Cast, Crew Chat Transcript

Some of the cast and crew of Star Trek XI, including JJ Abrams, participated in a fan chat session on TrekMovie.com, revealing some information about the plans for the movie including when the next teaser trailer will be released, goals of the film, and more. The chat occured on January 25th, also the last day of shooting on the Enterprise bridge.

The full transcript is here.

Highlights:
- Full list of participants: Director JJ Abrams, Executive Producer Bryan Burk, Executive Producer/co-writer Roberto Orci, VFX Supervisor Roger Guyett, Executive Producer Jeffrey Chernov, Unit Production Manager David Witz, John Cho(Sulu), Karl Urban (McCoy), Zoe Saldana (Uhura), Anton Yelchin (Chekov), Chris Pine (Kirk), and Zachary Quinto (Spock)
- Halfway through principle photography, hopeing to wrap by first week of April.
- First real trailer being worked on for Summer release. I am guessing with Iron Man since its one of Paramount's tentpole movies.
- One challenge was "getting a handle on the vision of the future" since some of the tech from the TOS (communicators, computers, etc) has been duplicated or surpassed by today's technology.
- Casting was other challenge, to get it right, Abrams very please with the cast.
- While filming, does have a team capturing behind the scene footage for the DVD.
- The teaser trailer has apparently been customized for regions of the world (replacing quotes and the like). Hmm need to find links to those.
- Greg Grunberg, Abrams bud, Heroes actor, and general good luck charm, was going to be in the movie but conflict with another movie role prevented him from being in it.
- Estimates about 1000 visual effects shots for the film using ILM tools, Maya, Renderman, and Shake.
- Commenting on a report of green screen heavy sets, Abrams said it was an exception. The goal "is to make Trek REAL", so will shoot on built sets and real locations when possible or practical.
- The door opening "Swoosh" will return.
- Abrams decided to direct (rather then just produce) do to the encouragement of his wife Katie and her love of the chracters.
- Apparently one of the stages the film is on is the same stage the series was made in the 60s just to bring things full circle.
- Aiming for a PG-13 rating for the film.
- In regards to canon from Orci: "...no decision will have been made out of ignorance of canon or details. — anything you see that you feel deviates from canon will have a canon inspired reason."