Frakes goes behind camera for 'Klingons' CD-ROM

May 3, 1996
Web posted at: 9:25 a.m. EDT

From Correspondent Dennis Michael

HOLLYWOOD, California (CNN) -- One of the stars of "Star Trek" is finding his new medium, CD-ROMs, to be a parallel universe to television and movies. But everything is not the same.

"Klingons," filmed on the Paramount lot, is definitely "Star Trek" country, but there are some major differences. The camera is video rather than film, and "Star Trek" star Jonathan Frakes is behind the camera, directing footage that will eventually be part of an interactive CD-ROM.

The CD-ROM "Klingons" is all seen from the player's point of view, and for a director, that's going boldly where few have gone before.

"It looks like a movie, it looks like a TV show, but there are no cuts," Frakes says. "It's astounding. And it's also so difficult to get actors, who spend their entire careers being told never to look at the lens, to be comfortable enough to look into the lens and talk to the lens as if it is, in this case, a little boy playing a game." .

"We shoot in first person," producer Keith Halper says. "We have a continuous point of view which, makes it very hard on the actors, incidentally, because we don't cut away, and do coverage and things like that. But all this adds to telling a story that is not just about 'Star Trek.'"

Halper says the game is played from the point of view of a Klingon named Pahk, following him through his life. "And that's a Star Trek experience that is completely unique," Frakes says.

It's a futuristic project, to be sure, but Frakes, for one, is definitely looking to the future.

"I'm generally intrigued by anything I haven't done ... and I haven't done this ... very few of us have.

"The rumor is that there will be interactive television. I want them to say, 'Who's done some of those CD-ROMs?' And they'll say, 'Frakes has done some of those. Let's bring him in.'"

With "Klingons" ready for the CD-ROM shelf, Frakes is busy once again in the director's chair -- this time at the helm of the next "Star Trek" movie.

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