Zack Silver: Trekkies research assignment

This semester I am taking a Youth Cultures class, where our final “research project” requires us to research a certain subculture and do a presentation on it. After having a list of around 30 subcultures, I choose Trekkies, the hardcore fans of the Star Trek series. One of the reasons being I was a HUGE fan of the last film that came out last year, as it instantly became one of my favorite films. I also have seen numerous of the older movies and TV shows, as I used to watch them with my dad. I was a moderate fan of this series, but wanted to dive deeper into how other people feel about it.

I choose to composite a video documentary of my findings. I composited multiple clips from the various shows, movies, and spoofs, as well as some from local Star Trek conventions. Then I interviewed multiple subjects. My grandparents were huge fans of the series from the start, and loved the new film. At my movie theater at home in Baltimore, one of my managers named John was a huge fan of the new movie, as he is a die-hard fan of the director J. J. Abrams and his previous work. I also interviewed and recorded one of my good friends, who never liked the series and didn’t bother to see the new movie. We sat down and watched the new film, and I got his reactions before and after: he liked it.

I am in the process now of editing all of this together. So far it has been going pretty well, but I am having some trouble trying to give it focus. I choose to use a narration to give the film a voice, as it was hard to tie some of the segments together. Overall I feel by putting the clips of the shows and movies, and the reactions I received in the interviews, I am able to capture the essence of this series, and what drove the fans to call themselves Trekkies. I hope to have this done and up on the web soon, and will put the link to it here.