Courtesy of Dale Long. http://byyourcommand.net

While the ride was being designed and constructed, Universal wanted to generate excitement and buzz about their new attraction. A promo / publicity film was to be shot and shown to generate excitement and attract people to the show. The major drawback was that nothing was finished enough to be photographed or to show off.

Universal Studios contacted the effects producers at Universal Hartland where the Battlestar Galactica visual effects were created. It was decided that a matte painting would be created to show a Cylon styled ship or structure that opens and kidnaps a Universal Studio Tours tram. Hartland’s resident matte artist, Jena Holman, was to do the painting and I would supervise the matte plate (live action background) photography and composite the matte shot. 

Jena and I went to the Universal back lot where a large wooden flat had been set up to stand in for the Cylon spaceship doors. This was not shot on the actual location of the ride as it was under construction. We set up the camera to frame the shot per the desire of the producers.

Live action back-ground "plate"

To preserve the maximum quality of image, we elected to use an “original negative” or “latent image” matte painting compositing technique. This is a very old technique originally developed by Norman O. Dawn in about 1914.  During the 1960s and 70s the technique had returned to favor largely due to the outstanding work of Albert Whitlock.

This process required that we set up black cards in front of the camera to hold back or “matte out” part of the scene that would be replaced with the painting.  The matte ran along the road, around the “spaceship” door and through the trees next to it.

Live action with matte in place

We would shoot a couple of good approved takes of the action then we would shoot 300 feet of test footage also including the black hold-out matte in front of the camera.  For the last take, we removed the black masking and shot a “clean” reference plate of the scene. A back ground plate is the live action that effects will go into. The term “plate” is attributed to Norman O. Dawn and may have come from his early photography experience. A “clean” plate means there are no rigs or masking or anything in the scene except what is naturally present. This is used for reference, rotoscoping and perspective.  This last take is the only one that was processed or developed. Later, back at the studio, the good approved takes and the 300 feet of test footage were separated, rewound and frozen. They were kept “latent” or undeveloped.

The day we shot was pleasant except that winds began blowing through the rolling hills of Universal’s back lot. As I looked through the lens, I saw the live action portion and the black matte in the scene. What alarmed me were the live action bushes and trees leaves blowing like crazy through the soft matte that ran through the trees. We could not cancel the shot so I knew that I would somehow have to match the motion of the real trees into Jena’s painted trees!

The next day, Jena and I took the one developed clean scene and projected it onto to a white, primed piece of glass. Jena traced out (or “rotoscoped out”) the details of the live action to know where the painting had to line up and match.  Over the following days, Jena would paint the sky, Cylon ship and the trees and each evening I would photograph a painting test over some of the 300 ft of test footage.  The hero live action takes remained safe in the freezer.

Painting with blacked out area for live action. Note left tree area is dark.

To solve the blowing tree challenge, I set up a black matte board that matched Jena’s painting glass and ran motion and exposure experiments. Over this black board, I placed large sheets of clear celluloid or “cels” that had dots of color and texture that matched the real tree leaves in the live action portion of the scene.

Analyzing the motion of the trees, I realized that the artwork had to move or rotate from the bottom of the cel. This made sense as trees are rooted in the ground and sway in the breeze. To match the motion of the real trees, I found I needed at least three passes or exposures of the leaf textures and they had to be different from each other in speed and angle of rotation. These passes were each stop motion animated frame by frame by hand.

Diagram to show how cels were animate to simulate moving leaves.

Jena laid in darker tree colors and I did multiple exposures of animated leaf high-lights over top of her painting.

The final step was to thaw out a good take of the live action (the original negative) and expose the painting and animate leaves onto it.

It requires a number of experiments, but Jena and I achieved a match of color, texture and motion between the matte painting and the live action that allowed Universal Studios to show off their new ride attraction months before it was physically completed.

Final composite of matte painting and live action.

I wish to thank Dale Long (http://byyourcommand.net) ,  Marcel Damen  (www.galactica.tv) and  Diane Cook  (http://kitchencostuming.com/)  for their assistance with this article.

Links, Battle of Galactica:

 http://byyourcommand.net/cylongallery/main.php?g2_itemId=1024

 http://www.thestudiotour.com/ush/studiotour/battleofgalactica.shtml

 http://www.thestudiotour.com/ush/chronology.shtml

Links, Battlestar Galactica:

 http://www.galactica.tv

Links, matte painting:

http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/digital-matte-painter1.htm

Retrieved from “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matte_painting“:

• Mark Cotta Vaz; Craig Barron: The Invisible Art: The Legends of Movie Matte Painting, Chronicle Books, 2002; ISBN 081184515X
• Peter Ellenshaw; Ellenshaw Under Glass – Going to the Matte for Disney
• Richard Rickitt: Special Effects: The History and Technique. Billboard Books; 2nd edition, 2007; ISBN 0823084086 (Chapter 5 covers the history and techniques of movie matte painting.)

