103 - Star Trek Picard Computer Playback Supervisor Todd A. Marks - No Win Scenario

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
I haven't listened to anything you've saidin the last twenty seconds. Damn it,
Trevor. Oh god, I hateyou so much. Well it's you.
We can cross off the reading.I watch almost everything in the majority
of it is terrible. What isthis podcast about? My record? He's
turning off, dammit, Trevor.Hi everyone, and welcome to the third
episode of No Win Scenario. Howyou doing, Trevor. I'm staying silent

(00:27):
for this intro because you told meearlier that I'm being too mean. You
were a mini but in one ofour recordings, so I said, let's
do it again. So I'm gonnaI'm gonna just hang back and let you
botch this whole opening, and uh, you know, well, the third
episode. I think at some pointwe'll get into a nice rhythm where you're
this You're the right level of kindof snarky for our listeners. Have you

(00:51):
told me your friends yet about thispodcast, Trevor. I've only told one.
I'm waiting until we get some moreout there. And do they know
that they're your friend? Broken?They they have no idea, They have
no idea whatsoever. Well, yoursour puss face is not gonna distract me.
We have a great interview today withTodd Marks. Todd Marks, he

(01:15):
is the video and playback supervisor fora whole bunch of movies and shows.
You know, we kind of gotconnected to him through Star Trek Picard.
You know, we've had some greatinterviews with Dave Blast and Liz Klowski,
production designer and art directors for StarTrek, so they hooked us up with
Todd and I think we're in foran interesting conversation. He's been around for
quite some time and done a lotof stuff, and I think video playback

(01:38):
and it's not not something that alot of people know about on TV shows
and films. Yeah it when youinitially mentioned that people might not get too
excited about it, I find itto be absolutely, so fantastic and so
interesting. It's very, very,very technical, but you also have there

(02:01):
has to be an an artistic elementto it as well, and every everything
has to be done perfectly, andit is a really intricate job. And
Todd is a really great guy.But that's not what you have in your
mind today, because I you know, you you seem like you woke up

(02:23):
sweating and and and and really disturbedthat Dune Too was going to get delayed.
The part two was gonna get delayed. Are you you handling that?
Okay, Yeah, I'm pretty bummedout about it. I think it's really
unfortunate and uh it's it's created someholes in the in the exhibition schedule,
especially the premium format and Imax exhibition, and everybody's rushing to take advantage of

(02:51):
it. I personally would have likedif they if if they were going to
uh you know, when they decidedthat they were going to push it until
the spring, I thought it wouldhave been a great idea to hold on
to that hot that Imax booking thatthey had for Dune Too and bring back

(03:13):
the first Dune because so few peoplegot to see it. David Lynch Dune.
I'm get out of here. Idon't know if you know this,
Trevor, but I love the DavidLynch movie. For those of you now
watching, well, Trevor won't letanyone see his face, But Trevor is
making a face right now. Ithink because he agrees with me that he
absolutely adores the David Lynch version ofDune that I grew up with. David

(03:36):
Lynch is one of the finest filmmakersand doing his one of the finest films
ever. Got Patrick Stewart, GotSting. I've met him. I'm a
huge fan to Twinky Books is myfavorite franchise. I just saw a thirty
five millimeter print of Mahoe and Drivea few weeks ago. I'm a very,

(03:57):
very, very big fan. Ijust finished his autobiography a few months
ago, A huge fan. Getnot not a fan of his version of
Done at all. And you knowwhat, coincidentally enough, you know who
else is a fan of that?David Lynch. David Lynch himself is not
a fan. It's not It's nota great movie. I you know,

(04:20):
it's one of those movies that youknow you watch as a kid. You
know, it could be any moviethat you watch when as a kid you
get obsessed with. I watched itlike twice a week in middle school.
I read the books. I lovedseeing it, you know, I think
I read during the first time infourth grade. I was a little too
young for it. But seeing themovie had it gave it, had it
make sense for me. It wasbig, it was grand. I don't

(04:45):
there was a you know, avision there. I wanted to get napped
during this This is such garbage.Okay, but explain this to me.
Explain this to me. You've seenthe Lynch movie. You have seen the
Lynch just wip. I just sawit in a movie theater with you seven
months ago. It was an insufferableexperience of one of our local independent theaters
played a thirty five millimeter print ofWinch's Dune Shout Out to the Brow.

(05:06):
Oh my God, Dawn was actinglike it was Citizen Kane and Orson Wells.
I was sitting there, I wastrying to I took the straw out
of my soda cup and I triedto gouge my eyes out during this film.
It is an insufferable experience. Falltwo things here. First of all,

(05:26):
I don't understand I have an openmind. I like the New Dune.
You absolutely do not have an openmind. I do not, I
am, I will be. Iwill be pleasantly surprised if Christopher Walking as
the Emperor works out. I waswas mind blown that that was the casting
choice on that one for the Emperor. So we'll see. I think I
think I think they did a disserviceto the character of Chahanni and Zindaia by

(05:51):
how they used her in the firstfilm, and I realized it was just
teeing it up for the rest forthe second part. Everybody, I want
you to understand, listeners, Dawnthinks, and and please all no offense
to her. But Don actually thinksthat Sean Young's performance in Dune David Wench's

(06:13):
version is absolutely fantastic. What hereally thinks, it's one of the best
performances he's ever seen. Old,I'm not putting on remember these words.
It was more than you thought.It was fine, she's in it for
twenty seconds. And that it's abetter performance than what Zendaia does in the
villainout version. And that listeners,all all the listeners who are listening to

(06:36):
this, all three of you,that I was and driving right now,
you just drove off the road intoa tree. I this is a ridiculous,
ridiculous conclusion. This is why Ihate Don. This is not true.
Everything he said is a lie.I will also not a lie with
the new Dune. Granted, Idid not see it in Imax like you
did. I was, you know, I think in the middle of COVID,
I saw a small well. Isaw it in cropped Imax. I

(06:59):
didn't see it in True by Maxbecause they were closed for I honestly I
loved I really did enjoy the movie. I really did. I honestly did
not feel it was as epic inscope as the original, all the all
the silliness aside. I felt likeur Keynes felt small, the city felt
small, the world felt small.Your brain is. I don't think we're

(07:20):
gonna agree on this one. Iwill say we haven't. We've been fighting
about this for years. I'm thrilledthere's a part two. I'm thrilled there's
talk of Dune Messiah. I'm bummedthat he said the other books are two.
I think I don't know if hesaid esoteric. I would love someone
to take on an Emperor of Dune. It's a great book. I think
it'd be a wacky movie. Imean everyone thinks it would be a wacky

(07:42):
movie, but I think someone shoulddo it. I mean, there was
actually a Dune mini series on scifive years ago that was like a stage
play. I mean it looked likeit was, you know, shot on
a you know, like a play. I thought it was a very interesting
way of doing Dune and Children ofDune I'd love to see God Emperor that
way. But God Emperor, youknow, someone turns into a huge,
thousands year old worm and it's atalking worm that rules the empire. So

