PRIME DIRECTION - Director Axelle Carolyn talks “The Griffin Incident”

[00:00:00] Hi, this is Axelle Carolyn and you're listening to Open Pike Night's Prime Direction, where you'll hear about directing Strange New Worlds until your ears bleed. Is this thing on? Hello? Hello?

[00:00:35] Welcome to Open Pike Night's Prime Direction, the series where we uncover the deep, dark history of what happened behind the scenes of each episode of Strange New Worlds. I'm your host, John T. Boulds. And let me introduce my co-host, first up, the man who firmly believes that the right figurine can make up for even the most neglectful parenting, Cameron Harrison.

[00:00:57] That's right, son. Now this is an original mint and clamshell box, Kenner, first run Boba Fett. So don't open it, don't play with it, just look at it and know how much daddy loves you. And the man who, wait, I could have sworn I just saw him, but sensors indicate there's nothing but us in the studio. So I guess Jesse Bailey just couldn't make it today. But here to detail her first foray into Star Trek, she's known to be detail oriented, driven and ambitious.

[00:01:24] And you'd have to be to bring Event Horizon to Strange New Worlds. Please welcome to the stage, Axelle Carolyn. Hi guys. Hello. Thank you for joining us today. Thank you for having me. We are very excited. I do want to say real quick, I'm a big Doomsday fan. So I will definitely be looking for you next time I watch in the background and great makeup all around.

[00:01:49] Speaking of which, so we oftentimes will ask the directors like why they think they were tapped for the episode they were given to direct for Strange New Worlds. But in your case, it seems a little obvious. You've acted in horror films, you've been a horror reporter, written your own horror stories, written horror television, directed feature films in television. What is it about the genre that you love so much?

[00:02:11] I, that's a very good question. It's been my obsession since I was little. And even not having access to horror movies, I started reading horror books when I was very young. I found my dad's collection of books that he read when he was a teenager, like Dracula and Edgar Allan Poe when I was probably eight or nine. And a lot of it went over my head, I think.

[00:02:35] But a lot of it just stuck with me for a very long time. And I was obsessed with ghosts and ghosts and skeletons. And then I figured I wanted to do something in horror when I was growing up, and I didn't really know what, and I wasn't sure if it was going to be directing.

[00:02:52] I think it's a very difficult thing to say when you're like 20 that, hey, I'm going to be a director, because it seems so impressive and so difficult. And there were so few women doing it at the time, too. So I kind of did any opportunity I got to do a job. I did some film PR as well. I think my first job was in film financing. I was a producer's assistant for about a week before I realized I was absolutely awful. And he realized it before I did, thankfully.

[00:03:21] He would be like, fix the coffee machine. And I'd be like, no, I don't drink coffee. But yeah, it's always been my passion. And I was writing from a young age, and I kept writing throughout. At some point, I wrote a script that I really liked, and I felt I don't want to pass it on to someone else. I want to make that myself.

[00:03:43] And so I made a few short films to kind of prepare and get ready. And then I made my first feature, which was a very low budget ghost story that was set in Wales that we shot when I was living in London at the time.

[00:03:57] And that was it. Like the moment that I realized with directing was like, that was my, that felt like my place that felt like the most satisfying. And it was almost like regardless of whether or not I'm good at this. It was just like, I feel like this is what I'm meant to be doing. This is where I'm the most satisfied. At the end of the day, I'm exhausted, but I'm so happy. And that feeling has remained.

[00:04:18] And, and, and, you know, as much as I love horror, I've had a couple of other passions on the side that were kind of not so much related, but like, love James Bond, love Star Trek. And Star Trek started when I was in my late teens with a friend introducing me to First Contact, because it had the Borgs. So she felt like it was probably going to be scary enough for me to be into it. And she was totally right. And if you'd asked me when I was a teenager, what kind of Star Trek episode I'd like to do, I'd be like,

[00:04:48] Spock and Kirk in a ghost ship. So you can imagine when I got the phone call that, hey, they want you for Star Trek. And it seems like it's a ghost ship episode. And I was like, could you repeat that? Because I feel like you said something that you can't possibly have said. You reached deep into my psyche. Do I get to eviscerate James Kirk? Can I do that? Can I hurt every single one of them? That's going to be great.

[00:05:14] Deeply hurt. Yeah. That is an interesting, because we usually like to ask people where their first, like what their relationship with Star Trek is. So I don't know that we've ever heard somebody say first contact is their first contact with Star Trek. How much other Trek exposure did you have after that?

[00:05:30] After that, quite a bit. Before that, I have to say none. I grew up in Belgium. And for some reason, as much as Star Wars is huge, their Star Trek is very ignored. And I didn't even have a good concept at the time of, I felt like it's a TV show and it's old, but it's also new when there's like movies. And this seems like a mess. I don't really know what it is.

[00:05:52] It's just like, I've heard of Spock, but that's about as far as I know about it. I don't even think I'd heard about Captain Kirk at the time. It was like, my knowledge was very much zero. And my friend at the time, Liz Lott, she was Swedish and she was really into Star Trek. I don't know why, but like all her friends in Sweden were into it.

