BEHIND-THE-SCENES : [CARETAKER] VISUAL EFFECTS
THE WINDSHIELD OF THE MAQUIS RAIDER
 Dan Curry: This is the windshield of the Maquis spaceship and we're about to crash into the gigantic Kazon battle cruiser, and this setup-up will allow us to create the illusion that the windshield of the ship is being destroyed as we're ploughing into the huge ship, so by overcranking or shooting at higher speed than normal we'll see the glass shattering and coming at us. (Towards the end of the [#1 and #2 Caretaker] story, Chakotay steers his Maquis raider on collision course with the Kazon battle cruiser and is beamed out to USS Voyager at the last moment.) Dan Curry: And now we're setting up to rig it so the fire will be coming from the bottom of the window, and we'll be able to do a double exposure so it'll look like the flame from the explosion of the impact of our ship against the Kazon will engulf through our spaceship and then we'll optically make the window mullions buckle so it'll make the crash look convincing just as our hero is beaming out to safety. So that's what this is all about, but it requires the efforts of a lot of dedicated and skilled people to make it happen. |
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 (A) putting the "windshield" in place |
 (B) Dan Curry and others watch |
 (C) the "windshield" is raised into place, ready to shoot |
 (D) getting ready to apply flames |
 (E) applying flames |
 (F) aplying flames (close-up picture) |
 (G) a small monitor enables staff to see what the tv camera sees |
 (H) tv camera footage of the flames is captured on the monitor |
 I |
 J |
 (K) glass fragments |
Dan Curry: Chakotay takes his small ship and takes it into the mother ship of the Kazon. The Kazon mother ship was only 18 inches long. One of the tricks with shooting miniatures is that none of them is ever in true scale with one another so we have to do a lot of math to calculate. Ok, we do one shot with one six foot diameter model and then this eighteen inch one is supposed to be bigger than that one - how do we have to adjust the camera move so we could only get so close to the eighteen inch model before it wouldn't hold up, so we made a big wall matching details on the small model to finish that shot after the cutaway to Chakotay. |
Dan Curry: Then we shot Robert Beltran against the blue screen and took the glass element of it being shattered and having fire blown into it, and we composited that behind him in the shot so it looked like the windshield was blowing in on it.
The following accompany Dan Curry's above explanation.
setting up for motion control photography of the Kazon ship model
this is the closest they film when zooming in on the ship model;
further close-ups will be of a specially built ship section
the ship model is filmed while moving....
....and as it moves further along the track
the actor, Robert Beltran, is filmed against a blue-screen;
the blue-screen (a green screen is sometimes used instead) will be removed in post-production and footage of zooming in on the Kazon ship will be substituted
this and following pictures show the shot being composited;
note that in this picture the window frame on the left still shows the reflection of the blue-screen
in post-production, a transporter beam effect will be added as well as
Chakotay being dematerialised as he transports
the windshield blows in
[#1 and #2 Caretaker]
SOURCES AND CREDITS:
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