Voyage Trekkers – The Great Hall FX
by Cookster on Sep.10, 2011, under Blog Shorts, Non-fiction, Props, Stories
At the end of July, David once again asked if I would like to help him on another one of Nathan Blackwell’s web series -Voyage Trekkers. The premise for this show is not a parody of Star Trek, but homage to all sci-fi. The twist being, “With all the starships in the galaxy, somebody’s gotta be the worst”…or as the tagline goes, “These are the voyages that don’t make the captain’s log”.
Blackwell gave us the footage for episode nine, filmed entirely with green screen background. David chose to do physical models for these shots instead of digital. I was in charge of making the models, while David was responsible for prop designs and postproduction effects.
Our assignment was to create a columned great hall similar to one in Star Wars and a large impenetrable door. We had a few recyclables to choose from so David decided that Gatorade bottles might work.
While he got busy designing the concepts for the door, I began cutting the bottles to form the base of the columns. We were going to use 2” PVC pipe and caps for the columns from Home Depot. I figured we were only going to use the top part of the bottle until I tore the labels off and discovered a more interesting top for the column.
After cutting and painting the various parts of the Gatorade bottles, they looked like this:
The door was constructed of mainly foam core, matte board, balsa wood strips, and various parts from a plastic model tank kit placed on quarter-inch masonite for strength. It had three height layers for dimension and the appearance of sliding open.
Once the door was painted, it was photographed for postproduction.
All the parts to the hallway were now finished and needed to be assembled.
David wanted to do that on top of a table so he could get the proper angles for the shoot. I was a little nervous for fear that we would accidentally knock one or more of the columns off the table. The columns looked good, but they were quite fragile and barely put together with super glue. We carefully spaced each column in two rows and hot glued a 1″x3″ board with decorative trim across the tops…so far, so good. Next, we placed the ceiling arches and hot glued them. Once we did that, we felt fairly safe that the whole thing wasn’t going to fall.
Several sheets of poster board were layered across the arches to enclose the ceiling. More foam core was painted and added behind the columns as walls. A 2’x8’sheet of Masonite was placed for the end of the hallway. Now were ready to set up the lighting for the hallway shots.
After weeks of running around in the Arizona heat for supplies, much hard work, and a few other minor setbacks, we finally got the shots we needed (at least David thought so). Now it was time to carefully deconstruct our model to be used possibly in the future for another project. Unfortunately, sometimes your greatest fears come true. As David was removing the arches, he hooked one up on the column bridge. The whole thing fell! Oh well, easy come… easy go!
Episode nine of Voyage Trekkers with hours and hours of David’s postproduction work will be up beginning September 12. We invite you to come see our efforts at: http://www.squishystudios.com/voyage-trekkers-web-series/
September 10th, 2011 on 1:34 pm
Very well written and informative! It was fun doing this!
Good job!
September 10th, 2011 on 3:27 pm
WOW … you guys have been busy. I’ve caught a few episodes so I’ll be sure to stay tuned for this one. Great job to both of you … can’t wait to see how this turns out!
September 11th, 2011 on 12:34 pm
It is nice to see old school VFX being done still.
Keep up the great work. Love the show.
September 13th, 2011 on 8:17 am
Thanks everyone for your comments. Yesterday, Voyage Trekkers actually got a plug on Saturday Night Live’s Weekend Update twitter feed! Hopefully good things will come from that!