Monday 13 June 2016

Star Trek Beyond round-up: HPE tech revealed, coffee tie-in, music teases, and more

A few Star Trek Beyond updates for you today, including samples from the soundtrack, and some tie-in coffee! But first... Last week Hewlett Packard Enterprise revealed their advertising campaign and and product placement plans tied to Star Trek Beyond, which included them working with the crew on Star Trek Beyond to imagine several future technologies inspired by the potential of HPE's The Machine technology (see previous report for the advert and details of what that tech actually is). Three technologies this collaboration generated made it into the film, and now details those have been revealed.

Those include, the Diagnostic Wrap, a type of portable medical scanner and augmented reality display. HPE's Marissa Freeman told IT Buisness that:
It analyzes the inside of the creature that it’s wrapped around and the data populates on the screen in real time, which is the future of mesh computing.
HPE had the prop on display at the HPE Discover event, which IT Business got a good shot of:


Concept art was also shown (via CNet):


CNet also released a still from the film, showing the Diagnotic Wrap in action, scanning someone in a red uniform, who worryingly for them has a "critical alert"!


The second device is a new Star Trek tablet computer called The Book. The concept art (via CNet again) shows that it can be configured in multiple ways, although it's not clear if this made it to the final design, or if we'll see all the utility on-screen.


Designer Chris Carlozzi explained its use to CNet:
The goal of The Book is to learn plus teach an aid to exploration. It educates plus documents life, adding to a database.
Another still shows this in action (though this hasn't been released in pure digital form, yet, below is a photo of the photo via IT Business):


The prop was also on display, slotted into its case/second surface. You can see it here with Carlozzi (via Grommet):


If you look closely you can also see a third still (on the left of the above image), showing the third technology in action. The largest innovation, The Quarantine appears to be an entire room (and so was not on display itself). According to IT Business:
It is used in the ship’s Sick Bay, providing a complete biological scan of an alien that sits in the middle of the array. A beam of light shines on the alien, simultaneously scanning it and displaying information about it.
Carlozzi talked about it to CNet in a more general sense of data handling and cloud computing:
How would I get something to report back to a ship? How would I get something to report back to Starfleet? How would I have databases, when we're talking about things that are like light-years, or different solar systems apart??
Here's the concept art for that too (via IT Business):


As noted in my previous report, HPE's logo/mark, The Element, will appear in the film. It seems to have been done so quite subtly though, as Marissa Freeman describes:
It’s a bit of an easter egg, a hint in the movie about Hewlett Packard Enterprise.
It seems to make up the frame of the Diagnostic Warp, appears as a floating holagram below The Book, and if the concept art was followed through, will be used to highlight panes of information in The Quarantine.

As I previously posted, also on display at the HPE Discover event were some props, and it turns out there were in fact two of the new escape pods. Here are a couple of extra photos, including a good look inside (via Storage Review and HPE's Instagram):



HPE aren't the only company with a Star Trek Beyond tie-in. Over in Malaysia Min Kaffe are launching a special Star Trek Beyond promotional coffee! Called Beyond Coffee, it is a blend of robusta coffee beans and bamboo salt. Here are a couple of packs (via Min Kaffee's Instagram):


They've got their own trailer/advert too:



Back behind the scenes of the film, composer Michael Giacchino released a couple more teaser videos (via Instagram) from the final recording session for the soundtrack:



A video posted by Michael Giacchino (@m_giacchino) on

And finally, here's a huge frame-busting billboard, spotted on the Sunset Strip in Hollywood, and shared on Instagram by Jonny Teboe.


Star Trek Beyond will be arriving in cinemas around the world from the end of July. To keep track of all the latest information on the film, visit my Star Trek Beyond guide page, and see the relevant pages on Trek Collective Archives to find all the trailers, posters, and promotional stills too.



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