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Dan Curry - Special Effects Designer

Flying Saucer Plus
  How to make the Borg Unimatrix

When we are going to do something very elaborate as a computer model, I like to start off with a physical rough model to give the computer model builder, so they have a good sense of what I have in mind. And, in this case, this is the Borg Unimatrix, the capital city of the Borg, floating in some remote region of space. And so I went in my little wood shop in the garage and made these blocks of wood, kind of an intuitive sculpture, using bamboo barbecue skewers and scraps of garbage, and just cut up little pieces of wood and glued them together.

To create this, it took me about a day and a half puttering around in my shop.

How Big?
  Tell me about the original design of The Enterprise?

No Air in Spacesubhead : The concept of the Borg cube body : The writers wanted a shape that was completely non-aerodynamic, since there’s no atmosphere in space, shape is irrelevant. And it was a shape that would contain a large volume and just look ominous, and that’s where the cube came from. And then we came up with other forms of geometry, and the most elaborate was the Borg Queen Ship, which had kind of inverted pyramids … an hour glass with buttresses floating around it. … In the case of the Borg Unimatrix, I took that idea and extended it into three dimensions, also taking into account the pragmatic nature of the Borg, that they build what they need without true regard to aesthetics. And so I imagined that they would have different utility modules for different operations, some might be communications, some might be reproduction, food processing, whatever. And so they would just kind of randomly add on as their culture grew and as the number of individuals in their population grew.

Elegant
  How much do the models cost to make and what general size are they?

The FBI's Most Wantedsubhead : Weapons for Klingons body : We had an episode where Worf was to inherit a special Klingon blade. And the art department came down with something that looked like a pirate’s cutlass… But I felt that for the Klingons, and especially for Worf, it should be something more cool and less familiar... And part of my misspent youth, I studied martial arts very seriously in Asia for a number of years and looked at Asian weapons. And I had imagined this weapon for a long time but had no reason to bring it into existence. So I made a foam core version of it and brought it into Rick Berman and said, ‘Look, here’s this really cool thing and we could create a whole new martial art around it.’ And that became one of the icons of Klingons. And, interestingly enough, it was approved by the Korean Martial Arts Society as one of the new bladed weapons that was actually practical. And the Navy Department of Research wanted tracings of it, the FBI wanted to talk to me about how I came up with the ergonomics of the weapon...

Quo Vadis
  Which is your favourite ship?

Cake Knifesubhead : Worf’s new weapon body : Michael Dorn, when he signed on to Deep Space 9, called me up in the summer and said, ‘Daniel, I need a new weapon.’ And so he came over to the house and I showed him some of my weapons collection, and he liked this, which is a Himalayan sword. Michael liked this, so we came up with a weapon based on this blade design. We’ve used it to cut birthday cakes and stuff like that on the show.

No Standard
  Do you have a favourite effect?

Buddhist Lightningsubhead : What are Jem Hadar weapons based on? body : These are Chinese fighting crescents. Usually used twin-hand, and they have a nice kind of fluid style. We used these as a basis for a Jem Hadar a weapon, as we also used this, which is a Tibetan fighting cleaver. And so instead of the Buddhist symbol of lightning, I put more practical handles.

Steel Wool
  How long, on average, do you get to create an effect?

Force Fieldssubhead : Cheerleaders, M&Ms and special effects body : This is the material for a cheerleader’s pom pom. I stumbled upon this in a dry goods store. And this was in just about every episode of Star Trek – the Next Generation, and many episodes of the subsequent series. One of its greatest uses is the Federation Force Field, and it’s around Federation ships. By shaking it and having a forty-five degree angle mirror underneath, so you can see its kind of random patterns, it gives a wonderful, non-repetitive organic sparkle to it.

So we take that and stretch it over an M&M to create force fields around the ships. Tweaked out of focus it was a wonderful galaxy in one show. We’ve also used it as hordes of sparkling little light bulb entities in an episode called Power Play... the individuals were created with this, which is a day-glo mitten.

To save animation time, instead of doing traditional animation frame-by-frame, I decided that we needed this little floating creatures to enter the bodies and take over the minds of our intrepid crewmen. So, by putting this on with the black sweatsuit and a little black hood over my face, and being able to see the original scenes with the actors, I was able to, using tai chi motions, just kind of float this thing around. It worked out very well, and I could do all the animation in a morning rather than over a period of weeks.

Glitter Ball
  How do you make a nebula?

Godsends and Drawbackssubhead : Has CGI replaced more traditional special effects? body : Well, CGI is both a godsend and it has its drawbacks - one of the things that is taken away is the kind of wonderful, fun, alchemy of figuring out how to use materials that were never intended to be used that way, to have the illusion of being something else. Where in the CG world, especially for ships, it’s a godsend because it saves us from sixty hours a week of shooting miniatures.

Certain things the computer still doesn’t do very well... explosions still don’t look very good. A lot of times we’ll mix generic explosions with computer generated debris.

