As we boldly step into the year 2007, I cannot help but think how far I have come with Lilredhead Productions.  Starting off with the first episode of Mr. Binkee’s Class and achieving what I have with Enterprise: Flashed and I Am Ahoyager is pretty mind boggling to me.  And if I can come this far, I know I can go even further!  But it’s always fun to step back and see where I’ve actually been and how I’ve gotten to this point today.  Over the next few days I will be doing a feature on the past of Lilredhead Productions and where it’s going to lead us in 2007.  So hold on, grab some popcorn, it’s time to take a trip into the past!

Previous A Look Back Articles:

• 2002- Baby’s First Steps
• 2003- Reaching for the Stars
• 2004- What the Hell is a Binkee?

2005- Getting From There to Here…

2005 was without a doubt the most important and prosperous year for Lilredhead Productions.  It didn’t start off that way though.  The beginning of the year was very slow.  I started off with a potential trilogy to the Bubba Has a Gun series.  First up was Episode 8- The Birds and the Gross.  This episode is as stupid as it is gross (hence the title).  Basically Bubba and his wife decide to have a little fun and Joe, Bubba’s step son, stumbles in on them.  This shocking scene sends Joe on the run while Bubba tries to hide Joe’s disappearance from Crystal (Bubba’s wife).  I then followed the episode up with a much longer sequel entitled “The Birds and the Gross Part 2″.  This episode furthered the storyline of Joe’s adventure and Bubba’s deceit.  It also featured Bill Clinton’s final appearance in my cartoons.  Because after this episode, there were no more.  Part 3 of this trilogy never made it out and Bubba Has a Gun came to an end in early 2005.

If you can’t tell by now, I have a very short attention span.  I easily get swayed from one project to the other.  I just get bored too easily.  I knew it was time to try something else.  It was early February and the rumors of Star Trek: Enterprise’s cancellation were becoming wide spread.  Being a Star Trek fan myself, I started to take notice.  I was actually surprised that it even returned for a fourth season after the first three sucky ones.  But anyway, as I continued to read about all of this, the wheels in my head started to turn.  A Voyager parody didn’t turn out too well, but what about an Enterprise parody?  And then it happened, in late February, Star Trek: Enterprise was canceled.  For the first time since 1987, fans were going to be without Star Trek the season after.  That’s when I knew it was time to take advantage of this situation.

This certain Enterprise parody entered production in early March.  Since I was making this series in Flash, the title “Enterprise: Flashed” seemed appropriate.  After all, it was Star Trek: Enterprise, only made in Flash.  The first episode, entitled “Canceled” was pretty short.  I didn’t know how fans would react to this series.  With Ahoyager’s failure still fresh in my mind, I was expecting it to fail right off the bat.  I did some of the voices while I had some friends and family contribute their vocal talents for more variety.  This was actually a first since in the past I did every voice in my cartoons.  But I wanted this to be good.  I wanted the Star Trek fans to like it.  On March 17th, 2005, Enterprise: Flashed- Episode 1: Canceled was released.  Along with the episode I launched enterpriseflashed.com.  The target audience was saveenterprise.com, and so I went onto their message board and posted a link to the episode.  Within a matter of days the episode had gotten hundreds of hits.  People at saveenterprise.com and trekunited.com were in love with it.  I hadn’t even made plans to do a follow-up episode since I thought it would fail.  But I got to work on it right away.  While the 2nd episode went into production I saw another potential audience for my series: startrek.com.  I mean, it’s the official Star Trek site, so there’s gotta be a lot of people over there who’ll like Enterprise: Flashed, right?  Wrong.

In late March, while Canceled Part 2 was wrapping up production, I decided to go ahead and post on startrek.com.  I did the same thing as before, just introduced the series and posted the link.  I got a lot of hits from doing this, but at the same time I got a whole bunch of negative comments.  And not because they disliked my series, but because I advertised Saveenterprise.com in the credits.  This series was meant to be positive, and so I thought drawing more people to a site devoted to saving the series was a good idea.  The majority of startrek.com did not.  You see, there was a war going on between startrek.com and saveenterprise.com.  Yes, a freaking war.  So imagine a bunch of nerds with skin problems slapping each other in the face back and forth.  That was pretty much the gist of it.  So, after Episode 2 released,  I cut off ties with startrek.com.  It was obvious that wasn’t the right audience to hit.  So for the record, once again, Moonves VS Brazeal’s reference to startrek.com was nothing more than a personal retaliation.  It was propaganda plain and simple.  So there .  But I’m getting ahead of myself.  I’ll get to Moonves VS Brazeal a little later.

