today and along with it the most major news release yet.
NOW AVAILABLE! The cast names with biographies and who they are playing, more information about the pilot, an hour long podcast with an appearance by a cast member are all on the site!
The episode artwork is also available for download on our official website.
Yesterday, Andy and I released a short discussion podcast that covered various aspects of plot development and pre-production which is also available in our downloads section!
Keep checking the official website and don’t forget to sign up to our forum at www.continuingmission.com/forum
As I promised you, the new crew, here’s your chance to continue the voyages the late Star Trek mastermind, Michael Piller began. This is your chance to read one of the pivotal chapters in the unpublished, unsettled and unreleased Michael Piller book chronicling the writing of Star Trek Insurrection. Assimilate it while you can! While you are here, don’t forget to check out my Star Trek compendium with loads of interviews, commentaries and more!
AS PER PARAMOUNT’S REQUEST ON THE 13TH JUNE 2007, I HAVE REMOVED MICHAEL PILLER’S UNPUBLISHED BOOK FROM WWW.SEBRT.COM - SEB’S RAW TAKES
Welcome to Volume II of Seb’s Raw Takes @ SebRT.com Compendium of the best and most memorable posts! Join me as I will take you on a little trip down memory lane for some of the posts and pieces of writing that most stick out in my memory.
I started blogging in December 2005 and I never thought that just 6 months later my site would have been host to an offensive against Skype Spam or that I would interview people like Guy Kewney, the right “Guy” from the BBC 24 mistake!
This compendium is broken into sections so that it is easier to navigate and I have tried to keep the number of posts (as there have been 220 posts here at SebRT) linked to a minimum.
Interviews with member of the Technology and Media Sector
Guy Kewney of NewsWireless and BBC 24 Mixup
Roberto Bentivegna and Up and Coming Film Director
PC Plus Magazine’s Features Editor, Richard Cobbett
Political and News Related Posts
An Event of the Highest International Urgency - Regarding the Chinese Satellite Situation
Listen up Terrorists CNN has some tips for you! - Views on an over informative media
Personal Favourites
My Music Video – Rock and Roll Heaven - Produced in August 2006
Tribute to Mr. Fred Rogers, An American Icon - My feelings and comments
Miscellaneous and or Humorous
My Cardinal Rules for Producing a Music Video
Writer from CNET James Kim Goes Missing and I have Questions
Opening a Can of Whoop-ass on Spam!
There are many more posts here on SebRT.com that I have not listed here including most of my Star Trek posts which can be reached here. This is my 15th month blogging and the further back I go reading my content I see my writing style and structure diminish greatly. Please bear with me as I have improved in this short space of time. If you need to contact me about any of these posts or have any questions please email me.
Welcome to Volume 1 of my Star Trek Compendium: Join me, Sebastian Prooth of Seb’s Raw Takes on a guided tour of my latest Star Trek blog entries and exclusive DVD commentaries you can download here for free! Please check below the main body of this post for my personal, recommended Star Trek links. If you haven’t already guessed from the content here, I am a Star Trek fan but I am more interested in learning from the production so that I can apply it as a writer / producer one of these days.
Make sure you bookmark Seb’s Raw Takes because there will be more interviews with Star Trek actors and production personnel very soon! Look forward to seeing Robert Picardo, the Emergency Medical Holographic Doctor from Star Trek Voyager interviewed here within the next month!
Interviews with the Star Trek Family
Dennis Madalone - Stunt Coordinator on Star Trek TNG, DS9 and Voyager
Dan Curry - Visual Effects Supervisor/Producer Star Trek TNG, DS9, Voyager and Enterprise
Rick Sternbach - Senior Illustrator on Star Trek TNG, DS9, and Voyager
Ronald B. Moore - Visual Effects Supervisor Star Trek TNG, Voyager, Generations and Enterprise
Andre Bormanis - Science Consultant Star Trek TNG and DS9, Co-Producer on Enterprise, Star Trek Writer, Author
Coming very soon. The interview is complete and is in the formatting stage! This is one of the best interviews yet from SebRT.com
EXCLUSIVE DVD Commentaries
Those of you who are new-comers to Seb’s Raw Takes might not know that I have produced 4 exclusive, full length, DVD commentaries for the Star Trek Movies following the TNG cast. The links to the posts with the downloadable commentaries are below.
Star Trek VIII – First Contact
Other Star Trek Writings and Links
Star Trek Only Chooses The Best! - My Thoughts about Star Trek XI
My Profile on the Star Trek Wiki – Memory-Alpha
Interviewed by Rico of the Treks in Sci Fi Podcast Show #112 - Download Mp3
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the interviewees for generously sharing their time with us, the Star Trek Community. I would also like to acknowledge Artie Wayne for the concept of these compendium blog posts. If there are any questions, please don’t hesitate to email me.
