WEBVTT

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Hi!

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Can I teach you a lesson?

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Aw! Well, who's this little guy?

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This is Badgey.

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He's a virtual tutor

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who can walk you through
any Starfleet exercise

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you can imagine.

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Hi, I'm Mike McMahan,

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creator and showrunner of
Star Trek: Lower Decks.

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I'm not an animator,
and I can't draw,

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but I work with a lot
of amazing people,

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a lot of amazing artists,

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who can not only draw

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but just make amazing,
magic stuff come to life.

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I've been around it a lot,

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and even though I can't draw,

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I think I can walk you through
some of the stuff we do

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that takes us from nothing

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to a full Star Trek
animated episode.

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So, the writing process
of Lower Decks

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usually starts with a discussion
of our ensign characters.

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What do they want?

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What do they think they want?

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What are challenges
in their lives?

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And when we've come up with
a couple emotional stories,

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then we start talking about

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what sci-fi can illuminate that.

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For Badgey, I remember one
of the first things I did was

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I drew the character of Badgey

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on one of our glass doors
in the writer's room.

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And they were like,
"What's he like?"

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And I was like,
"Eh, I think he's like a

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Moriarty on the holodeck."

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And then we started
talking about

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what role does Moriarty
fill in TNG,

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and what job could Badgey,

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you know, what kind of stories

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could revolve around
this character.

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[Badgey] Can I teach you a lesson?

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Rutherford is great at
Starfleet tech,

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but he's not exactly perfect.

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So he's created this
Badgey character

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that he's been working on
on the holodeck,

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that he's trying to use
as a training program,

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and it's not quite working out.

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Once we have the Badgey
episode written and cast,

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we record the voice actors,

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and a audio engineer
stitches together their audio

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into basically like an
old-timey radio play version

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of the episode,

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to kind of visualize
it in your head

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while you're listening to it.

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[Badgey] Looks like you
wanna recover lost cargo.

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Did I get that right?

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[Rutherford] Oh, yeah,
almost forgot-

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[Badgey] Coming right up!

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That radio play goes to
the board teams,

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which is a group of artists who,

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in black and white,

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do a rough version of what
you see on screen at the end,

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except it's very low detail.

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Eventually, it all comes
together into an animatic.

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Come on, you stupid glitch!

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[electronic ding]

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We're back in business!

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The animatic is kind
of the template

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that we work off of,

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to, individually, shot by shot,

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add the character designs

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and the color backgrounds
and everything.

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When we get the rough color in,

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the episode's almost
ready for air.

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But that's when everything
has to be refined.

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That is where we go through

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and we add beaming effects.

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We add reflective light.

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We're also going in and we're
adding special sound effects.

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We have one sound engineer
whose whole job is to make sure

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that the soundscape
and the footsteps,

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the way the computer's
responding to somebody saying,

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Computer, load Bajoran
marketplace!

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Then on top of that,

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our composer is creating an
all-new, original score for us

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that sounds like Star Trek,

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but fits into this
20-something minute,

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you know, super fast-paced
comedic version of it.

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And then after all
of that is done,

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we take it to a mixer,

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we make sure that all
the levels are right,

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that you can hear everything.

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It really takes an army to put
one of these things together.

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You just want to make
sure it's exactly right

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before it ends up on
somebody's screen.

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So, when LA went into lockdown

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we were still in the middle
of working on Season 1

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of Star Trek: Lower Decks.

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And it took us about
a day to make sure

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that we got everybody moved
into remote workspaces

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in their homes.

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The nice thing about animation is

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we don't have a live-action set.

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Our biggest challenges have been

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how do we safely record our actors.

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Now, luckily, a voiceover
actor can work in a closet,

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if it's correctly set up.

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In addition to
animating and recording

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our voice actors remotely,

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Lower Decks has a live
orchestra for its amazing music.

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And originally, that was
supposed to be 60 people

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in an orchestra
playing in a room,

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but because of LA's lockdown

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we had to come up with a
way to have our composer

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record the musicians individually

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and then stitch everything together.

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I think it sounds great.

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Not only have we finished doing
post on Season 1 remotely,

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but we have written the
entirety of Season 2

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with the writer's room over Zoom
while we've been doing it.

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Some of our new writers
have never met in person

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some of the writers from
the first season.

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But, hopefully, this world
is getting back

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to a state of normalcy
soon enough,

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and we'll be able to see you
at a Star Trek convention,

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and we all will be
able to talk about

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where did Dr. T'Ana's tail go,

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and what's the deal with
Boimler's purple hair

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and all the stuff that we
like to talk about too.