Back on Trek

Photos: Industrial Light and Magic. TM and © 2009 by Paramount Pictures. Star Trek and Related Marks and Logos are Trademarks of CBS Studios, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

When J.J. Abrams was handed the keys to the Star Trek kingdom, he boldly went where no Star Trek filmmaker had gone before: into prequel land. The decision to tell the story of how the legendary characters of the famous TV-and-film franchise got together originally meant the project would require both story and visual connections to the original 1960s-era Star Trek TV series.

Some of the challenges of this approach are obvious, particularly the casting of new actors to take over the classic roles. More vexing, however, was the visual challenge—how, exactly, to design, frame, shoot, color, and exhibit the piece in a way that evokes what was originally a low-budget, low-tech TV series from several decades ago, while still updating the visuals for the big screen in 2009.

“The decision was to take inspiration from what was created by Gene Roddenberry 40-some years ago and treat it in a new visual style, giving it relevance today that would not involve doing a campy throwback look,” Abrams says. “We wanted to make what he created vital in today''s context. Doing a Xerox of what you had seen before would have undermined that attempt. We certainly legitimized things like the colors of the uniforms, phasers, the basic design of the ship, etc. There is no one particular look for the movie. It takes place in a number of different settings, and it was important to make sure the scope and scale was large and diverse. But there were a couple of visual systems that we committed to early on to make it seem realistic, including the use of lens flares—something that we became ridiculously obsessed with.”

First, Abrams asked key team members who helped him make his first feature film—Mission: Impossible III (2006)—to return for Star Trek. As this is only his second feature directorial effort, Abrams felt it was important to maintain his core team. Thus, Mission: Impossible III (M:i:III) DP Dan Mindel, Visual Effects Supervisor/Second Unit Director Roger Guyett of Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), Editors Maryann Brandon and Mary Jo Markey, Production Designer Scott Chambliss, Set Decorator Karen Manthey, Colorist Stefan Sonnenfeld, and others all returned to help Abrams update Star Trek.

Guyett says it''s now clear to him that Abrams, so respected as a TV producer, is a natural filmmaker—much more comfortable in the director''s chair than even three years ago, when they first worked together on Mission: Impossible III.

“He''s become very familiar with the mechanics of making a movie, and on M:i:III, he was already a quick study,” Guyett says of Abrams. “On Star Trek, J.J. had a movie under his belt, and it shows. He was more confident and more familiar with the process and very clear on what he wanted to do, and he can see shots in his head. What he was very clear on was that we had to constantly expand the movie''s scope. This picture has a scope that earlier [Star Trek] movies never had.”

Director J.J. Abrams, pictured working with cast members, made the crucial decision to shoot Star Trek in anamorphic 35mm to visually honor previous Star Trek films, but not directly emulate their look or design.
Photo: Zade Rosenthal. © 2008 Paramount Pictures. All Rights Reserved.

The next step for Abrams was to decide how to shoot the movie. Abrams is a well-known aficionado of the Star Wars universe, he was working closely with ILM on huge digital-
effects sequences, and he had the opportunity to speak directly with George Lucas about his filmmaking theories. So early on, there was talk of shooting the piece digitally.

Eventually, however, Abrams and Mindel decided the movie should be shot in the 35mm anamorphic 2.35:1 film format. Both men say that was the best way for them to end up with both an ultra-big-screen feel and the realistic, organic look they wanted for the Trek universe.

“In my mind, it was a film project from the get-go, but there were some heavy hitters who had made space movies suggesting we shoot HD,” Mindel says. “I pleaded for the anamorphic format and showed J.J. some tests that convinced him this would be the most photographically pleasing way to shoot the movie. I showed him how I was intending to use the anamorphic approach for interior sets by using the lack of depth of field with the [anamorphic] lenses—how we could cover some sets discreetly, very easily, as opposed to trying to do that in post, digitally, later. It was very important to have that big-screen feel. I think the 2.35:1 format with real
anamorphic lenses is how classic movies have been shot for years, so I argued in favor of anamorphic lenses, because they have the highest image-gathering quality available.”
Abrams wasn''t hard to convince. While he admits to having “an extremely interesting discussion with George Lucas about the advocacy of digital, and [how] there are many places where digital is obviously a brilliant tool,” he says he felt it was not the right tool for this particular piece.

