by Joseph on August 23, 2010
Instead of relaxing yesterday I got caught up in another great Twitter hashtag, #thingsstartrektaughtme (Things Star Trek taught me). Here’s my contributions:
- Touch typing on LCARS interfaces is a vital job skill in the future.
- You canna change the laws of physics.
- Don’t let anyone named Decker command a starship.
- Temperature is a vital point to consider when serving Revenge.
- Of all the many possible occupations available in the universe, McCoy was a doctor. Not anything else.
- There are always possibilities.
- Most aliens we will meet in the future look exactly like us, save for aspects of their ears and foreheads.
- Never let @williamshatner direct a Star Trek movie.
- Vulcans never bluff.
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by Joseph on August 22, 2010
Working in Australia has some benefits, one of them being that there are different release dates than other countries… Like the United States, for example. In the US the coffee-table book Star Trek 365 from Abrams Publishing won’t come out until September 1st, but it’s been on sale here for almost a month. So, being the obsessive Star Trek fan I am, I had to pick it up.
So, how is it? Well, I’ve never owned any of the other 365 books, so the format is new to me, but I like it. It basically takes you through a “year” of Star Trek, with each day covering another aspect of the Original Series (yes, I put that in title case… Deservedly so).
The structure is great as a chronological conceit… even though it covers the three years of the first series and things that also happened many years later. The writing by Paula M. Block and Terry J. Erdmann does an admirable job of providing details that even the die-hard Star Trek fan might not know. And the photos… Oh, my, the photos.
The layout is copy and content (sometimes with small photos) on the left hand page, and full page photos or images/collages on the right hand page. Some of the images they have found are just fantastic, and it is truly impressive to page through (see images below).
So is it worth it? Absolutely. I dare say even a casual fan would appreciate this unique hardcover volume. And for $20 on Amazon, it’s a bargain.
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by Joseph on August 10, 2010
As I sit in the airport about to head back to Sydney for work, I wanted to put together some quick thoughts I had on the Star Trek convention I just attended in Las Vegas. It was my second Vegas Trek con, and while I only attended two of the four days I had a great time. Here’s some of my quick rambling recollections:
Recollection 1: John de Lancie, who played Q, made the best point I have ever heard an actor make about Trek fans (even better than Shatner’s “get a life”). Paraphrasing: “it’s like you threw this great dinner party 20 years ago, and people don’t ask you about the party… They ask you about buying the groceries. They ask you… What were you thinking when you picked up the potato… And then put it back… When it wasn’t the right potato.” Remember folks, these people are actors… They live in the moment and then they do…. Surprisingly… More acting, sometimes not even on Star Trek!
After de Lancie made this very subtle yet very obvious point, half of the audience questions were still in the vein of “tell us about what you were thinking when…” Sigh.
Recollection 2: They really really really need to prescreen interview questions, or have a moderator ask them for most of the panel. Fans just are not good interviewers. Heck, I’m a trained journalist and I sometimes ask embarrassing questions when I’m confronted with people I respect and admire…
Recollection 3: When John de Lancie (yes, him again – he’s one of my favorite actors) asked if anyone in the 1000+ sear theatre he was speaking in asked if anyone had seen Breaking Bad (the best show on TV, and one he did a fantastic recurring role on a while back) only three people – including me – applauded. That made me very very sad. Trek fans, expand your horizons!
Recollection 4: The parties at the con were great, rivaling some of the best conference parties I’ve ever attended. At least, I think they were… I can’t remember much. Special thanks to Rod Roddenberry and Lisa from the Intergalactic Bartender for a great time.
Recollection 5: Met some great great new friends at the con – connections I hope will survive me going out of the country for a while. You know who you are, you wonderful people you!
Recollection 6: The new Star Trek reboot has divided a lot of fans, but I will say this: it has also brought lots of new fans into the fold. Especially young women. Who look REEALLLY good wearing original series miniskirt costumes. A nice diversion from some of the typical costume goers you see…. And speaking of which…
Recollection 7: Trek fans, I love ya… But before you try on that original series outfit, buy a mirror. And for some of you… Consider some cardio.
Recollection 8: I love David Gerrold and I love The Martian Child. Read it, all of you.
Final recollection: I love Trek, and I really enjoyed the con, but I can see a real difference between fans who attend. There are some who are just wonderfully open and friendly and then some that are… Well, not so. They are not to be pitied or criticized, they just don’t seem happy. I think to them a convention like this is more ritual than enjoyment, like people who go to church long after they stopped believing in what it was the church represented.
I understand – I stopped doing conventions for over 10 years because I wanted to focus my energy on building my career… And now that I have “arrived” to some extent, I can return to it with a renewed sense of excitement and fun. Not to be judgmental, but anyone who is just going through the motions in anything… Well, they need to reconsider what they are doing. Life’s too short to limit your options… Or your life.
Joe, out.
