American Cinematographer - June 2009 - 36

A Bold, New Enterprise Right: Spock addresses the Vulcan council. The scene was filmed in the SkyRose chapel in Rose Hills Memorial Park in Whittier, Calif. Below: Mindel (holding finder) and director J.J. Abrams scour the countryside in search of lens flares. parking lot and backed by greenscreen; the site’s elevation allowed Mindel to shoot into the sky without fear of glimpsing the Los Angeles skyline. “We learned on Mission: Impossible that these big greenscreen sets work better outside,” says Mindel. “You get the ambient dust and wind and sunlight, which really help sell the gag.” Condors also stood at the ready with Nine-light MaxiBrutes and Dinos for backlight and 100K and 50K SoftSuns for fill. The approach “certainly didn’t make compositing the sequence easy,” says Guyett. “With a really gnarly set, greenscreens get dirty and become less effective, but I think if we’d done it [onstage], there would be a greater chance of people looking at it and saying, ‘I don’t really believe they’re outside.’” Mindel adds, “Part of working on this kind of movie is learning about the [visual-effects] technology, and Roger’s very keen to teach guys like me. He and I shared the experience all the way to the digital intermediate, because the biggest issue is blending everything together seamlessly [in post].” The filmmakers carried out the DI at Company 3 with colorist Stefan Sonnenfeld. “Shooting on film, which is really important to me and Dan, and then doing the DI with Stefan allowed us to do a critical and final pass that was in some cases about color-correction and in other cases about being incredibly creative and giving certain locations an even bolder look,” says Abrams. Mindel notes, “Kodak offered us [Vision3 500T] 5219 because of its greater latitude, but I found it lacked the initial contrast that I like; I’d much rather have the contrast on the negative than try to add it afterwards.” He opted instead to shoot two Kodak Vision2 negatives, 100T 5212 (day exteriors) and 500T 5218 (interiors). “We shot at T2.82⁄3 basically all the time, and I like to use zooms on set, so I pushed by half a stop to give us enough light when we were inside or shooting at night,” adds Mindel. After the mission is accomplished on the drill platform, Sulu is jolted off and into freefall. When Kirk jumps after him, it falls to Chekov, aboard the Enterprise, to lock onto the plummeting targets and beam them back to the transporter room. In the transporter-room set, “we had some floor and ceiling lighting effects that remained fairly similar to the look of the original series,” says Mindel. Prampin adds, “We gave the art department old Fresnel lenses out of 10Ks, and they actually incorporated those into the set for the characters to stand on.” A mix of 10Ks and Ninelights provided illumination from below the transporter, and 2K MoleBeam Projectors were aimed through holes designed into the ceiling. The transporter remained dark “until the characters stood on it, and then we would gradually start putting a little light into it,” says Prampin. “Eventually, we would get to an overexposed state, at which point the characters would ‘disappear.’” (25K SoftSuns and 8K Paparazzis enhanced the effect.) When Pike falls into Nero’s hands, Spock becomes acting captain of the Enterprise, and in the interest of logic and efficiency, he decides to keep Kirk out of his way by jettisoning him to the ice planet Delta Vega. The planet’s exterior was constructed alongside the drill platform at Dodger Stadium. “We mocked up a proof-ofconcept on the computer and did a very quick survey of the car park,” says Guyett. “We ran a Sunpath on the two sets, and we were able to present this concept of shooting the two sets 36 June 2009

American Cinematographer - June 2009

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