Star Trek: Unity - Episode 1 "Disunity" and Episode 2 "Disunity, Part 2"

[Tanveer_Naseer]

Hi everyone,

My name is Tanveer Naseer and I want to share with you our series “Star Trek: Unity”. Our series is set in the time period between “Enterprise” and The Original Series (TOS) and at the moment, we're are working on a series of prequel audio-only episodes that introduces our characters and plotlines that you'll be seeing in our full CGI, animated series (you can see a teaser trailer for our animated series on our project website at www.startrekunity.com – click on the image link on the main page to see the trailer).

We released our first episode, “Disunity” in December 2007 which was nominated for the 2008 Parsec Award for Best Audio Drama – a proud accomplishment you can be sure of considering that it was our premiere episode. The follow-up episode “Disunity, Part 2” was released just a few weeks ago. I directed both of these episodes as well as co-writing them with my good friend Matt Boardman.

You can download one of 3 MP3 versions of this episode or an audio CD image from our website -

www.startrekunity.com

Alternatively, for those who prefer getting their audio dramas from podcast feeds, you can download our episodes, and the director's commentary for “Disunity”, from our feed found here:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/StarTrekUnity

Now one of the big reasons that I wanted to post our series here is because I'm currently in pre-production on our 3rd episode, which I will again be directing but writing solo this time, and I'm gearing up to start casting the key guest starring roles in this episode. Although I expect it to be a few more weeks before I post casting calls in the appropriate section of this board, I wanted to draw everyone's attention here to our series because even after our 3rd episode is cast, we'll still be needing people for our fourth and final audiosode as well as actors for our animated series.

If you're a fan of science fiction or good drama with a focus on character development, I think you'll enjoy the episodes that we created to date. Indeed, these episodes demonstrate both the kinds of stories and production values that we want to achieve for our series.

So I invite all of you to check out our 2 episodes and I hope many of you will be interested in trying out for the future roles we'll have to offer with each subsequent episode.

Of course if anyone is interested in knowing more about our series and such, please do not hesitate to send me a PM here. Thanks in advance for everyone's interest and I look forward to working with many of you soon.

[hudson]

Listened when released and very good they were too. Looking forward to number 3.

[Tanveer_Naseer]

Thank you, Hudson. Although the release of episode 2 took longer than I wanted, I must say that I'm quite pleased with the final product. I'm personally looking forward to Episode 3 as it's a nice, stand-alone episode that allows some deeper exploration of one of our key characters. It will also touch on a societal issue which to date hasn't been getting much exposure in dramatic works.

In any case, I'm glad you enjoyed our first two episodes.

[panetta]

Nice work Tanveer, I didn't notice any crew credits on your site. I was wondering about your editing, music, sound design and mix credits.

[Tanveer_Naseer]

Thanks, panetta, I appreciate that.

In regards to crew credits on our site, the reason why we don't have any listed is because the editing, sound design and mixing was all done by me. And so, rather than have my name repeated for each role, I just lumped them all under the "Produced by" credit.

In the case of "Disunity, Part 2", I also added the task of composing the score heard throughout the episode to the above tasks - for "Disunity", I worked on creating new mixes of existing works, though in one scene near the end, I did write an original score.

For our third episode, I'll be writing the episode myself (the first two I co-wrote with my fellow co-executive producer of the series, Matt Boardman, who's currently at work on the CG work for our animated series). I'll also be again taking on the role of directing and producing the episode. Of course, I'm hoping once we start our animated series that we'll have guest directors/writers brought in so I can focus more on the series development - if not get a bit of a break from all the work.

Again, I'm glad you enjoyed these two episodes. As you can imagine, they were both a labour of love. And yet, with the next episode, I would love to see us make some more improvements, specifically in the acting department. And for that, well, I'm hoping I'm in the right place.

[Jack J Ward]

Very cool! Thanks for posting here!
I'll give it a listen.
My own Trek show I wrote takes place just before Kirk arrives.. or rather, in parallel with the beginning of Kirk's five year mission.

Keep it up!
J

[Tanveer_Naseer]

Hi Jack,

Thanks for the warm welcome.

Your show sounds interesting and I can imagine you must be curious to see how your vision of Kirk's early years will compare to Abrams' interpretation.

In any case, I do hope to frequent this site as a resource for finding actors to play the many parts we'll be casting as our series continues to move forward. With our 2 episodes now out, I'm confident that people will get a good handle on both the level of production quality we're aiming for and the kind of storytelling/character development we want to have as a signature for our series.

Again, thanks Jack for the kind welcome.

[panetta]

will you be continuing audio versions once you start your animation? what program are you using? Maya? how long will your episodes be?

[Tanveer_Naseer]

Hey panetta,

No, once we start the animated series, there won't be any more audio-only episodes. The reason we decided to do a select number of audio-only episodes first was two-fold - 1) it gave us the opportunity to start working on refining our audio elements, including the development of a custom library of sound effects and 2) it provides us with the opportunity to create the backstory to our characters so that our audience can better appreciate who these people are and what their motivations are.

Besides, unlike a live-action series, with a CG animated series, the audio component is relatively the same - the only difference is that now you have a visual component added. Of course, it also simplifies some of the writing since you can let the visual elements set the tone and transfer information to your audience. So, even when we start our animated series, we'll be looking to sites like this one to help us find actors who can help bring life to these roles.

In regards to what program we're using for our CG animated series, we're using Studio 3D Max.

And as for episode length, honestly, we're not tying ourselves down to time limits. I think as internet-driven content, there's no need to mimic a format based how TV networks break up their shows to allow for commercial breaks. Instead, our focus is to take as much time as needed to tell the story. So, if you look at "Disunity", it clocks in at just under 60 minutes while "Disunity, Part 2" comes in at around 46 minutes. This was pre-determined at the start, but rather a reflection of the kind of story and the needs of the series - if "Disunity", we needed the time to set up the series 'atmosphere', the characters and the overall plot. With "Disunity, Part 2", we didn't need as much time since the characters were now familiar to the audience and we could focus more on creating that roller-coaster ride that this story needed.

Wow, long reply. But I thought it would be helpful to share the thought processes we used to develop this series and these episodes instead of just giving one-word replies. I think that helps others see that there is a lot of planning going on, not to mention logistics, that isn't always apparent in the finished product (well, actually if you do your job right, it shouldn't be obvious because everyone's too busy enjoying your tale. LOL!)