The Enterprise Encounters The Minions

Описание: Captain Picard and his crew encounter the Minions in this reimagining of the classic TNG episode "Darmok".

Just when you thought “Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra” was confusing enough, the Minions take incomprehensible communication to a whole new level. Can the crew of the Enterprise-D find common ground with a species whose universal translator registers only… “banana”? ⭐🍌

Check out Episode 2 - Picard vs Minion (Star Trek × Minions #2)
   • Picard vs Minion (Star Trek × Minions #2)  

And Episode 3 the emotional finale
   • Star Trek x Minions: The Final Chapter  

Details on how it was made for the creatively curious are below, as many people have commented recently that they appreciate that detail.

Thanks for watching and please consider throwing a like and subscribe my way. Or maybe try that new Hype button, whatever that is 🌠

#startrek #minions #parody #mashup

Star Trek is the property of Paramount/CBS and Minions and Despicable Me are the property of Illumination Entertainment/Universal Pictures.

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I've always wanted to do something with Darmok, so this is effectively my tribute. I was watching it a few weeks ago actually thinking about how to weave in a Seinfeld crossover (yes don't worry I'm always on the lookout for SeinTrek potential!) When the gibberish started the Minions popped into my head because we love watching it as a family and I've always found their 'Minionese' language hilarious. I had fun coming up with a script that was part-Darmok part-Minion nonsense.

My wife and I recorded the Minion audio (she has been helping out more and more with these videos so if I say "we" that's who I mean). I found a good Minion voice model to convert the audio using Replay.

The Minions are all AI-generated here with lots of careful prompting, resulting in about 160 video clips using mostly Wan 2.2 and 2.1 offline on my PC. There are a few different types of Minion clips. Some are the front two characters, some are just the captain, and some are all four. When they're speaking, it's Wan MultiTalk syncing the audio (mindful that for some reason it reduces audio quality so be careful to insert back the original audio). In the past I had only used MultiTalk for a single character, so I was really pleased to see how well it works for two, but it does require you to have both audio clips exactly the same length (so its much easier to put them together in Audacity or Ableton as a single conversation, then export each track separately).

There are also some videos of the Minions being silly where we recorded audio to match their lips as best we could. Lots of audio effects, EQ, panning, reverb, etc. applied to create more immersion as the scenes change between viewscreen and the crew. And oh yes, it was my wife's idea to include the Tribbles 😊 They are taken from a DS9 episode because for some reason AI struggles to generate tribbles. The Minion's ship was edited in Photoshop based on Gru's rocket car. Then I used Wan 2.2 to animate the exhaust.

DaVinci Resolve has a feature to isolate dialogue audio which was helpful in removing background music from the TNG episode, which is what can kill the seamless feeling of a video edit. I used Suno to generate some atmospheric music in the final scene. For the credits, I had a lot of fun singing the Star Trek tune in 3-parts, put it through the voice conversion, then used Ableton to sync them up and add some reverb and pitch correction (there is no auto-tune!)

The longest part of the edit was the opening scene when the Minions are on the viewscreen. When Data and the other crew member turn around it was a challenge to get magic mask working so I had to rotoscope that one frame-by-frame the old fashioned way before I was happy enough with the results.

The beam-out effect also took me a while as its not something I'd done before. A combination of Fastnoise + Dissolve in Fusion, with some 'Comic Speed Lines' generator added on top for the final touch. Photoshop generative-fill was used to remove Picard from his shot so I could transition to an empty background after the beam out.

Always happy to answer questions on how it was made as I really do believe anyone can make these types of videos if you set your mind to it. I'm by no means an expert myself!

Hope you all enjoy it. If enough people like it I would definitely like to tell the rest of the Darmok story. With Minions. 🖖