Where Few Have Gone Before

HSU Alumnus Works Behind-the-Scenes on "Star Trek"

Most students thinking about their future careers wouldn't dream that their career would be designing the future but that's exactly what Humboldt State University alumnus Dan Curry does every day.

As the visual-effects producer for Paramount's "Star Trek: Voyager," Curry is responsible for everything from supervising visual-effects shots to designing alien creatures and weaponry. He choreographs space battles, creates other-worldly vistas, and even trains the actors in martial arts when the script calls for some alien fisticuffs.

He has won four Emmys and three International Monitor awards for his work on Star Trek and he's quick to credit his experiences with the Peace Corps and his HSU education as having a profound influence on his life, and consequently, the "Star Trek" universe.

Inspired at a young age by the adventure films of the 1930s and 40s and science fiction classics like "Things to Come," "War of the Worlds" and "Forbidden Planet," Curry knew early on what he wanted to do with his life.

"When I was a kid, I always wanted to be an artist and make movies," Curry recalled. "Although growing up in New York City, I didn't think making movies was a realistic possibility, I went to the movies a lot. Any film that would enable me to go to another time or place for a couple of hours was something I was interested in and that actually lead me to have quite an adventurous youth."

HSU Alum Dan Curry stands in front of a starry backdrop. Curry is one of the artists who creates such backdrops for Star Trek: Voyager.

Curry involved himself in various theater productions throughout high school and went on to graduate from Middlebury College in Vermont with a BA in fine arts and a minor in theater in 1968.

Upon graduating, Curry was determined to serve his country by way of the Peace Corps and traveled to Thailand where he built small bridges and dams and learned to speak fluent Thai and Lao. He later worked for other government agencies and did freelance work in film, fine arts and architecture. Curry also began a serious study of martial arts which, along with his many experiences in Asia, would come to be very important to "Star Trek" later on.

"I think the most important thing about the Peace Corps, especially at that time in history, was that it gave me freedom from my own culture," said Curry. "It put me in an environment where no one expected me to assimilate into their culture so I was free to learn a lot about myself and rediscover what I liked about being an artist. School can create this unnatural intensity about things and by being separated from everything, it gave me a chance to find out what are universal truths about the human condition and what are artificial manufacturing's of your own culture."

Upon his return to New York in 1972, Curry worked briefly as a bio-medical illustrator and eventually migrated north where he took a job at a community college in Cape Cod, Mass.

After a few years of teaching fine arts and studio courses, Curry decided to go back to school for his MFA degree in film and theater. Encouraged by a faculty member familiar with what HSU had to offer, Curry applied for the graduate program and moved to Humboldt in 1976.

"One of the great benefits that I got out of HSU was the fact that the program was very flexible and allowed me to explore a lot of different areas," said Curry. "As a part of the graduate program, I taught a special class in perspective, a class in set construction and aesthetics in theater design. I also had the opportunity to experiment in areas like script analysis, cinematography, film editing, and sound design."

"One of the things I remember most about Dan was his diversity," recalled HSU theatre arts professor Ivan Hess. "He had such a broad background, he was just insatiable in terms of taking every advantage of our production facilities to explore his creativity. He was officially in the design program but he also wrote original plays, and even produced one."

Curry cites the production of his one-act play, "Krorg's View," as one of his proudest moments at HSU. The science fiction play, written and directed by Curry, focused on the power struggles between various alien races in an orbiting prison. Audience members were given ponchos to put on and became part of the set, playing hydroponic plants situated about the theater.

"It was a very different experience than looking through an archway into an imaginary world," said Curry. "The whole theater space was the world."

While doing his graduate work in film, Curry had applied with the fine arts department to do an independent study in painting. When he presented his work in a one-person show, established film editor, Marcia Lucas (then-wife of Star Wars mogul, George Lucas), happened to see the exhibition and encouraged Curry to look into matte painting. He graduated with his MFA in 1979, and accepted a job offer from Universal Pictures to do matte work for such sci-fi shows as Buck Rogers and Battlestar Galactica.

Curry left Universal to work as art director for Modern Film Effects and then went on to become vice president and director of creative services at Cinema Research Corporation. By 1987, he had worked on over 118 feature films, designing title sequences and producing visual effects when he was tapped by post production producer, Peter Lauritson to work on a new television series called "Star Trek: The Next Generation."

Curry signed on as the visual effects supervisor for "Next Generation" early in the first season and has since worked as visual effects producer on "Star Trek: The Next Generation," "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine," and "Star Trek: Voyager."

While his producing duties include everything from working with the directors on stage to doing matte paintings and effects compositing, Curry does have some help.