[00:06:10] And she was the one who was, you have to see something. So, you know, at least you can tell me that you don't like it. And she picked that one specifically because of the kind of horror content. And then after that, I watched the other movies that led up to it, starting with the Next Generation crew. So it was more into Next Generation at first.

[00:06:31] And then I went backwards and I started watching the original series and I just saw kind of episodes that I could find on VHS. And then I saw the movies and the first movie almost stopped me from watching the other movies. I don't think you're alone at that. It's a horror movie in its own right. It has at least one moment that inspired this episode, which is the moment of, you know, whatever survived did not last long. Oh my gosh, that haunts my memories for sure.

[00:07:01] That's such a great line. That whole sequence is so, so good. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I got to ask with it being rebooted now, is there any chance you've got to pitch for a horror James Bond? Because I would watch that installment in a heartbeat. Oh man. Oh my God, that'd be amazing. That would be so cool. We'll put that out there. We'll write MGM and let them know that. They'll reach out to you. Well, I mean, you kind of mentioned that even people who don't know Star Trek know Spock, right?

[00:07:28] Now you've worked on a number of titles, you know, classic literature, even Sabrina the Teenage Witch is technically, I think, four years older than Star Trek. So an icon in her own right. But directing James Kirk and Spock, does that feel different when you're directing them, when you're in scenes with them? Do you feel like the weight or responsibility or even just the like, hey mom, look at me? That's a good question. I'll say this.

[00:07:53] I was so eager to do a great job and so eager to kind of make them see that they'd hired the right person. And before we started work, I was working on a different show in Toronto. So I said, hey, I'm going to stop by the studio and just come say hi and meet the team. And they were like, great, this is wonderful. And they took me for a little walk around the stages and they were, we were talking about the episode. So I really wanted to be like, all focused about the episode. Yes, I'm very serious. I know exactly how I'm going to, you know, this is.

[00:08:23] And then we step onto the set and it's the hallway and I'm just full of goosebumps. And that's where you realize, oh my God, I'm on the Enterprise. Oh my God. And then we keep walking and we go to a different stage and we step on the bridge. And I started tearing up and everybody turned because they know everybody gets that kind of reaction. You know, they hire people they know are going to be sensitive to that material

[00:08:51] and are going to be excited to step on the bridge. And there's no way you can, you can work on it for years apparently and still be incredibly impressed by the captain's chair and not want to sit at it unless you really, you know, it's always a special moment. But they all turned and they were like, oh yes, yeah, yeah. That's, we forgot it's your first time. Yes, it's a moment. So yeah, there's, part of you is very aware of the legacy

[00:09:17] and aware of the legend that surrounds those characters. And, and, and, but you also have to kind of forget about it when you're, when you're working obviously, because otherwise you would never be able to do the job properly. But you also have to understand where those characters are heading, especially in the case of Spock to know in an episode like this one, there was a lot of discussions about how much he could show his emotions and how much he could show that he was scared because my whole point of view was,

[00:09:46] I don't think the audience is going to be scared if the characters are not scared. You'd live through those characters. So if you see Spock going through it with a very Vulcan attitude, there's a good chance that people will not be disturbed if they're watching someone who seems to have everything under control. So there was a line to kind of go through to find how much of that he could show. So, and Robbie had built the episode in a way that was very clever,

[00:10:12] where this was Spock's journey towards his Vulcan side. So he starts being reasonably human. You know, he's having a human relationship. He is kind of drawn towards the more human side of his personality. And his exploration of his human side is pushed to its limits. And then he's brought back to reality through his use of logic. And that brings him back to his Vulcan side,

[00:10:39] as we can see in the final scenes when he's talking to Nurse Chapel. And he's much more Vulcan than he was in the beginning of the episode. So that, I guess, it's a very long way of explaining that. Yeah, I think you are. But you also have to try to power through it and not feel, you know, the weight of that legacy on your shoulders. Yeah. You've got to be a professional. Yeah.

[00:11:04] And with this episode being a horror episode more so than probably any episode of Star Trek, did that give you an opportunity to do something you haven't yet been able to do with the horror genre or approach it in a different way because it is Star Trek also? Yes. I feel like, first of all, I think you can work with the horror tropes and put them in a new environment and it will feel fresh. So there was a degree of, we're just going to explore the technical side of horror

[00:11:33] and we're going to explore things that maybe it's not entirely new, but in the context of a ship, of a spaceship, it's entirely new. Like, basically, it's like The Shining or The Haunting based on a spaceship. And that makes it feel fresh all by itself. But to me, I was really interested in, like, that technical exercise of building tension and building fear. And the script was quite specific about the characters' journeys and the, well, even the scares.

[00:12:03] But there was a lot of latitude. The ghosts were not described. So I could go in there and kind of design them the way I wanted. There were a lot of scenes that were set in hallways and we had to make them look different because we're basically always shooting in the same hallway. It's always the same stage. So you have to make it look different from one deck to another and try to come up with different ways of lighting it and of making it look spooky.

