About the Captain
| An interview with Jana (Xyll) Krcmarova on her role of Captain Talisa Ren. | |
 |
How would you introduce Talisa Ren to someone who has not seen Star Trek: Metren Incident and does not know her? |
|
Talisa is a Trill with a symbiont – and she obtained it under very dramatic circumstances. Fortunately, there were no indications of emotional instability and then Ren symbiont was accepted by the host without problems. Thanks to the experience of the symbiont, Talisa became a more content and wiser person, staying more on top of things. She commands a small unimportant science vessel, but is lucky enough to get around very important events. |
|
|
What do you find most interesting on the character of Talisa Ren, or most appealing? |
|
 |
Naštěstí také stojí nohama pevně na zemi, nebo palubě a ví, že často se věci podle šablony a regulí řešit nedají. Má ráda dobrodružství a ráda by se do nich vrhala po hlavě. Zároveň si však je vědoma odpovědnosti za svou loď a posádku a proto nechává bláznivé plány na čas dovolených. |
| Can you tell some secret about what we’ll get to know about the Captain in the Secret Games? | |
 |
The Captain has quite a lot of room in the Secret Games. You’ll get to know something about her family and hobbies, and about her nature in general, what se does and does not like. How she’s used to solve certain situations. Sadly, I can’t be much more specific than that without revealing important stuff of the upcoming episode. SPOILERS! |
| Being one of the main characters, you have many dialogues in the movie – how do you learn them? How do you get ready for the shoot in general? | |
 |
I memorize the texts the same way I used to memorize the poems in primary school. I read through them while on the bus and do the same thing before going to bed - that’s the essential thing. It’s easies for my brain to save them that way. It’s also important for me to position the text into the story and to relate what I’m saying to the context of the entire scene. You can memorize the text at home, but it’s really when you’re with the other actors working on the scenes when you add the look and emotions to it; that’s also when the general concept of the scene is being finished, as well as layout of the people on the set, setup of the scenery and so on. This may also include a training of a fight scene, for example. |
| The Captain is a Trill – is the mask difficult to prepare? | |
 |
Compared to the other aliens in our show, the masking of a Trill is simple to do. You just got to watch out for the spots to be roughly on the same places and to use a color that doesn’t get smudged and can be washed off after the shoot at the same time. Looking ahead, we’re planning an improvement – the spots are going to be painted over a template, which is going to allow them to look the same on all shooting days and to reduce the prep time. Currently, making the spots by hand takes over half an hour. |
 |
Some scenes also need us to mask an injury, scars and wounds. That’s more of a challenge, of course. You also must take good photos of the masking so that it’s possible to re-do if needed. |
| A large portion of the Secret Games and even the Metren Incident was shot on what’s called a green screen. How about that? | |
 |
It’s definitely a lot more challenging compared to shooting on a stage. You have to imagine everything. In most cases, all you have on the spot is a green screen, sometimes a chair and co-actors. Everything else gets done in postproduction. Additionally, if you’re doing a larger scene, something like an entire bridge or a shuttle bay landing, the scene has to be split, and the single depths of the scene are recorded separately. The actors that interact in the scene thus get together in postproduction as the scene gets composed together. Still, I think we did a good job on that. At least considering the scenes that are already composed. |
| Can you tell us any funny stories from the shootings? | |
 |
Nothing in particular, unfortunately, but a lot of fun happens on the set. As always when you’re working on something you love with a great team. But I do have one story that confirms the old saying that whatever you plan, however well you plan it, there’s always a surprise waiting for you somewhere. When we were shooting in the exterior and needed to shoot some scenes on a deadline whatever the cost, a combine harvester arrived at the neighbor field and started to work. Luckily for us, all we needed to do was scenes that don’t directly focus on the actor’s mouth and that are going to be easy to get dubbed. As an act of wisdom, the sound engineer recorded the ambient noise in the morning. |
| What got you to the shooting anyway? Was acting in a movie a dream of yours? | |
 |
Not in the slightest. Even as a little kid, I never wanted to be an actress or to act in a theatre. The offer was unexpected and quite frankly, I was hesitant to take it. But I was told that I’m going to get just a few lines. And that I’m going to be a Starfleet officer for a while. In the end, I was made a Captain and the number of lines was much more extensive. But I liked the project already and so I stayed. And in fact, it also fulfilled my dream of being an astronaut. |
| Is there anything that surprised you about the shooting or acting? Something you didn’t expect? | |
 |
Maybe not surprise, but it reassured me about a couple of things that are said about shooting. Like that acting is about waiting for a shoot. You wait for hours for the scene to be ready, lights set up, laid out, for the AV gear to be prepped and you masked. Then it’s just a few minutes (or even tens of minutes if the shoot isn’t going very well) and then there’s another one or two hours of wait time again. And that’s how the entire day goes until the night. We’re an amateur enterprise, of course, so everyone is doing everything, which means that while waiting, you’re busy helping wherever needed and time passes more quickly. |
| What did contributing to this project give to you and what did it take away? | |
 |
It gave me a lot of interesting memories and experience related to shooting. The nice thing is that filmmakers have to know almost everything – a lot of things is done on the fly and you can use some manual skill as well as knowledge from pretty much any field. And don’t think that’s just because we’re an amateur production. I took part in a professional shooting and it was almost the same. |
 |
I also learned how many ticks I make without knowing it. I make hand gestures while talking, I’m rocking around and slouching. I had to watch out not to do all of this. It took a lot of time and some illusions about acting. But I absolutely regret nothing of that. |