"I have two great supervisors that work with me who alternate episodes and then I oversee them," Curry said. "We're always collaborating and I have learned to delegate and supervise while not getting in their way."

"Dan is very creative and has a very unusual way of looking at things," said visual effects supervisor Ron B. Moore. "I think we work very well together as a team because while I'm more practical and budget-conscious, Dan is a real artist. I think we've both learned a lot from each other."

Moore has been with "Star Trek" since 1987 and first met Curry when the two worked together at Modern Film Effects. Moore shares supervising duties with Mitch Suskin who has worked with Curry on Voyager for the past four seasons.

"Dan is not only a real artist; he knows visual effects," said Suskin. "He not only understands the creative problems but he'll understand the technical problems and usually have some really clever ideas that we hadn't even thought of."

Curry relishes the fact that he hardly ever has to do the same thing twice. Splitting his time on stage working with directors and supervising effects shots, he also directs all of the second unit photography for each show such as blue-screen shots, stunt sequences, inserts and the like. Curry also directed the "Next Generation" episode "Birthright, Part II."

Curry is often called upon to instruct the cast in martial arts. He developed the Klingon martial arts form 'mokíbara' as an adaptation of the earthbound tai chi. Curry has studied martial arts since his time in the Peace Corps and admits that heís been more than a little influential in the development of Klingon culture.

"If you look at the Klingon's prior to The Next Generation, they were kind of like aggressive Nazis," he said. "Once I started working with Michael Dorn, who plays Worf on "The Next Generation," the writers saw what was going on and (the Klingons) became more of a Bushido-like culture living by the code of the warrior."

Inspired by Himalayan and Southeast Asian architecture, Curry also designed the look of the Klingon homeworld, Quo'nos (pronounced "crow-nos"). The Klingon cityscapes are actually computer-generated matte paintings that Curry creates on his Macintosh using Adobe Photoshop. He then composites the image with other foreground elements (actors, smoke effects etc.) to add to the realism of the shot.

In the "Next Generation" episode "Reunion," the script called for Worf to inherit a "cool Klingon bladed weapon." After reviewing some of the art department's initial sketches of familiar swashbuckler-type swords, Curry approached the producers with his own crescent-shaped design.

"It's a weapon I'd imagined for many years," he said. "I hate movie weapons that are not ergonomically sound or are impractical, so I came up with the batleth. I presented a foam-core mock-up to the producers and developed a whole new martial arts style for it."

Curry's batleth design is also one of the first bladed weapons in years to be allowed into certain Korean martial arts tournaments. To his surprise, he has even been approached by both the FBI and the Navy Department of Research about the weapon's design. Unfortunately, Curry never patented the design and consequently has never received any royalties for his own invention.

"More importantly, I found that the aesthetic training of knowing what works right has given me a very important foundation in my career. " -Dan Curry

When Michael Dorn joined the cast of "Deep Space Nine," the actor collaborated with Curry to create another Klingon blade.

"I got this strange phone call, 'Daniel, I need a new weapon,'" said Curry, imitating Dorn's commanding voice. "Michael came over and after we talked about my collection of blades and ergonomics, we worked on something that suited him and was the size of weapon that he wanted. That's how the mekleth came into being."

Having been with "Star Trek" for over 13 years, Curry has been in the unique position to participate in the evolution of visual-effects technology. While most of the effects for The Next Generation were created with scale models filmed using motion control rigs, the majority of the effects shots on Voyager are now realized via computer-generated imagery.

"It takes seven weeks to do an episode and we really have about three weeks for the visual-effects," Curry said. "When we shot motion control, we could shoot one ship in a day. As the episodes got bigger and bigger, more ships were needed, especially towards the end of DS9 where the stories would call for armadas of more than a hundred ships. It would be physically impossible to shoot that many ships as miniatures in the time we have. Computer animation makes that possible, taking away the physical constraints such as track lengths and where the model mounts are."

Despite the evolution of digital effects technology, Curry urges students dreaming of a career in the visual-effects industry to get a broad education in the traditional arts.

"When I came down (from HSU) to work professionally in this industry, I had enough practical experience in both theater and film that I felt confident in being able to communicate in the special language of this industry," Curry said.

"More importantly, I found that the aesthetic training of knowing what works right has given me a very important foundation in my career. I spend a lot of time getting people who are well-versed in computers to have the aesthetic judgment which comes from working the traditional media and photography." While Curry believes that school is partly about job training, he also believes that becoming an educated person is an important part of the process.

"I think a lot of young people ask, how is this relevant to my career?" Everything is relevant," Curry said.

"I would not have thought studying in sword school in Southeast Asia would be relevant to my career and yet some of the ideas that I had when I was there became icons of 'Star Trek.'"