DVD cover art.

It was fun to see the film again after all these years and it brought up some fun memories from working on the film. Under my company, David Stipes Productions, I was able to bring together some terrific talented people to work on the project.

Celebrated concept artist and illustrator Steve Burg designed the spaceship. Burg and Emmy award winner Ron Thornton constructed the model.

Creeps spaceship being filmed in a smoke room to simulate foggy night.

Model maker, and later director, Dale Fay constructed the alien cylinder that contained the creeps.

One of the aliens running with Creep cylinder by Dale Fay.

Famed “Star Wars” vet, David M. Jones, supervised the construction of a huge forced perspective cemetery set for the film’s finale.

This is a small scale mock up David Jones built to show concept.

David Jones in center overlooking his work. Joanne Walker adds details to the left.

Michael Karp provided motion control programming. Motion-control machine work and rigging was created by Richard Bennett.

I was the visual effects supervisor and producer for my company’s portion of the effects work. I also created the motion graphics elements for the laser blasts and spark effects at the beginning of the film.

There are a couple of interesting facts: only the bottom half of the spaceship was constructed as that was all that the audience ever saw.

Nathan Stipes refurbishing Creeps ship in 2005.

The Creeps spaceship was used in a “Star Trek: The Next Generation” episode.

Fred Dekker later worked as a consulting producer / writer on “Star Trek; Enterprise.”   In 2001, I was a visual effects supervisor on the show for two episodes. I was excited to see Fred’s name on the production crew list. It was fun seeing his face when I reintroduced myself after almost 15 years.

Phil was the supervisor and boss at Cascade Picture of California when I began working there in 1969-70. I learned a lot by watching and listening to him. Phil loved the challenge of doing visual effects in-camera and his specialty was forced perspective. To market the technique to the T.V. commercial business, he dubbed it “Magnascope”.

The Jolly Rancher as seen through the camera.

Forced perspective usually involves creating a scale model and placing it in front of a live action scene and lining it up so it appears to be a natural part of the shot. One challenge was to get the model at the correct distance from the camera so it was not too large or too small to fit correctly into the background.

How it was set up. The Jolly Rancher actor is closer to the camera with miniature table, chair and bench. The tall pole was used as an eyeline guide for regular sized actors.

The correct model distance placement can be solved with math and a tape measure or you can use the cool trick Phil had to make this easier. Phil used what I have affectionately called “The Kellison Sticks“

The key is to build your miniature to a scale; for example, 1 inch = 1 foot or 1/12th scale. So, if you needed a model car in the foreground and a real car is ten feet long then a 1/12th scale model of that car would be ten inches long.

Do be aware that there will come a point where a tiny foreground miniature is impractical due to limited detail and lens focus issues. Larger is usually better than smaller.

To make Kellison Sticks, get a length of board like a 1″x 4″ or a 1″x 6″ by say, 8 ft long. Paint the board with alternating one foot segments of white and black. Now make a scaled down version of this board with alternating black and white segments. For example, if you are working 1″=1′ then your scaled board would be eight inches long with one inch segments. At a scale of ½” = 1′ your stick would be four inched long with segments of ½ inch each. Now you have your “Kellison Sticks.”

To line up your miniature, have a person hold the full sized black and white painted Kellison Stick at the edge of the live set where the foreground miniature will line up with the background. Place your scaled down Kellison Stick at the back edge of the foreground model.

How to use the "Kellison Sticks"

 With someone looking through the lens, move the miniature back and forth until your scaled down Kellison Stick matches the full sized Kellison Stick through the camera. There, you have the correct distance!

How "Kellison Sticks" look through the lens when correct.

I have seen actors who were really obnoxious and uncooperative when they didn’t get what they wanted so I was watching Terry with interest as the day unfolded. For every shot when called, she dried her tears, went on set, became her character, Dax, and delivered the best performances she could. She did not give an attitude, whine or make excuses. She did her job.

To give Terry an exit from the series, the DS-9 writers had bad boy Gul Dukat kill Jadzia Dax in the episode called ‘Tears of the Prophets’. Dukat, possessed by the Pah-wraiths, uses an energy force to lift Dax off the ground then kill her.

To accomplish this, Terry would have to wear a special flying harness which wrapped around her hips. Unfortunately the rig, made of thick leather and straps, was very uncomfortable and did nothing to flatter Terry’s figure. In fact … she was horrified at how she looked.

Terry came up to me with a look of desperation on her face; the harness around her hips made her look huge! Was there anything I could do to make her look better in her last shots?

I was so impressed with her qualities of character and professionalism that I assured her that I would do what I could to help her look good in the final shots. With that she appeared relieved and we went on to do the final death scene.

