my Star Trek obsession

[Chris Millar]

 

Love the big kink in the corridor where the painted backdrop starts :lol:

 

How fast is the actor walking in the scene ?

[Will Earl]

I'm not sure that is a painted backdrop at the end of the hallway. Look at the other shot that David posted with it - even through the two locations are suppose to be different, it's likely that the hallways were modular and reused.

Edited May 30, 2009 by Will Earl

[David Mullen ASC]

I'm not sure that is a painted backdrop at the end of the hallway. Look at the other shot that David posted with it - even through the two locations are suppose to be different, it's likely that the hallways were modular and reused.

 

No I believe it is a painted backdrop, though it could also be a false perspective receding section -- Harold Michelson was sort of famous for putting false perspective in his sets to make them look bigger. The Enterprise engine room set is an example -- the receding tube of the warp core gets smaller and smaller in size and they put stand-ins who were shorter and shorter in the background to sell the effect. Those are actually children playing the engineers in suits in the far background.

 

And the vertical tube of the warp core had a false perspective painting on the floor to sell the down-angle.

 

Michelson also did "History of the World: Part One" for Mel Brooks and Brooks I believe improvised a gag in the Versailles palace scene of King Louis running down the wrong corridor where he appears to grow in size because the hallway set was shrinking in size as it receded, exclaiming "What kinda place is this???" when he reaches a tiny dead-end, hunched over.

[David Mullen ASC]

Here is another shot of the corridor -- Kirk enters from around a corner right next to where the false section begins. It may be a painting but I'm surprised then that they could match the colors and the light panels in the false section so closely to the real section. It may also be a false perspective section:

 

 

Here is that painting on the floor of the soundstage:

 

 

Here is that false perspective engineering set with the children in suits in the background:

 

 

Personally, I love these old stage tricks. But it shows that back then you designed a set with a master camera angle in mind.

[Jim Hyslop]

One thing I'm curious about is when V'Ger scans the bridge of the Enterprise. I figure the drop off in quality is because it's a duped optical, but I'm curious as to how they went about the intense light source on set, these days you'd just shoot the shot with someone moving about holding the light and they'd be painted out digitally. Here I imagine they did something similar, although the 'scan' effect they came up with didn't seem enough to cover up a grip waving a light about onset - perhaps the light was boomed from above? Does anyone have any more precise info? An old cinefex perhaps?

 

One thing I noticed in that scene was the jitter between the left and right portions of the screen. That always suggested to me that it was done in two takes, which were matted together, kind of like you'd do a wipe. The bright "scanner" would be superimposed over the wipe line, and would hide most of the jitter.

 

That's just my guess, though.

 

--

Jim

[Jim Hyslop]

One thing I noticed in that scene was the jitter between the left and right portions of the screen. That always suggested to me that it was done in two takes, which were matted together, kind of like you'd do a wipe. The bright "scanner" would be superimposed over the wipe line, and would hide most of the jitter.

 

That's just my guess, though.

 

And if I'd read through all the thread before replying, I'd have discovered David Mullen's explanation, which also explains some of the image warping I'd noticed in the shot.

 

--

Jim

p.s. Anyone know why the forum wouldn't let me edit my previous post? It said I didn't have permission to change it.

[Jim Hyslop]

No I believe it is a painted backdrop, though it could also be a false perspective receding section -- Harold Michelson was sort of famous for putting false perspective in his sets to make them look bigger. The Enterprise engine room set is an example -- the receding tube of the warp core gets smaller and smaller in size and they put stand-ins who were shorter and shorter in the background to sell the effect. Those are actually children playing the engineers in suits in the far background.

I've heard of operas that do the same thing - a huge, forced perspective set of a castle, using shorter and shorter actors to play the guards, who also carried proportionally smaller spears, shields, etc.

[Jim Hyslop]

Here is another shot of the corridor -- Kirk enters from around a corner right next to where the false section begins. It may be a painting but I'm surprised then that they could match the colors and the light panels in the false section so closely to the real section.

Could it have been a matte painting, created in post with the artist very carefully matching the colours?

 

--

Jim

[David Mullen ASC]

One thing I noticed in that scene was the jitter between the left and right portions of the screen. That always suggested to me that it was done in two takes, which were matted together, kind of like you'd do a wipe. The bright "scanner" would be superimposed over the wipe line, and would hide most of the jitter.