[00:12:30] The script would mention there's various ghosts that they don't notice. So I loved going with, I don't know if you noticed them, but in the beginning when they get on the griffon, before you see the one who's walking behind them, there's a couple of ghosts that are kind of hidden. And you might not see them and that's totally fine. But if you see them, I'm sure there'll be a little bit of a moment of, and that's very inspired by my clan against haunting of Hill House. I thought it was very fun to just have ghosts that are not, you can see them, you can not see them.

[00:12:59] It might enhance your experience or you might, it doesn't change anything if you don't see them. Yeah, there was, it was just a pure exercise in tension and in character-based scares. And that was, it was a pretty great challenge. Yeah. Okay. I do have a little follow-up to that. I don't know if you remember, Cam, David Lynch made that video about people watching movies on phones and stuff like that. Oh, yes. Now, if you're playing the movie on a telephone,

[00:13:27] you will never in a trillion years experience the film. It's such a sadness that you think you've seen a film on your fucking telephone. Get real. When you're shooting a horror show or movie like this, like how, how much is that in your mind? Like this is supposed to be in a dark theater on a big screen kind of thing. Does it frustrate you that knowing that some people are just going to be

[00:13:54] watching this on their phone in a car or something like that? On a bus. Yeah. I don't think about it when I'm shooting. Although I'm always aware that it's probably the best it's ever going to look because you're on those like, I don't know, 40, $50,000 monitors watching that. You get to see the best version of the episode. Pretty much, pretty much. But the only thing that frustrates me is when people say, oh, it's too dark because you're watching things during the daytime without closing the curtains.

[00:14:23] Like if you're watching a horror movie during the daytime, please close the curtains. Make sure that the reflection of your windows is not going to completely make it look like you're watching something that's just white and bright. Because we do put a lot of effort into, and I know that when they go through color correction, that's a big thing that's being taken into account as well. It's like the degree of how much do we reveal? How much do we show those ghosts? How much do we? So that's the one thing I would recommend. Wherever, if you're watching on a phone, if you're watching on a massive screen,

[00:14:53] I don't really mind. Just make sure that you're watching it in an environment that's a little bit dark so you can see it. I like it. My son's at the age where I'm starting to introduce him to horror movies, and he keeps asking, like, can we watch the next Nightmare on Elm Street? In the middle of the day, I'm like, we got to wait till it's dark. When it's night, we'll watch the next one, but not right now at noon. Good parenting. Good parenting. That's great. Well, you talked about designing the ghost. Can you talk about the design for Rose Harper? Did you have a lot of say in that? Yes, I did. So I know you guys spoke to Chris Fisher,

[00:15:23] and he's the one who was my first contact, I guess, with Strange New Worlds, and he'd introduced filming the episodes like, we want you to make your movie. So here's the script, here's the budget, here's the sets, here's the characters. Have fun. And sometimes you get told that in TV, and you realize that there's limits to what they actually mean by that. And in this case, it really was, he really bent it,

[00:15:52] and it really was the way that it worked. Of course, you work with the showrunners, and of course, Akiva and Henry mostly have a lot of things to communicate when it comes to the journey of the characters, because they know where those characters need to end up for the next episodes, and they're very specific about just their arcs throughout the episodes. But when it came to scares, they were very, very trusting, and they just said, look, you can change the lenses, you can change the lighting, you can decorate that set the way you want.

[00:16:21] We're on the Griffin, but obviously we're shooting on the sets of the Enterprise. And the stage is, you can't paint the walls, those walls are white, and those walls reflect the light. So good luck trying to make it look dark, but you can do whatever you like for that. And in the case of the design of the ghosts, it was the same thing. It was kind of, well, we have an idea of what's on the page, but just go and make it spooky. And we, my main inspiration was, I remember the concept that I gave

[00:16:50] was the design of the ghost in Guillermo del Toro's The Devil's Backbone, where it just feels like it's almost like cracked porcelain. And it's a very, it's pale, and it's, it's very elegant. It's very simple. It's, I didn't want something that was going to look too zombie-like either. So it's very ethereal, I think. And then they did a few tests, and, and it was very fun to see our actress, Rose Harper, discovering

[00:17:21] how little she needs to do to look spooky when she's in that makeup. Like, she looked at herself in the, in the camera, and, and she saw what it looked like when she just set the lines without even trying to be threatening or anything. And it just came across so creepy. So she played it very beautifully. Yeah, and then working with Bernadette to design the costumes to make sure that they weren't zombie-like. So I didn't want them to be frayed or to be, to have holes, but they just look like they've been damaged by time.