When we got the footage into the digital compositing bay we began looking at techniques and options to see what we could do to help Terry regain her figure. Since we were on a budget for a limited effect for the death scene, we had to squeak this in somehow. We decided to cover Terry’s torso and hips with effects elements rather then try to rotoscope or otherwise distort her filmed image frame by frame which would have cost a lot in man-hours and bay time.

Luckily, we had some resources. Over the years of production, we had amassed a collection of visual effects footage elements like fire, smoke and liquid nitrogen. We began experimenting with the elements over Terry’s footage to see what worked. We decided to use licks of liquid nitrogen vapor fluttering out from the edge of the body and hiding her rig-thickened profile.

While not a perfect fix, we did it within the budget we had. Months later at the DS-9 wrap party, Terry came over and gave me a warm thank you for making her look good. I told her how impressed I was with the way she handled herself in that situation so it was a pleasure to help her.

For more on the uses of liquid nitrogen in visual effects see: http://www.davidstipes.com/liquid_nitrogen1.php

Cascade Pictures was a major provider of visual effects, stop motion and cartoon animation for commercials for (I believe) the late 1950s through the mid 1970s. 

I was fortunate enough to work there and get a terrific real world visual effects education.

This is a frame from the first commercial I was paid to work on; my first professional job in 1969 at Cascade Pictures. This is from a Kellogg’s Cocoa Krispies cereal commercial featuring a caveman named Ogg. (His wife was “Kell” … for Kell-Oggs.)  These characters were used until about 1975.  (see link below)

The stop-motion set-up was unusual. Ogg was mounted on a stationary rig while the Styrofoam rocks and environment were slid past a fixed, stationary camera.

I was assigned the job of animating the various layers of rock moving past the camera in the background. Each layer was attached to fine string that was pulled a few fractions of an inch per frame.

The baby dinosaur was suspended on fine monofilament and also animated frame by frame.

http://70scommercials.blogspot.com/

The puppet construction and animation was the work of a terrific designer, Siegbert Reinhard, who also had success with his fine art paper sculptures in the 1980s and later.  Siegbert’s technique was pretty simple. He started with a block of poly-foam (simple cushion foam) that he carved with an electric knife. Once he was satisfied with the shapes he cut them open and inserted an armature made of either braded aluminum armature (sculpting) wire as in the baby dinosaur or a simple ball and socket armature made with thin steel plates and brass ball links as in Ogg. If you look carefully you can see that the baby dino’s legs are actually separate from the body which allowed the use of the relatively weak wire. The spines are glued on carved foam pieces.

The puppets were painted with “Cartoon Color” cartoon Cel Vinyl paints from The Cartoon Colour Co, in Culver city, CA.  Wearing rubber gloves, Siegbert poured paint onto his palms and squished it into the entire foam puppet like it was a big sponge. Since the paint is a remarkably flexible pigment the puppets remained soft and easy to animate. Details were brush painted.

An interesting side note. The now famous visual effects supervisor, Dennis Muren, was the cameraman on this shoot. He hid the mount holding up Ogg by projecting straw colored light onto a piece of retro-reflective 3M Scotchlight material placed in front of the rig. Dennis adjusted the light intensity by eye for every frame where the rig would be visible.

This was probably the first time front projection materials was ever used in a commercial. Only one year earlier in 1968, 3M Scotchlight became famous for its use in “2001: A Space Odyssey.”

I have not seen Siegbert Reinhard for many years. But I no sooner posted this than fellow AI instructor, Kevin Hedgpeth,  e-mailed and sent a link to Reinhard’s studio.  I am glad Siegbert’s work is still available.

 http://www.reinhardstudio.com/

 
http://www.cartooncolour.com/catalog/index.php?cPath=1&osCsid=612f46bb6d3ec84bebd074e6d9bea72b

http://70scommercials.blogspot.com/

David Allen with puppets of the Giant and the villagers.

The Giant leaves his cottage with Hans, one of the children.

David and the crew were disheartened by the unfortunate circumstances. So much good work had been completed. Rather than abandon the sets and puppets, David wrote his own story that was initially called “The Giant’s Magic Treasure” but was later released as “The Magic Treasure.”

Castle from "The Magic Treasure."

The Giant looks out his window.

This production was a collaborative effort between David Allen and some of his friends, David Stipes (associate producer, sets, props and some puppet armatures), Margo Stipes (sets & props), Jim Duron (associate producer, sets and art design), Linda Duron (costuming), Tony Doublin (sets), George Archambeault (narration), John Morgan (music), Dennis Gordon (Titles) and others.

(L-R) Linda Duron, David Stipes, David Allen and Jim Duron.

Production was on-going for years but David completed the work in 1980s. The film was a labor of love and reflected a good message, but David could never find a market for its release.