Recently I had the pleasure of speaking to Ronald B. Moore, who was the Visual Effects Coordinator on Star Trek The Next Generation and Visual Effects Supervisor on Voyager and Enterprise. Throughout his entire career he has worked on films such as last years Miami Vice to the 1984 hit Ghostbusters! Ron has won 5 Emmys and been nominated for 9. Most recently Ron has lent his talent to the widely acclaimed “Star Trek New Voyages.” I spoke to him for a couple of hours for the interview, during which we talked extensively about motion control photography used in episodes like Endgame and Lifeline of Voyager. Ron is a fan of the show and truly an all around awesome guy to talk to and I was privileged to speak to him amongst his busy schedule.
Ron! Non one could be more welcome at SebRT.com, I had admired your work on Star Trek for years. Thank you for joining me for this short interview.
Are you working on the next Star Trek feature Star Trek XI?
It would be very unlikely. It’s all new people now. I’m glad to see JJ (Abrams) coming in and the names they have coming in. Like Matt Damon as Captain Kirk… They have huge shoes to fill. The charisma, the chemistry, of the original series will be hard to match.
Are you a fan of the show?
Oh yeah. Very much so! I never was able to get into Deep Space (Nine). I didn’t work on DS9. At the end of TNG I left to do Generations and then came back to do Voyager and then moved to Enterprise.
Do you get recognized in public ever?
Not really. I do have many friends and fans that I have met over the years at conventions and on the Trek cruises. It is always fun to run into them around the world. The cruises have taken me to many places and allowed me to meet many people in many countries. I consider this one of the best perks of all that I have received by working on Star Trek.
What effect that your produced stands in your memory?
There’s a show that was TNG, Identity Crisis. I know the director didn’t like it, but I loved it. I liked the concept of the show. We got on and it was a Friday, a complicated day, we were on stage 16 there was black light and dirt and dust. I remember sitting there and waiting for a shot that was really complicated. It was about 12:30AM and we started setting up the shot and it was just totally wrong. I wondered what I was going to do! I started moving things around - everything was crucial for the shadows and I got it set up. LeVar (Burton) came up to me and told me that he saw why we had to make the change.
How has the work you do evolved with the advancement of computers and technology?
It grew every season! Nothing is the same from TNG to where we ended up. When we started we were on 1 inch tape and Enterprise was shooting on digital!
What kind of work have you done for Star Trek New Voyages?
My work on New Voyages has been mostly consulting with the directors and some of the crew putting the latest episode together. I think it is a really great episode. Mark Zicree shot it in HD and the story is really good. I consider George Takei a friend and it is always good to work with him though sadly we didn’t spend much time together during this project. George has been on many of the Trek cruises I have been on. The latest episode of New Voyages in nearing completion. I believe they are having a screening in Florida at the end of March. There will be some work that needs to be done after but you should be able to see it before long.
Do you watch the show when it is on TV and say – ah, now that was a hard one to do!
It is fun to watch episodes I have worked on. Some make you think that you could have done better and others make you proud. I find it hard to watch some of the early episodes as we improved so much over the years. And yes, now and again I will see a shot that was hard and still wonder how we pulled it off in the time we had. Trek was a really great show to work on.
Did you ever work closely with Michael Piller?
I can’t say I worked closely with Michael but did work with him on the Trek shows. I have a lot of respect for what he added to the show and the work he did after. He was a highlight to the years I did work with him on Trek. He is missed.
What are you working on at the moment?
I spend some time last year working on Smallville and Miami Vice and a few other projects working with a company in Santa Monica. At the end of the year and the first of this year I have been involved with Rush Hour 3 doing some visual effects editing and producing. It has kept me busy but I am also involved in looking for another project to get into.
Do you have any exciting future plans?
Nothing at the moment. I have enjoyed doing the Cruise Trek conventions over the years and they have one this year to Australia and I hope to manage to pull that off. I did a The Cult TV convention in England last year and play guitar with the Enterprise Blues Band and we put out our second CD last year. It is a great bunch of guys mostly actors that have played parts in Trek over the years.
Ron asked me to add the following statement to the end of the interview:
One final word. It is important to understand how many people it takes to pull of the shots in any TV show or Movie. I have been blessed to work with some of the most talented people in the field of visual effects. On Trek I have worked with Dan Curry, Rob Legato, Gary Hutzel, Paul Hill and so many many more really super people it is something to remember. I hope to work with them all again. I have worked on many TV shows and features and of all of them, Star Trek was a highlight. I owe my being here to real stars like Richard Edlund, Jo Westheimer, Gene Roddenberry and the people associated with them. In this business it is many times the people you work with that make it all happen.
And with that I would like to thank Ron for spending two hours with me. It was truly a pleasure to “meet” you. Talking to you was as inspiring as I thought it would be!