Episode 2- Canceled Part 2 was even more popular than the first.  People seemed to love the humor and storyline this episode presented.  It was a great feeling to know people were enjoying this series so much.  Part 2 was supposed to mark the end of the story arc.  But since the script was so big I had to split it into two episodes.  And so everyone was expecting Part 3 to be the next episode.  However, things don’t always go according to plan.  Between the production of Episode 3, I was contacted by a staff member from trekunited.com.  He wanted me to make a cartoon starring everyone’s favorite CBS CEO, Leslie Moonves.  Moonves was the one who ordered to pull the plug on Star Trek: Enterprise and so I was asked to make a cartoon poking fun at him.  This cartoon was to be presented at a huge trekunited.com live chat with Tim Brazeal (founder of Trek United).  I got together online with another trekunited.com staff member and got to work writing the script.  Now, this was a bit stressful.  I had like four days to animate it.  I was finishing the final scenes minutes before the chat was about to start.  I took this very seriously and worked my ass off to get this thing done.  It was rushed, but I got it done.  And after Tim Brazeal delivered the news that their fund raiser failed to bring back Enterprise, the cartoon was released to bring smiles to peoples’ faces.  Even though it was short and cheesy, it did its job and people liked it.

Production of Episode 3 continued on.  This episode took me a lot longer than the first two to complete.  I announced a May 17th release date.  Well, this was a bad idea since the episode wasn’t even done.  I worked night and day, neglected sleep, and missed the deadline I had set myself.  On the morning of the 18th, Canceled Part 3 was released.  This episode closed the Canceled story arc, left some questions for people to ponder, and was the best episode in the trilogy for many.  I was very proud when this episode was finally released.  However, at around this time, Enterprise closed with its final episode and the members at trekunited.com were starting to give up and leave.  It was time to switch gears.

Since The Leslie Moonves Incident was popular, I thought of doing a sequel about it for quite some time.  The first idea that popped into my mind was to do a fight between Leslie Moonves and Tim Brazeal.  This original idea was to be short, about the length of the first movie and pretty simple.  However, as I started thinking about it, I realized I could do a lot more with it.  I got in contact with Tim Brazeal and he liked the idea.  And so, with his support and vocals on board, I started writing the script.  The script went through about three re-writes before being finalized.  What I had here was a huge story, filled with Star Wars parodies, classic TV shows, and a bunch of retards from startrek.com.  During the course of writing the script, I included “the Trek United army” into the story.  I thought this was a good way to bring in some of the members of this site.  And so I allowed people to send me pictures and get their likeness put into the movie.  I got over 50 photos, so it was pretty successful.  Production of this cartoon started in late May and on August 25th, it was released.  Tim Brazeal coordinated with me and launched a redesign of the Trek United site along with the movie.  This made the release of the movie feel even more significant.  Moonves VS Brazeal turned out to be my biggest and most successful cartoon to date.  By successful I mean the animation was good (for the time), the storyline was compelling, and the target audience loved it.  As I mentioned earlier, I featured startrek.com in this movie as the people helping Moonves.  It seemed to fit really well and Ben Harmer’s Beavis and Butthead impression put it over the top.  It pissed the majority of the startrek.com members off pretty good.  Not to mention, the more they talked about it, the more hits the episode got.  However, to be fair, you cannot help but see how I made fun of Trek United too.  The soldiers of the Trek United army see Tim Brazeal as a god and that’s how it really is over at that website.  Believe it or not, the use of startrek.com as the enemy wasn’t the most controversial part of the cartoon.  In fact, the word “fuck” was.  Yes, in the movie, one of the characters says “fuck” (and it’s a joke that not many people caught).  I got slammed left and right for using this word.  Well, since I believe in freedom of speech, I usually just say whatever the fuck I want (tee hee).

After Moonves VS Brazeal, I was a bit lost.  I didn’t really know where to take the Enterprise: Flashed series.  I had a few ideas in mind, but just didn’t know what to do first.  Finally, in the fall of 2005 I decided to do a parody of the series finale of Enterprise entitled “These are the Voyages?”.   The idea was to take the series finale and completely twist it.  The episode starred a fat, aging Commander Riker as he dealt with a personal issue.  Along the way he consults Counselor Troi, goes through a holodeck simulation of the NX-01, and has a sex talk with Captain Picard.  The episode was released on December 13th, 2005 and was very well received.  Another website, trekbbs.com, picked up on it and mentioned it on their front page.  From their the episode spread like wild fire from site to site.  And when message board members start making avatar images about your series, you know you have a hit.

2005 went out on a very high note with “These are the Voyages?”.  The introduction of Enterprise: Flashed put Lilredhead Productions on the map, and continues to fuel the hits this site craves every day.  Up next is our final stop, 2006.  Stay tuned!

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