[00:17:49] And they have those kinds of, yeah, she did it really nicely. I don't know how they aged. Bernadette loves weathering stuff. Every time we talk to her, she's like, we weathered it like this. She's amazing, and she has solutions for everything. It's just, it's, it's really impressive. And then we had conversations about what the various, ghosts in the background were going to look like. Like, what's the mix of different aliens? And are we going to bring, like, I didn't want anything that looked too floofy, too, too floofy, or too silly. You know,

[00:18:18] there's only so many scary and Dorians you can have, so it's kind of, yeah, just trying to find the mix of, it's, and it was all Starfleet people, so it was all uniform. But we have a couple that have, like, extra long arms. We have a couple that walk a little bit funny. We, it was fun. It was fun. You could do a good assortment of different, different monsters in there. That's cool. And, like you mentioned, with the, the walls being white, the Enterprise is designed to be, like, a welcoming and comforting place for people. It's comforted literal

[00:18:48] generations of viewers go more into the challenge of what it was like to shoot the Enterprise as spooky. Like, what kind of challenges did you really run into? That was the first conversation I had with Jonathan, production designer, and Glenn, the DP. And I know Glenn was, he really resented not being able to paint those walls. But, but what's fantastic is that everybody on this crew is so eager

[00:19:17] to honor the legacy of the show and to figure out what you have in mind and make it the best it can possibly be. So, there's never anybody who's cutting any corners. They know that we have to make it look a certain way and they're going to work until this works. And so I, from the start, knew that we were, we were going to find a solution somehow. And, and I think it's a combination of not using bigger lights and kind of just using accent lights in the hallways, for example. And then we did things

[00:19:47] like there's, there's a hallway that has plastic sheets hanging down that kind of looks like it's in, it's being refurbished. And we put a little bit of atmos in there so that you have just a little bit of wind that moves it so you never know exactly what's behind those sheets. and it was working with the sound as well to kind of make it feel like things were moving when you can't tell where something might be coming from. But yeah, we, one of the sets

[00:20:17] that I love the most is Sikbe. I love working in there and I love the way that we ended up lighting it and it was all those shafts of very white light that fall on each of the beds. And so when the ghost sits up, when the body sits up behind Spock, it catches the light so beautifully. Remember seeing that when I was watching it on the monitor and I, I giggled out loud. I was like, oh my God, this is so good. This is exactly what I was hoping for. Was that Gia in the body bag sitting up? Yes.

[00:20:46] It was for that shot? Yeah. Oh, wow. Very, she does a good Michael Myers. Yeah, it was a good spooky sit up. She did, yes. Very physical and that was exactly the reference. It was exactly like sit up like Michael Myers. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, speaking of medbane references, I mentioned this to Robbie too because there's the scene with Spock where he turns around and suddenly there's bodies everywhere behind him when there wasn't before which made me think and because you mentioned TNG one of your first Star Treks, maybe think of like the Dr. Crusher scene,

[00:21:16] a very similar scene where like they all sit up and she looks around and has to use logic to realize it's not happening. Was that, were you thinking of that scene when you shot it or? You know, very luckily, I didn't remember that episode when we shot it and I purposefully did not go back into watching all the horror episodes of Star Trek at the time but I have watched it since and I know that there's a lot of similarities in the way that the episodes are set up but it goes in very different directions but yes, that scene made me laugh when I saw it and I thought, okay, I'm glad that we've,

[00:21:45] I'm glad that I didn't see it ahead of time and I'm glad that I think they feel very different. Yeah. I mean, yeah, like the blood pooling into the body bag and stuff it definitely is like this is not your dad's arm which I guess is us this is not our Star Trek version of that like oh no, it's darker now so it worked very effectively. It feels similar in that it gives me the same feeling but obviously, yeah, they're two totally different things which I think is like the right reference like make me feel the same way

[00:22:15] but in a different execution. Yeah. Yeah. That blood pooling in the body bags was one of the most difficult parts of the episode actually. It doesn't seem like much but it was a combination of figuring out between makeup and like between special effects and props like finding the right body bag finding the right how opaque it should be so that you can see the outline of the body but you can't see that the body is clearly just a doll, a puppet and just having like

[00:22:44] we made some of the parts of it a little bit wet so that you could see a little bit of the outline at the top and then kind of making sure that you can fill those body bags without like the challenge was that if you actually fill the body bag with whatever liquid it is it's going to be so incredibly heavy and you can't reset it so it was also like they put up a little mattress that looked like a layer of blood at the bottom and it was a whole thing but it was so great and again everybody took so much

[00:23:14] time to figure it out and to make sure that you read on the page the body bags start filling up and everybody has a different image of it it's really interesting when you read a script you have a very specific image that comes to your mind but it's not necessarily the image that the props master will have or that the special effects people will have or some people thought oh it's going to pull from the top down or it's going to like it's the body that's bleeding so there were a lot of discussions to try to figure out how to make it how to make it happen but I felt like to me the coolest way

[00:23:43] was just like the body bag itself starts filling up from the bottom up and yeah that's what we ended up doing that's so cool you mentioned cinematographer Glenn being sad he couldn't paint the wall so he had to paint them with light can you just talk about working with him on that did you guys have a lot of the shared references when you were trying to describe what you wanted or how was that we did we did Glenn is fantastic I absolutely love working with him and he's some cinematographers like to do all the shot listing together and be very very kind of

