Where was the Defiant filmed?
How long a shot for a typical scene?
How many connection points on the Defiant?
Was the Defiant packed away in it's wooden box after every shot?
How many light passes were needed?
Motion control photography of the Defiant required a minimum of seven passes to obtain all the elements needed to composite a shot.
- The beauty pass was the primary pass showing the hull of the ship in its appropriate lighting environment.
- The matte pass (used to get a silhouette that would hold out a place for the ship in the background)
- Running lights
- Deflector shield
- Window lights
- Warp drive
- Impulse drive, etc..
- Occasionally additional interactive light passes were required if the ship was to be depicted near another light source such as an explosion.
This reference manual used by the TNG Visual Effects team, is the only one in existence. Its print outs show "beauty passes" of every motion control miniature shot done with the hero Enterprise model in Season 4. This allowed the VFX team and producers to determine whether ship shots could be reused and/or put into a different context. Motion control photography of the Enterprise required a minimum of seven passes to obtain all the elements needed to composite a shot. The beauty pass was the primary pass showing the hull of the ship in its appropriate lighting environment. Additional passes were the matte pass (used to get a silhouette that would hold out a place for the ship in the background) Running lights, deflector shield, window lights, warp drive, impulse drive, etc.. Occasionally additional interactive light passes were required if the ship was to be depicted near another light source such as an explosion. The miniature photography process was expensive and time consuming, so opportunities to reuse ship shots were taken advantage of.
How many people were typically needed to help shoot the model?
Over the years was the model ever damaged, or shorts to internal lighting?
How would they know what to film? Was there a storyboard created to plan out the scenes?
Was the Defiant always filmed alone or were there any occasions when it was filmed next to another model?