Composer Michael Giacchino and Stunt Coordinator Joey Box Talk to Star Trek Magazine

Your approach to the score is very different from the John Williams template from Star Wars...

Quite honestly, that was the first direction we went in, and I had written several themes that were in that space opera kind of vein, somewhere between what Jerry Goldsmith and John Williams did, in that language of what we¹ve all come to know as ³space music.² On every one of them, it felt right for a big space movie, but it didn¹t feel like our movie. Again it goes back to the idea that we were trying to do something that wasn¹t exactly what you had seen or heard before. We wanted to do something that was a little different space movies don¹t have to have this sound.

J.J. always wanted to make it about the character he¹d say that the theme for this movie can¹t be polished, it can¹t be soaring, it has to have an almost-unfinished feel in the way that Kirk is almost an unfinished character. He¹s not a finished person he¹s getting there but he¹s not there. He¹s a little rough around the edges. J.J. wanted something that was somewhat sad, somewhat brooding. That is clearly not what Star Trek has been in the past, or Star Wars, or anything that would normally go in that direction.

I think he was absolutely right to say what he said and it really took the music in a different direction. We are dealing with the start of the relationships with these characters that we know so well. It¹s a tough beginning for them, not an easy one. Any time we did try to be too heroic or too traditional, it felt wrong, and not true to what was going on emotionally in the story.

Musically, had we gone in a direction that it had gone before, it might have felt hollow. It wouldn¹t have felt like we were taking it anywhere different.

I feel like it really needed to be treated differently than it has been the last 10 years.

STAR TREK MAGAZINE INTERVIEW WITH STAR TREK STUNT COORDINATOR JOEY BOX

The skydiving sequence, as Kirk, Sulu and Olsen head for the drilling platform above Vulcan, is one of the movie¹s highlights, and Box admits, was the biggest challenge on the film.

³There were a lot of unknowns. That was all stunts, with a little bit of visual effects,² he says proudly. ³Our fantastic visual effects director, Roger Guyett, added to it tremendously.

We didn¹t do any practical skydiving though. That made it a bit more difficult, because if the photographer is skydiving alongside people falling through space, there¹s a lot more opportunity as far as movement goes. When you start putting wires on people, you can lose the natural body movement that you get in space. However, by shooting it as little set pieces, it did evolve a little bit, and at the end of the day we got a realistic sequence.

I didn¹t feel that we were going from seeing a stuntman skydiving to an actor you never break out of the sequence for the whole time, from the moment they leave the shuttle.

³The first thing we did was mock up the landing,² he continues. ³Then we took the actors and put them on wires. We got them into position and then started to train them. We got their brains and eyes used to being 30-40 feet up in the air, then got them into flight position and took them through it.

At the end of the day, you want your actors to do as much as possible, otherwise you¹re seeing half-profiles and heads turning away unnaturally. I¹d say that on that sequence 80-85 per cent of everything was done by the actors. They didn¹t do the very dangerous landing, but even so, we were dragging Chris Pine across the platform of the drill. He was a real sport, he¹s a tough guy. All of them were fantastic you couldn¹t have got a better group of actors. Chris and John Cho were in there the whole time.²

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