[00:24:13] nit gritty from the beginning and in his case he prefers to just be like look I'm here you have questions there's things we need to explore together let's just do it but other than that I'm a resource you can come to and so I would shot list and I would come up with references and then we'd discuss and then he would discuss ways to make it happen practically and it's interesting because you don't have you maybe don't spend every single day entirely in prep together the way that you sometimes do

[00:24:42] but he's so ready when you get started in production and he knows his stage so well and he's designed the lighting so he knows exactly how to do every single part of it and so I felt sometimes like it was almost like he was reading my mind I would explain in a shot and we would discuss it and he would get sometimes you have to kind of go with an approximation of what you have in mind because it's not exactly possible somehow he always nailed what I had in mind it was wonderful

[00:25:12] like it was so satisfying but in the case of the lighting it was a lot of like showing him references giving him images and then he would ask like he would show me how about this kind of light or how about this or he would take photos of a test that he would be doing and then oh maybe a little bit less blue a little bit more white here a little bit more it really felt like a very very close collaboration and I was again so delighted with the results that we had the amount of times that I giggled behind that monitor

[00:25:41] was anytime you feel something come straight from your brain and appear on a screen it's just such a great feeling and a surreal experience so I had a lot of that on Star Trek John and I got to sit visit the set just for a day or two but we got to watch Akiva working with Glenn and I got the impression like yeah Akiva would throw something to him and Glenn would be like great give me five minutes we'll make that happen but every time Akiva would be like all right Glenn do your thing now and then he'd be like a kid in a candy store like doing his

[00:26:11] cinematographer shot so he really seemed to like embrace both like I get to do my thing but I'm going to do everything I can to make your vision happen too yes is that how you felt extremely fun and I think and I think that because they have to get used to doing so many different types of you know it's not just like oh it's a sci-fi show and we're just doing sci-fi or it's just action they have an action episode they have a musical episode they have a horror episode they have a comedy episode and they've come straight from filming a comedy episode because we were we didn't shoot this as the second one we shot it as the fourth one I think

[00:26:41] so so it's a very different look and then you go into something completely different and they have to be so adaptable and they have to rely on the filmmaker to kind of bring it back to whatever this episode needs so it felt again felt very satisfying to have a whole crew who's so used to having a guest director come in and listening to a different voice all of a sudden so you brought up I don't want to gloss over too much you brought up you didn't go back and watch the other horror episodes until you were done with this

[00:27:11] there's a lot of discussion about what Star Trek episodes are horror episodes I would love to know your list of what you went back and watched after you finished filming this I did not go back and watch much afterwards but I wish I did and the list that I would use would be the same ones that are online I went to the next generation episode because I knew that that was kind of the closest to what we'd done in some ways like just looking at the synopsis and from what I remembered from watching it at

[00:27:40] the time and then just the fact that it's night terrors you know it's but I don't know horror for Star Trek I always think the Borg somehow or something much more psychological maybe there's one that I'm forgetting but I can't think of many others that play that much on more body horror a lot of people use impact nor from deep space now but yeah that's that's psychological more than I don't know if there is beyond like you said the transporter

[00:28:09] from from the motion picture like not a ton of body horror going on I don't think there's anything like what we did to Sam Kirk yes yeah I believe Jesse our other host his question on that to Robbie was how dare you I'm asking how you actually accomplished it and Robbie walked us through the rig and everything but yeah that was as one of those like are they going to do this oh they're doing it oh the shot's still going on

[00:28:41] and there's a part of it that's also you know you're when you're doing TV production is yours but post production moves on back to Akiva and Henry so if you have a shot that's mostly VFX I've planned it I've storyboarded it I have I've mentioned what I'd like but at the end

[00:29:11] floating into space which I was so enamored by and they went there they did it and they even went there's a little detail that I had pitched that I was sure was never going to make it but is in there there there's little droplets of blood hitting the camera which is a little bit of

[00:29:42] the final draft of the script at all do you know to be honest I I was hired I didn't get the script right away I didn't know that the script wasn't finished that's a Robbie secret yes there was one scene yes the teleporter scene we changed for various reasons what was written originally which was very cool would have been very difficult to achieve and we didn't really have time the motion

[00:30:11] picture and was all relying on her acting which I think she did amazingly like those screams were so chilling oh my god oh the ortegas yeah yeah yes yeah that's one big one we changed I'm sure there's little details that we modified but not much really certainly not anything that had to do with the the plot points the storyline like the and the major scares it was all there and Robbie also talked about the moment

[00:30:41] that Laan has her turn near the end and how he mentioned it was like the moment on set was unnerving and the two of you sharing some looks behind Chrissy through Laan's journey and does you have experience as a horror actress to help with that I acted very briefly and very poorly so that's very rarely my reference I did it because literally you know you're a 20 year old blonde

[00:31:11] people throw you in front of the camera that was the extent of my acting experience so I would never dare just be like I would do it like this can you at least relate with them on being covered in blood and screaming and dying on the camera for sure no I think that the acting the very brief acting experience has given me a lot of respect for what they do and