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If you would like to find out more information about Ronald B. Moore check Star Trek.com or click here for his Memory-Alpha Page. Please send any questions to questions@sebrt.com - Thank you and come back in a week or so as I will have an interview with Andre Bormanis!
I had the pleasure of speaking with a member of the support team at Control Scan today after I had no luck contacting a company that displays the Control Scan badges on their website. In their own words ControlScan:
Provides third party verification and services to identify, measure and prioritize security, privacy, quality, accessibility and compliance risks that exist on corporate web properties.
If I was in need of this service I can assure you the first place I would go to is ControlScan. Their outstanding level of customer service even to someone calling who is not looking to become a customer is fantastic for a dot com company. There is no doubt in my mind why they hold business accounts with such large companies as quotes on their website.
I contacted ControlScan after having no luck contacting a company with whom I have recently done business. The company is part of the Yahoo Stores and is called DieCastBlast. Through a relative in Nevada I bought a gift from them for my father’s Christmas present a beautiful Aston Martin DBS, the one from the latest James Bond film.
It was never shipped but according to UPS who had shipping information for the item, it was billed to them on the 12th of December. After countless attempts at getting in contact with DieCastBlast by phone and email we resorted to contacting ControlScan, as they had badges that claimed DieCastBlast had passed their requirements.
Because of the special circumstances of this situation the representative at ControlScan was extremely helpful in getting me the contact phone number for the human behind the scenes at DieCastBlast. Once my Uncle and I had obtained the phone number we called them and were given a series of excuses that ultimately added up to the item not being dispatched and claims that we had been informed of this already and a credit had been issued back to the credit card that purchased the model car.
Without the help of ControlScan, we would be no closer to getting this problem dealt with, we would not have been able to reach a voice at DieCastBlast as all previous voice mails had gone unanswered and emails not returned. I have given ControlScan a complete account of this event and their representative promised that the information would be kept on their permanent file.
I still don’t have the Aston Martin DBS is 1/18 scale for my Dad to open on Christmas Day. That’s the only thing left to get this Christmas!
Just a few minutes ago, as everyone watching will know, Leona Lewis was named the winner of X-Factor 2006! Wow! Her performance throughout this competition was in my opinion medicore but she won me over this evening with her performance of “A Moment Like This!” She just absolutley brought the house down!
Leona is speechless on stage in the enormous hoopla aftermath of the announcment. It was amazing to see that Leona’s first single was made, LIVE on TV! I was really pleased not only to see a CD being made which I have never seen before, but to see what is expected to be the number 1 Christmas single this years, 1st copy being made was very exciting!
Not forgetting Raymond Quinn who is the runner up and an incredible gentleman about it as well! Ray was extremly gracious and I expect that he won’t be forgotten when the producers of X Factor get to thinking about producing their next albums! Like Simon Cowell said, he has the “likeability factor on his side.”
So in the coming days and weeks we are going to be seeing Leona everywhere, expect to see, hear and feel her all around. Watch out for all the interviews on radio, TV and I would imagine even podcasts! If John Peel were alive, I am sure he would be all over an interview with her in the morning. I for one am nothing but excited for her and won’t miss her next appearance. Go Leona!
If you don’t know who Leona is check out the video above and wait a few hours for the video of the smash winning performance to hit YouTube!
SebRT.com extends a very special welcome to RICHARD COBBETT. Richard is Features Editor of PC Plus Magazine here in the UK and a technology expert. It was Richard’s original idea that I contribute to PC Plus magazine for the January 2007 issue!
Welcome Richard. Tell me a little about yourself, how did you come to be Features Editor of one of the leading technology magazines in UK?
Hmmm… punishment for sins committed in a previous life? (Laughs) No, much the usual way. I joined Future a few years back at Editorial Assistant level – that’s the publishing term for ‘guy who makes the tea’ – and worked up through Staff Writer and Senior Staff Writer to be a section editor. In practice though, titles aren’t all that important. It’s the writing side I love, rather than the increased administration/management angle as you go up the ranks.
Ironically, despite my title, features are one of the parts of the magazine I have the least to do with. Most of my admin time is spent on our tutorial section, Hands On, our leisure section After Hours, and sneakily spending much of my time… ah… ‘heavily researching’ the latest cool stuff.
Which is always fun, especially when you get paid for it.
What is your favourite kind of technology article to write?
It’s not so much a kind of article, more the ones that let personality shine rather than chips and circuits. I’m not a hardware guy; I don’t care even a little how many gigaflops or petathingies a graphics card can handle – I want to see the passion that makes that kind of thing more important to someone than, say, their fridge’s cooling rating or the tension rating of the elastic strap in their underwear.
