American Cinematographer - March 2004 - 48

An Effect

on

His Peeis
look

Right: Anderson
(center) enjoys

at

the dailies, and Gene

would

Clubhouse.
Anderson had a

he wanted it faster or slower or
something different, so we'd do it all
over again that night."
By then, a third generation of
Andersons was working in the com¬
pany. Anderson recalls that his son,
Howard Anderson III, flipped light
switches on and off for the running
lights of the model of the Enterprise

longtime

while he filmed the craft from differ¬

say

the camaraderie
of two other

illustrious ASC

members,
Vilmos

Zsigmond (left)
and

Stanley

Cortez, at the

Society's

collaboration
with Cortez, for
whom he often
served

angles and tracks for the purpose
building a library of inserts. "We
brought an astronomer in to design

ent

of

as a

second-unit

a

director of
Below:

Anderson (left)
and his son,
Howard
Anderson III,

enjoy the ASC
Golf Tournament

along with
Anderson's

partner, Joanne
Reeves, and
Anderson Ill's

wife, Kathy.

was

blessed

to

have

an

opportunity to work with a lot of
creative people," he says. "We did all
of the opticals for I Love Lucy in
1951, including titles, mattes and
second-unit work. We had very close
located

on

their lot, which

we were
was

later

but

were

be

Anderson

was

inducted into

the

American
Society
of
Cinematographers in 1962. His
sponsors were Society members Bob
DeGrasse and Arthur Miller,

with

we

huge piece of black

no one

more

liked it;

paper

authentic,
wanted it to

was

we

dramatic."

The company

1965, about a year before the series
aired. They made models of the star-

moved to the
during the late
1980s and stayed through the mid1990s, when they moved into a
state-of-the-art facility in North
Hollywood. Anderson III became
president of the company in 1993. A
fourth-generation member of the
clan, Valerie Anderson, subsequently
joined the company in a managerial

ship Enterprise in sizes ranging from

role.

only a few visual-effects artists in the
organization, including Dunn, Bill
Abbott and Roy Seawright.
The original Star Trek series
was

the first television program to

make

regular use of movie-style
visual effects. The Anderson brothers
began working

4"

purchased by Paramount."

backlit it. It

vari¬

ous

directions. "I

a

and
on

whom he had collaborated

through the ranks, starting over
as
an
optical-printer operator.
Typically, he created fades, dissolves
and "flop-overs" used to reverse
up

field for Star Trek'S
recalls. "He put pin¬

star

holes in

films. At that time, there

mid-1940s. Howard worked his way

ties to Desilu Studios, and

to

on

that project in

Universal Studios lot

Like the ASC, the Anderson

14", created star fields, and

invented

photographic technique
that visually represented the signa¬
ture phrase, "Beam me up, Scotty."
Anderson explains, "To create the
'transporter' effect, we optically
superimposed film of glittering alu¬
minum shavings over footage of
actors who were being beamed up or
down.
[Series creator]
Gene
Roddenberry was a huge, bright,
dominating figure. He was good to
work with and a nice guy, but he was
very precise and second-guessed us
all the time. For footage of the
Enterprise in flight, we decided to fly
the camera by the spaceship models
instead of moving them, because it
looked more convincing. We must

family is marking its 85th year in the
industry this year. "I remember my
father telling me he had the world's
best life," says Anderson Jr. "He saw
the advent of the electric light, the
locomotive and airplane, the cine¬

have shot the miniature of the space¬

possibly can be done."

a

ship for the main title

more

than

a

hundred times with different little
moves, turns

44 March 2004

realistic

Anderson Jr.

photography.

and speeds. We would

ma,

radio and television. I believe the

future will

bring challenges and
opportunities that are beyond the
scope of our imagination today.
That's the way it has always been -
no one could have predicted that the
industry would be remastering films
that my father and I worked on 50
and 60 years ago for home-video
release today. The secret is that you
have to love what you do, and you
must

strive to do it the best that it

■
American Cinematographer - March 2004

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