Damon.
-Where's Bob?
-Hey, I'm over here. Hi, guys.
-Alex, you around?
-I'm right here.
-So this piece of music...
-Bryan Burk, sound off.
-Is Bryan there?
-Hi. I'm here. I'm in New York.
-This is ridiculous.
-Bryan is joining us via satellite today.
This music was not the original piece
of music in this opening sequence.
Michael Giacchino had this recorded
like two weeks before
we finished the mix,
-and I think this is a genius move.
-Unbelievably awesome.
It's great 'cause it makes
the Bad Robot logo really creepy.
-It does. It's very ominous.
-It is scary.
-For the first time ever that robot...
-Is actually bad.
...freaks me out.
The movie didn't originally
open with this.
-Nope.
-It opened with the birth of Spock.
And why was it changed, J.J.?
Well, we had the birth of Spock.
Then we had the birth of Kirk.
Then we had young Spock,
then young Kirk.
Then we had older Spock,
then older Kirk.
And it just was too much back and forth
for too long,
so we removed the birth of Spock
and made the Kirk birth sequence
a pre-credit sequence
to kind of reset the movie, which I think
helped the pace of the open.
I can't imagine the movie
starting any other way than this.
That's very funny because
we only debated it for a year and a half.
-But until we all saw it...
-Until we saw it.
-Until we saw it.
-Yeah.
I mean, I think the thing
that's so genius about this is that
you're dropping the audience
right into the middle of a situation
and a terror that's so cool.
That was Randy Pausch, by the way,
who walked right past Robau.
We were also really concerned
about canon and continuity,
because Spock is older than Kirk.
-Right. That's right.
-So you couldn't do this scene first,
and then Spock's birth because of that.
So, it was either start the movie
with this scene and lose Spock's birth,
which was... We're basically like,
"If we lose that,
we lose his attachment to his mother.
"We don't understand
that his mom is human."
Because in the other scene
that Winona is in,
her ears are actually wrapped,
so other than dialogue,
you don't know that she's a human.
But enough about that.
I love the way that the weapon systems
on the Narada work.
The other thing that's genius for me
about this is the way you cut it.
What's the Kelvin named after?
Oh, sorry.
-I thought you were done.
-Kelvin was my grandfather. Sorry.
Oh, yeah.
No, you should tell that story first.
Harry Kelvin was my grandfather.
I love that story.
I use his name in almost everything
that I've worked on.
-That story gets me every time.
-Fade out.
No, but he was the guy
who sort of inspired me
to make movies and make things,
and have things work.
So he was sort of the...
Bryan Burk, was this your idea
for sound design, right here?
I'd like to take credit for this,
but this was J.J.'s sound design
from the very first cut.
I love the idea that everything goes out
when we enter
the cold vastness of space.
Well, it's a weird thing 'cause I wanted
to do silent space from the beginning,
but the truth is it feels like
the movie's not completed
when you actually
have silence in space.
It feels like the weight is not there.
I sort of did the, you know, occasional...
Acknowledgement
that you're aware of reality.
Yeah, that it sort of says that
the reality is that there's silence
in space,
but I wanted to, you know,
give the sequences,
for the most part, the sound that
you would expect to feel in here.
If you roll back, not us, but you,
the viewer, on the shot of the screen,
-you'll see there's this...
-How could we roll back?
Are you in a coffee can?
There are these handrails,
which is really kind of a testament
to Scott Chambliss,
our production designer,
who really made the ship really tangible.
And I remember being on set
with a friend who was visiting,
who was commenting that
when you think about it,
and you're flying through space
and you're