Star Trek: Renegades

[Johnny]

Yep, officially don't like it.. ah well.
Why is it the majority of fan productions feel it necessary to remove the familiarity from whatever they produce? ie: banding on uniforms, or combadge alterations? I get the same feeling with things like that as I do when I see a wobbly set. :/

batboy853 wrote:

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Whoa welcome back! I know this is off topic, but what happened to your fanfilm? is it going to be released someplace?

they could always contact this person and see if his bridge is available?
http://subspacecommunique.com/node/499

Mine was only a university project, took six weeks to build the set and it was up for 2 1/2 days then it had to come down. It was all a bit rushed in the end, and a lot of it still has no effects, redubbing etc. I think I'll build a website for it all to be in one place some day soon. But for now...bring on the cheese...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8UPSknaHZI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5MMa-CLYIA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKKPr03dh4Q
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2rhB9ZHylQ

[Matt S]

I just discovered 'Of Gods And Men' - fun stuff - Walter Koenig kept up on his acting skills - Nichols was a little rough at first.....

[Maurice]

Johnny wrote:

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Mine was only a university project, took six weeks to build the set and it was up for 2 1/2 days then it had to come down...

Cool set, but you never get back far enough to really see it. Was it buttoned-up (not wild)?

[Johnny]

Maurice wrote:

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Cool set, but you never get back far enough to really see it. Was it buttoned-up (not wild)?

What do you mean by 'buttoned-up'?
J.

[Maurice]

Johnny wrote:

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What do you mean by 'buttoned-up'?
J.

Meaning the set didn't have wild walls that could be moved so that the camera could shoot into the set from outside.

[Johnny]

Maurice wrote:

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Meaning the set didn't have wild walls that could be moved so that the camera could shoot into the set from outside.

Ah! No it was screwed together top to bottom, front to back. Took some doing getting it apart as well! The studio walls were only half a metre behind the set anyway.

[Maurice]

Interesting. The way it's shot it looks smaller.

[Potemkin_Prod]

Very reminiscent of the Potemkin's bridge, Johnny. Well done.

What did you guys do about the glare off the consoles and MSD? I'm curious because it's a concern for us as well.

[Johnny]

Potemkin_Prod wrote:

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Very reminiscent of the Potemkin's bridge, Johnny. Well done.

What did you guys do about the glare off the consoles and MSD? I'm curious because it's a concern for us as well.

The consoles were 3mm extruded acrylic with photocopier transparency sellotaped to the back... not exactly art, but they were purely for reference. We used After Effects to create console animations (or in some cases sourced pre-made lcars), and then corner-pined, masked, colour-corrected and re-lit them in post.

It was pretty much hell. I'd get through about 9 frames a day, although I wasn't very good back then! So we never really had to worry about reflections or issues with bouncing light.

[Potemkin_Prod]

We tried backlighting the consoles, but it was a miserable failure on camera. Too dim to be seen. So we took the CDR artwork we had and used it directly on the console, either a glossy print (too much reflection) and as a flat PSA vinyl applique which our cast members can reference. Then we took the CorelDraw art, and converted it to a layered PSD (photoshop document) and animated it, saving the animations as AVI. There were only a few of us who worked on this project; it took around two months to create all the AVIs.

Then using After Effects (I think) we mask them into place, angle them, and composite them into the video. Several of the VFX guys and our editor want us to use a green screen of the same size placed over the referenced position on the console. This would make placing the animations easier. The cast and shooting crew are hesitant to go with that approach as they like having a visual cue.

Still, I love the look of your bridge and animations! Well done!

[batboy853]

here's an out of the box idea, maybe try using a blacklight for the back light on the consoles it in theory would make the colors pop out.

[Johnny]

Potemkin_Prod wrote:

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We tried backlighting the consoles, but it was a miserable failure on camera. Too dim to be seen. So we took the CDR artwork we had and used it directly on the console, either a glossy print (too much reflection) and as a flat PSA vinyl applique which our cast members can reference. Then we took the CorelDraw art, and converted it to a layered PSD (photoshop document) and animated it, saving the animations as AVI. There were only a few of us who worked on this project; it took around two months to create all the AVIs.

Then using After Effects (I think) we mask them into place, angle them, and composite them into the video. Several of the VFX guys and our editor want us to use a green screen of the same size placed over the referenced position on the console. This would make placing the animations easier. The cast and shooting crew are hesitant to go with that approach as they like having a visual cue.

Still, I love the look of your bridge and animations! Well done!

We did consider green screen, we had chromat curtains available which would have been great to use, though even with green curtain, chromat or painted wood, there were issues with a green bleed on shots, especially a shallow depth of field, and the camera compression would leave us with a bigger green edge problem with green than we started with. And that's not even touching on the fact you have to light it separately to produce an even key.

I think AFX (or equivelent) post work on a black or referenced on-set graphic really gives you the freedom to do whatever you want with the animations, and if you hate it... you can change it without re-filming.

batboy853 wrote:

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here's an out of the box idea, maybe try using a blacklight for the back light on the consoles it in theory would make the colors pop out.

The issue with double-lighting on things like cling/adhesive vinyl or transparency is that, assuming you're starting off with a transparent medium then you'll be printing black as well as the colour, which means the light will pass through both in equal parts. Although admittedly the darker colours will let through a little less, however the last thing you want is a light black with a slightly lighter colour.

I tried everything from laser cut 300gsm black card with colour transparency in the button holes, to adhesive vinyl and nothing really provided the right look. Especially where there's limited ability to control natural light or access a decent amount of artificial light it becomes quite difficult.

What we did in our case got the best results for us, although it generated more work!




Some of the DSLR's (550 or above) have firmware upgrades you can install which let you record near-uncompressed footage, but it was a bit before our time. If I did it again (and I'm tempted!), I'd film on my 600... though I'd still add the lcars in post.

[Potemkin_Prod]

never tried the black light approach -- not sure how much fluorescence would appear on the otherside of the transparency, especially since we were using a translucent shieet behind the transparency to diffuse the light from the light source. The backlit sheets as Johnny points out make for lighter black backgrounds. I suspect the only way to achieve the result would be to cut out a sheet of opaque laminate (ie black countertop material) with the areas to be backlit already precut and then place the applique over the top of it and a piece of non-reflective glass or plexi over the top of that. Which would cost far more than Potemkin can budget for it at this time.

[Maurice]

On Polaris we had four flatscreen monitors running DVD loops, six overhead transparencies on light boxes, and a whole mess of physical buttons lit from below. The great thing about this is we got the best of all worlds in that we had animations running on the consoles that we didn't have to matte, the controls were "practical" in that they were physical and the actors could interact with them by touch, and the overhead graphics are easy to replace in post if we want (in some cases we'd pull out the artwork and slap a green filter and diffusion in there to make an instant greenscreen.

The other benefit of having backlit art/buttons/lit screens is you get something that's difficult to achieve if you add them in post: interactive lighting. Note in the second pic that you can see the glow from the buttons on the hand of the actress just left of center.

The trickiest part is the holographic table projections, but so far NEO f/x is doing a bang-up job match moving that stuff, even when actors pass in front of it.

[Potemkin_Prod]

Currently, we're looking at replacing the midlevel displays with actual monitors. We'll probably keep the overheads and control panels as appliques because our cast can interact with the "touchpads" better. Physical buttons, although attractive, weren't used in our Trek timeframe. Most of the panels, displays, and all were based upon those from either TMP, TWOK and TUC.