Fortunately, “The Magic treasure” was included as a special feature in the Criterion Collection 2006 release of “Equinox” one of David Allen’s early stop-motion feature film efforts.

Cover art for Criterion Collection release of "Equinox" 2006

For more information please look at:

http://www.criterion.com/films/780

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_W._Allen

One of my students asked for a list of visual effects films to look at during the break between quarters at school.  

I directed him to the Visual Effects Society (VES) and their list of films.

 http://www.visualeffectssociety.com/documents/ves50revelfin.pdf

 This was their list on May 10, 2007.  We have had a few new VFX films since ’07.  Do you agree with this list?   If not, what are your choices?

 THE VES 50 (Bold and Italics indicates a tie score)

1. Star Wars (1977)

2. Blade Runner (1982)

3. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

3. The Matrix (1999)

5. Jurassic Park (1993)

6. Tron (1982)

7. King Kong (1933)

8. Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)

9. Alien (1979)

10. The Abyss (1989)

11. The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

12. Metropolis (1927)

13. A Trip to the Moon (1902)

14. Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

15. The Wizard of Oz (1939)

16. Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988)

17. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

18. Titanic (1997)

19. Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)

20. Jason and the Argonauts (1963)

20. E.T. the Extraterrestrial (1982)

22. Toy Story (1995)

23. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (2006)

24. The Ten Commandments (1956)

25. The War of the Worlds (1953)

25. Forrest Gump (1994)

25. Citizen Kane (1941)

25 The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad (1958)

25. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954)

30. The Terminator (1984)

31. Aliens (1986)

32. Mary Poppins (1964)

33. Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)

34. Forbidden Planet (1956)

35. Babe (1995)

36. The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)

36. Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)

38. King Kong (2005)

39. Planet of the Apes (1968)

40. Fantastic Voyage (1966)

41. Jaws (1975)

41. Ghostbusters (1984)

43. Sin City (2005)

44. Superman: The Movie (1978)

45. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)

46. The Lost World (1925)

46. Return of the Jedi (1983)

48. What Dreams May Come (1998)

49. An American Werewolf in London (1981)

50. Darby O’Gill and the Little People (1958)

50. The Fifth Element (1997)

 The Visual Effects Society / © Copyright 2009

Physical model from episode, "Ties of Blood and Water" (Gary Hutzel, vis efx supervisor)

As you could see from the photo above and next below, the physical model was pretty good looking and would have been used as long as possible on the series.

Physical model from episode, "Call to Arms"

With season 6 episode  #546,  ”Valiant,”  we were forced to create a CGI (Computer Generated Imagery) version of a Jem’Hadar ‘Battleship.’  The main reason was compelled by the story. If possible we would have used the physical model for both the cruiser and the Battleship, with the scale of the model being the only difference.

John Eaves' drawing of Jem'Hadar Cruiser and Battleship with defiant for size comparison. (Image courtesy of John Eaves)

In the story, a young crew on the ‘Valiant”, a sister ship to the Defiant, encounter a Jem’Hadar Battleship which is much larger than the Jem’Hadar Cruiser.

Valiant begins an attack run. (Both ships are CGI.)

They think they have discovered a weakness in the battleship and do a series of close-up attack runs. Not such a good strategy as the Valiant is destroyed.

The Valiant attacks! (CGI)

Since the story called for close up attacks, the camera would have to be flying an inch or so off of the physical model. This was pretty much impossible with the motion control camera / rig and more importantly, the physical model was never constructed to tolerate that kind of close up scrutiny. It just did not have the detail to hold up.

Jam'Hadar Battleship (CGI. Note all of the additional texture.)

Digital Muse (now Eden FX) was contracted to construct a digital version of the Jem’Hadar Battleship.

The design was quite similar to the Cruiser but with a lot of added texture and detail. That is what you will see as the major difference between physical and digital models. The wing sweep / wing-pod relationships are  different, too. 

"What You Leave Behind" (All CGI)

Having a digital model greatly helped us as we got further into the Dominion war story-arc in DS-9.

Since John Eaves posted his excellent designs for the DS-9 Jem ‘Hadar battle ship, I thought I would let you see it as a model.  

John’s design translated into a terrific looking model that was fun to light and photograph.

 It was initially a physical model, not CGI. The one issue we had with it was its weight.
 

The model was photographed at the motion control facility, Image G.

Dennis Hoerter at Image G facility

Because the models were shot with motion control, we were able to use a very effective orange matte process. The model appears to be floating because it is on a post covered with orange material.

Dennis Hoerter monitoring the Jem-Hadar model and motion control rig.

The Jem ‘Hadar model was used in a number of the DS-9 episodes that comprised the ‘Dominion war’ story arc.

This article and images are used for non-profit educational purposes only.

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