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[Nessi] TOBIAS RICHTER
As we can see, it is Thursday and
things are not running smoothly.
I originally planned to give a presentation
with my Laptop, here on stage.
That will not work because the
cables have not been laid.
That means, I am about to leave the stage,
run upstairs and give the presentation from there.
Then I will come back down again in order to answer questions.
You will have to do without seeing me, but you will still hear my voice.
I hope it is still doable.
My entire talk is about Phase II.
One or other of you will already know about it.
It is a fan-series that as it were,
three year mission.., to catch up with the remaining 2 years
of the Enterprise's five year mission.
They produce their own scripts in full episode length.
All that with standing sets that are in found in America.
They have built the entire bridge and various other rooms.
and produce, twice a year for two weeks,
an episode respectively.
At least theoretically.
We have four or five episodes that at the moment are in
different stages of post-production.
That is, we are busy filming, but we are not keeping up with the releases.
We hope that, that will improve in the following years.
At the moment we have a quota of 1 to a maximum of 2 episodes each year.
But after all, we already have 6 or 7 episodes.
For the past 2-3 years, I am responsible for visual effects.
Everything which has to do with space ships or with outer space comes from me.
There is another artist involved called Pony Horton.
He does all the beam effects and a lot of the matte paintings.
We split the work between us.
Today, I am going to show a few examples of the work that we did.
A little insight how it is made,
what we have to do,
and I hope this will enlighten you about this
relatively complex process which is behind all this.
Can we play the video. That is my demo-reel for my company.
I have a little company in Cologne with 4 or 5 employees
that mostly works in the area of visual effects and graphics for games.
This is our demo-reel, it runs for one and a half minutes and
gives me some time to run upstairs. Till then...
Hello, here I am...
As I said, that is our demo-reel which covers all kinds of areas.
Then I have here a file...
This is the first episode for which we created effects, it is called "Enemy: Starfleet"
There are a few nice effects, for example
we re-imagined the wormhole from Star Trek I,
we built a dry dock.
Let us just have a quick look...
Here are a few standard shots of the Enterprise
flying in various variations around the planet.
Near the studios, there is a sand colliery
where such things can be filmed.
Here you can see the original picture
and here how it appears when color-graded.
Of course, all the phaser effects have to be painted in.
In some places, diggers had to be painted out that were standing around in the background.
Or even adding rocks in the background, which were not there originally.
Or add complete explosions that were not there in the original.
You can see all the diggers etc., which were in the background.
The wormhole we tried to get as close as possible to the original
These trail effects...
The Enterprise in the space dock.
This takes place before the first movie and should therefore look a little different.
That's why we have used the triangular form.
That was about Enemy: Starfleet.
That is an episode that has been released.
[Applause] Thank-you!
There you saw our "Kirk".
We have of course all the characters: Kirk, Spock, McCoy,
some are being played by, more or less, amateur actors.
There are a few professional actors taking part as well.
Amongst others, as of last year, we have our "Kirk" that replaced
James Cawley with Brian Gross, a professional actor from LA,
who wants to play Kirk in future as James simply has no time any more.
He does the entire production, appears on stage as an Elvis imitator and
on top of that, to learn the roles, to look after everything, it was simply too much.
Therefore as of the last vignette
which we have released, Brian Gross has taken over the role.
The last vignette is this "Going Boldly".
There we can see for the first time, our upgraded ship.
Up until now, we have worked with the old TOS Enterprise.
We have now upgraded it so that it looks more like the Phase II Enterprise.
It has a different form of Warp nacelles, the pylons are different,
it has additional photon torpedo banks at the front.
And this is the first time that we see it in action.
The whole vignette is a little too long, to show in its full length,
that is why I am going to skip a little...
until we get to the 3D-part where we have the reveal of the Enterprise.
It is based a little on Star Trek I, the dry-dock sequence.
That is our new Kirk, by the way.
This is the first time we see Lt. Arex, a full-digital character.
That we will make use of again as needed.
[Kirk] Mr. Spock
[Spock] Captain.
Mr. Scott?
[Scotty] We're ready sir
Phase I tests show that she's exceeded all design expectations.
[Kirk] Then let's begin Phase II!
[Arex] We are free and clear to navigate.
[Tobias Richter] Yes, more will follow.
[Applause]
Now we have seen many pretty, colorful pictures, but...
how does this all happen? How is this all made?
The first thing we get, of course, is the script.
So a script for an episode usually has about 60-70 pages.
One reads it through step-by-step and marks the sections that are defined as visual effects.
With all the space scenes, it is generally simple.
Then later things are added like "Can we exchange the color" or
"can be put that character somewhere else", or
"here is a closed door that has to be open".
Those kind of things come afterwards, after the filming.
But beforehand one can filter out, let me say, all the space scenes.
And then, the first thing one does is to create an animatic for each scene.
An animatic looks so like this, for example.
This is a shot from "Origins", one of the episodes being worked on.
You can see the whole thing is still rudimentary.
We already have the dry-dock, that had already existed.