 

That's just my guess, though.

 

--

Jim

 

No, it was done like I said, by reflecting the footage over mylar. From Cinefex #2 (Aug. 1980)

 

Dykstra:

 

Anyway Bruce Lane began working on a pellicle system using distortion to remove the parts of the frame we didn't want to see. Basically, it worked on the same principle as a fun house mirror, We took a rear projection unit and put a flexible mylar pellicle at a 45-degree angle to the screen. Then at 45 degrees to the pellicle, we placed our camera. So what you had was the image being projected onto the screen, then reflected onto the mylar and photographed from the mirrored mylar surface. Behind the pellicle, Matt Beck rigged a probe device which would press forward against the mylar, and whatever image was on the other side would be puckered into a thin sliver. The probe had both an X and Y axis, so it could move up and down and side to side, as well as in and out. By hooking up the motion control system, Matt could program it so the distortion effect track the technician as he moved around the set with his light bar. It was really strange, though, because as the distortion effect progressed across the frame, everything would pucker -- it would suck people in and then spit them out back out again...

... it wasn't what I'd call the most sophisticated system, but it worked.

 

Here is a scan of the Cinefex page showing the lighting rig:

 

[Saul Rodgar]

I've heard of operas that do the same thing - a huge, forced perspective set of a castle, using shorter and shorter actors to play the guards, who also carried proportionally smaller spears, shields, etc.

 

Black Narcissus was completely planned, designed and shot with those physical world optical illusion techniques. The featurette included in the Criterion DVD shows a lot of the background paintings AND the physical perspective elements that were used for the individual shots, using the preset camera vantage point paradigm.

Edited May 30, 2009 by Saul Rodgar

[David Mullen ASC]

Could it have been a matte painting, created in post with the artist very carefully matching the colours?

 

--

Jim

 

No, because the camera moves and people cross in front of it - today that would be done with greenscreen and digital compositing, back then, it would have been a bluescreen and optical printer compositing, plus no out-of-focus people would be allowed to move in front of the bluescreen, and most of the time, the shots would have to be locked off to avoid motion control -- and but none of those scenes were duped and there's too much camera movement and people movement, etc. Plus the scene it lit blue, so that rules out bluescreen (they could have used greenscreen but that was very rare back then.) It's basically live-action photography. The only likely options then are set painting, false perpsective, or rear-projection, and it doesn't look like the last option.

 

Besides plenty of people who worked on the movie have mentioned the false perspective pieces and painted backdrops on the sets.

 

Also, the live-action bluescreen shots are fairly obvious in the movie due to blue spill (one of the reasons why Trumbull prefered hi-con multi-pass matting instead, but that's not possible with live action.)

[Guest Tim Partridge]

There's a miserably fake looking, painted backdrop used at the end of Star Trek Nemesis, in the corridors of the Enterprise. Terrible and amateurish. Very unforgiving on the big screen. These are not easy tricks to pull off, by any means, which makes you appreciate the craftsmanship of the likes of Michelson and Kline.

 

 

Will,

 

Visually, in terms of cinematography and set design, it's all down hill after ST:TMP (in my opinion). The vertical drop from the epic visuals of the first movie to the TVish second will be quite extreme for you (even if the second is better as a movie overall), but from there on it peaks again with the Nimoy movies (although it's a tiny hill compared to ST:TMP), but then flatlines more or less straight after that. I am very interested to hear your responses to these films on a technical level.

 

I would also love to hear David Mullen rank the cinematography of the Trek films, particularly as he is clearly quite a fan of the franchise. :)

[David Mullen ASC]

Well, I know some of those Trek DP's so I don't want them to take offense at my ranking of the movies, but a rough breakdown:

 

#1 Star Trek: The Motion Picture

Clean, sharp, slow-speed film anamorphic photography, pristine, polished, rich contrast, cold & high-tech. Great widescreen compositions that favor master and deep-focus staging over a bunch of close-ups.

 

#2 Star Trek (2009)

I liked the anamorphic flares -- gave those scenes a sparkly brand-new car feeling to me, high-tech, glossy. I liked the way sets were lit in general, and I really liked the dark look of the early scenes on the Kelvin, in some ways, while I like the Apple computer design of the new Enterprise, dramatically it leaves you nowhere to go in later movies, it's just too white and bright. Sort of works as a "first time you see it" sort of experience but it will get old eventually. Less fond of the excessive use of close-ups.