[00:31:41] how difficult it and it was so fun to push her in a completely different extreme and Chrissy's so good and she's I can't stress enough how fearless she is when it comes to okay I'll try that and then she tries something and I try to push it further and she's like

[00:32:10] sure great got it and she that the way that she smiled the way that she's kind of amused by you know there's there's always a temptation to play villainous when you're doing something like the turn that she has at the very end and and I felt like it might be more fun if it looks like she's elated like she's so happy to be there like she's like oh this is my place at last and there's a smile that she gives oh god it's way more chilling and speaking

[00:32:40] of smiles by the way Anson is also one who's you don't have to push very much to get amazing things she goes on quite a journey and those last scenes were we did a lot of takes with a lot of different variations but she was pretty amazing on every one of them yeah well I mean speaking of Anson Robbie called you out on the sheer joy you had at filming the chef pike scene would you like would you care to comment

[00:33:10] on that sure that joy started in prep when we were trying to figure out how to do I don't know how much he talked to you about this I'm sure he must have mentioned the s word the s word the s we can figure out how to make those fingers cut properly and not feel like when you were cutting with the knife like if you do that on prosthetics like on latex you try cutting with the knife and the prosthetics just kind of

[00:33:40] jump up like bounce and it looked terrible and I remember Akiva saying you know it should be like like cutting through sausage and they did a version that was made of sausage and covered it with just a layer of something that looked like skid and that's what we used eventually he's cutting through hot dogs basically that is cool we did not get there now it's very joyful just knowing that but yes it was very fun to see everything came together you had

[00:34:10] to have the hot dogs perfect you had to have like the blood spurting in the right way and then Anson is wearing kind of a prosthetic that covers part of his did a few takes that were played more straight and then I kind of asked if he could go more Jack

[00:34:39] Nicholson and more delighted with it and he was I mean I feel like he really loves it when you give him something to was a fantastic scene to shoot frankly it's a fantastic scene to watch yes it was definitely

[00:35:09] one of those I was like oh he's got he could cut his fingers out they won't do they did that yes yes and there used to be a shot where he's looking at his cut fingers before he passes out in some ways I'm kind of glad that it's not in there because it's you were behind the camera filming the darkest episode of Star Trek did

[00:35:40] you direct the three different stories and actors in different specific ways for for the movie they were in for the story they were in well they're all kind of in the same genre of of horror so technically it was fairly similar obviously there's differences in the way technical side of it one of the biggest adjustments is that on Star Trek you're used to

[00:36:10] you go through a corridor people walk fast they have somewhere to go they're talking as they do it like a hallway scene is going to last five seconds and we if people walk around the griffin the way they walk around the enterprise no one is going to be scared so it was a lot of

[00:36:40] like let's slow it down no you're walking slower no the camera is slower slower camera move everybody's just creeping around like and Chrissy took that to heart very quickly and they would do a take walking all together and before I even said anything before we reset she would be like it's a horror movie let's go slower it was really great but yeah a lot of that for each one of them was like no this turn slower you don't know what's behind you you

[00:37:10] don't want to react right away you crept out you don't understand what way so you have to move differently and for each of them that was one of the biggest challenge was what they were all together okay because I think that they're so used to at that point just having that kind of banter between them and just being very efficient well speaking of how different characters react differently my favorite of the stories was the Spock one because watching Spock specifically

[00:37:40] in a Vulcan deal with the supernatural around him that felt like Star Trek horror to me that perfect blend and you mentioned but he's still got to be scared or it doesn't work so can you talk about how do you get Spock to show fear and maybe just approaching that very Vulcan lens of horror was that different I mean I know all horror movies usually have at least the skeptical character but this felt

[00:38:10] at the door and he puts down his flashlight he goes very slowly like he's just kind of trying to assess the environment I felt he was when he was moving slower it always felt like it was calculating what was around him which is a very Spock thing to do so it worked very nicely with the

[00:38:40] was going to be right in that scene and just adjust what it was needed and just going look I

[00:39:10] like we did with Kirk his reaction to Sam's death is interrupted because I find it very striking when you have something that you can see how distraught they are but you don't have to linger on it again he's so attuned to

[00:39:40] brought back by being centered into his Vulcan side but it was really fun because his section is the one that feels like a nightmare like weird nightmare logic especially when the cavalry arrives and they take him out into the hallway and then they come back to Tupring and then suddenly it's Pike who's the villain and all of that was really you almost don't you can have a vision for how it's going

[00:40:39] really such thing as too much blood my bigger issue is that the blood was green and it doesn't feel as painful as if the blood was red for us humans I think so it

[00:41:11] yeah speaking of bringing him back to logic I do love his chant because it's the Vulcan chant of logic and Vulcans are kind of creepy in general but when he's chanting it feels like something straight from the evil dead or Mola Ram chanting from Temple of Doom it feels creepy and part of this movie within an episode did you develop that chant had that already been written when you that had been written I love that you see it like that I do feel like there's

