When asked how he’d like to see his own role defined in our ever-escalating high-definition home-entertainment world, Masi Oka, star of NBC’s hit fantasy/sci-fi series Heroes, reaches for the stars. "I’d like to be known as a visionary Blu-ray Bluetooth," he smiles. "I want to bring all of the parts together." In other words, save the format, save the world. And that’s good news for fans anticipating the Blu-ray Disc release of both seasons of Heroes on August 26. (No worries, home-video enthusiasts: Season 2 also gets a concurrent DVD release, and Season 1 has been on DVD for a year.) With an extras palette bursting with content — including unreleased footage from the alternate ending to the Generations storyline, four Genetics of a Scene shot-by-shot breakdowns, and picture-in-picture commentaries on all 11 episodes — Season 2 is looking to set the standard for TV-on-Blu-ray releases. "They want Heroes to be the testing ground to see how far Blu-ray can go," confirms series creator Tim Kring. Adds co-executive producer/writer Jesse Alexander, "We think Blu-ray Disc and the biggest show on TV are a perfect match." (For more high-def Heroes particulars from Kring and Alexander, see our "BackTalk" interview).
Oka has worked behind the scenes at George Lucas’s Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) as an R&D technical director (His special-effects handiwork can be seen to great effect during the famed asteroid chase sequence in Star Wars: Episode II: Attack of the Clones). And he's been in front of the camera as Heroes' fan-favorite time traveler Hiro Nakamura. So Oka is well aware of the breadth of elements that need to be in place for DVD and Blu-ray releases to maximize the home theater experience. "Because of the scale, the budget, and the time restrictions, a lot of thought is put into what we do in high-def," he says. "The time we take with the lighting, for example, is very important. We're very conscious of making things look great because we want to maintain an epic feel to our show. It has to look and sound like we’re making a feature film every week. As for commentaries and extras, we have a responsibility to share things you wouldn't see or get otherwise: the behind-the-scenes stories, the bonus footage, all of it."
I love extras, believe me, but a show must deliver on story, tone, pacing, presentation, and — most importantly for the S&V crowd — visual and sonic quality. Knowing all this, Oka points out three key Heroes sequences that make the show a home theater home run.
Flying Man meets Hiro ("Hiros," Season 1, Episode 5). "What an incredibly cool shot when Nathan Petrelli arrives outside the Fly by Night Diner in [Lake Mead], Nevada," Oka notes. Slippery-smooth New York politician Petrelli (Adrian Pasdar) has just escaped capture in Las Vegas by using his ability to take to the sky, clad only in a pair of powder-blue striped pajama bottoms. Hiro watches wide-eyed out the diner window as Petrelli swoops in from the top right of the screen. Note Petrelli's counterclockwise vapor trail and the subwoofer surge that rumbles through the score before he lands on the ashy desert floor, skidding on his bare feet and kicking up a puffy white dust cloud that gusts right at you. Petrelli grimaces and grits his pearl-white teeth, which stand out in contrast to the earthy grime on his stubbled face. Hiro smiles with glee at the arrival of his new comrade in powerdom, whom he dubs "Flying Man." Concludes Oka, "That was probably the best scene. And I love the staging of that whole sequence, too."
1,000 suspended cranes ("Six Months Ago," Season 1, Episode 10). For pure visual èlan, says Oka, "the room with 1,000 cranes was very beautiful." Here, Hiro comes into the Burnt Toast Cafe in Midland, Texas to prove to waitress Charlie (Jayma Mays), his doomed first love, that he’s actually from the future. He stops time to enact the "ancient Japanese tradition" of origami and suspends 1,000 individually folded cranes in the cafe in the seeming blink of an eye. "I love all of the Hiro and Charlie stuff," gushes Oka — and who can argue? Watch for the swaying wisps of black hair and the shimmering cheeks as Hiro squints to bend time, then follow the burst of white-yellow light that beams down his face before the awesome reveal of the myriad colorful cranes. Director Allan Arkush swoops around the lovestruck pair to showcase the scope of the cranes, all suspended on thin white strings. Orange, green, and yellow cranes dominate the foreground — observe the creases on the tails and wings of some of the yellow ones — while steam from the grill in the kitchen rises in the background. You should be able to read the logo on the drab brown Primatech Paper wall calendar and note the layer of makeup on Charlie’s pale, still-stunned face during the close-up of the pair's elegiac hug. It’s quite an accomplishment. Marvels Oka, "The amount of time it took to create that whole sequence — absolutely amazing."
The cherry blossoms ("Lizards," Season 2, Episode 2). Dissected quite beautifully in the Genetics of a Scene extra titled "The Anatomy of the Cherry Blossom/Swordfight Scenes," the cascading cherry blossoms that Hiro causes to fall all over Yaeko (Eriko Tamura) in Otsu, Japan in 1671 are a sight to behold. "You mean the scene where we're actually at Venture Farm [in Southern California] with PAs holding and shaking cherry-blossom sticks?" he asks. "It’s definitely nice — a compelling storyline we're all proud of that's also visually stunning. There's not more you could ask for with that one." In the "Anatomy" extra, director Arkush acknowledges his debt to Akira Kurosawa and Seven Samurai for the visual style of the episode in which Hiro — posing as Takezo Kensei, the renowned swordsman and hero of tales told to him as a youth by his father Kaito (George Takei) — truly becomes, according to Arkush, "the warrior of legend."
So where does Blu-ray go next? "I want to see Blu-ray Disc releases become more interactive and give the fan community more options," asserts Oka, who will be watching on a Sony Bravia 52-inch LCD. Agrees Jesse Alexander (whose system sports an InFocus Play Big IN76 projector), "We’re excited about the potential of the interactivity for this format. In the DNA of the show, we have what we call a transmedia approach to our storytelling. We look at all the different platforms out there and figure out how to put our narrative across them in a way that's organic and authentic enough to supplement the storytelling. We first did that last season with the filmed commentaries at our Web site. We did so well there that we'd like to apply that level of forward thinking to the download and storage capabilities of Blu-ray."
Sounds like Heroes is a prime candidate for BD-Live, a feature that connects Blu-ray Discs with the Internet. Setting up a live event where users are given a date and location to log into, watch a select episode together, and then comment on it in real time — with one of the stars (like our friend Mr. Oka) responding in kind — "sounds like a fabulous idea," says Tim Kring. "It’s a great idea," echoes Alexander. "We have actually talked about doing something like that." To borrow from our man Hiro, "Blu-ray interactivity is our destiny."