We have another starship, that lies within the dry-dock.
We have an old freight transporter,
but all still without textures and relatively simple.
The animatic is used to determine the timing,
the entire timing of the scene and what happens in the scene.
And when it has been made, then it simply runs like this.
That is given to the editor, who puts together the film,
so that he can edit it into the film
so the producer can see, this and that is going to happen, it will be that long.
One can still make changes, for example we need that scene a little longer or a little shorter.
But the editor can start to work and the clip can be later exchanged
when the scene has been properly rendered.
and that can be done rather easily.
When the scene is finished, it looks for example, just like this.
What we have just seen as an animatic, looks like this when it is finished.
It looks slightly nicer.
Zoom, and it is gone!
Now we have still not yet said how the whole thing moves.
In principle, the whole thing is built up with separate 3D elements.
First of all the background, the stars, which is simply a geometric sphere.
And then there are several elements that are placed on the foreground.
It can be various starships, asteroids,... each element is added individually.
For example, I can load the new Enterprise.
Here is our, in the meantime, very well filled models folder.
And we will load the Enterprise. So you can see how such a ship is put together.
That is the 3D-model, the current 3D-model.
Here you can see the updated
Warp nacelles. They are not round anymore, but based a little more on the Star Trek I film.
The slightly changed shape of the pylons.
At the front, these photon-torpedo launcher.
Otherwise, it is relatively similar to the other model.
These red elements are for example all lamps, lights that in the scene then...
represent the lights of the ship, its own lighting that is.
The whole thing...
is available in different layers. There is. like in a real model,
a so called "Beauty Pass," where we set the external lights.
Usually, there are two to three lights, one main light,
and a so-called "rim-light" on the edges in order to illuminate the edges at the corners.
That is for our "Beauty Pass" where you see the ship as you would really see it.
There is a "Lighting Pass"
where all the (flashing) lights that are on it, are seen as the only element.
We have a pass where these lights at the front here are shown.
We have a pass where we have just the interior,
as the ship also has its own interior fittings.
As you can see here. The whole thing is kept relatively simple,
yet especially where the camera flies close by,
then you can recognize it quite well,
that there is something there and you can even add little digital people who walk past.
That is yet another level of reality that can be added.
And the actual animation.
The main part of the work is in general to build the models.
Once that has been done, then the actual animation is not that difficult.
We can move this around in space
and set a key frame which states that at this time -
we are in frame zero - the ship is at this location.
and... Let me just have a look, I normally have a larger screen.
Just a second...
We set the ship here at position zero, just here.
Then we move it, we can rotate it.
On an axis, on several axes.
We could also theoretically scale it, but that would be crazy.
Ships do not normally change their size.
And we can say that this position is where the ship is to be at say four seconds.
The the rest is calculated by the computer.
It does the transition between the two points automatically.
And then each image has to be individually rendered.
When we have four seconds at approx. 25 frames per second, equals 100 frames.
And for each pass, an image is rendered.
That means when we have a beauty pass, a lighting pass, interior lighting pass and
still various others, there are easily 5 or 6 passes,
We have about 600 images that we have to put together for one sequence.
That is done in another program
For that we use a program called "Digital Fusion."
There are also other programs like: "After Effects" or "Nuke"
They are used in order to combine these rendered images into a sequence.
Let us take as an example...
Do we have a sequence here, yes exactly, this.
Here you can see a so-called "Flow".
You can see here...
These are the individual picture elements. We have for example our star field.
We have here the Moon. This is the sequence that we saw earlier.
We have, further forward from our planet, the atmosphere.
We have the actual surface of the planet.
Here the cloud layer.
We have our dry-dock
in the corner.
Before that a so called "Light Pass" for everything which is illuminated
is stored here separately.
We have the ship which is in the dry-dock.
The dry-dock has been rendered out as a mask.
Which simplifies things.
We have, when you get closer, various little ships, work-bees that fly around.
And, of course, our freighter.
And when we combine it all...
There we perform various operations, color corrections,
a little blur here and there. And when all of it is converged...
It comes piece by piece, together.
The planet has to be added.
The clouds are added and then we have a little atmosphere on top.
Then we have the dry-dock.
We have the lights from the dry-dock, separately.
The ship that is in there, where is it?
Now it's in.
Has been added here.
And so forth until, we have at the end,
the complete picture.
And as we can see along the time-line.
We go from frame zero to 400 frames, that this entire sequence has.
This is 400 images altogether, times...
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, a lot.
There is about 4000 to 5000 images that are merged just for this one sequence.
And then, rendered again.
At the end, we have a sequence of individual images that create the final sequence.
They are then converted into Quicktime and sent to the editor
And he can then insert it into the film.
That is a quick overview of how the working sequence takes place.
There are a few things that come about, that you first see after it has been filmed.
For example.
I said earlier we have a complete bridge set standing there.
One films the scenes one by one.
That is from Going Boldly, which we saw earlier.
This is a sequence that we had to re-film as we had earlier filmed a sequence with
Lt. Arex, this digital character.
