American Cinematographer - April 2023 - 54

For scenes in Star Trek: The Motion Picture depicting the
warp-drive engine room of the Enterprise, Nicholson built
a 60'-tall set piece using blown glass that was backlit to
create a column of shimmering blue-white illumination.
day's dailies had to be in-camera perfect, multi-pass motion-control on
film. All of a sudden, I became 'the miniatures guy.'
" Hollywood is funny because if you have one success, you get known
for that very quickly. I look at the production business as the most collaborative
and educational art in the world, but it's like going down the
rapids on a very large river in a kayak - you don't know which way the
current is going to take you. So, you take risks and find solutions. "
Full Circle
As the visual-effects designer on Highlander II: The Quickening, shot by
Phil Méheux, BSC, Nicholson created innovative " quickening " energy effects
by manipulating laser light. " We built three white, multi-spectrum
lasers into a multi-plane animation stand. We fed the lasers via fiber optics
through an acousto-optic modulator, which created 16 million colors.
We used galvanometers on mirrors to manipulate the light and used
a stylus to draw on a tablet, and the light followed your hand, animating
laser light directly onto film. An old Mitchell camera on the down-shooter
photographed the raw light hitting a rear-projection screen. It was
an enormous undertaking. We used that laser-animation stand extensively,
including for title design. Strangely, we've now come full circle
to where virtual production has become all about what you can pull off
54 / APRIL 2023
in-camera, which is where I started. "
Nicholson's journey to the virtual realm was built on a career's worth
of creative partnerships. A prime example was when Star Trek: The Motion
Picture visual-effects designer Douglas Trumbull invited Nicholson's
collaboration in the 1990s to film elements and write computer
code for interactive CD-ROM games. Stargate's television work introduced
Nicholson to Volker Bahnemann - former CEO and president
of Arri's U.S. divisions, who invited Stargate's participation in emerging
digital camera technologies - and to associations with Sony and Canon.
" It's critical for anyone trying to predict the future of any process,
like cinema, to understand the technology from an engineering standpoint, "
Nicholson says. " This goes back to my father, who insisted I study
engineering as well as art; those disciplines are at the core of cinematography.
It is the responsibility of the cinematographer, visual-effects
supervisor or virtual-production supervisor to find the right blend of art
and technology. Once you're comfortable with that, you can throw away
the sheet music. And that's when your work starts getting good. "
Virtual Production
An early breakthrough in virtual production came with Nicholson's work
on Star Wars: Underworld, a proof-of-concept test for Lucasfilm that was
IMAGES FROM PARAMOUNT PICTURES' STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE.
American Cinematographer - April 2023

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