“I wanted this movie to feel real,” Abrams says. “I''m not saying you can''t be real with digital. But with film, for me, there was such a familiarity and comfort to it, a real warmth. We wanted to avoid coldness and any unnatural sense of perfection. [Mindel] is such a brilliant DP, I''m sure we could have achieved this look either way, but we felt it would take longer if we shot digital. Given our desire to avoid greenscreen as much as possible, to have the movie look as real as possible, and given that we would already have a large portion of it created digitally anyway [more than 1,000 visual-effects shots], I just felt we would be better balanced shooting on film and embracing that familiarity—that beautiful imperfection that comes with film. I know anamorphic lenses on a 35mm film camera real well. I know what that looks like, and I''m in love with that.”

As they ramped up for production, Abrams and his team also did extensive research into the world of Star Trek and space movies generally, as they fought to strike that balance between honoring the imagery that came before, while updating the franchise. Guyett brought to the table essentially a highlight reel of what he says were “interesting visual effects” from previous Star Trek movies to help inform the film¬makers'' overall mindset, rather than to
specifically mimic.

“I watched all the Star Trek movies,” Guyett says. “I decided to edit a reel I thought was interesting to help us understand how [legendary director of the original 1979 Star Trek film] Robert Wise revealed the Enterprise. It was a big moment when he revealed the ship, and J.J. and I discussed that and made sure it was a big moment in this movie, as well. I was also looking at lighting in space. Many space movies make specific decisions about how to light ships, and I thought, in particular, 2001: A Space Odyssey [1968] and [2007''s] Sunshine did a great and dramatic job of lighting spaceships.

“Those kinds of movies use darkness as an analogy for the unknown and light comes out of the darkness, and that was good for what we were doing because [Star Trek] is about exploration and there is some degree of trepidation involved there. We also learned to use color to express geography as we created different environments in the movie—moving out of black to specific colors if they are near Vulcan or other planets. I looked at all those movies, and so did J.J., and Dan Mindel and I watched 2001 on a big screen. Those things gave us great reference and were visually inspiring—a library of ideas we could draw from.”

The movie features camera lens flaring as part of the visual design, including use of a proprietary system designed by ILM''s Todd Vaziri for effects shots.
Photo: Industrial Light and Magic. TM & © 2009 by Paramount Pictures. All Rights Reserved.

On Paramount stages and various locations throughout California, Mindel used Panavision Primo anamorphic lenses to shoot the movie with two primary stocks: Kodak Vision2 100T 5212 for day exteriors, and Kodak Vision2 500T 5218 for night exteriors and interiors. Mindel says the approach was mainly traditional, with frequent use of technocranes. He did, however, add some of Panavision''s brand-new anamorphic zooms to his repertoire, including the AWZ2 lens (40mm-80mm) and the ATZ tight zoom (70mm-200mm)—both of which saw heavy action during production.

The biggest innovation in shooting the movie may have been the most low-tech method employed by Mindel overall. That technique was the strategic plan to build camera lens flares into the photography. For a sci-fi space film—or any film these days—that aesthetic is extremely rare, since filmmakers usually battle to remove flares from their photography, rather than insert them. Abrams'' and Mindel''s obsession with lens flares, however, was part of a strategic vision for the photography. The technique is so prevalent that Abrams jokes he may have designed “a future in which you''ll have to wear shades.”

“I can''t explain it with intellectual reasoning—I can just say it was important to me,” Abrams says. “Even though some people may think we went over the top with flares, I just loved that they made it feel like there was always something spectacular going on off-camera, as well as what was happening on-camera. It reminded me of the feeling I would get watching NASA footage. It might be a distraction to some people, and I apologize to them, but I loved that feeling that this was a more natural future, rather than a [stereotypical sci-fi] shiny future.”

Mindel says the approach required an attitude adjustment on the part of the camera crew. “We have been spending the last 20 to 30 years trying to take flares out,” he says. “Here, we loved the way the anamorphic lenses flare naturally, and we were told to let them happen and we even put them in when they weren''t there. Other space movies have that non-believable aspect of being photographically sterile, and they rarely allow the idio¬syncratic nature of light and movement into the arena, which gives you a kind of homogenized movie. We were eager to make sure that did not happen here. We felt a degree of believability comes with the idiosyncrasies that we allowed onto the film—those aberrations on the lenses, flaring, and even a little misframing or accidents. Often, it''s accidents that go on to make up the great pieces of movie art. We felt that by allowing flares in, we would get an organic infringement into the sterile frame—adding a bit of imperfection, a degree of reality.