(08:05):
I guess there are some logistic challengeswith that, but I want to see
it. Ten years ago, Dawn, for my birthday, bought me a
blu ray of David Lynch's Dude,the worst birthday present I've ever received,
because he knows how much I hatethe film. I immediately after he left,
I ripped open the case, Itook the blu ray out. I

(08:26):
put it in my cat's litter box. The movie sucks so much that my
cat wouldn't even go to the bathroomon it. She was stopped using the
litter box. You know what,Trevor, I can't think of a better
transition to our next segment. Ican't either. I'd like to apologize too,
well, everyone, all of humanityfor Trevor. I won't empologize for

(08:52):
me to. Actually, we're we'regonna work on him, ladies and gentlemen,
but please feel free to send allyour hate mail to Trevor once again,
and all your love and adoration forme to no win Scenario Podcast at
gmail dot com. That's No WinScenario podcast at gmail dot com and you
can subscribe on Everything Spotify, ApplePodcasts, Audible, Spaker, Spreaker,

(09:13):
spreakerdast Breaker, Spraaker, and whereveryou love podcasts. Stay tuned next for
an interview with Todd Marks from StarTrek Recard. Hi. My name is
Todd Marks. I'm a computer videoplayback supervisor UH and also a projection mapping

(09:37):
specialist UH and I've been working inthe film and television industry for about thirty
years now. Professionally, I startedshooting videos back in the early eighties and
UH and moved to LA in theeighty eight to finish my schooling and then

(09:58):
get into the to the industry,which I was able to do. So
that's that's a little bit about me. Are there a lot of you out
there in Hollywood? Yeah, There'sprobably a good handful of top tier playback
people. There's a lot of guys. There's a playback or men and women,

(10:18):
playback technicians, playback engineers. There'snot a lot who kind of span
all the different things that I do, as far as there's some that are
very technical. I mix the creativeaspects of overseeing the creation of the content

(10:41):
and mixing the newer technologies or theappropriate technologies for whatever the project is.
Most people when they see, youknow, in a film or TV show
and long list of credits, theymight not necessarily like, sure, see
that. I can't understand it.Yeah, of course, And it's you
know, it's one of those jobsthat you can't just go, oh,
well, I'm the guy who doesthis. You know. It used to

(11:05):
be kind of our description was,you know, when you're watching a show
and somebody they're looking at a screen, or they have a handheld device,
or there's a room full of monitors, I'm in charge of all of that.
Anything having to do with the display, so being you know, as
somebody who's interacting with a phone,or they're on a bridge of a ship,

(11:28):
spaceship, any of that type ofwork I'm in charge of. So
from taking the script and seeing whatthe writer has written to describe some action
and then figuring out a way toconvey that into graphics, and then bringing

(11:48):
in the appropriate technologies, the righttype of monitors or displays to then help
tell that story. So I'm astoryteller in one aspect, I'm a technologist
in another aspect, and it's ait's a mixing of a lot of different
types of skills and so you know, we just sometimes it's just wallpaper in

(12:13):
the background. They just kind ofhelps set a tone or a mood or
just helps make you believe that whatyou're seeing is a real set or you
know, it doesn't pull you outof what you're watching, it helps pull
you in. And there are certainpeople who just do the technology part.

(12:33):
They bring you know, they havea graphics company provide all the graphics,
and they have nothing to do withwhat those elements are. There's other people
who are just you know, graphicscoordinators. And then there's the people on
set who are you know, eitherpushing the buttons to make the content play

(12:54):
either in a loop or a queuedto specific action. And then I'm just
you know, I oversee kind ofall of that or playback on the screen.
One of my rules is is itvisually interesting to help tell the story?
Is it plausible in the world ofthat, Uh, it's you know,

(13:20):
being shown in and logical? Itdoes it if somebody's interacting with it?
Is the logic there? It's notjust a bunch of flying on screen
that's you know, somebody's clicking throughor going oh well it's so and so
and so and so, and you'relike, how the hell do you get
that from a bunch of flying shapes. I want people to be very clear

(13:41):
that this means this, and thismeans that. And the one thing that
I always know when I'm successful islet's get a close up on that,
and let's get and put you know, push in for a tight close up.
Then I know I've very you know, I've been very successful because I
helped tell the story rather than thecharacter just going oh well, we're at
twenty four sense. You know,I'm like, well, let's show them

(14:01):
that and you give them some kindof gauge. And certain projects like Star
Truck for card I was brought invery early so that I got to work
with the art department and the designersto help not only incorporate specific types of

(14:22):
newer technologies and displays into the consolesthey were building, or saying you know
this is you know, here's thiscool curved type of oh lad that we
could use, or here's this transparentdisplay technology, and here's what's involved in
making it work into a console andhere's how we have to worry about the
wiring, and here's them we haveto feed the image to it, and

(14:46):
Yetta gotta get yet and it's like, oh, and don't forget give me,
give me events so that the thingcan you know, when the little
console heats up, it doesn't overheatand yet so it's it's there's just so
many different aspects. It's so manychallenges. It's going to ask you,
you know, just in terms oflike your credits. You have a huge
list of credits. You've got StarTruck and Steve Jobs, but then you've

(15:09):
got things like the internship right inthe hall pasts like these are hugely different
styles. You know, is oneharder than the other? Is one more
fun? Is it? Is itgreat to you know, every few weeks
or a few months to do somethingcompletely different or they all have both,
well, almost all of them havesome component of fun. Not all of
them are fun, but there areusually some components of fun work, yes,

(15:33):
but certainly there are some that areare very much more rewarding and much
more challenging technically, which is oneof the things that I enjoy is,
you know, figuring out how dowe you know, make this thing that's
being required or asked for or oryou know, bringing them something really cool

(15:54):
that we can do. So,yes, there are some like Star Truck.
The card was kind of a culminationof a lot of you know,
multiple decades of my skills and gettingto you know, kind of be a
part of the entire process, notjust at the end where we're like,

(16:15):
oh, yeah, here's our here'sthe monitor, put something cool on it.
You know, it's it's from hey, guys, this is really cool.
What you know, here's a coolthing we can do, you know,
and and then make it, makeit entire, the whole thing.
But I was interesting to read oneof the articles about your work with Nemesis.
Right, I'm imagining you had alot of time, but there was

(16:36):
there was a little bit of tensionthere right between the stuff creating and the
resolution where you wanted to push it. You know, did you not have
can you talk a little bit aboutthat and and did you or did you
not have that sort of thing popup this time? This go around back
on Nemesis where I was brought into do the playback and at the time,

(16:56):
you know, Michael Okuda was incharge of his whole graphics team that
was at paramount because they were doingthe TV series. I was fortunate that
I had worked with a couple ofthe people who were involved in producing Nemesis

(17:17):
on previous projects, so they hadbrought me in because they knew that it
was, you know, it wasa pretty big show. I did get
to do a lot of stuff thatI wanted to do and push things further
than Mike Akuda was wanting to doinitially because he, you know, he
was used to doing everything with backlitpanels and then a little cut out for

(17:41):
a CR eight nineteen inch CRT atsix forty by four eighty resolution, and
I'm like, okay, well wehave LCD panels. Now, we have
plasma displays, we have projection,and so I was just always pushing for
things that you know, would allowus to do more. And you know,

(18:06):
so the more futuristic on Star Trek, yes, which you know,
I always as as I had mentionedit in an article recently, I always
found kind of a little weird thaton a futuristic show they were so against
doing using the future, you know, the newer technologies. So Mike,
you know, was frustrated that hewould have to have his team rebuild all

(18:26):
these things at higher resolutions and atmuch faster paces in certain cases than you
know, he wanted to do.Because I was like, you know,
well we're shooting this, you knowtomorrow, I need this thing. He's
like, well, they're going tohave to wait. I'm like, yeah,
I can't tell the director that it'snot going to be ready. So

(18:48):
you know, I had to manipulatethe system a little, you know,
play play around. You know,we we had our push, you know,
there was push and pull. Andone of the things that I was
I had to do was in orderto kind of get rid of the CRTs
that he wanted to use. Wasin the bridge of the ship on Nemesis.