But with a different person in the captain’s seat.
That means, they had to re-film it in order to be able to combine it afterwards.
We will see it again in a moment.
That's the temporary sound from the microphone, that will all be processed, later.
What one can perhaps notice, or better was missed at the time,
because it was something you only see when editing, is...
The door is closed at the beginning of the scene.
And they should be just coming out and it looked extremely daft upon editing.
When the door is already shut and they are walking quickly.
That means, James came and told me
"We have a problem, we have to open the door"
So then I go there, and open the door.
Very simply in that we made a photo from the same camera position.
Which was then added behind them and the door by-hand, with masks
frame per frame, demasked.
Which is a lot of work, but luckily it is only for a few frames.
And when you play it, the door is just closing.
Problem solved!
These are the typical jobs that are first noticed afterwards.
Another thing was, for example, this sign, which is on the bridge.
It shows of course the old Enterprise,
because nobody thought about updating it.
Here the pylons were still straight and the old warp-nacelles were to be seen.
That means, it was updated once and exchanged in all the sequences.
Such small issues, one doesn't normally notice.
Another example,
is this view-screen.
We unfortunately do not have an engine room.
Because it would take too much space.
That means, when we want to put Scotty in the engine room,
we have to film it in front of a green screen.
That means this is a digital set
and the people, that is Scotty and Rick in the background.
They were filmed in front of a green screen and composed into the image.
Here we can see him, the green has already been taken out,
but as we can see, it is just Scotty alone.
or respectively, Rick alone.
And that is what the rendering of the engine room looks like in pure form.
And there in compositing, there are a few effects added.
For example the bright areas that they shine a bit.
That the whole thing has a bit of atmosphere,
That we have a so-called "smoke layer."
Small clouds that add to the atmosphere.
Small nuances, that add to the feeling that it is all realistic image.
I talked earlier about this Arex shot, this was the original shot that we filmed.
At that time with an actor in this position.
From whom we copied the movements a little.
To get inspirations for a more realistic movement.
We had the problem that we could not use this footage
Because the actor for Sulu was no longer available, and we wanted to see our new Captain here.
What we did was to put the camera in exactly the same location,
re-filmed this entire area,
and then afterwards combined the whole thing
along an edge that was a natural form, for example this edge of the set and
here the chair edge,
as a template we could use, so that you do not see it.
And the result, looks like this...
The edge cannot be seen... [Arex] "We are clear and free to navigate."
... where we replaced the image.
Then of course, there are a few amusing things that happen.
Our Scotty is our crazy guy who likes to have fun.
The whole set, the wooden hut where the studio stands,
is on a relatively busy street where at the weekend, motorbikes drive past.
And that is easily heard and at some point...
[Loud motorbike noise can be heard] Scotty reacted to the noise!
The filming often has to be stopped while some truck or other guys are passing by.
We have one more thing. We filmed our vignette: Going Boldly, where
we saw the ending, earlier, with the new captain.
At the same time, we filmed our latest episode: "Bread and Savages"
which is still in a very early phase of post-production
and is also the first episode where Brian Gross appears as Capt. Kirk.
And I can show a few pictures...
That is what I meant with "hut". That is the building which contains the studio.
Does not look like much on the outside, but inside it is quite astounding.
We have our bridge set with Scotty in the captain's seat.
It is really a 360° bridge, you can go anywhere on it.
It is quite impressive when you stand in it.
Here we have our space-suit, based on the original TOS version,
that we used for "Going Boldly", in a short effects sequence.
Here is the conference room. Also for "Going Boldly"
A short camera track that we needed when the admiral held his speech.
Another thing that we can see, the panels at the top are all red.
And the one in the middle is even darker, as well.
At some point, James noticed this and asked if it was possible to make it blue.
That is again a job for me, that unfortunately is a bit more involved
as it does not appear in just one shot but in twenty shots
where at times people walked through the red areas meaning we had to use masks.
Those are the jobs that are not so much fun, but also have to be done.
Many ventilators as it is very, very warm in there,
no air-conditioning as is otherwise usual with the Americans.
But there, it has to all be done, more or less, by hand.
That is why they are always running and just switched off while filming.
And as soon as "Cut" is called, the first thing they do is turn them on again.
We have a few pictures from the location.
That is our McCoy.
Here is our old "Spock"
and the new "Kirk".
There we filmed in that sand pit again, where we also filmed Enemy Starfleet.
It is very versatile for use as alien planets.
And at some time in the lunch break, there was a package from "Dunkin Donuts"
Where our three main actors have nourished themselves.
The whole thing took place on Magna Roma and that is why you have all these guards
that are lying around having had not such a good day.
Also here, it was a location in Ticonderoga, that is the next somewhat larger town.
They have this nice town hall which allowed us to film in front of it.
So, I am now going to come down and answer questions.
[We have not yet subtitled the rest of this video]
Subtitles by Peter Walker www.startrekphase2.de
With corrections by Tobias Richter www.thelightworks.com
[The lighting is poor for a few minutes until they turned the lights back on]