[00:41:41] something that feels like a witchcraft ritual we kind of shot it mostly from the point mess with you but I loved how much it was just questioning the entire time

[00:42:11] like all right what's real what's not who's good who's not who's like is and until we get the turn at the very end Robbie mentioned that you were really adept at knowing which shots and moments to use like you mentioned cutting off cutting off reactions is more effective than dwelling on them but he mentioned you were really good at determining where to use your time and budget can you talk about one shot that was really important for you to get just right and where you decided to spend more time or a series of

[00:42:40] shots or things like that well all the everything that builds up to a scare has to be just so it feels sometimes I feel like a lot of people look down on horror and feel like it's one of the easiest emotions to get out of somebody but I think it's very much a misunderstanding because for something to feel atmospheric and feel like a scare is earned you have to put a lot of work into what lenses to use like it's a very precise kind of if you go with a wider lens you're going to see more of the environment it's going to look a little bit more deformed

[00:43:10] but you can't use that all the time so you kind of specifically pick what shots to use that for a white lens is kind of image and sometimes I love to put one of those lenses right in someone's face so it looks like when Spock is on the table for example you go with a wider lens and it gives a

[00:43:41] slightly surreal feel to it sometimes it's picking a white that's seen from a bigger distance or from behind something so it how long your lens has to be so you can see something in the background or you can't like there's a lot of playing with very technical details and everything for that has to be just right

[00:44:10] but one of the shots that we did the most takes on I of the ear so we didn't have to go from a close up to another close up so it was finding the angle where the camera could see his face properly but also still see the ear very properly and then adding

[00:44:40] to that difficulty is the fact that the way we did it they built a prosthetic on top of his ear that was kind of pre-cut so Gia had to cut at a specific spot that was just above his ear and she was so scared of cutting into his ear and obviously he was quite attached to his ear so he also was worried about how it was going to work out so the more takes we did the more it felt like you have to go for it I

[00:45:10] wanted it to not feel like a clean snip I wanted to feel the moment you know you get the shot the moment you I don't know sometimes you watch something and it's not quite right and then you get the take and you know it's the take and it's that satisfying moment of it's come together we know it's going

[00:45:40] to the show who makes her return this season is Gia as Dupring I just think she brings such a nuance to this character that could easily be one note and even here where she's just a figment of the imagination she delivers such a great performance can you talk about working with her on that and in general with the characters

[00:46:10] who are figments but we don't know that at first how did you direct that at all Gia is awesome and it's funny how when you don't know actors other than through the characters they play it was the case for Ethan too although Ethan I met a little bit earlier in pre-production we had a couple

[00:46:43] of something goes wrong and you have a Vulcan who just goes fuck it's hilarious and you're realizing oh I'm talking to a regular human it's really dumb but I had a little bit of that and Gia is very funny and she's also very open to this was such a weird role for her so you can

[00:47:13] be a little different from what you would usually be the way we looked at it was you are seen through the eyes of Spock you there's

[00:47:43] a psychological study but anytime there was any question of how do I do this and is this aligned with what the character usually is it's well you're seen through the eyes of Spock or you're seen through the eyes of Kirk so it's going to be a little different so this cast is obviously full of fantastic actors and we never like to play favorites but as a horror director did you have any you're like that's a horror actor right there anybody who you

[00:48:13] just work with and be that kind of star honestly I would cast any of them in a movie but I think Chrissy really embraced it I think she was great I would cast her as a villain for sure I'd be super curious to see what Ethan would do as a villain I think that would be so against type that it would be really fun but he's

[00:48:54] very yeah but again I would happily cast any of them in horror I think they would all be so much fun and we asked we were interviewing for another one of

[00:49:31] they really did really nicely I felt at script stage conceptually that they managed to give a little bit of humor to this episode but they didn't go too far in it so they really kind of Star Trek usually whatever the genre you're making there's going to be moments of humor and they went very light on that in this one and I think that was a great decision because it really allowed us to

[00:50:02] well speaking of all that do you have a favorite horror movie or maybe top three you'd suggest people check out you can't say your own oh my god that's difficult the one I usually go back to is the fly the version of the fly which is one of the first horror movies I watched back at the time I was obsessed with Jeff Goldblum because of Jurassic Park and so I saw that he was in the horror movie oh my

[00:50:32] god I gotta see that and it felt really emotional watching it and I still feel like it's one of the most beautiful love

[00:51:02] stories ever put on screen but it is also a proper horror movie and proper body horror and that just a position of special effects and emotions was really what stuck with me and that's always what I try to achieve and that's why Star Trek is so good for this is that Star Trek is all about the characters so obviously every scare in here is going to be based on the specificities of the character and the worst nightmare for each of those characters so it's the fact that it's

[00:51:32] very psychological and very tied to those character emotions so The Fly would be one a big inspiration for this one and one that I come back to for a lot of a lot of shows I always have references from The Haunting from 1963 classic ghost story just beautifully shot again one that I saw pretty early on so it made a big impression but it plays with those white lenses I was talking about the cinematography