(19:11):
The entire thing was built on agiant gimble with with the ramrods,
that hydraulic thing so that when theship got hit, the entire thing would
shape, you know. And Iwas like, ators you know, yes,
going to this. Yes. Sothat helped me in saying, listen,

(19:32):
the CRTs are not going to withstandthis constant hitting and you know,
without breaking. And then you know, and also they're heavier and yetta.
So that that one little thing helpedme kind of then get the LCD displays
in there, and you know,at the time, LCD's displays were not
graid off angle and they weren't asbright as what we are currently dealing with.

(19:53):
And so there were some, youknow, some areas where I was
like, okay, can we justmake sure we a little over the top
and not so much from the side, because you know you're losing. So
there was there was a little workingwith the with the director, I mean,
with the DPS, directors of photographyand the Cambra department to say,
let's pull over a little on thetop. In most cases, everything looked

(20:17):
pretty good. I mean, itstill looks very good. There's a few
shots in that film today that I'mstill a little like I wish I had
had some other display technology for thisparticular thing. And then moving forward to
Picard, which was, you know, about twenty twenty one years later,
a lot of the stuff that wewanted to do in the past we could

(20:41):
now do practically. You know,one of the big new technologies was the
transparent oh LEDs from LG and thatwas one of the first things that we
actually wanted to purchase because they werebuilt to order units and it was like
an eight week, eight to twelveweek build time. Yeah, so that

(21:07):
when we were when I was hired, it's kind of jumping all over here.
But when I was hired in Marchof twenty twenty, I started Dave
Blast had had asked me to,you know, look into these, and
I looked at what they were usingon the other show on Discovery and they
were using planears displays, old displaysanyway, so it was an older model.

(21:32):
I found these newer models, butit was going to be twelve weeks
and it was going to be youknow, about one hundred and six thousand
dollars to buy six of them,and uh, we kept asking. The
producers were like, we got toorder these if we want to have them
in time, and that kind ofgot pushed off and we we actually on
May one of twenty twenty, wekind of shut down when the work from

(21:57):
home orders didn't allow us to startbuilding because they were like, we have
everything ready, we're gonna start building, but we don't want to spend this
money yet until we know we canactually start. So the differences between back
then and now with Akuda was thatAcuda was brought in as a consultant.

(22:18):
This time rather than in charge ofthe graphics. And so I brought in
Twisted Media, who actually had doneSeason one, and then I brought them
back Force because I got hired forseason two and three, and I'm like,
Okay, well, these guys obviouslyknow their trek stuff and they have
great playback software. I just needto kind of increase the quality and the

(22:41):
resolution and ya, yeah, allthese other things. And then Okuda was
brought in to work with them,which they were thrilled about because you know,
Recruit is a legend. And thenI had also brought in an additional
graphics coordinator, I mean, I'msorry, graphic consultant designer and who was

(23:06):
a friend of mine who does alot of very high end stuff, and
so I was trying to kind ofpush, you know, the specific look
and design. With today's modern OLED displays, we can now shoot things.
You know, you have a screenthat looks phenomenal at almost any angle,

(23:26):
is bright enough in almost any situation. You can get translucent versions of
them, which you can do thingsthat you know, again we used to
have to do in post production,like in the movie Date Night, which
I did many years ago. MarkWahlberg has a three clear displays in front

(23:48):
of him, and that he's doingthis whole interactive thing that was all done
in post which I oversaw. ButI was also there on set to say
do this over here and do thisover there, now, you know,
But and that took months to kindof design this whole interface to match what
his actions were. Now it's likewe have the graphic there that they can
actually look at and interact with,which saves us a lot of time and

(24:15):
also looks a hell of a lotbetter. Yeah, okay, don I
have five questions, so go away. Okay, Okay, I want to
allow to speak down, Trevor.I want, I literally have five questions
I have. I want to backup specifically to the hardware before we get
to the content. Sure if Iunderstand correctly. First thing is that is

(24:37):
that the monitors are on screen.They have to have a refresh rate that
matches the frame rate of the camera. Right, Do they have a color
science that matches the color of thecensor or the film stock? Like do
you have to start? Yeah,two different things. So the refresh rate
is more specific to CRT, sothe older tube monitors, and so in

(25:03):
that case, we needed a monitorthat would refresh at forty eight hurts,
which is twice of twenty four.And then we had a SINC box.
We had a standards converter which wouldwe would take our signal, put it
through this device, run it atforty eight hurts. It would have a
genlock capability, so that sinked thatto the camera and then we would look

(25:27):
through the camera. You'd have topull the film, you'd look through the
camera and then you have a littleyou'd have a little sense or adjustment,
so you'd watch the roll bar,which you know you would see on the
old CRTs. It would dial itdown to the bottom of the frame and
just park it there and then hopefullythat would lock there. And then if
you had multiple cameras, they allhad to be you know, connected together

(25:52):
with the cables so they were allgen locked. And then if you had
multiple monitors, then all the monitors, even you know, if there are
different feeds, then all would haveall of them would then need to sink
so that they're all refreshing at thesame rate. So, yes, that's
a that's a situation with CRTs andplasmas, not as much now with old

(26:17):
and LCD. It's not and completelygone. There is still some need depending
on the type of technology. Igo into details of that later, but
the for the most part, LCDsand no lads are okay, there are

(26:37):
something Do you do? You dialin the color temperatures? Yes, the
color temperature is the Genesis had avery very specific, very very specific color
or how it rendered colors to it, so you would my guess is that
you would have to adjust per youknow, per camera, right, It
depends, yes, So with inthe past back, we'll just go to

(27:03):
Nemesis. On Nemesis we were usingwe custom built these control boxes that was
VGA and then it broke out tofive wire and you would have an RGB
dial on the unit and so youcould adjust with an actual physical button the

(27:26):
color temperature to get to thirty twohundred or close to thirty two hundred,
which is the color temperature that theytypically are shooting at for tungsten indoors.
Then we also had software called atool called Gamma, and there's been several
others over the years that we use. That again is kind of individual from

(27:48):
the computer to the monitor. Theproblem was if you had multiple monitors getting
the same feed from that one computeryou would try to have to you would
have to match all the monitors excuseme too, the same so that they
looked the same, which wasn't alwayseasy because sometimes you're using different displays that

(28:11):
are all getting this feed. Whatwe have now and what we did on
the card was Twisted Media. Againwho Who, the company that did our
graphics also has this amazing playback software. And one of the abilities is real

(28:33):
time adjustments for brightness, contrasts,color temperature, and you can, you
know, individually tweak tweak it.And the beauty is that you're we can
be in our control room watching themonitor, the live feed monitor in our
control room and watch and adjust andsee how it looks and kind of eyeball

(28:56):
it pretty closely. Then we'll gointo the UH either onto set or into
the DIT tent, the digital technicianstent, because they have you know,
the color accurate O Lab displays andwe can see, you know, is
this too bright, is this toodark? Is the color temperature off?

