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A question on Star Trek TMP


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Hey All.

I've been thinking a bunch recently about going back to shoot some film stuff for music videos. I'm lucky I know a few performers who, while I'll be working for little to no money, are willing to invest a bit and play around visually. At present, I'm thinking about 35mm, probably 3 -perf and some Dry for Wet work. But beyond that, I was curious about bringing out this effect:

 

https://youtu.be/mvDma4sG8Vg?t=106

 

There may have been a time when I looked up how to do this; but honestly at present i'm coming up pretty short on the how; so I put it to you all; how did they do all this photochemically? Beyond just camera necessities, also what was done in the printing process?

 

Any help would be much appreciated as always.

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Douglas Trumbull, Cinefex #1, pg.28:

 

"It was done on a horizontal camera stand with 35mm film projected from behind onto a little RP (rear-projection) screen. They isolated the parts they wanted to have streaked -- faces and lights, primarily -- by making individual rotoscope masks that would reveal only those parts. Then, as each masked image was projected onto the RP screen, the camera would move relative to it with the shutter open and record it as a blur. The idea was they're caught up in this wormhole effect and you're seeing a distortion of time and space on the bridge -- everything's started to stretch out. Since the blurs keep changing and undulating during the shots, they had to use a computer to control all the motions. It was an extremely complicated process -- each different streak in a given shot would require a separate pass -- and it took them about seven months to complete the whole sequence. Then they went back and had all the streaks optically superimposed over the live-action footage they'd started from originally."

 

He said that this sequence had been started already by Bob Swarthe working for Robert Abel's company before they were replaced by Trumbul's, but since it was so complicated and being done with 35mm equipment and Trumbull was geared to work in 65mm, he let him finish the sequence at Abel's.

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There is a much more detailed description in Cinefex #11 (interview with Robert Swarthe), over a page long which I'm not going to retype. But it does mention that the steppy quality to the streak was an accident of the system, the motion controlled camera took a moment to begin its move, causing a hot spot in the streak due to the build up in exposure in that frame.

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I think you'll have a hard time finding anyone who could do this work on an optical printer. Let alone find a rear projection screen attached to an Oxberry animation stand set-up.

 

It wouldn't be the same, but a variation would be to mistime a shutter on film camera and shoot everything with a 90 degree tilt to so the streaks move horizontally instead of vertically (you'll have to crop and rotate in post, so ideally shoot on a 4-perf 35mm camera rather than a widescreen format.)

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What I"m thinking is not to do it on an optical printer-- but maybe work with a DSLR in post for this specific sequence (as well as cardboard cut outs).

 

Basically the idea is from the film original once scanned Print out transparencies of each frame needed (perhaps every other frame) (and granted I'm thinking a few seconds worth here, not the long sequence) and throw them onto a light-box with everything masked out minus the "light areas" I want to streak, and then utilizing a stills camera in bulb mode attached to a slider-type thing to do a long exposure, hand moved, to get the streaks, then composite them. I think you're right and photochemical won't work, which is kinda sad :(

Most of those whole idea comes out of me rambling to a good friend of mine about how sad it is these techniques are dying, and wanting to try them before they're gone.

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What I"m thinking is not to do it on an optical printer-- but maybe work with a DSLR in post for this specific sequence (as well as cardboard cut outs).

 

Basically the idea is from the film original once scanned Print out transparencies of each frame needed (perhaps every other frame) (and granted I'm thinking a few seconds worth here, not the long sequence) and throw them onto a light-box with everything masked out minus the "light areas" I want to streak, and then utilizing a stills camera in bulb mode attached to a slider-type thing to do a long exposure, hand moved, to get the streaks, then composite them. I think you're right and photochemical won't work, which is kinda sad :(

Most of those whole idea comes out of me rambling to a good friend of mine about how sad it is these techniques are dying, and wanting to try them before they're gone.

