‘Star Trek: Discovery’ director Olatunde Osunsanmi on challenges of sci-fi series: ‘Every scene has to be built from scratch’ [Exclusive Video Interview]
“It becomes very emotional knowing that you don’t get to go play in that universe anymore,” remembers “Star Trek: Discovery” director and executive producer Olatunde Osunsanmi about saying goodbye to the sci-fi series after five seasons on the air. “It’s incredibly difficult, particularly when you have as much fun behind the scenes as we did.” We talked to Osunsanmi as part of our “Meet the Experts” TV directors panel. Watch our exclusive video interview above.
Osunsanmi directed more than a dozen episodes of “Discovery,” including the season five premiere episode “Red Directive,” which he’s entering this year for Emmy consideration. But helming an episode of a visual effects-heavy sci-fi series like “Discovery” isn’t as simple as showing up on set and hitting record. It’s “about a 30-to-35-week process on ‘Star Trek’ because everything is world building,” he explains. “Everywhere you go or every scene they try to exist in has to be built from scratch.” So for a sand runner sequence in “Red Directive,” for instance, “we put it on a gimbal, and you put it up on the VR wall, and there’s an incredible amount of testing.”
“It’s a quite detailed process,” he adds. “It’s a total collaboration amongst all the teams. Lots of concept art, lots of testing of the technology, lots of inventing of new technology. Because some of that stuff just hasn’t been done yet, until one day you arrive on set and you hope it works. Usually it does.” But “when I read something like that in the script, I actually get really excited” because “it’s challenges like that that keep things fresh.”
As an executive producer, Osunsanmi also worked with other directors on the show as a “guardian angel.” Especially when they were new to the show, “you’ve got 50, 75 years of history” in the “Star Trek” franchise to work with. “And then you’ve got the history of ‘Star Trek: Discovery,’ which is its own thing.” That provides “a really wide and large box which the directors can play in … and my job is really to encourage them to find their own unique voice in that universe to be the best that they can be.”
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