(29:17):
And you know, and then Ican walk either to the guys, go
guys, bring down this, adjustthat, and you know, we can
do it in real time. Backin the old days when it was actual
film and sync. Sometimes you youknow, you would look through the video
assist monitor wasn't always an accurate wasvery actually rarely an accurate telling of if

(29:44):
everything was in sync, and thenoften you wouldn't know, you know,
your how how the exposures were,color temperatures, you could kind of get
pretty close, but you know,we'd have to go to dailies the next
day and you know, at lunchand you'd like, oh, okay,
all right, we gotta bring thesedown a little bit, or these have
to come up a little bit nexttime. And so that was where it

(30:08):
was very important to have playback engineerswho were like just masters at color and
exposure and could you know, balanceall these monitors and you know, back
in the day when it was allCRTs NTSC never the same color, you

(30:29):
know, trying to match a roomfull of CRTs was challenging as hell.
When we did, I bet wedid deep impact there. We built a
real working MSNBC television studio on stageand I had I don't know, maybe

(30:49):
forty CRTs, you know, banksof them across the news room and they
all had to look good when wedid. And that was that was challenging,
but a little easier because those wereall you know, high end Sony
production monitors. Then when we didAnchorman two, uh, the there we

(31:15):
had about one hundred and twenty fiveCRTs and we were recreating a nineteen eighty
television studio supposed to be brand newand you know we shot this uh like
maybe ten years ago or something likethat, and trying to find that many
period CRTs, uh was challenging.Luckily, we you know, we were

(31:42):
able to kind of pull together alot, and then we also built bezels
that we put over monitors to makethem look like older displays. But there
we had to like pull the coversoff all these old CRTs and get into
the little pots and try to likepull the you know a just the sizes
because they start to scale weird overtime, colors go all wonky, and

(32:06):
you know, you could never reallyget perfect with all this older you know,
because you know, this one mighthave twelve hundred hours and this one
might have sixty hours, and youknow, you have old components and it's
crazy. I mean, I coulddo a whole podcast just on the technology
and all the different crazy stuff wehad to do on Anchorman two, because

(32:30):
it was just nuts playing off thatyou've worked with. You've worked with autours
like Danny Boyle and Steven Soderbergh,one of my favorite favorite filmmakers. You've
worked with crafts people like Stewart Bairdand Stewart and and oh okay, and
Mimi let a comment on that wayand me, MEI letter, I mean

(32:52):
Stewart Baird, I mean, Imean his editing skills. Well, I
was just gonna say he was oneof the great great editors. Yes,
up. Not who you want todirect Star Trek you don't typically not a
great idea to get a first timedirector who hates Star Trek to direct a
star I didn't even know. Andthen and then you're working on Picard where

(33:15):
there are multiple directors and and Frakes, who is a fantastic TV director.
How do you work with all Imean, I know they're different projects,
but how do you work with allof these voices and they're different approaches?
A lot of it is with greatenthusiasm, uh and showing them, uh

(33:39):
what we can do for them andgiving them the ability to do things that
they didn't even think of when theywere writing or or not writing. But
you know, breaking down their theirtheir scripts to to shoot, and so
part of it depends on kind ofwhere we are in the process as far

(34:01):
as you know, when I'm broughton to the project, because as I
mentioned earlier, one of the thingsI really enjoy doing is helping tell the
story better and you know, findingcool ways to do things that you know

(34:22):
is not something that most people wouldthink of, is you know, how
to on for example, on Solaris, you know, we were using a
variety of different holographic projection material sothat we could basically float displays in air
instead of doing it as a posteffect. So early on in that film,

(34:50):
George Clooney's characters in his apartment andon the on his TV, which
is this floating screen or is thisfuturistic newscast with you know, all these
different things happening. We built thatall in an online editing session for over
a weekend, that whole graphic andthen floated a piece of this special uh

(35:14):
rear projection acrylic and then you know, hid the projector so that they could
do those shots. And then alsoin the spaceship and in Cluney's quarters there's
a monitor which is again like apiece of acrylic which we basically cut a
hole in the back of the setbelow, so the displays you know,

(35:36):
on the desk, and we cuta hole towards the floor and shined the
projector up and then you know kindof you know, masked it. And
that was before we had projection mappingsoftware, so it was trickier, you
know, and because you're keystoning anddoing all this other stuff to try to
make the image. Yeah, Ihad just when I done did Solaris,

(36:00):
I had just finished Nemesis, wherewe had done other cool stuff with projection
where we had taken this project rearprojection material and cut it and curved it
and so on the Rieman Bridge,in the lower consoles there's these kind of
wraparound displays that were all done practicalwith projection. And then also in the

(36:22):
Rieman Bridge there were the upper displays. Upper consoles. I had gotten these
thousand women lasers they weren't lasers butprojectors and built them into the console and
they shown up and hit a fiftyfifty mirror and half the image went and

(36:43):
it was a chromatic coded mirror,so that it split the color, so
part of the color part of theimage and color went up onto the aliens
faces, and another part bounced forwardonto a piece of curved rear projection material.
So the front peace was green greengraphic, and the part that was

(37:04):
up on the alien's faces was thiskind of pinkish shoe, same same graphic
but just different looks. And thatwas all done again practically. You know,
nobody from the art department said hey, can you build this thing that
does this. I was like,hey, we can do this thing,
which will look really cool. Andthen you know, I work with them

(37:25):
and come up with these cool thingsthat so you gotta keep giving the directors
more candy, more more. Yeah, that's the key. Yeah, so
you want to you know, youwant to d with Danny Boyle on Jobs.
I was just going to say,in the case of Steve Jobs,
your work, I mean I sawthe film a few times. I really
enjoyed it. Uh, your workis actually part of the drama. Yeah.

