German studio Loreley Productions' homemade Star Trek movies started the way many fan projects do, with a simple question: how far can you push this with what you already have?
Around 2020, that meant a small test film, a handful of people, and a lot of improvisation in order to get the first of three Star Trek fan-films off the ground, the latest being Part III: Erstontakt. But even at that stage, the decisions were already leaning toward something more structured than most indie shoots ever get to. “We decided to place our stories in the Kelvin timeline,” explains director of photography and writer Heiko Thies, “because the uniforms and props were much cheaper, but still look pretty screen-accurate.”
