On November 17th, 2024, a rather special digital short was released on YouTube for Star Trek fans:
Celebrating the 30th anniversary of the release of Star Trek: Generations, 765874 – Unification is a silent clip produced for the Apple Vision Pro.
The explanation can be seen on the the OTOY website here: https://home.otoy.com/unification/ OTOY is a software company that produces the OctaneRender Studio and cloud rendering solutions for CGI and digital imaging.
Working within the software suite, the producers used “digital prosthetics” on top of the actors who were filmed in costume to recreate the Kirk and Spock as portrayed by William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy during the films.
So while being a tribute, the short is also a product demo and advertisement for the de-aging technology that can be used by other filmmakers. This commercial aspect of the project doesn’t diminish the effect of the short, but I felt it worth mentioning.
We spoke a lot earlier this year on the effect of Nostalgia, and much of that was via the lens of Star Trek, placing the various series of the streaming era on a curve. 765874 captures much of what we’re talking about. If you have no attachment or knowledge of the characters, no nostalgia for them, it could be largely devoid of meaning. It is the history of those characters than brings the emotional weight to the piece.
Still, if you have connection to those characters at all, no matter how tangential (like me), then it’s worth checking out.