(37:49):
Right, And and now you're workingwith the timing. I'm guessing now
you're working off the timing of fastBender and Jeff Bridges because they're if they're
not reacting to it, it's it'ssymbolically in unison with their performance. Yes,
no, well, yeah, Imean in yes and no. So

(38:12):
you know, for example, whenthere's we did three different keynotes because we
had you know, three different yearsthat were represented, you know, the
original Macintosh release in eighty four andthen the next release in nineteen eighty eight,
and then the iMac in ninety eight, and each one of those actually
contained the original parts of the originalmaterial from those keynotes, which again is

(38:42):
a whole other story of how Igot all that material. But yes,
those were built using ironically coincidentally Apple'skeynotes software, which jobs had done four
keynotes, and so that they wereyou know, they were basically a cute
slide I'd show or shoote presentation,so that as they were, you know,

(39:05):
we knew on this line you goto hear in this line, we
go to there, and so thatyou know, it tied to the script
and to you know, what theirdialogue was. So yes, the performances
were you know, it's kind ofa given take. So sometimes they're responding
to what we're bringing up on screen, or sometimes we're responding to their line

(39:28):
which choose us to bring up thenext piece. Yeah, yeah, I
thought your working that one definitely playedin with the storytelling like that was your
job as storytelling. I'm not sayingthe others are not, but that one
I felt the biggest impact on it. I remember talking to my friends afterwards

(39:49):
about it. It really it reallyadds to the drama. Thank you,
and and it was it was theproject itself had a lot of meaning to
me. One. I grew upin Sunny Vale and you know, right
next to Cupertino, and you knowwhat was there during the whole starting of

(40:10):
Apple. You know, Jobs andWosneia both were students like ten years before.
At my high school. I hadthe same electronics teacher as as them,
and the same computer teacher. Youknow. I took my first computer
class with the IBM punch cards,you know, in nineteen seventy eight,

(40:30):
I think. And and then themoving on into the the launch of the
Macintosh at Flint Center, Flint Centerat the back of Flint Center and where
we actually filmed parts of the moviewhen like Jobs is showing his daughter the

(40:52):
Macintosh first time, those were That'swhere I went to film school, in
those classrooms like twenty five years orso before that. So it was a
bit of a mind f you know, because here I am and I had
worked in the film department as atea for about four years as well.

(41:15):
And so you know, those thesewere cement stairs that you had to walk
four stories up this little cement corridorI had. I had painted numbers on
every step going up, so Iget so everybody knew, You're like,
you're seventy eight steps or whatever itwas, and those numbers were still there,
you know, so many years.You know, I had graduated in

(41:37):
uh eight, worried five something likethat from there, and you know,
the film department had subsequently moved toa different place on campus, but these
this stairwell still contained all the youknow, the painted numbers that I had
been there. The production designer freakingcovered had them covered up waterproof paint,

(41:58):
supposedly because I didn't want them inthe shot. I was so pissus.
But the working on that was wascool because I was able to like bring
the department chairman, who was semiretired, Zach Elicia, back to I
brought him to the set, andI brought him to our production office up

(42:20):
in South San Francisco, and hegot you know, I introduced him to
Danny Boyle, and you know,it was a really cool moment. To
be able to like introduce someone whohad such an impact early on in my
you know, learning filmmaking to herei am, you know, all these
years later and I'm working professionally,and then also to work in the same

(42:42):
building was just you know and beon the same campus as you know,
I had gone and graduated from.And one of the cool things we got
to do while we were shooting therewas during one of our lunches, we
went to the new film department andwe did a like a seminar for the
current film students. And so myself, Don Henderson, who was also one

(43:08):
of the filmmakers on the show,who also was a Danza graduate and friend
of mine from way back then,also was there working on it, and
we you know, we were talkingto all the students and then you know,
halfway through, Danny Boyle came inand then you know, sat down,
and you know, the students werelike blown away because you know,

(43:30):
there's one hundred students getting to sitwith Danny Boyle telling them stories and things
like that. So it was areally cool, you know, an opportunity
to kind of give back to theplace that it helped start my career.
That's great don I'll allow you totalk now. I was to say,
Trevor, this is why I've beenteaching part time for all these years.

(43:50):
So maybe one day one of mystudents will make it and do something nice
for me, just like that.So it keeps me going after all these
years. Could you maybe talk abouta little bit about the unique stresses of
your job, because you know,you talked about having to you know,
create things or invent things or likelike up to the last second. Yeah,
like that that's pretty stressful. Imean that seems to yeah, yeah,

(44:13):
right up there, Like how doyou manage it? You know,
does it go bad? You know? Is it old hat at this point?
Yeah? The stress of it isthere's always stress involved in anything that
you're doing on a set. Andyou know, the example I always give
is when people are doing I'm like, you know, if you're don't work

(44:36):
and you're you're in a meeting andyou have to do a PowerPoint presentation and
something doesn't work right, Yeah,that could be a little stressful. And
I'm like, Okay, imagine you'rehaving to do that, but you're on
a set with all these expensive actors, highly paid actors, an entire film
crew, where time is money,yeah, and fifty extras and something stops
working and you have to tell them, hold on, this is isn't working.

(45:00):
We can't shoot right now. Uh. And you have a first assistant
director coming as you're trying to figureout what's going on. Uh how much
longer? Uh? How much longer? Uh? How much longer? And
you like, well, give melike five minutes to you know, see
what's going on. Okay, andyou know, five minutes goes by,
and they're like, okay, we'reready. You're like, uh, not

(45:22):
quite yeah, hold on, They'relike, should I should we send the
actors back to their trailers? Uh? Okay, so that that's certainly happened.
More than once, they'll actually askyou, should should we send them
back? Wow? Because they youknow, actors don't want to freaking just
stand there while their course because isit like is it three minutes? Is

(45:45):
it twenty minutes? Is it?You know? Yeah? And and that's
an expensive weight. Yeah, andthat's a lot of pressure. And you
know, if it's a little something, you're like, okay, well this
is gonna that one model is justgoing to be off or we're gonna just
turn it away from camera. Butif it's something in a news room where

(46:06):
all of a sudden, I meanthis happened on Deep Impact, where all
of a sudden, we were gettingnoise an interference on a bunch of the
displays, and one of my engineersstarts like ripping stuff apart. In the
control room. I'm like, holyguys, you know, and we're like,
okay, we need We're gonna geta little time. You know,

(46:27):
you don't want to be the guythat's the one who's responsible for the production
falling behind or not making their day. And some of the most stressful times
of my life have been, youknow, when things are not working properly
and you're trying to make them work. Or the other great one is like
when you're you have your computer andyou've set everything for the particular scene and

(46:54):
it's you know, just have tohit play, but it's not saving,
it won't save, and you're like, just don't crash, just don't crash,
and you know, you're just hopingthat you don't have to. You
know, something doesn't reboot in themiddle of something or overheat, you know.
So yeah, there's there's always there'salways is it? But is it
the stress? Like you know thatyou might cause you know, production to

(47:15):
be behind and all that money,but do you get like the eighties coming
in yelling? Is that like whatlike does that not happen? Does that
happen? Or that certally happens?They you get to know, you might
get initially, you might get ayou know, one of the the lower
tiered PA's or ads come in withMilwaukie and they're like, what's going on?

