The world feels that the art of cinema and television is uniquely American. That is because the Americans have done so much to expand this art form. Southern California's Los Angeles area is one of the oldest TV and film production centers. Its massive entertainment industry is a large employer, not only directly demand actors and production technicians, but 'The Biz' supplies employment in the other related trades like laborers, bookkeepers and secretarial staffs, and with the supplementary connected service jobs like caterers, dry cleaners, photocopying & script delivery services, car washes and so on. Even local scifi fans have got into the unpaid video production ranks. And there are MANY good innovative scifi fans in Southern California that are making many distinctive unique scifi fan videos and TV shows. They often produce their own fan projects for a large scifi fandom audience living in Los Angeles. There is an excellent active fan video series being produced in the Los Angeles area. This video's producer, Tony Genovese has named his fan series, 'The Redshirt Filmette Series'. This all started with episode called, "Life Insurance". This first show of the projected video series has been exhibited successfully and it has received good public attention since its premiere in 2001.

LINK: http://www.geocities.com/agenovese1/RedShirtvideo1.html

Most Star Trek fans and non-trekker citizens know about the many dark humor and tragic circumstances concerning the 'RedShirt'. These people are often a cursed member of the Star Trek starship crew. A person 'who is doomed to fail on a task from the start' has been adopted into our day-to-day English language. The filmette series project explores several possible scenarios dealing with the RedShirt officer's dilemma. Mr. Genovese explained this script idea was about the many comedy paradoxical story possibilities connected with RedShirt myth. Started in the early '80's, Mr. Genovese saw many wonderful parody fan videos with his own personal interest in scifi fan videos. He has had this RedShirt story idea for many years.

Tony Genovese's scifi fandom interests LINK: <http://www.geocities.com/movieactorsag_2000/scifi.html

Since the early '80's, Mr. Genovese has collected some 60+ hours of fan videos from multiple creative producers nationwide. These friendly fan video producers gave their open permission and directives to Mr. Genovese to take every opportunity to publicly display their videos. This RedShirt video producer has a great working relationship with all these fellow scifi producers. Mr. Genovese expects these fan producers would enjoy this recent RedShirt video idea. The 'Life Insurance' video deals with the humorous complications that one Star Trek security crewman has when the crewman is working on a standard TOS landing party. This RedShirt video suggests a possible comedy scenario. Mr. Genovese didn't want to give the plot away here because he asks that the public enjoy seeing it for themselves. The video was shot in '99 and it debuted in late '00. This video has been shown in many local video festivals and contests with public success. The video won The Valley Warner video festival's 'funniest short' competition and the LA Park's Recreation Halloween Festival's contest in the parody category, 'best of show'. This video has been seen at Star Trek's large Shore Leave Convention and has been released through European scifi clubs and through other scifi local outlets. The RedShirt video producer has a small volunteer production unit called, Genovese Cine Productions. The unit was created to produce local videos, TV shows and public events. His production pals are all volunteers. Mr. Genovese has been very active while working either in film, TV, cable, theater or in scifi fandom for over two decades. The Genovese production crew is a great bunch and are talented folks. Cine Production group has been in existence since making Mr. Genovese's first Doctor Who fan video, 16 years ago. That video featured the actor, John 'Sgt Benton' Levene [John Anthony Blake) and is called, 'UNIT Recruitment'. Mr. Genovese said, 'working with a professional like John Levene was great, but that is another story...'

In recent years, the production of the RedShirt Filmette project was more extensive and organized than past projects. This RedShirt Filmette project's location was very easy to find with some amount of research. A suitable planetary location was found locally in the S F Valley. Star Trek locations are a hobby of Mr. Genovese. He has a complete list of them and he has been to several TOS, TNG filming spots. RedShirt Filmette project's shooting location was picked because of its local rocky planetary location 'look' that matched the famous Vasquez Rocks often used in TOS shows. An interesting small trivia fact about this Trek video is that the RedShirt Filmette's rocky location was another part of the same large TOS geologic outcropping. Its area was quiet and a park-like area. It was well suited for the video shoot. The shoot went well. The location shoot went smoothly although; there were some sound problems with low aircraft flyovers on the weekends. Despite purposely scheduling the shooting days during a cooler time of the year, it was very hot. This caused some small Vulcan makeup & Starfleet costume troubles but was managed. To complete the location questions, the RedShirt simple in-door shots were done at a friend's apartment in Burbank and a home in Torrance. All these scenes were shot in '99 & 2000. This producer explains that most of the production time was spent for the volunteers to be scheduled for shooting during their free weekends. The production of the RedShirt Filmette project was varied as well. Any production problems were manageable with some advanced planning. The producer explained his all volunteer cast & crew were from a local scifi clubs and were from his many friendly experiences in various scifi fandom groups. Some participants had extensive non-pro related production experience in many areas. The whole shoot only took some 6 hours in one day to accomplish and the shoot had no interference. Video editing commenced immediately with a video premiere party with available cast and crew. The episodes videotape copies were given out as keepsakes to major participants. Mr. Genovese wrote, directed, edited and produced this show. The RedShirt screenplay script was written about a year ahead ('98) of the production's shooting schedule. Mr. Genovese, a professional Film/TV actor did not appear in his own video, but he did some off-camera narration. The producer wanted other new actors to get a chance to perform in this Filmette series. This video had a great cast of talented cast members. This video maker believed that at the time of the RedShirt episode's production, he was very busy by working on the feature films; City of Angels and Bowfinger and on the TV show, Sliders.

His partial professional resume LINK: <http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0312964/ ;

Mr. Genovese explains, "Fans must realize that there has been a great and healthy fan videos history that has been around for many decades, well before the Internet was accessible by fans to download digital fan videos. I am exploring the possibility in putting some videos on the Internet. BUT, hundreds of great projects exhist in the videotape medium and can be screened at local scifi gatherings. Look for them at your local scifi meetings or ask to get fan videos screened there by contacting me to share my scifi fan video archive. Also, if you are planning a video project, I have a lot of good production experience that I wish to share with others. I feel my experience would be a great asset. I wish to share my knowledge.

Email me for more at: movieactorsag_2000 AT yahoo DOT com.

I consider myself a connoisseur of the fan video genre because of my 15 years exploring this subject with my contacts, participation, collection and study of fan videos. Yes, I have seen hundreds of VHS and Internet downloaded projects. I have two more RedShirt Filmette series episodes in pre-production. Both scripts are already written and open casting with script breakdown are in good progress."

I love video making myself. I saw this video and rated it a B+. Star Trek fans and video watchers should look forward to seeing more about these RedShirt Filmette videos. Good luck to you, Mr. Genovese in the future and keep us posted about your fan video progress. Thank you!