At the press conference at Gower Studios in Hollywood to promote the August 28 release of Heroes: Season 1 DVD set Tim Kring spoke about doing commentary tracks for the DVD set.

He also sat down to field questions about the future of the show.

Here’s the trascript of the Q&A session:

Did you find you had more money going into the second season?

Tim Kring: One would think that… there is a natural bump in every budget, every year because of contracts and cost of living and all that stuff. We’ve been held to the standards… the good news about a second season is that you learn a tremendous amount. You learn how to get more efficient. You move faster. For us, the number of days of shooting has always been our day to push it. That usually centers around how many pages we can print. On a show like Heroes you have to remember the visual look of the show in every scene, or every other scene, there’s usually an angle or shot that you don’t usually see on television.

Are you doing anything to make sure that fans that didn’t watch last season can get caught up?

Tim Kring: That’s a big part of what we’re doing. One of the things that I learned in the first season was we called Season 1, Volume 1. It was entitled “Genesis.” It just happened to be 23 episodes long. Volume 2 is entitled “Generations” and it by no means has to be a whole season long. In fact, we’re looking at Volume 2 to end in the middle of the season. Which allows us to wrap up certain stories, which allows us to have new stories begin so you don’t get a sense that if you jump on the train, you’re aggressively being pushed off the train because you don’t know what’s going on.

Will the Second Season be two big arcs or do you not know yet?

Tim Kring: It’s designed to be three.

How far along would you say Heroes is with its story arcs?

Tim Kring: We’re taking it, obviously, one season at a time. I have, sort of, some big ideas of the tent-pole ideas you’ll be seeing, but this season, we started with we knew where we were going in terms of the themes and ideas behind it; but it’s 10 writers in a room for 10,000 hours talking to each other.

Have you thought of any other historical periods you’d like to visit?

Tim Kring: Not as of now, no.

You said the Second Season will begin 4 months later does that mean that Hiro (Masi Oka) will be in feudal Japan for 4 months?

Tim Kring: No, Hiro’s story is the only one that picks up exactly, immediately. He’s existing in a time frame outside the rest of our cast.

Will Kaito Nakamura (George Takei) be back next season?

Tim Kring: Yes, George Takei is in the first episode.

Expanding on the “Generations” title, will we see more about the Petrelli’s Mom (Cristine Rose) and George Takei’s character?

Tim Kring: The idea of “Generations” is that last year we set up this sort of sense that there was this other generation. Represented by the Linderman (Malcolm McDowell) character and the Petrelli’s mom… all of these characters set off this idea that there was another generation that had secrets of their own. This Season, one of the themes we’re gonna talk about is the sins of parents being visited upon the children.

Where is Ando (James Kyson Lee) right now?

Tim Kring: Ando is pining away for his time to return.

Is there any chance of getting a big star to play one of the Heroes?

Tim Kring: That’s one of the interesting things about the idea of being an anthology, people don’t have to commit to an entire series. Some of the hopes of that is to entice actors, writers or directors that might not normally be attracted to the workload of a series.

You brought a lot of the ensemble together at the end of Season One, do you foresee splitting them up again?

Tim Kring: Yes, we start with them apart again. That’s always been the fun, I felt about the show, the guessing and the predicting and the discussions about how these characters find their way back to each other’s lives. I think that’s a big chunk of what this show’s success is.

Will we see characters like Claire’s Mom (Ashley Crow) come back again?

Tim Kring: Yes. Absolutely. The smaller characters you saw along the way can have a greater significance in the second season.

If the Second Season has three Volumes will you be doing three finales for each?

Tim Kring: The idea is actually to do small finales. So you don’t have to carry the burden of having every single character come together to do this great ending. It will build to certain mysteries that seem like they’re solved and other ones will sort of straggle along. As with many volumes of books and comic books.

Did doing commentary tracks for the DVDs cause you to have any insights about the episodes that you didn’t already have?

Tim Kring: I personally only did one commentary.

Did that give you any more perspective?

Tim Kring: Yes, because it was a commentary of the original pilot. I have to tell you, I was really struck by, I was very please by watching it again after as many months. I really thought that we held very closely and very purely to the original look and feel and tone of the show. I was actually pretty amazed by it. I was also struck by how far characters had come, yet, you could see the kernel of all of them in the pilot.

Heroes Season 2 begins September 24 on NBC.

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