Sweet!
Star Ship Polaris
- Thread starter aridas sofia
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It's amazing how much Star Trek sensibilities affect my expectations of spaceship design ... without the windows and other details you mentioned, I keep wondering why you're showing this ship tipped on it's side. Then I see that it's vertically-oriented like Probert's original Romulan ship.
I love it, but the guns (if that's what they are) look a little big to me. I can't wait to see the thing textured-up and animated!
I love it, but the guns (if that's what they are) look a little big to me. I can't wait to see the thing textured-up and animated!
^ Actually, unless things have changed, the Polaris' internal "up" is aligned with its external "forward," and its internal "down" is its external "aftward." If that is still true, than the ship's external notions of up, down, port and starboard are irrelevant with respect to the orientation of the internal forward/backward and leftward/rightward axes.
Definitely not like anything else out there, and that's GOOD. Can't wait to see some textures on this bad boy!
Y'know ... I knew that. It's one of the things I like about the concept. And yet, when I posted above, that fact wasn't anywhere in my thoughts. Nor were there any thoughts about decks at all ... I just seem to have picked an orientation and said, that looks weird, so that's it!
What an amazing mind I have!
I won't actually be doing the F/X so it's hard to say how it will turn out, but I wouldn't mind seeing the ship "filmed" in such a way that it's hard to tell what its proper orientation is supposed to be, lots of spins and multi-axis camera moves, that sort of thing.
Yeah, the decks are oriented along the axis of travel - this was something we had an interesting moment about on set, when we were discussing how the actors should be placed and react to something like a sudden acceleration. I pointed to the ceiling and said "you know you're traveling that direction?" 
I can see the ship rotating or "banking" around 90 degrees, so that sometimes the saucer is nearly in line with the screen "horizon" and sometimes it's vertical. I don't see it customarily rotating anything like 360 degrees through a shot, although I suppose you never know - which is in and of itself one of the fun things about doing this: we don't know. We have no previous episodes or references to imitate, and it'll all depend on what looks and "feels" right.
Default orientation is vertical on the screen though - that was the little/big innovation Vektor introduced that really sells this design as something different and special. Took me a week or two to wrap my head around it, silly as that may sound.
I can see the ship rotating or "banking" around 90 degrees, so that sometimes the saucer is nearly in line with the screen "horizon" and sometimes it's vertical. I don't see it customarily rotating anything like 360 degrees through a shot, although I suppose you never know - which is in and of itself one of the fun things about doing this: we don't know. We have no previous episodes or references to imitate, and it'll all depend on what looks and "feels" right.
Default orientation is vertical on the screen though - that was the little/big innovation Vektor introduced that really sells this design as something different and special. Took me a week or two to wrap my head around it, silly as that may sound.
When I said "spins," I wasn't talking about a constant mode of travel or anything, more like what the Millennium Falcon sometimes did during combat maneuvers.
I'm also a big fan of cameras that don't always pretend to know which way is up in outer space. I think it really lends a sense of three-dimensional vastness to such scenes when the camera does something as simple as a slow roll in one direction or the other. One fairly extreme example of this is the scene in the latest Star Trek movie where the camera pulls back from the bridge window and rotates up and over the saucer, literally rolling upside down as the Enterprise approaches the Narada. Some other examples that stand out in my memory are numerous space scenes from the third and fourth seasons of Star Trek: Enterprise.
Another thing I think would work well for Polaris is just a little of the "shakey-cam" technique. Not to Battlestar Galactica extremes but just enough to provide that "you are there" effect. Again, I think the new Star Trek hit a pretty good ballance.
EDIT - An idea just occurred to me for a very cool and probably very useful shot. If you really want to sell the idea of how the decks are oriented and why people react the way they do to things like forward acceleration without confusing the audience, you might consider something like the aforementioned shot from Star Trek, only in reverse. Start with a typical ship fly-by, but have the camera push-in and rotate from ship orientation to deck orientation as it passes through one of the windows onto the bridge or wherever. Just a thought.
I'm also a big fan of cameras that don't always pretend to know which way is up in outer space. I think it really lends a sense of three-dimensional vastness to such scenes when the camera does something as simple as a slow roll in one direction or the other. One fairly extreme example of this is the scene in the latest Star Trek movie where the camera pulls back from the bridge window and rotates up and over the saucer, literally rolling upside down as the Enterprise approaches the Narada. Some other examples that stand out in my memory are numerous space scenes from the third and fourth seasons of Star Trek: Enterprise.
Another thing I think would work well for Polaris is just a little of the "shakey-cam" technique. Not to Battlestar Galactica extremes but just enough to provide that "you are there" effect. Again, I think the new Star Trek hit a pretty good ballance.
EDIT - An idea just occurred to me for a very cool and probably very useful shot. If you really want to sell the idea of how the decks are oriented and why people react the way they do to things like forward acceleration without confusing the audience, you might consider something like the aforementioned shot from Star Trek, only in reverse. Start with a typical ship fly-by, but have the camera push-in and rotate from ship orientation to deck orientation as it passes through one of the windows onto the bridge or wherever. Just a thought.
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Yes, please go easy on the shakey-flarey-cam 
I like the Galactica approach to the space visuals and would like to see some of that - the "focus-pulling" and loose framing when the "camera" tracks fast-moving objects are elements I like. Ideally I'd like more of a ZOIC lookand less of the old Star Trek "house look." Galactica/Serenity or even some of the Star Wars movies are better referents for us, I think, than Trek.
Don't worry, we don't have the money or resources to try to duplicate what Abrams did and that approach wouldn't really suit our subject matter and pacing either.
Don't worry, we don't have the money or resources to try to duplicate what Abrams did and that approach wouldn't really suit our subject matter and pacing either.
And don't forget, you probably don't want the virtual camera work on the exterior space shots to be too dissimilar to the physical camera work.
That's an interesting point... are the interior live action shots being done with hand-held cameras?
No, but we haven't shot the location footage yet. 
This is just about perfect. Many thanks and congratulations!
I'll send an email about a couple of details later.
I'll send an email about a couple of details later.
I like the window placement.
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