“We developed an interesting, low-tech technique for it. We had two guys with flashlights flaring the lens constantly. There is a real expertise to it. The hardest thing about the
technique was how to keep the lamp operators out of frame since they had to play very close to the lens. The trickery comes from knowing how to flare the lens and hide behind the flare. In this situation, dailies become especially important. They were done at FotoKem [in Burbank, Calif.] by [dailies colorist] Mark Van Horne, who is one of my closest allies when making an anamorphic movie. It sounds archaic, but watching traditional dailies is the only way to guarantee quality control on an anamorphic movie—especially for focus and other subtle things that are hard to see on an Avid screen.”

But the flaring technique hardly stopped once the production left the set. Mindel''s camera work served as the inspiration for the creation of artificial lens flares for many bits of hundreds of visual-effects shots. These flares were created using a proprietary system developed at ILM to match the specific aberrations of Mindel''s anamorphic lenses.

ILM Sequence Supervisor Todd Vaziri was responsible for developing the artificial lens-flare software system, which the company dubbed SunSpot. The system essentially combines off-the-shelf software, certain proprietary ILM tools, photographed elements, and several custom paint elements to painstakingly match the flares captured on the negative.

“The technique gives compositors instant, highly realistic anamorphic lens flares for our all-CG shots that are indistinguishable from real, practical flares shots by the first unit,” Guyett says. “We used it to create flares for a variety of purposes such as spotlights on the exterior of the Enterprise, lights on synthetic set extensions, the Vulcan sun, and a dwarf star featured in the
film''s prologue.”

The Delta Vega ice planet, which features some of the most sophisticated CG creatures in Star Trek history, took advantage of extensive second-unit work led by Visual Effects Supervisor/Second Unit Director Roger Guyett.
Photo: industrial Light and Magic. TM & © 2009 by Paramount Pictures. All Rights Reserved.

Guyett says the design and surfacing work done on the very recognizable starship Enterprise was another crucial challenge for ILM. Abrams had his team design a sleeker, more contemporary version of the ship, and Guyett adds that ILM lovingly researched the nuances of the ship''s surface and pedigree in order to get it just right.

“Our design is more contemporary—the same silhouette as the original, but in many respects, sleeker and bigger in scale,” Guyett says. “We never thought about shooting miniatures for it—that just didn''t suit the way we were working, and CG has come so far from the earlier Star Trek eras, so there was really no reason to. But we do still have one of the original Enterprise models here at ILM, so we certainly studied it, and we even brought in [model maker] John Goodson, who had worked on earlier Star Trek films to help us figure out how to paint the CG Enterprise. He helped us build out a CG concept to match how they used interference paint [a paint emulsion that lets you see opposite colors at certain angles when painted over dark or light colors] on the surface so that the ship''s panels divided up to create a geometric look.”

Guyett adds that ILM also benefitted from shader R&D work it has done in recent years for several big effects films, in terms of finalizing the look of the Enterprise.

“We built upon that research, further developing [Pixar] RenderMan shader sets that use HDR [high-dynamic-range imaging] in unique ways, allowing for even more photo¬realistic lighting models,” he says. “I''m very pleased with the look we were ultimately able to achieve, and I have to really tip my hat to our crew for devising some ingenious techniques.”

There were myriad effects ILM and the other vendors on the project (Digital Domain, Lola Visual Effects, and Svengali Visual Effects) had to grapple with, ranging from Star Trek favorites such as phasers, transporters, warp signatures, and the like to big-bang imagery such as an ice planet, black holes, a planet collapsing, a space-jump sequence, space battles between starships, and a veritable boatload of exploding stuff.

Guyett says the production went to great lengths to maintain the feeling of realism in these effects as well, by doing extensive scientific research on how explosions and other reactions occur in space. Abrams even hired Carolyn Porco, a science adviser from NASA who was the leader of the imaging project for the Cassini satellite mission. Abrams met Porco at the 2007 TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) Conference, and he invited her to add her astronomical expertise to the mix.

“In early years, if you blew something up in space, you just composite in the elements and that''s it, like any other explosion,” Guyett says. “But we wanted more reality, more pyro-type effects to simulate the physics of the way things explode in space. We studied and argued at length about how things would behave if you don''t have gravity. ILM has done so many explosions for so many years that we knew how to do a lot of physically based volumetric explosions.”