(47:38):
You know, or you get onthe radio, guys, what's going
on? Or but then there's alwaysthe thing where it's like the escalates.
I mean, we had a thingon on Picard where on the first episode
of season three where we literally hadless than a week to convert the entire

(48:00):
uh Stargazer into the Titan with allnew graphics, you know, shooting on
that first day and not having everythingquite ready and the director getting very frustrated,
which understandably, but you know,we were we were so we were

(48:22):
spread so thin because we were doingthat and we had two other sets that
were going that, you know,and the graphics team just could not managed
to keep up with all the requestsand the new stuff. And you know,
it's like there were like little holesof in the in the consoles where
there was like black where you knowthey didn't finish like certain pieces and or

(48:45):
something wasn't ready, and you know, the director like called the producer to
come and talk to me, andI'm like, you know, I'm we're
doing the best we can. I'mnot one's building the thing. And I'm
like, the graphics company will provideus all the elements to put to be

(49:08):
put in in post at their cost. So they've already agreed to that because
they know they're behind. So youknow, it's like once I kind of
like, guys, this is whatwe're dealing with that here's you know,
it's nobody's fault per se. Thisis just you know, there's just too
much to do well along, there'slines, too much to do. Is

(49:30):
it the fact that there's not amudget people that everyone's trying to rush everything
out? Like what what what isthe ultimate reason for that kind of falling
behind? Is it too many requests? Amount of time? Is it?
That was it was just well thatthat was a schedule, uh situation where
they're trying to do too you knowthat they have certain requirements where maybe there's

(49:58):
actors that need to be someplace else, and so they need to get them
their stuff shot. The actors aremuch more important than oh, are the
graphics guys or the playback guys goingto have this ready? They're gonna do
it. We know what they're goingto have to do it. You know
that we kind of are like loweron the totem pole there. So you
know, in certain shows we actuallyget to go, hey, guys,

(50:21):
this is too much. I needat least a day to do or five
days or whatever. There were certainlysituations where the graphics team could not keep
up with the requests of you know, and especially on that one bridge,
because we had thirty seven or thirtyeight unique feeds to all the different displays

(50:45):
that all needed different graphics. Soit's not like on a normal show where
you might have four or five displaysthat you have to build. They here
you needed. You know, therewas a ton of new stuff and it's
all story specific, and you havecertain directors are much more demanding of I
want, you know, when thisparticular queue comes or this line comes,

(51:07):
I want something on the screen toshow that, whereas another director is like,
that's all right, I'm gonna justbe on their face, you don't
have to build me anything, soyou'll have you'll all of a sudden,
it's like, oh, instead offour queues that we have to build,
there's fifteen. And it's not juston this display. It's on that display
and that display and that display,and these are all different and they all
have to be built, they allhave to have queue points. And or

(51:30):
you have a director go yeah,I'm not really sure it could be here
here, and you're like, okay, that's like not just a simple thing
where you go. You know,it's it's a different display, it's a
different resolution, it's a different size, of different shape. So there was
there was a lot of that onthe card. There was a lot of
last minute stuff because you also weregetting new scripts, you know, Or

(51:57):
you have a director who changes hismind or their mind and like, oh
yeah, I want it there,and then you get to the set and
they're like can we put it overthere instead? And you're like, I'm
gonna need like, let me callmy graphics team, because the graphics team
wasn't there on you know, theywere in Chicago. So yeah, so

(52:17):
how do you manage like when you'rein the midst of production, Like how
do you manage that kind of likeintense pressure all the time. I mean,
you're working through lunch or maybe oryou know, you're just everyone's working.
Everyone's just trying to get through stufflike how do you or do you
just get through? And then Imean the long days too, Yeah,
yeah, I mean, luckily it'sfor the most part, it's gotten better

(52:37):
with the long days because of thenew union rules, at least on the
shows that I've been on. Butyeah, I mean I've certainly been on
shows. I mean even like whenwe did Nemesis, we were doing sixteen
eighteen hour days, you know,and it was it got so bad that

(53:00):
the executive, one of the paramountexecutives came to set and set on set
to make sure that at twelve hours, you know, the they were wrapping
up, you know. And onthose types of shows, I'll get back
to the to the stress level,but the the you know, it's like

(53:20):
you get to lunch after six hoursand then you look and you're like,
hey, another twelve hours, weget to go home. Dealing with that
stress kind of varies depending on theproject and who you're working with. As
I've gotten a little older and moremature, I've learned to not most of
the time, to try to notyou know, take it out on my
crew or other people to you know, it's just like level with them.

(53:45):
It's like, okay, guys,here's what, here's our situation. We
really can't mess this up. Wegot to deal with this, and let's
figure out how to deal with it. But you know, of course,
there's always times where you're it's overwhelmingand it's it's a lot to deal with.
Luckily, I'm uh pretty good atletting kind of emotions. You know,

(54:05):
once they're past, I can kindof let it go, which you
know is sometimes good and sometimes badbecause you don't always remember necessarily like oh,
Jed, I should really avoid thisthing. I mean again, I've
gotten much better as I've gotten older, my my adhd. You know,
I've I've kind of learned to workwith two kind of go Okay, I

(54:27):
need to make sure this is doneproperly ahead of time, so that we're
not waiting until the last second andthen dealing with this huge stress. So
that's one of the things that I'vedone. Has learned a lot of things
to do to try to lower thepotential for stress. And again, like

(54:49):
you know, equipment failures where you'llhave you know, you make sure that
you have three different ways to dosomething technically so that you know you have
failsafe and failsafe and and this justhappened literally a week ago. I was
on a job for on a commercialand we had rented a forty thousand women

(55:13):
projector that arrived late and then hadinitial problems that we finally got working,
fired it up, and then itwas glitching all over the place and we
didn't have time. They're like,well, we're gonna bring you a new
one. I'm like, I don'thave time. The crews already out there.
So luckily I had brought some ofmy other projectors as a replacement just

(55:35):
in case, because I was like, Okay, I don't want to be
relying on this thing. So that'sthat's one of the things that I've learned
to do to kind of you know, reduce stress level and not be able
to you know, because you justdon't want to be the guy who goes
and goes, sorry, this isnot working, we can't shoot this today.
Just before we did this recording,I was listening to a podcast where

(55:59):
the they were going in depth abouthow regard with with all the details how
difficult it is to maintain a marriageand a family in this industry, And
they went into with regards to toscheduling and you know, having young kids

(56:20):
and they just and being out ofsync with them even if you're just away
for a month or even a fewweeks, and how that really affects the
relationship and stuff like that. Uh. I believe you mentioned to us that
you have family members that are inyou know that our marriage and family therapists.
Yeah, my wife, Yeah,so have having a having a partner

(56:45):
that's does that I imagine that makesthis easy that I imagine it makes this,
uh this easier to maintain. Maybenot, but I imagine you do
see in the industry a lot ofpeople struggling with with having a family,
and that has to have an effecton top of the stresses of eighteen hour

(57:07):
days. Yeah, I mean thatthat has to lead to some to some
real deep struggles I imagine. Yeah. Well, I mean I've had this
discussion with my wife over the yearsas well about it's tough to go from

(57:30):
your job where your respected people dowhat you ask them to do. You
know, you get praise and thenyou come home and it's like, you
know, the kids don't want tolisten to what you're asking them to do,
and you know, everybody's tired becausethey've been doing their own stuff.