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by Joseph on August 8, 2010
by Joseph on July 12, 2010
Warning: This post contains extreme geekery and wish-fulfillment and should not be considered as anything more than my blue-sky fantasy on my part. I think it is a good idea, and hope that someone somewhere with the ability to “make it so” is reading…
One of the many things that Star Trek doesn’t have that its rival space epic Star Wars has is a tourist attraction. Star Trek used to have the great Star Trek Experience attraction in Las Vegas, but that has been gone for over 18 months now. Star Wars has the long running (and soon to be revamped) Star Tours ride at Disneyland and Disney World, and Disney also offers the Star Wars weekends special events every year in Orlando.
Yes, Star Trek has a traveling exhibition, which is cool, but it’s not like the Experience was – a must-see destination for Trekkers like me. They are still trying to get the Experience revived but the economy – especially in the troubled Las Vegas region – is not helping matters. So, I thought to myself as I was daydreaming the other day, how do you do a permanent Star Trek destination on the cheap?
The answer came in a flash. Retheming.
Retheming is the term used when a theme park attraction is, in affect, “re-skinned”; When a new tie-in or story is applied to an old attraction, to leverage the legacy hardware and building. And no one does it better than Disney.
Disney has rethemed buildings at their parks numerous times, a fairly recent example being when they changed a mostly-empty stage building to the American Idol Experience at Disney’s Hollywood Studios. It’s cheap (compared to building a new attraction), it’s relatively quick to implement, and can draw people in who would not have gone to the “old” attraction before.
I have three retheming ideas Disney can use if they cut a deal to license Star Trek (which would not be unprecedented – Universal licenses Star Trek form Paramount for an attraction in the 1980s).
Option 1: Stitch’s Great Escape. Instead of having Stitch in the center of the auditorium, have a Borg be the specimen that has been captured. Enhance the ride with two or three cast members in Borg outfits browsing through the audience.. and give the audience Phasers attached to their seats that can let them defend themselves. Leave in the dark, scary moments and re-theme the entryway and signage to be Starfleet. It’s already been rethemed once before, why not again?
Option 2: Innoventions. Add Star Trek theming to Innoventions, and surround the new inventions to a Star Trek scenario. Have the cast members don the red, blue and gold tunics and divide the areas into science, engineering and command. Sell Star Trek merchandise in the carts in front of both entrances.
Option 3: Mission Space. This is one of my favorite rides at Epcot, and features a great spaceflight simulator that (unfortunately) not a lot of people ride nowadays. The thing is, the ride uses a fictional space agency and a futuristic space ship you pilot…. So how hard would it be to replace the agency with Star Trek and the space ship with a long-range shuttle in the ride film? Not very, I think. Rebrand the whole thing “Starfleet Academy”, put the cast members in Trek uniforms, and then rebrand the Advanced Training Lab play area and gift shop. Heck, you can even add on to the building and create a quick-service area/bar like Quarks (from the Star Trek Experience) or you can use the nearby (and mostly abandoned) Odyssey Center for the new Quarks Bar and Restaurant… Or a Star Trek museum.
It’s this last option – rebranding Mission Space – is the most ambitious and the one that I think would resonate with the most folks (it would also take away from the stigma the ride had after two people died on it the past few years). Of course, all this would cost money, and Disney is already tying up a lot of cash with a refresh of Fantasyland…
But I can’t help that it would work. As we saw with last year’s Star Trek reboot, a lot of people still love the property and a lot of new fans were created from the film. It would be expensive but not THAT expensive. And it could live up to the promise of Epcot, the city of the future. What’s more futuristic than Star Trek?
Anyway, it’ll probably never happen. But a man can dream…
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by Joseph on December 28, 2009
As you may have seen from many of my other posts here, I’m a big Star Trek fan. Big Big fan. When I got the DVD of the new Trek movie last week, I immediately dived into the extras to see how the producers had pulled the rabbit out of the hat and saved the franchise. One of my favorite special features was on Ben Burtt (formerly of Lucasfilm) and his sound design for the movie. This segment repeatedly emphasized how important sound was to add subtext and reinforce key moments of the film.
Burtt also noted that the churps and beeps in the original series when the characters did something (like open a communicator or lay in a course) were always friendly and musical in tone and that alerts and warnings were almost always guttural and sharp tones. So, of course, being a user experience guy, I started thinking out applying this to my own work.
Even though I design applications for the web, I see there is obvious value in using sounds to add a layer of alerting and/or confirmation for the users. And, interestingly, the major computer operating systems follow the same design principles that Burtt noted that the original Star Trek did.
Both Windows and Macintosh operating systems have audio cues and alerts, but it is interesting to see how different the designer’s approaches are. Microsoft is much more aggressive in their use of sound, while the UI designers at Apple tend to be more minimalistic about sound design. Also, Apple’s sounds tend to be more melodic in tone and Microsoft’s more… well, the best word I can think of is “guttural” with harsh DONK sounds accompanying errors.
No judging, just observing.
I noted previously the future has already arrived, it’s just not the future we expected. If you look at the future of experience design, I think that music and sound is an important thing that we should begin to consider part of our responsibilities. In other words, when designing experiences, we need to think beyond the screen and keep sound in mind.
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