Other effects work was less complex, but equally important to the movie. Star Trek''s classic aliens and new aliens, for instance, were largely created traditionally—with prosthetics and makeup. The movie, however, does feature two CG creatures on a grander scale than anything from Star Trek''s past for the Delta Vega ice planet sequence—creatures designed by Neville Page, who also handled the movie''s Romulan makeup design work.

The movie also includes an innovative approach to digital makeup, making at least one actress'' face appear truly out of this world. She plays an alien with distorted human features, and Guyett says that distortion was achieved by emulating a technique from, of all things, a Björk
music video.

“We called it the Cunningham Effect, because the technique was inspired by a video directed by Chris Cunningham,” Guyett says. “They took a human face and distorted the features digitally. We used that video as a point of reference. People have done it before, but that video was what got our attention. We took a woman with refined, clean features and just distorted her features—particularly her eyes—to make her look somewhat human, but have an unsettling quality. We did that for a character from a new alien race.”

Guyett''s contribution also included his second-unit directing work—work that Abrams says saved the production numerous headaches solving problems for visual-effects scenes, particularly sequences from the ice planet and for an effect called “the space jump.”

Guyett, who was heading second unit on a feature film for the first time, credits his years of experience working with “some of the great second-unit directors—guys like Vic Armstrong, Peter MacDonald, Simon Crane, and others” for making the second unit so efficient. He emphasizes that his dual role was particularly important because of the practical realities of modern, big-budget filmmaking—especially where visual effects are concerned.

“When you look at production costs, you don''t want to create issues that, quite frankly, the skillset of [the filmmakers] should allow you to overcome later, or do more efficiently, if you plan it correctly,” Guyett says. “The burn rate of a first-unit production is a lot of money. If it takes an hour to set up a greenscreen, that can translate to tens of thousands of dollars for something you might be able to do later in post for $5,000. So you need to know that in advance and build it into your plan. The way the business works right now, the footprint [of visual effects] needs to be minimal. Visual effects was always very maligned for slowing things down. Now, with planning, we can speed things up, and J.J. is the type of director who recognizes that.”

The tone, textures, and palette of the images from the starship environment of the story''s villain, Romulan warlord Nero (Eric Bana), was one of the parts of Star Trek deeply affected by the digital-
intermediate process at Company 3.
Photo: Industrial Light and Magic. © 2008 Paramount Pictures. All Rights Reserved.

The overall look of the film, of course, wasn''t finalized until the movie went through the digital-intermediate process at Company 3 with colorist/owner Stefan Sonnenfeld—another
longtime collaborator with Abrams and Mindel. Sonnenfeld reports the Star Trek DI wasn''t particularly harrowing, despite being a gigantic visual-effects film, largely because Company 3 and ILM work so frequently together—they even have a fiber link between the two facilities—and because of the timing of the production.

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“This and other movies I worked on recently were all for the summer, but were actually shot [in 2008, because worries about a possible actors'' strike put the movie into production sooner],” Sonnenfeld says. “That meant the movie was largely final, including visual-effects shots, by the time we started the DI. That sped things up. Normally, on these kinds of films, you are scrambling because the visual-effects shots aren''t always finished. This time, it was more streamlined. In this case, the look was more from set design and in-camera stuff with respect to the camera flares and things like that. But having a largely final movie to work on did benefit us with things that were not as rigidly preplanned. So, the actual look of the planet Vulcan, we gave a very specific kind of feel working together [in the DI], and same thing for the environment of the villain [Romulan warloard Nero] on board his ship.”

Sonnenfeld used Da Vinci''s Resolve R350 color-correction software, and his team conformed the movie on an Autodesk Smoke system. Company 3''s digital viewing theater, featuring Barco DP90P extended-gamut DLP projectors in combination with a FilmLight Truelight color-management system and proprietary LUTs, was also used routinely by the entire filmmaking brain trust to view and make decisions on visual-effects shots throughout production.

Abrams calls Sonnenfeld “the guy who masters the album after you record and mix it.”

“[The process largely revolved around] sweetening the movie, desaturating it when needed, and matching certain shots together,” he says. “Stefan ended up putting this incredibly subtle and massively important touch on the movie, which is as creative as any aspect of it.”