There’s something of a bizarre belief around the computing industry that computers have to be treated as serious and sacrosanct, which I don’t really buy into. Good humour, actual personality, the feeling that you’re sitting right with the writer as they rant, that’s the kind of thing that everyone can enjoy – provided it’s done well, of course. Without that kind of added inspiration, an article’s as inert and useless as an unplugged graphics card. Or the plugged in GeForce Go in my old laptop.
Yeah. Still bitter…
You’re also a blogger – How long have you been blogging, were you part of the first “wave?”
It depends what you mean by ‘first wave’. I was putting up regularly updated content about eight years ago, albeit via manually editing HTML pages rather than using a blogging engine. My current site – the unoriginally, yet vaguely erotically named www.richardcobbett.co.uk - has been up for around… hmm… must be four years or so now, although it started off with a different name. Although it doesn’t look like that immediately. There’s a big Journalism Archive full of articles, but the main Journal section is what I refer to as ‘Culled’ on a pretty regular basis.
Why delete stuff?
Eh, time moves on. Stuff gets outdated, parodies I wrote at 2AM last year don’t seem as funny in the cold light of next year, it keeps the database size down… there’s plenty of reasons, but the only one I need is ‘because that’s how I do it’. I don’t buy the idea that blogs are a perpetual, endless, monster that has to keep being filled up on pain of death. If I get bored, I take a break. If I get really bored, I’ll do something else.
I’m unlikely to luck into the cure for cancer while poking fun at whatever show I was just watching or complaining about a tough deadline, so I think the world will probably survive. The main reason I got into it was to get to write things that people don’t pay me for, like the parodies or more whimsical gaming posts.
Still, archivists can be happy that any articles I still like during a Culling get promoted into the main Journalism Archive. Sorry to anyone who wanted to look up the days I had the flu in 2004. The fact that it was March is officially lost to the mists of time….
If you could have one piece of technical hardware while stranded on a desert island that you don’t want to aid your escape, what would it be?
Tragically, my word processor. I’m very much a writing geek, so writing stories and things would keep me more occupied than, say, a gaming system or a big screen TV. I have the worst handwriting in the entire world, so a box of paper and pen just wouldn’t cut it.
If not that, maybe a box of assorted computer equipment, all with next-day on-site warranties. Just to see the repairman’s face after his transatlantic crossing.
How long have you been writing for magazines and other print media?
Hmm, must be about six years now, although I did the occasional odd and sod before doing it full time.
I see that you are somewhat of the resident Podcasting expert at Future, where do you see podcasting in a year?
Probably in much the same place. It’s still going to be primarily a geek-driven thing, with increased community complaints about its over-commercialisation. And everyone will still be arguing about the name, which won’t have changed.
However, the number of people listening to podcasts should be far greater, as more people get into it via things like the iTunes Music Store, companies like the BBC make their content available in that form, and the word starts spreading to less technically minded users who never have to hear ‘XML’ or ‘RSS’, or worst of all, ‘Thanks for downloading my podcast. Up first, a five minute lecture on podcasting!’ Ngggh.
PC Plus should
add a regular section about RSS driven media like Podcasting and
Blogging, if it is created, would you recommend me to author it? 
Uh… not really our thing, not as a regular, anyway. For web generated content, the web’s better suited to keep track of the latest news. The worlds of web and print present an interesting challenge… although one that really needs words like ‘microcosm’ and ‘macrocosm’ to go into. Suffice to say, in this case, trying to match the speed of the web in a monthly publication wouldn’t work that well, especially with the (small, but you’d be surprised how important) difference between clicking a link in a browser and having to fire up a computer after reading a magazine.
What is Richard Cobbett working on at the moment and what’s next?
Well, with my plans for a perpetual motion machine coming to something of an abrupt halt, right now I’m focusing on the hellish deadlines that always come around the Christmas issue. Taking a week off’s always good, but people still want their magazine at the end of the month. I’m also writing more and more fictional stuff at the moment; it’s considered something of a cliché for journalists to be interested in writing proper books and things, but really it’s more of a truism. I’ve also been doing a bit of stuff on writing in computer games – speaking at a recent BAFTA event about the importance of story and narrative, with something similar on the cards for next year. There’s more on that over at my site.
As for what’s next, heck, I’ll give most things a try if they sound fun – I enjoy creative writing in just about any form, fiction, scripting, comic writing, whatever, and I’m always up for leads or potential projects. No? Incoming tumbleweed on the horizon? Then I guess I’ll just fall back on my tea making skills. My tea is delicious.
Well thank you for joining me Richard, it has been a pleasure to have you here on SebRT.com. You are welcome to come back at any time!
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If you would like to find out more about RICHARD COBBETT go his personal blog. Pick up the latest issue of PC Plus to read Richard’s latest articles. If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to email me with any questions.