(57:52):
And I'm like, you know,can we clean up the house, And
you know, nobody wants to hearyou complain about stuff, and you're you
know, and so you kind ofgo from this. You know, it's
like this world and especially with production, where it's you know, it's not
like a normal nine to five jobs. You're in the intense, you know,

(58:13):
environment, and you're doing these likeincredible things oftentimes and you know,
and now with like a Star Trek, you get like fan adoration and you
know, all this other positives andpeople you know, really finding what you
do fascinating and then dealing with youknow, oh, then you've got to
come back to reality and live asa normal person in you know, in

(58:37):
a house and changes your you know, you kind of it's it's been very
difficult at times where you know,you get angry and frustrated because it's like
this one place I'm treated this wayand then this other place I'm treated you
know, at home, it's likenot you don't get that yes, exactly,

(58:57):
and so uh, you know,and it's a tire you know,
you're tired and don't want to necessarilyhave to deal with all these other issues
at home, and so yeah,there is a definite level of understand you
know, understanding and stress that isinvolved in this, you know, and

(59:17):
we still deal with that today.I mean it's not you know, we've
we've had our struggles, as asany family I'm sure has with this type
of environment, you know, workingin this type of environment. And I
have a very creative family. Soeverybody has their own like things that they're
doing. My son, who's youknow, and his twenty seven twenty eight,

(59:40):
he's he likes LARPing, so liveaction role plays, so he's stilling
props. You know, we haveour three D printer and he's building stuff
you know for that, and he'soff, you know, in northern California
doing this LARPing thing. And whenyou're doing the things that you love,
it's a whole other you know versuslike, oh, can you put the
dishes away? And do you knowit's not very exciting for you know.

(01:00:01):
My wife's an artist and she's hasa therapy degree of an art therapy degree,
but she's now doing art full timeand so she's now in her own
whole studio and you know, andagain it's like everybody, you know,
I've encouraged because of what I've done, I've encouraged everybody to kind of follow
your passions and do what you reallyenjoy because it's such a it's so great

(01:00:25):
to be able to do that,and it fills a part of your soul
to to you know, to enjoywhat you do and to you know,
get pleasure and sharing that with others. But then the reality of doing real
life stuff kind of gets in theway of that oftentimes, and that's where
there is definitely struggle and everybody inI'm trying to learn to deal with everybody's

(01:00:51):
ADHD or whatever their place weaknesses andstrengths are. And so yeah, I
wish I had better answers for howto deal with all Those were great answers
the you know, and it's likeI will get the question of it was
like what do you like to doin your spare time? And I'm like,

(01:01:12):
I don't know. It's hard forme to like, you know,
I like doing like fixing things,you know, around the house, because
that's like very task oriented, andI'm very I'm a very task oriented person,
so it's hard for me to go, yeah, let's just go and
hang out and go to a movie. It's like, I don't you know,
it's like I have to disconnect sometimesfrom that part of my being of

(01:01:37):
wanting to get things done, whichfills that, you know, that part
of me that ADHD kind of whatever. But are you diagnosed with ADHD?
Oh? Yeah, I'm from avery very very early age. My mom
had done her thesis paper on it. So you know, when I was

(01:01:57):
in grade school, it was veryobvious that you know, I was,
I had what they called learning disabled, which is what it used to be
called hyperactive learning disabled, you know, and then I got to go to
once a week where you could yougot to go to a different program at
a different school for the gifted kids. And that's actually where I first got

(01:02:24):
to They had like a little TVstudio at this school with like three cameras
in a little control room switcher thing, where I first got to actually do
that back in grade school. Soyou know, having those resources back then
and being on medication way way wayway way back then, you know,

(01:02:45):
in the sixties and yeah, soI've I've had to deal with that my
whole life. It's amazing that youhad the resources, fat I mean,
because I've always been diagnosed with itin the past few years years and I'm
I'm in my late forties, andeven coming up in the eighties and nineties,

(01:03:07):
it wasn't really talked about that much. I mean, it was being
talked about more, but it stillwasn't talked about that much. Yeah,
I mean, I was fortunate thatmy mom was, you know, a
marriage family therapist who was into thetransactional the TA for teens thoughts and you
know, and we used to haveencounter groups that she was involved in in

(01:03:28):
the seventies and you know, soI grew up in that kind of environment.
And my dad was an aerospace engineerat Lockeed and my mom was you
know, this therapist, so theyalways had their little struggles as well,
but different personalities. So yeah,I mean I was kind of used to

(01:03:49):
that growing up. So h yeah, I was. I was very fortunate
that, you know, I wasdiagnosed very early and got you know,
help with a lot of those things. Not that it solved any of those
troubles, but it actually, youknow, at least I had some accommodations

(01:04:09):
right to you know, work withme on those things and not feel like
I was something wrong with me,but that it was that it was something
to be dealt with, right.What has been so far the highlight of
your career where the work that youdid and the story and the final output,
the final film or show married together. It really worked and fired in

(01:04:30):
all cylinders. What have you beenthe most proud of so far? I
mean, definitely the stuff we've donemost recently on Picard, I think is
you know, kind of the pinnacleof what we've been able to accomplish because
of a number of factors, theamount of displays on the one set and

(01:04:55):
the impact that it had, andthe drama that had added to the story,
and the technology pushing the look ofeverything to a level that you know
was just next level essentially. That'scertainly, you know, when I was
doing it, I was like,God, this is this is kind of

(01:05:15):
like a dream job, because Idon't know how I'm going to do better
than this with you know, gettingto do all these different aspects and getting
the respect of, you know,from everything from working with you know,
the set designers, the art directors, the construction departments, the effects department,
the props department, and everybody kindof once they saw what we were

(01:05:39):
doing, listening to what I wantedto do, and getting to like bring
things to them that, you know, again that they didn't they hadn't even
thought of. Just as an example, when we did District the District sixth
set and they were just looking atdoing stuff on the ground bull and I

(01:06:00):
was like, Okay, well I'mgoing to do projection mapping above everything,
you know. And I did kindof a previous with photoshop of like here's
what it's going to look like,and then doing it and then just you
know, being blown away. Andthat's that's one of the things that I
just really just kind of fills mewith pride is being able to do,

(01:06:23):
you know, kind of come upwith those visuals and achieve them and just
bring things to another level. Ithought the season was such an accomplishment and
you all have such amazing work,and I, from the respect of me,
I just absolutely loved it. Everyevery week it was just gorgeous and
fun and yeah, I did yousee did you have to see the last

(01:06:44):
two? On I go? Iwent to see into New York to see
it on Imax, and I thoughtthat would not get to see the last
fun So I saw the first thefirst two on Imax at the Beer Oh
Wow, which we jesus that wasa I was so it was so hard
to get into that. I mean, the only reason I was able to
do it was I worked with theParamount Archives person who had Beverly's Cairote cryo

(01:07:15):
chamber from episode one of season three, you know when she gets sick and
she's in them. So I wason display or something outside the premiere was
I think I said? Was that? Well, it was in the party
after across at the Hollywood Roosevelt theyhad set pieces and props and costumes,

