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[HOPE AND FEAR] : BEHIND-THE-SCENESThe quantum slipstream visual effect |
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Additional commentary by production staff is in this colour.
Scans by Janet.
On 2nd March 1998 the raw film footage from Friday night 27th February and early Saturday morning 28th February is delivered to Consolidated Film Industries (CF), Los Angeles. Then the processed film is delivered to Editel, a Los Angeles facility specialising in film transfer. The film is colour-corrected before being transferred into a state-of-the-art video format known as D-2. The D-2 tapes acts as the master, and copies are made in ¾ inch video format, then delivered back to Paramount. Several copies go to the various producers who view the footage as dailies (i.e. the work from the day before) and a copy goes to one of the show editors (there are three who rotate the task betwen them) who immediately prepares the footage for assembly. The editor receives it about lunchtime and inputs it into the Avid system, a computer program that works like a word processor but with pictures instead of text. The editor's job includes alerting members of the crew to any potential problems that he has discerned in the footage. While working with Scene 102, for example, today's editor Daryl Baskin hears a line of dialogue whereby Chakotay tells Tom Paris to turn the ship around in the slipstream. It is of concern because a visual-effects shot showing them altering their position in the slipstream could be cost-prohibitive. Accordingly Daryl Baskin calls Dan Curry who has himself been concerned since the production meeting. He has since discussed it with Brannon Braga and Ronald B. Moore. In the script Chakotay gives an order which leads into Scene 103:
103 EXT. SPACE - QUANTUM SLIPSTREAM (OPTICAL)
VOYAGER SLOWS and BANKS in the opposite
direction, FLYING back the way it came!
Even at this late stage, the producers are not sure what the slipstream will look like. The idea for a ship-generated slipstream originated with [Scorpion] a year earlier.
Brannon Braga: "We were going to have the Borg ships raising slipstreams and have big fights in those slipstreams, but we had too many ideas for that episode and some just didn't make it. I knew the slipstream idea would come in handy someday."
Dan Curry: "We want the slipstream to look very different from our warp effect and very different from the wormhole. And that's the trick, because it should have a tunnel-like quality. Ron and I always spend a lot of time dealing with quasi-physics, so we're having some trouble with the concept of making a U-turn in there and breaking out of the wall."
It turns out that discussion will continue periodically, right up to the very late stage when visual-effects staff must sit down in a computer graphics lab and begin drawing pictures. No matter what eventually gets decided, the shot will need to be completely rendered in exactly thirty days' time.
By 23rd March, Mojo and his staff at Foundation Imaging staff have been busy working on an image of the slipstream.
Mojo: "The concept of the slipstream is speed!" Right from the beginning I knew the direction I wanted to take. The environment the ship is in would make it look as if it's moving really, really fast." He creates a computer-generated tunnel then put a test Dauntless inside and began changing the tunnel with colours, textures, stars, anything that would make it appear new and different. We're adding some transparency to it because we certainly don't want the audience to think we're at warp or in a wormhole. The first thing we did was a total stab in the dark, but now we've created several versions for Ron (Moore) to look at."
See Post-production: visual effects for information about the completion of the quantum slipstream effects.
What the final version looks like in the finished tv episode:
 Voyager in the slipstream, firing torpedoes. |
 Voyager veers off to the right, in another direction from Arturis' ship. |
 USS Voyager, in flight in the quantum slipstream, fires torpedoes at Arturis' ship and scores a direct hit. (pop-up window) |
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