 

#3 Star Trek IV

Well, there aren't a lot of classic Trek settings in this one since it mostly takes place in San Francisco, so I'm judging it on the few non-San Francisco scenes in comparing it to the other Trek movies. But the best thing is the lighting of the spaceship bridges and Starfleet control room (with a lot of underlighting from consoles), the warmth of the Vulcan scenes, the lighting in the one Vulcan interior with Spock and his mother. Nice, soft, flattering close-up lighting. Though I like the finer-grained sharper Trek movies, I also like the use of the 1/2 Fog filter and smoke in this one. It worked well in moodier scenes.

 

#4 Star Trek: Generations

Strengths: high-contrast sharp shadowy lighting in some Enterprise scenes, like that "sunset" light falling into Picard's quarters. One of the cleanest, sharpest Trek movies next to the first one.

 

#5 Star Trek: Nemesis

Just all-around nice anamorphic photography and lighting, soft but not flat, nice use of color at times but not garish. Good lighting of the bridge set.

 

#6 Star Trek III

Probably in some ways the one movie that harkens back to the Original Series the most in terms of colored lighting. Sometimes it works quite well, like in Spock's dark quarters when Kirk finds McCoy in the shadows. Good anamorphic photography, nice variations in mood on the bridge set. Some other interior scenes can get a bit too TV-ish in the lighting though and I find some of the production design problematic. Making the Vulcan scenes at the end look at bit like the old TV show or a Cecil B. Demille movie actually works for me now, though less so when I was in college.

 

I'm tempted to flop III and Nemesis -- Nemesis is more contemporary (of course) and is probably more like how I'd shoot a Trek movie (not that I'm as talented as Jeff Kimball) but at least III goes for some interesting theatrical ideas, though on a budget. In some ways, the modern Trek movies have been too slick, if that's a bad thing (not sure) -- I guess maybe I'm saying that the use of soft light becomes sort of the conventional Hollywood big-budget look that the studio likes.

 

#7 Star Trek V

Ignoring that this movie has real problems in a number of departments, including some effects that make Trek 2 seem big-budget in comparison... Andrew Laszlo always does some risky low-light work in his movies, this one included. The moodiness of the hanger deck, the rec room, etc. was interesting to see.

 

The rest of the Trek movies have their pluses and minuses -- Star Trek 2 obviously suffers from its TV budget, though there is some nice close-up lighting at times, and some mood to how the bridge was lit. The best thing was probably sawing the bridge up into sections to get a crane in there -- some nice camera moves on the set. Star Trek 6, the other Nicholas Meyer one, adds the Steadicam into the mix on the bridge, though Shatner was trying that in his Trek V too. Not too happy about Trek 6 being shot in Super-35, though it's quite good Super-35 photography. Again, Meyer sort of got shafted, budget-wise, just as on Trek 2.

 

Star Trek: First Contact is probably the best of the Next Generation movies in terms of story, pace, action, mood, etc. and Leonetti did a great job of lighting the women in his films. Those movies seem a bit greyish though, but not in an interesting way like Trek 1.

[Guest Tim Partridge]

Thankyou for the breakdown, David.

 

My list is similar to yours. I definitely rate STIV as being second best. I haven't seen the new movie, but respect that it at least has tried for it's own visual identity and not just doing the "TV house" thing. STIV's camerawork was also nominated for an Oscar, wasn't it? I do really like the availble light exteriors of SanFran, plus the very smokey, Flashdance style spaceship interiors.

 

I must admit that I would put Trek III in after IV, largely for it's boldest, as you mentioned. I also think Charles Correll's lighting was in another universe (excuse the pun) compared to the flat TV lighting Gayne Reschner gave WOK. III actually looks cinematic, with contrast, shadow and decent production design. Loved the Krull soundtrack, too. :)

 

I noticed when watching Nemesis (back in 2002) that there was one kind of classic Kimball/Scott moment where one character (I think Data) is sat in a chair, toplit at least three stops over. That aside, to me it just looked the same as Alzonzo/Leonetti/Narita's work on the previous movies. I also didn't care for that buggy racing scene around a quarry where they seemed to add some bleaching preset in the DI. I also seem to remember that you could clearly see the rigged lamps wrapped in 216 reflected in the actor's headsets or something else reflective during this scene (at least on the big screen).

