Interview: Supervising Director Barry J. Kelly on STAR TREK: LOWER DECKS

Putting together a season of Star Trek: Lower Decks is so complicated a proposition, it might as well be constructed at Utopia Planetia shipyards. But today, Comics Beat is giving our readers a peek behind the curtain thanks to an interview with Supervising Director Barry J. Kelly.

The Beat caught up with Kelly over Zoom to learn more about his role on the series. We asked about how he first became involved, about what his day to day responsibilities look like and (of course) about what he’d order from the food replicator.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

AVERY KAPLAN: Can you tell us about your history with the show? How did you come to be involved?

BARRY J. KELLY: I worked at Titmouse Cartoons for about thirteen years now. I was working on Venture Bros., Moonbeam City and some Adult Swim stuff. I was working on Star Wars Galaxy of Adventures for two or three years. 

I had a little break, and I heard there was a Star Trek show coming through. My directing partner, Juno Lee — he has been directing that show Pantheon that has been on Netflix recently. But he was my directing partner for many years, and he became the supervising director for the first season and had to exit. And I was his episodic director.

The supervising director oversees the season, and then episodic directors are deputized for each episode. Each episodic director has three or four artists under them, and they’re just trying to figure out that one episode while the supervising director is making sure the season stays on track.

But Lee had to exit early, and I directed the pilot — I was a huge Star Trek fan. The first scene of Lower Decks episode one, “Second Contact,” I was amazed by how clear the characters came through; Mariner and Boimler. And I got it. I, like many of the audience members, wasn’t sure if the show was going to work. And once I read that first scene, and then the whole pilot, I said, “Oh, I get it 100%.”

The beauty about the scripts that Mike McMahan and the writers make is that they’re hilarious before they’re animated. The problem is, I read a script and I feel like I already watched the episode, and I’m like, “Oh crap, now I’ve got to make this thing. And now I have to make it as funny as I thought it was when I read it the first time.”

Once I’d directed four episodes as an episodic director in the first season, Juno had to exit, and I took over halfway through. COVID hit. So we’re all at home and we had to figure out how to make the show air on time while a global pandemic was going on. And I kind of just became the defacto artist for the show. “What does the show need?” Just here to be of service.

And there was already season 2 starting as season 1 was wrapping. I hit the ground running being the supervising director, which meant I had to deputize my own episodic directors; the new storyboard artists for the season. Once we got to season 2… Season 2 through 5, everybody was the same. Everybody wanted to come back to the show after that. We found our key people.

I’ve been on the show ever since; 50 episodes later.

KAPLAN: What do the day to day responsibilities look like for you?

KELLY: I can just run through my schedule. Since I’m supervising directing, I’m working on the whole season.

We do make the show linearly, one through ten. But once the departments start… for instance, we go through boards, then we go through design, then we go through animation and then we go through composite. 

We make the boards and the animatic, and once we feel the episode is working, we have a blueprint for it, we break it up into all these pieces. And then it becomes this puzzle we have to put back together again, once all these pieces go out and get distributed to different artists to make.

For my day to day, usually I’ll start only looking at boards. And once we finish episode one, it gets triggered to design. And then while working episode two, episode one is in design. And then by the time we get to episodes three, four, five, there designs for one and two. So it’s a waterfall effect, where each department is starting after the next.

So my schedule eventually turns into: a director has a bunch of storyboards to review from storyboard artists; I’ll sit with them for maybe two hours in the morning. I’ll just give notes, we’re just talking about the scenes. I’ll say, “Something’s not clear here in this scene. We’re missing a certain part of the script where a character was supposed to be hiding in a room; we’re not really getting that.” I’ll give them those notes and then they go back and talk to their storyboard artists.

The next two hours of the day, I’ll be looking at designs with our art director. Those will be meetings with the background artists and the character artists. And that will be from a completely different episode. Sometimes, multiple at the same time, because it’s all at different stages.

And then the next two hours of the day might be comps or animation. Animation will just be looking at shots. They’re not in order and everything’s kind of fragmented; I’m just trying to a mental map of what’s going on in this episode versus the next episode. And those are just the characters on black and white backgrounds. The backgrounds aren’t done yet, the department stuff is happening simultaneously.

Then maybe the last two hours of the day will be composite. Composite is where the characters get put against final backgrounds and they’ve added effects, they’re moving the camera. It’s when all the puzzle pieces come together for editorial to bring it back.

Maybe on those days to — it’s different day to day, too. It might be a sound mix for a different episode. But it’s usually like every hour, every two hours, I’m looking at a different phase of production. And I’m trying to keep it all together in my brain. 

But there are a bunch of talented artists who are keeping me afloat all the way. I’m just a thing that comes in and annoys them for two hours. “Does this need to be this way? Does that need to be that way?” And they say, “Yeah, I guess you’re right,” or they prove me wrong, and I say, “Oh, you guys were right. I’m so glad you guys are good artist who work for me. I made the wrong call and you guys caught it and fixed it and made it even better and made me look like a genius.”

KAPLAN: What would you order from the food replicator?

KELLY: I am such a sucker for mac and cheese. I just like fried chicken and mac and cheese. 

And fruit roll-ups. I’d probably order a lot of fruit snacks — artificial fruit chews. I’d be asking, “Can you make those fruit snacks that were the sharks, from the 90s? But make sure you get those white ones in there, that are like… yogurt, marshmallow, I don’t know what they were.”

It’d be like, “Shark bites, circa 1993, coming up.”

And I’d say, “Make sure they’re in the foil packaging, please, so I can have the satisfaction of opening it. But maybe instead of putting eight, put 16 in there. Just give me more of those.” If I could make fruit snacks, I’d do that.

New episodes of Star Trek: Lower Decks are available for streaming on Paramount+ on Thursdays.

Keep up with all of The Beat’s Star Trek coverage here.