[00:52:02] is impeccable and it shows you very little there's not a lot of scares but the atmosphere is so thick and to me it's a great example of seen since in other horror movies that have been copied I really recommend that one I don't know there's so much I'm trying to think of what else serves as inspiration for this one there was definitely some

[00:52:32] shots from the haunting yeah watch the devil's backbone the devil's backbone is really good I haven't yet I need to it's definitely like I think that's my favorite del toro okay and again it plays with the supernatural in a way that's not necessarily what you expect it's not necessarily the

[00:53:14] ears off and as long as they make it back to the med band enterprise they're going to be fine and ready for next week's adventure like that's that's unique in the horror realm so that that was I'm glad you

[00:53:44] not have to worry about that because it's like psychologically yeah I'm pretty physically and still they just run a little light over them and they're okay I like what Mbega says at the end that physically they're going to be okay but mentally there's going to be some scars yeah I mean we've been promised this episode will have ramifications that are not over yet so nice we look forward to that yes so do I I haven't seen the others

[00:54:14] now I apologize Axel I don't think we warned you about this our final question is do you have a favorite shot from this episode oh my god yes I do it'll be to bring sitting up behind Spock yes that's a good one very good shot and I like you did that really well like the sitting up behind Spock running across the hallway behind Kirk and Laan as they're walking down you are

[00:54:43] super skilled at those kind of deep background stuff I've watched the episode three phenomenal he's I recommend looking up on youtube his edition for America's Got Talent contortionist and he's incredible and it was

[00:55:13] almost like let's let's rein him in instead of letting him do this thing because he can do all kinds of crazy backwards walking on his hands insane it was just I just wanted something a little bit disquieting but he gave us 15 different versions of what he could do there it was really cool and it was the timing of trying to have them finish their dialogue and turning the flashlight just as he's leaving and the timing of that one was difficult to get yeah I

[00:55:55] there's two or three figures towards the beginning like I mentioned who are hidden you probably won't see but I'll give you a hint on what one of them is when they're leaving the engineering room they're going through the first hallway look up above them okay very cool and did anything like Spock's ears anything land on the cutting room floor that we didn't get to see in this episode no not really no I don't think

[00:56:25] there might be some good outtakes maybe some good bloopers there's a moment where the doors close and the sick bay and Ethan had to run towards the door and the shoes have very slippery soles and he ate shit and he was oh you know he kind of gets up and he's like I'm fine I'm fine it's nothing it's nothing and then later on I saw that he opened his elbow and

[00:56:54] oh professional what was the original transporter scene ortegas was going to be transferred into a wall she's going to be fused into a wall oh philadelphia experiment style yes it was just really cool and I love the idea but it's very difficult to build an entire wall on you know the downside of going into a different genre every time is that you have two weeks to prep

[00:57:23] and two weeks to shoot like a little bit more than two weeks to shoot but two weeks to prep that's not a lot of time to build an entire wall that would be molded after like which parts of the body can we see and so we started looking into that and then it just kind of felt like it wasn't going to give us what we were hoping for so yeah instead it it kind of played on on her performance and on her screams and we did a lot of takes of that and that was kind of on me but I just wanted to make sure that we had what we needed but I felt bad because it

[00:57:53] was she made it look like she really was in pain it was very disturbing to watch what we got was pretty disturbing yeah well done she's such a trooper she'll just go to those places and look like she's being broken into pieces and scream and then and then she just kind of shakes it off and go I'm fine I can totally do another and I think she was she was good at hiding the fact that it was it was taking a toll so I'm glad that we didn't do too much of it but yeah what a trooper like all of them

[00:58:23] they're absolutely amazing well Axel thank you very much for joining us and welcome to Star Trek welcome to joining the ranks of so many fantastic directors we really appreciate you joining us thank you so much for having me this is so much fun there's few things I love discussing more than this episode I'm so curious to hear Robbie's episode it's so fun to like relive it through someone else's eyes right and we got on so well and you don't

[00:58:53] always in TV you don't always have the writer with you on every episode like I think on Star Trek you probably do but not on every show and sometimes it feels like I'm not even sure what the you know what they're supposed to be doing but in this case we were I could use him as a gut check I could kind of like see his reaction we would both giggle at the same parts and it was like we have a lot of the same references and the same movies that we watched

[00:59:22] and also he has a very silly side to him that worked very nicely with mine like we I don't know if he told you about the eyeballs that he found mechanical eyeballs that you can like race against each other so we would do that every day and I also had a 3D printed little arm of Kirk's kid that they 3D printed one to show me what the size was going to be like and because I was at the monitor when they

[00:59:52] brought it I asked to keep it and I would use it to point at stuff and also to hold my chin and also to hit on someone else's face and at some point it disappeared and I was there was a shot that we were doing that was on a close up of something so they had a smaller little clapper board and they held it with the little arm it was really fun that's fantastic well thank you again hopefully

[01:00:23] if maybe you're coming back next season we'll speak again perhaps perhaps thank you guys so much it's so nice to meet you both you as well thank you you