(01:07:36):
and so he brought that in.Well. I hooked him up with the
electrician or the fixtures guy, Derek, who was in charge of fixtures on
Picard, who was also luckily alsodoing Quantum Leap at the time, And
so Derek and one of his guyswent down to the where the archives were

(01:08:00):
hooked up all the lights so thatit all lit up and stuff like that,
and then I procured the two iPadsand got the graphics running so that
they you know, it was activeand had all the little EKG stuff and
you know, so it looked reallycool when it was there. And so

(01:08:24):
the archived guy actually gave me histicket so I could go in to see
the thing. And then I satwith Liz and Dave, and Dave was
like David like had Liz was Dave'splus one, and he had to like
really fight to get a ticket,and he was trying to, like for
weeks, was trying to get ourcrew to get tickets to this thing,

(01:08:45):
and they would not give us.Like really, the crew couldn't go see
the so it was only by youknow us kind of twisting some arms and
you know, figuring out little Itwas just actors and produced. It was
fame. It was mostly it wasthe actorssers and fans because it was the

(01:09:05):
you know, and they actually hadan overflow theater even so there would have
been enough for you know, otherpeople. So there were some of our
other casts, I mean, someof our other crew, like Jeff and
Props was there because for whatever reason, he got invited. Like it was

(01:09:28):
like there was a handful of peoplethat got invited and other ones who kind
of connived their way in and like, yeah, but he had worked all
three seasons and so he had otherYeah. So yeah, I did get
to see it on the big screenand that was phenomenal. And the other

(01:09:50):
cool story about that is that wasthe theater that I saw the original Star
Trek the Motion Picture in when itfirst came. Oh get out. So
that's my that's my favorite Star Trekfilm. I don And it's not about
you, Trevor. This is abouthis his experience here. I love it

(01:10:13):
so much, OK, but thisabout his experience. Wow, So you
saw the original there and there youare. I saw the original and I
also saw the Original and Superman inthat theater. I love that film too.
Yeah, you know it's the scorethat was you know, you still
get chills. Thank you again somuch for your time for sure, not
like there's a lot of else otherdays. God, I'm not saying we're

(01:10:38):
taking it. I'm not saying we'retaking advantage of it. But it was
good. It's a great time whenwe all when we were all locked down,
and I was, of course thatand everyone's locked down. I just
I just basically was teaching a classonline and I'm like, what am I
going to do? Cheaching like youknow, film production, a production class
over zoom. So I just likecontacted every connection I had, and I

(01:10:59):
just had all these people out yourway who who couldn't do anything, and
they would just come in and guessedmy class. And I feel like that
class learned the most because we justhad it. Every week, a different
person come in and talk about theindustry for them. That's so so amazing
to have, you know that.I mean I remembered, you know,
like as a student, when you'rethose opportunities to meet the real people people.

(01:11:23):
Yeah, that's that's great. Thanksagain, Todd. This was fantastic,
It really was, and thanks forbeing so open. Yeah, so
anytime a yeah, eat eat somethingfirst with your mouthful and let's start the
outro. All right, that wasan awesome interview. How okay, go

(01:11:47):
get all right? Welcome back everyone. That was awesome to talk to Todd.
Uh. It was great, fantasticinterview. I genuinely love technical deep
dives and I his job sounds likeI mean, I think on most sets
you're juggling the crafts. People arejuggling a lot. But my gosh,

(01:12:09):
I man, that that seems forme specifically, that that is overwhelming,
and I have nothing but great respectfor him. Speaking of people, I
have no respect for what's new withyour life, Trevor, anything going on
coming up? Are you just lookingforward to the next pod? Oh my
god, I'm sorry meant to referto ourselves as the pod podcast I'm so

(01:12:29):
looking forward to. But well,I mean I watched I finished two shows
recently that has nothing to do withthis podcast. I finished The Diplomat on
Netflix, which is one of thebest shows of the year, you know,
a faster paced West Wing in away. And I finished the recent
new kind of run of Justified andI really enjoyed that. And I watched

(01:12:56):
a Hung Kong drama from nineteen ninetyone, Center Stage by Stanley Kwan with
Maggie Chung, so one of thebest biopics I've ever seen in my life.
Nobody cares about this stuff, butI'm still going to go to bad
for it. Well that's interesting,Trevor, and I need you couldn't care
less. I couldn't get you towatch one episode of Evangelian, so shut

(01:13:16):
up. I've watched two. Noyou haven't. I know that for a
fact. I even know. Pleasein one of our in one of our
deleted scenes from our podcast that we'rekeeping to ourselves for now. I gave
you a quiz and he didn't evenknow. You forgot the name Nerve as
the organization and nerve you moron,It's Nerve Nerve Nerves. Just end the
podcast, all right, let's endit on this, Let's end it now.

(01:13:40):
Well, I am looking forward tonext week. We have cinematographer Jeremy
Benning, who the sci fi worldwill know for his work for all the
seasons of the expanse. He's doneThe Boys, He's done a ton of
documentary, national geographic, He's gotNetflix shows going. So I am very
much looking forward to talking to him. His resume is what I would describe

(01:14:00):
intimidating. That man has done alot of work and he is very,
very versatile with this craft. I'mvery excited for this interview and with that,
we'll leave you alone. Don't forgetto send us feedback. Well,
I'm leaving you alone. You're laughing? Are you telling the You're leaving the
audience alone? Are you alone?Oh? Yeah, you have to like
maniacal laugh like for those of you, like I'm watching Trevor, I'm in

(01:14:24):
a brightly lit room. I'm talkingto Trevor and he's in this dark room
with like a cat like lurking inthe background when he's doctor or evil or
something. Absolutely, so it getsbetter, It gets better. What are
you flossing? Yeah, we're filmingusing an approxybush and brush and I'm cleaning
my teeth. I've discovered though,that Trevor really hates when I start nibbling
on nuts during our podcast. Yeah, because you're supposed to freaking eat during

(01:14:46):
the podcast. Oh god, soplease that you're taking out that is disgusting.
Keeping it in. People do notlike when you eat. They aren't
the kids on too SMR. Nowthat's not a thing anymore. Past that,
all right, No Win Scenario podcastat gmail dot com. We can
subscribe to us on Spotify, ApplePodcasts, all your podcasts, ventures and

(01:15:11):
vendors. With that, thanks forlistening. Bye everyone, love you,
bye, don hate you. I'mgonna cut you out Trevor. By the
way, no one cares if yousay goodbye, keep saying goodbye, and
they keep cutting it out goodbye.In today's world, mental health is everyone's
concern. If you or someone youknow is in crisis, please use these

(01:15:34):
resources. For US listeners, callone eight hundred nine five zero six two
six four or text helpline all oneword h E L P l I N
E to six two six four zero, or email helpline at NAMI dot org

(01:15:55):
that's NAMI dot org. For ourinternational listeners, please visit suicide Stop dot
com. That's s U I cI d e stop dot com

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103 - Star Trek Picard Computer Playback Supervisor Todd A. Marks

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}103 - Star Trek Picard Computer Playback Supervisor Todd A. Marks