 

I do agree with you on STV as well David. While I do believe that this is where the rot set in for Star Trek movie visuals (again with the TV Generation sets) I think Mr. Lazlo's cinematography put up a brave fight, and in many ways it's the most cinematic photography of all of the films after ST:TMP.

[Will Earl]

I've made it through Khan and Search. It's definitely felt like the quality of the production design has gone downhill, I haven't noticed it so much with the cinematography - the main thing that stood out about Khan was the score by James Horner, which I didn't really like and sounded very similar to his Battle Beyond The Stars work. The quality of the matte painting and visual effect work in these last two films is much improved from TMP, the paintings of Vulcan at the end of III are great and the shot of the crew watching the Enterprise burn up as it crashes on Genesis is rather beautiful.

 

I actually wish I had the Cinefex's to go along with these films, I look at some shots and I can sort of reverse engineer them based on modern VFX techniques, but I'd like to know some of the specifics.

[Jim Hyslop]

Well, I know some of those Trek DP's so I don't want them to take offense at my ranking of the movies, but a rough breakdown:

 

Very nice summary, thank you.

 

Some other interior scenes can get a bit too TV-ish in the lighting

Would you mind elaborating on what makes lighting "TV-ish"?

[K Borowski]

I noticed when watching Nemesis (back in 2002) that there was one kind of classic Kimball/Scott moment where one character (I think Data) is sat in a chair, toplit at least three stops over. That aside, to me it just looked the same as Alzonzo/Leonetti/Narita's work on the previous movies. I also didn't care for that buggy racing scene around a quarry where they seemed to add some bleaching preset in the DI.

 

Wasn't that a real BB for that? Also, I thought only part of the film went through a DI.

 

This last Star Trek film was the only one that I thought had the entirety scanned.

 

 

Frankly, David, I'm surprised you ranked the new Trek as number two on your list.

 

Do you count the FX work as Cinematography? I felt that II and III were absolutely superb in this regard.

 

Memory had faded my appreciation for VI (I hadn't seen it in years until a week ago, and saw it in the theatres when I was only four, my first Star Trek film), but watchign it again I feel the Cinematography in this film may be even better than in ST:TMP.

 

In terms of working with the story, despite it being S35, it's stellar. Also, as a whole, it is probably the most intelligent of the Star Trek movies, all the rest of which (even ST:TMP doesn't have the most mind-tinglling script) seem stuck on the concept that the average viewer has an IQ of 85 and there needs to be an obvious good guy and an obvious bad guy for audiences to understand it.

 

Hell, they even thought the concept of The Borg as too difficult to understand so they came up with the corny Borg Queen character and turned the borg themselves into zombies.

 

As a religious fan of ST:TNG, I was very disappointed with all of the TNG movies (except maybe Generations). They almost leave the world of Sci-Fi and become straight space action movies.

Edited June 11, 2009 by Karl Borowski

[Freya Black]

Here is another shot of the corridor -- Kirk enters from around a corner right next to where the false section begins. It may be a painting but I'm surprised then that they could match the colors and the light panels in the false section so closely to the real section. It may also be a false perspective section:

 

Here is that false perspective engineering set with the children in suits in the background:

 

Personally, I love these old stage tricks. But it shows that back then you designed a set with a master camera angle in mind.

 

Funny, they did almost exactly the same tricks on the original Alien movie! Except they only had about 8 million for the film, so they had space suits that didn't really work and the children would pass out from lack of oxygen and instead of amazing matte paintings of the corridors, they used a mirror!

 

I loved the mirror trick in paticular.

 

love

 

Freya

[Freya Black]

For those genuinely obssesed with star trek there are a number of web series out there.

Most of them I find to be unbearable personally but I'm not a massive Trek fan so YMMV.

However I think the following are kind of interesting:

 

http://www.starshipexeter.com/

 

Based on the original series, these people actually built their own sets and everything!

 

http://www.startreknewvoyages.com/

 

Which is based loosely on the PhaseII TV series that Paramount started making but abandoned just as it was about to go into production. (They made the movie instead) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_Phase_II

 

Just thought this stuff might be interesting to people here so I thought I would share! :)

Have fun!

