It includes the ‘return’ of William Shatner as James T. Kirk.
You may have already seen some of the intriguing Star Trek-related shorts produced by OTOY as part of The Archive from the Roddenberry Archive.
The latest is ‘765874: Unification’, which celebrates the 30th anniversary of Star Trek: Generations. It launched on the web and via the Apple Vision Pro app.
In it, we see live-action footage and CG images, with actors portraying characters like James T. Kirk and Spock during the shoot. According to OTOY’s blog, performances came from “Sam Witwer as James T. Kirk, with Lawrence Selleck as Spock. Witwer and Selleck were filmed in costume, performing as Kirk and Spock on set, aided by both physical and digital prosthetics resulting in period-accurate portrayals matching the appearance of the characters as they originally appeared in TV and Film at the time.”
Watching the short, and seeing a few behind the scenes images and videos here and there, really boggles the mind how they handled the face replacement work (which, as noted above, they call digital prosthetics). The visual effects supervisor was Mark Spatny.
Here’s a fun video from production designer Dave Blass.
For folks using terms like "AI" and "Deep Fake" #Unification was all done in camera with @SamWitwer performance captured along with his Kirk version LIVE. This next level of Digital Prosthetic technology used by actors and craftsmen will be huge. It's technology in the hands of… pic.twitter.com/OnDXQux3cD
— Dave Blass (@DaveBlass) November 20, 2024
Head to OTOY’s blog post for more info.
