Was the Collector scene in Insurrection an unfinished effect?

[cml898]

I was watching Insurrection tonight and found the scenes on board the Collector near the end of the film to look like an unfinished Blue Screen effect. Like maybe they planned for it to look different but ran out of time and decided to leave it as having blue walls. Has anyone ever said as much in interviews, or if not, have other fans made similar speculations about that scene before?

 

[doubleohfive]

Answer:

Initially, it was a blue screen and the intention was to matte in effects in post.

During post, either because of budgetary reasons or because someone liked it, they decided to keep the blue screens.

Simple answer is simple.

 

[Gepard]

Didn't we already have a topic on this, like, two weeks ago?


...after a little searching, yes. Yes we did. Trevanian's reply from the thread is worth reposting:

Greenscreen was commonly used from about TRUE LIES onward, for film projects as well as others. What is of interest in this case is that if you look at shots from making of INS, the collector set utilized GREENSCREEN at the bottom. Why put bluescreen around the sides if you have greenscreen at the bottom? NO REASON WHATSOEVER. So the blue was an 'artistic' choice, albeit a sucky one, just like all those cookie-cutter hex shapes all over the Son'a ships.

The notion that any effects comps were cut due to cost issues are ludicrous, since Par was willing and able to spend between 7 & 12 mil in the last few weeks before release to fix the perceived faults, driving the budget up from the 58mil that Berman started admitting was the ACTUAL cost as soon as they saw the movie wasn't going to do the business that would let them say it cost 65-70mil.

[petty personal stuff snipped for space]

I remember that photo showing the greenscreen; it was draped rather haphazardly at the bottom of the set and used to add a CGI set extension (which, it must be noted, had CG versions of the purported "bluescreen" in it.) . I must say I've never heard of a set mixing and matching blue- and greenscreen like that before, so it seems plausible that the blue was just a really terrible design choice.

EDIT: in fact, here's an image showing exactly that. Probably the one I'm thinking of.

 

[Maurice]

Given modern matting tech it's not necessary to have as perfect a key color as was the case with optical printers, but it's still best to get as clean and even a color as you can to make it less work to do the matting.

Oh, and the reasons for green is that it separates more easily from most flesh tones than blue. Also, many video technologies have the most and clearest information in the green channel, which makes it easier to isolate.

 

[cml898]

Oops, sorry for the repetitive thread. I did a quick search for Insurrection topics (and I mean real quick) but missed the fact that there was a topic that had blue screen in the title and was in fact about this very same thing.

 

[Gagarin]

Plus the fact that the blue lighting was spilling on every surface...they wouldn't have lit it that way for chromakey. And the exterior of the collector had blue patches on it.

 

[Aldo]

Answer:

Initially, it was a blue screen and the intention was to matte in effects in post.

During post, either because of budgetary reasons or because someone liked it, they decided to keep the blue screens.

Simple answer is simple.

See that's what I always thought too.

I mean come on, for a major motion picture the way the interior looks right now is really cheap and ugly looking.

 

[22 Stars]

You are confusing INS with a major motion picture. All Trek films produced after TMP and before Trek 09 were made on a B level budget, to maximize profits.

Oh, and before anyone questions me, I worked for Paramount for 15 years during this time and know exactly how Paramount did it's analysis of box office vs. expense, it was part of my job.