 

love

 

Freya

[Scott Larson]

Yes but you can't help but notice how shockingly cheeeeeezy the sets look in HD :)

I had the opposite reaction. Nothing about it shocked me. The bridge didn't have just the "blinking lights" that signify cheap sci-fi but many of the "displays" and controls around the bridge had a surprising amount of detail that made them look almost realistic. They did replace close ups of some the truly dated props like Sulu's "analog" chronometer.

 

One thing I noticed is how they "cheated" the focus in some scenes. In one conference room scene there were three actors at different distances from the camera. Instead of focusing on whoever was talking, they simply kept the focus on the middle actor and let the other two be slightly out of focus while they talked. This was barely noticeable on the DVD but is certainly obvious in HD.

[Patrick Neary]

I was noticing more the "planet" sets, which, well, they looked bad.

 

(By the way, Hello fellow Portlandian, or Portlander, or whatever we are...Have you noticed that Portland really isn't "Hollywood North" the way the TV news proclaims once every 2 years or so? It's still a great town tho-)

[Andy_Alderslade]

Are you picking on me for like "Star Trek" movies? I also like Kurosawa movies...

 

But I'm not going to apologize to you for liking "Star Trek" anymore than for liking the occasional hamburger or hot dog instead of an expensive restaurant meal, or listening to the occasional pop song instead of a classical symphony, or reading the occasional genre paperback instead of a great novel. And eventually I'll get through my Silent Ozu DVD collection, I swear...

 

Its interesting how we can get a lot of satisfaction and reward from very commercial products, Star Trek never did much for me personally but as a teenager I was very much a Star Wars kid - something about the original films really appealed to me, I was at the time a dyslexic kid, swamped by homework in a broken home with few friends - something about Star Wars actually gave me a sense of hope that one day things were going to be better.

 

Later on when I went to Uni and found the freedom and fun and company I was very much in need of, I didn't really need Star Wars anymore (and those darned prequels didn't help), but I'll never forget how something as commercial, made 1000s of miles away, before I was even born was so helpful to me.

 

In many ways how commercial something is irrelevant to how it can affect you, both big and small films can effect people or demand people's loyalty - for example even today people leave thank-you messages on the grave of Francois Truffaut somebody who was obviously at the opposite side from star wars or star trek.

[Scott Larson]

I was noticing more the "planet" sets, which, well, they looked bad.

Oh yes, the "planets" were minimal of course. The strategic placement of huge boulders everywhere was to distract from the non-existent horizons which were clearly gelled lights. I don't think there was any precedent for creating sets like that on television, was there? You can tell they put some effort into the "ruins" in Man Trap. The budgets for these episodes were incredibly low. I could imagine NBC executives watching these early episodes on a projector looking for anything that didn't look right.

 

Another fun cheap scene to look for is a shot from inside a turbolift. They appear to enter it from some nondescript hallway, and without a cut thirty seconds later the doors open and we see the bridge. Of course it was just a simple matter of using a "hallway" set to block our vision of the bridge while the doors were open and moving it out of the way while the doors were closed to reveal the bridge set when they opened again.

 

(By the way, Hello fellow Portlandian, or Portlander, or whatever we are...Have you noticed that Portland really isn't "Hollywood North" the way the TV news proclaims once every 2 years or so? It's still a great town tho-)

No, that would be Vancouver, B.C. :)

[K Borowski]

Another fun cheap scene to look for is a shot from inside a turbolift. They appear to enter it from some nondescript hallway, and without a cut thirty seconds later the doors open and we see the bridge. Of course it was just a simple matter of using a "hallway" set to block our vision of the bridge while the doors were open and moving it out of the way while the doors were closed to reveal the bridge set when they opened again.

 

I, for one, was always quite impressed by this shot when I first realized that they didn't have an actual full-size space ship to film on, of course ;-)

 

Seriously, how fast could *you* lug a giant fake corridor backdrop off a set which was then seamlessly sealed 360° around?

[Scott Larson]

Seriously, how fast could *you* lug a giant fake corridor backdrop off a set which was then seamlessly sealed 360° around?

Depends on how many large men helped me! Note that we only see the upper part of the hallway wall so it could have been on wheels. Also if I remember right we see very little of the bridge set through the doors before a cut so it may have been moved just a few feet to the side.

 

You know some guys were high-fiving each other when they pulled this off. Well, high fives weren't in common use yet but I'm sure they were doing whatever white guys did in the late sixties in these situations. ;)