Yeah, as I remember reading about, it was done with a mirror reflecting the desert floor and hiding the wheels.
So how much would have quality SFX in TFF helped the movie to you?
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This is more or less what I read, decades ago about how it was done, although it was never clear to me whether the grease was applied to create the effect in-camera on the master footage, or whether it was applied during post. Also, would they put grease directly on the lens, or would they put it on a sheet of glass in front of the lens? But yeah, I never heard of any blue screen being used for that particular shot.
There are some shots where the wheels were hidden with a mirror, but there's at least one shot where the underside was blurred out. FX artists often use different techniques to achieve the same effect in different shots, depending on what works best in each situation. And it wasn't grease on the lens, I think. As I recall the shot, the blurry effect is localized around the underside of the speeder and has a flickering quality, so it was probably done frame-by-frame in post-production.
On the original Outer Limits, they'd use an old trick of Vaseline on the lens or on a matte box glass to blur part of the image.
OK, here's an interview with Richard Edlund, in which the landspeeder issue is discussed:
I tracked down that reference from the discussion here, in post 81, in which TServo2049 also opines:
^Ahh, yes, I remember now. A rotoscope shot. Meaning hand animation drawn frame-by-frame to match a moving image and alter or conceal a portion of it.
You don't need a lot of money to come up with a good story. The premise of the story was flawed and they never got past that. All the fancy set pieces and flashy visuals don't make up for the fact that there's no damned story there and in everything I've seen regarding the treatments there never was.
And he had the money. TFF cost 43% more than TVH. He just spent it badly.
Bennett and Winter spent it badly. Shatner wasn't the only party to financial mismanagement there. Shatner didn't pick Ferren on his own.
That's the biggest issue there.
The other money issues are due to timeline -- Paramount wanted something right away in summer 1989, they had a month and change to finish the script after the writers strike ended and began shooting in late 1988, and they were doing expensive location shooting while the Teamsters were on strike.
If you read "Star Trek: Movie Memories" he tries to play it both ways when taking responsibility for the film.
On one hand he kinda/sorta takes some of the brunt in not fully fleshing out ideas and being a little too ambitious in trying to do too much like trying to fill a 5 gallon bottle with seven gallons of water.
On the other hand he kinda/sorta tries to pass on the failure to others citing financial restraints, time restraints, and other factors not allowing to "fully" bring his vision to the screen.
In the end he refers to it as something like "A glorious effort that didn't fulfill it's potential."
Personally I think he was just a lousy director and in over his head, but for him to even admit partial responsibility is pretty impressive for him.
I will bet one thing though. Given his hubris and high esteem he holds himself, it MUST have been one of, if not THE, most painful blow his ego suffered during his career.
The topic isn't just the FX, it's whether the movie could have been helped by better FX. I would think that saying how bad one thinks the film is therefore perfectly on topic.
But then again, so would saying how good one thinks the film is.
All I can say, as someone who still watches TOS episodes for pleasure, is that I don't remember my Trekkie friends and I complaining about the SFX at the time. We had plenty of issues with the movie, but the cheap SFX weren't the problem. I don't even remember them being discussed. It was just a mess of movie.
My recollection at the debut was that we thought the only really abysmal shot was the Enterprise warping out ahead of the torpedo. The rest was passable, with a couple of good shots, like the Enterprise and moon reflected in the shuttle window or the Great Barrier approaching the observation room windows.
(And again, for all the complaining about Shatner as a bad director: no, he's not. He keeps the camera pointed at interesting-looking stuff, and guides the camera to keep static scenes from being too dull and to move focus to the important stuff remarkably well. For all the movie's flaws, the part of directing that's choosing what to film and how to frame it is done quite well.)
Yep. When it comes to interesting camera placements, angles and movements, Shatner is top-tier among the Trek movie directors -- Wise, Abrams and maybe Carson are the only others up there. You can make an argument that Meyer was held back because so much of Khan is set on the bridges, but it falls apart once you watch TUC, which has like one interesting shot in it that Meyer probably didn't have anything to do with (the second-unit helicopter vista in Alaska). Nimoy's work is terrible, Frakes is just bland and Stuart Baird wouldn't know a pretty picture if it were tattooed on his dong.
In terms of camera stuff, it's frequently difficult to tell where the Director ends and the Cinematographer begins. It's easy to say Shatner's got a better eye than others if you accept that the Director is responsible for that, but many times Directors cede a lot of that responsibility to the Director of Photography.
It's easier to generalize and say a Director is responsible for the acting, because if s/he's not getting what they want, they keep doing takes til they get it.
It's easier to generalize and say a Director is responsible for the acting, because if s/he's not getting what they want, they keep doing takes til they get it.
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This is my recollection as well.
I'd never thought about where Shatner ranked among the directors of the films, but I agree that he's definitely better than most (though not the best) when it comes to camera work. Of all the problems that TFF had, I never found Shatner's directing style to be one of them. I thought the movie's pacing was excellent, and have always liked that Shatner gave each of his co-stars a chance to shine--something that other directors failed to do.
I thought Frakes did a good job in FC, but his work in Insurrection was terrible. Stuart Baird should never have been tabbed as a director in the first place. He knew nothing about Star Trek and had difficulty remember the actors' names.
--Sran
That anyone would think the above is in any way a suitable response to what were fairly tame critiques is quite revealing.
While it's flawed, I am fond of TFF. The SFX are of mixed quality; none are so bad as to seriously detract from the film.
It's possible TFF could be improved by a re-edit, but it would have to be radical: most importantly, cut most of the gags that follow Kirk being captured, then create an extra act showing the journey to Shakari. A lot of this could be done with dubbing: give Sybok a line about how they will pass the "galactic barrier" (e.g. one of his followers is a genius scientist); then a montage of people sitting or walking around looking serious, with building ominous music, perhaps a Kirk voiceover adding drama. Show the Klingons taking the same journey to keep them in the game and raise tension. Then when they reach the barrier, more crew voiceover to indicate they are applying technology, not just faith and fridge logic.
Yes, I like that whole scene.
It's possible TFF could be improved by a re-edit, but it would have to be radical: most importantly, cut most of the gags that follow Kirk being captured, then create an extra act showing the journey to Shakari. A lot of this could be done with dubbing: give Sybok a line about how they will pass the "galactic barrier" (e.g. one of his followers is a genius scientist); then a montage of people sitting or walking around looking serious, with building ominous music, perhaps a Kirk voiceover adding drama. Show the Klingons taking the same journey to keep them in the game and raise tension. Then when they reach the barrier, more crew voiceover to indicate they are applying technology, not just faith and fridge logic.
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