Macro
  The Transporter effect, gold flakes in water effect, how has it moved on from there and how did you make the Next Generation Transporter effect?

Oatmeal Sunssubhead : Story boards and creating suns with beer and cereals body : Story boards help us visualise the sequence of events. And I especially like to do it for the visual effects sequences because it lets me make sure that we’re not showing a similar image and keeps screen direction constant. And in this example, the story board is showing photon torpedoes igniting and trying to rekindle a sun.

I noticed that on a still photograph, the surface of the sun reminded me of dried oatmeal. So, I sprinkled oatmeal on the surface of a light table and put a little electric motor next to it, and the motor caused the oatmeal to dance a little bit. And then by using a computer to wrap it over the surface of an imaginary sphere, that became the surface of the sun. The corona was a laser beam bounced off a beer can onto a piece of cardboard. And the solar ejecta was baking soda tapped up, shot with a high speed camera, so it would kind of come up and collapse, and everything looked pretty natural.

Yesterday's Enterprise
  You’ve taken shots of rocks in your garden and used those as special effects, tell me about that.

Hardware Storesubhead : Ordinary objects doing unusual things body : I would go into a hardware store and see plumbing parts and things to repair sprinkler systems, and looking at them out of scale and context, I would see spaceship parts and different things that you could apply for different purposes. And I think that’s one of the things that’s enjoyable about doing this kind of work, is you get to have those kind of mind journeys.

Two Years!
  When were you first asked to create a wormhole effect?

Styrofoam Monsterssubhead : Helping the actors with quick polystyrene whittling body : This dinosaur was in Star Trek. And this was from Distant Origins, where we discover an intelligent species of dinosaurs that evolved from a primordial ancestor. A sculptor named Jordu Schell, made this out of modelling clay, and then I took it and painted it and photographed it against a piece of blue screen, which it is on now. And it had to be bigger in the show than the actual sculpture.

To make it simple for the actors, sometimes I’ll make little foam core cut-outs like this, rapidly on stage, this was like a ten minute cut-out, and using a brush pen, just kind of squiggle some detail just to amuse myself and give them a feeling of what it is. And that way the actors know how big it is when they walk around and they get a feeling of the mass of – of the object in the – in the show. Anything we can do to help them is a wise investment of energy.

Manifold
  Do you have much input to keeping the effects accurate?

Hoardersubhead : Clearly you have trouble throwing stuff away, do you keep a lot of things? body : Unfortunately, yes. They have no real value, it’s just too cool to throw away. That’s why they kind of live in my garage until they find their way into the dumpster.

Not Negative
  What’s the most difficult science problem you’ve had to visualise and make real?

Melted Carnagesubhead : Abstract Borg sculpture body : This is from the episode Q Who? where Q takes us to encounter the Borg for the very first time. We needed a shot that went onto the main viewer, where the Borg ship heals itself from a phaser blast. And we had a model maker put this together for us, and we had enough for five takes on the melted portion. And what we did is we had welding torches just out of frame with the camera, and they would melt the plastic and shooting it on 35 millimetre motion picture film, we just ran it in reverse so you’d see this kind of melted carnage come back into being a perfect thing. And after the five takes, I had it in my hand and was about to throw it in the dumpster when I realised, ‘Well, this is a little too cool to throw away, I’ll save it.’ And then the model maker put it in a plexiglass case for us to keep it dust free. It’s a good piece of found art. And everybody that comes in says, ‘What is that thing?’ And then, when they find out, they think it’s a fairly cool object.

Miniatures to CG
  Was there a significant technological change between Deep Space 9 and Voyager?

Toy Borgsubhead : How merchandise comes in handy body : This was from the episode, Dark Frontier, Star Trek Voyager, and this is the first time that humanity encounters Species 8472. And before they actually encounter the life form, they see that they have left a pile of dead Borg body parts on their ship. And the Borg, up until that time, were the most frightening of our adversaries. And to keep our budget down, and I knew it needed some insane thinking, so I figured I’d better do it myself. And I took Borg action figure toys and cut them up … and just stacked them up in a crazy way and re-painted them. And kudos to the sculptor who did the original toys, because the faces were so well done, I was able to get a close-up this big. So, in the show, I photographed this with a still photographer here at home against a piece of blue screen, but when we shot the scene on stage, the actors knew about how big the pile of Borg would be, so everybody knew where their eye lines were supposed to be, so they walked around on an empty stage and then, later on, this was composited into a scene. I think it’s pretty cool.

Choreography
  When you began on Deep Space 9, what were your ambitions, having already worked on a series. Were there things you were dying to try out?

Ping Pongsubhead : How do you make a deep space probe? body : This is a Class 4 probe from The Enterprise of Next Generation era. And, in reality, it’s a ping-pong ball glued on a deodorant bottle with little bits to enhance it. And this was used in a number of shows as a little probe sent in to investigate outer space phenomena.