If you can use motion control for each frame so that the streak from each frame looks the same, you might get a look a bit like that Star Trek clip. But I suppose if you went freehand with the camera movement it would look a bit more wrigley and anarchic (yay!)

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  • 7 months later...

Those original ILM teams were wizards. I love practical effects. The level of creativity involved is palpable.

Not to be persnickety, but ILM didn't do TMP, though future ILMer Scott Farrar did shoot some of it (for Trumbull's team under Dave Stewart), as did former ILMer Doug Smith (the latter working for Dykstra at Apogee.) And yeah, they were all geniuses! Again, if you want to drown in TMP VFX tech, just read the last half of the monstrously thick RETURN TO TOMORROW book on the making of TMP ... put that together with Cinefex and AmCin coverage and you're probably about as close to knowing most of what and how they did things as you're going to get.

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Not to be persnickety, but ILM didn't do TMP, though future ILMer Scott Farrar did shoot some of it (for Trumbull's team under Dave Stewart), as did former ILMer Doug Smith (the latter working for Dykstra at Apogee.) And yeah, they were all geniuses! Again, if you want to drown in TMP VFX tech, just read the last half of the monstrously thick RETURN TO TOMORROW book on the making of TMP ... put that together with Cinefex and AmCin coverage and you're probably about as close to knowing most of what and how they did things as you're going to get.

 

Ah yes, ILM didn't get involved till Wrath of Khan. And I thought I was Trekkie.

 

I'm particularly fascinated by the miniature work. The Enterprise in that film is probably the most convincing miniature I've seen. This includes 2001, the Star Wars saga, and the more recent CGI Trek films/tv series.

 

On the other hand, it would be difficult to make that model "fly" as effectively as the ships in the mentioned films and tv. A big model like that can't roll, bank, or accelerate as freely as a CG model.

 

Clearly I've thought a good deal about this, lol! If I could wish myself into the director's chair on a ST film, I'd want to see the gravitas of TMP Enterprise coupled with the agility/nimbleness of the more recent ships. But I'm hijacking now. Apologies for geeking out.

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On the other hand, it would be difficult to make that model "fly" as effectively as the ships in the mentioned films and tv. A big model like that can't roll, bank, or accelerate as freely as a CG model.

The model doesn't, much. The camera does.

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Spaceships don’t need to roll and bank in zero-G...

 

But forgetting that for a moment, you usually convey size in a transportation vehicle miniature by the sort of moves it makes, and the Enterprise is the size of an aircraft carrier, so you risk making it feel smaller if it moves too nimbly.

 

What a CGI model does allow is for the virtual camera to fly around the “big” spaceship with greater freedom, from near to far.

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Spaceships dont need to roll and bank in zero-G...

 

But forgetting that for a moment, you usually convey size in a transportation vehicle miniature by the sort of moves it makes, and the Enterprise is the size of an aircraft carrier, so you risk making it feel smaller if it moves too nimbly.

 

What a CGI model does allow is for the virtual camera to fly around the big spaceship with greater freedom, from near to far.

I entirely agree. I would add that the CGI model is able to have a lot more moving parts, which should make it much richer character. But if they keep destroying her every movie, she can't really develop as a character. Now I'm definitely rabbit-trailing.

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The first decade though of CGI spaceships, there was such a high cost to detailing the digital model at a high resolution, that CGI spaceships either tended to lack texture or they avoided getting too close to them or they did everything at a low resolution. The physical model of the Enterprise E in "First Contact" looked better than the digital version in "Insurrection".

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Oh yeah, the most convincing CGI starship thus far has been the USS Kelvin from Star Trek 09. The scale and detail of that model were really excellent. I also loved Enterprise in Star Trek Beyond. That's the best she's looked since TMP. I hate that they destroyed her. She moved in a similar way to the Refit Enterprise as well. So much sci-fi model work (CGI or practical) lately gives me motion sickness. It's important to see the model clearly if the audience is to believe it.

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