Space Nazis
  Describe the concept of Deep Space 9 in terms of the way it was designed.

Very!subhead : How cool are the space ships? body : These are some of the ships from the show. And The Enterprise, of course, is great - But one of my favourites is the Klingon bird of prey. The original model was made for the original Star Trek series features by Industrial Light and Magic, and it’s one of the most beautifully crafted models with metal parts and mechanical wings and it was always a pleasure to shoot it.

It’s got a very predatory quality which goes with bird of prey, so it has enough zoomorphism about it to conform to the name and the Klingon culture, but yet it also just looks like a really nasty aggressive ship.

Sleek and Agressive
  Tell us more about Voyager

The original Enterprise done by Matt Jeffreys, is a ship that has captured the imagination of people around the world. I think because it appeared at a time when people were still thinking about flying saucers, so it’s got the homage to the flying saucer in the main living area, but adding the powerful looking engines and the barrel fuselage down here, and the kind of Bonanza wing shape. It was a great departure from the missile inspired spaceships that we would see in other movies and series.

Getting Our Act Together
  Describe the concept behind Next Generation, which was of a different time.

When models are created for the show, they vary in size depending on the amount of use and what level of detail is required. For example, the model for Deep Space 9 was six feet in diameter, and we had to make a special model without one centre that had the outer rim, so we would use it for shots where we’re see out from the centre hub. And that was an incredibly expensive model because it required special steel armatures and several different circuits of lighting. So a model like that could be in excess of hundreds of thousands of dollars and take many months to build. On the other hand, certain models are free, such as ones that I would make with little broken parts and stuff, if it’s for one-time use only, for a little ship that flies by.

Voyager was five feet long, the physical model. The Enterprise for Next Generation, we first had one that was built by Industrial Light and Magic, that was six feet long, but we found that it was too unwieldy because of its size when we were shooting passes, which is when you’re shooting the silhouette of the ship that you can then use to make a hole in the background where the ship goes. So we subsequently had Greg Gene make the four foot Enterprise, which is what we used primarily on TNG.

Don't Know What You've Got 'Till It's Gone
  The Enterprise-D was a very 80s ship, wasn’t it?

The model I like the most is the Enterprise D from The Next Generation. It was the first Star Trek series I worked on so I had a special feeling about it. But also its proportions, the elliptical saucer was very graceful and elegant. And I think I also, probably, have a love affair with the ship from the new series… It will be really good.

Milk Tears
  How do you make a Vulcan cry?

I don’t have a particularly favourite effect. I have sequences that are favourite. I think because I like to do them, I like matte paintings. I think even as a child, when I saw Forbidden Planet and other movies of that type, and – or Roman epics, like Quo Vadis, and I began to sense that there were paintings mixed with actors. I realised that it was a way to create a reality that can only exist on the screen because of mixing actors with that kind of art work. And I think matte paintings have evolved with digital technology, that you can make three dimensional objects and move through them the way a matte painting would have worked before, and because of tracking technology, you don’t have to lock the shot down. And it just gives a scope and a scale, that other types of shots don’t do. And, of course, I really like great ship shots that are really dynamic with interesting explosions.

Reality
  What’s your ambition visually for the new series, Enterprise? Is there something that you really want to try out?

There’s no standard, but generally it takes about seven weeks to do an episode for the series. And that would, say, start from the commencement of principal photography. And by the time we get a locked cut to start working with, we generally have between three and four weeks to turn out an episode. And by industry standards, that’s very quick.

Beauty
  Do you have a particular memory of each series? How do you remember Next Generation and the others in terms of what your department has done?

We’ve made nebulas in many different ways. On Next Generation, some of the nebulas were paintings, and I would airbrush them on big, black pieces of foam core, and then do camera moves, and then have separate layers of stars. Sometimes I’d airbrush different layers so you’d have a feeling of multi-planing. Then we’ve, of course, used the – the pom-pom a couple of times, out of focus, as nebulas. And now we generally will take computer software and create nebulas that way. And NASA and JPL sometimes provide us with deep space photographs from the Hubble Telescope, and we will paint out the stars so we can put our own stars in and shift them around a little bit and make nebulas that way, as well. And frequently we’ve taken things like a light bulb, photographed through acetate which has been rubbed with steel wool, and that might be the more glowing core of a nebula, as a separate pass on a motion control rig.

River of Blood
  From holiday snaps to Klingon hell

Well, the original series used swirling glitter, to my understanding, in water. And they would rotoscope or trace the actor for each shot, and then that would be composited on an optical printer. When Voyager came along, I wanted to create a new look for the Transporter, so we came up with the little spheres of light that expand out and wipe on the person. And I wanted to see something different than that two dimensional curtain that came over them, and so the – the light spheres were created as a CG element, but then we used the original glitter elements because we didn’t want to do too big a departure.