{"id":239,"date":"2009-06-10T02:01:38","date_gmt":"2009-06-10T09:01:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/davidstipes.net\/?p=239"},"modified":"2009-06-20T14:30:00","modified_gmt":"2009-06-20T21:30:00","slug":"v_the-final-battle-mothership","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidstipes.net\/?p=239","title":{"rendered":"“V-The Final Battle” mothership"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is one of my favorite shots of the Mothership from “V-The Final Battle.”\u00a0 This was a gorgeous model constructed by famed model maker, Greg Jein.\u00a0 It was about 30 inches across and made of cast resin with neon internal lighting.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\"v-saucer_72dpi2\"<\/p>\n

The composite was done “in-the-camera” on the original negative for best quality. The move was programmed with a repeating motion controlled camera rig.\u00a0 To make this shot work we had to be able to repeat the camera & saucer move over and over to capture the model, lights, matte, earth and stars.<\/p>\n

\u00a0We first photographed the model over black with normal lighting onto color negative film. (We often called this normal lighting the “beauty pass”.)\u00a0<\/p>\n

This\u00a0photographed film was not developed, but held for later exposure passes.<\/p>\n

\"Shooting

Shooting with low profile camera.<\/p><\/div>\n

We then repeated the camera and saucer move with the saucer painted white and evenly lit, again over black.<\/p>\n

However, this pass was shot on high contrast film that gave us a black silhouette of the saucer on a clear base. This became a “holdout matte” that would protect the image of the saucer from double exposure.<\/p>\n

\"dsp2_s_133_575-72dpi\"

Hi contrast hold-out matte<\/p><\/div>\n

\u00a0The undeveloped normally lit saucer negative was rethreaded into the camera along with the “holdout matte” footage. The programmed camera then double exposed the earth and stars onto the negative.<\/p>\n

\"dsp2_s_134_575-72dpi\"

Final composite.<\/p><\/div>\n

The earth and stars would be captured on the film but the black silhouette matte of the saucer prevented the earth or star images\u00a0from burning \u00a0into the normally lit Mothership.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

This article and images are used for non-profit educational purposes only. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

“V” and all related elements\u00a0 \u00a9 1983 – 2009 Warner Bros. All rights reserved. The use of anything related to “V” or “V-The Final Battle” on this site is for educational purposes only and is not meant to be an infringement on Warner Bros. property rights.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is one of my favorite shots of the Mothership from “V-The Final Battle.”\u00a0 This was a gorgeous model constructed by famed model maker, Greg Jein.\u00a0 It was about 30 inches across and made of cast resin with neon internal lighting. \u00a0 The composite was done “in-the-camera” on the original negative for best quality. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,34],"tags":[35,8,9,78],"class_list":["post-239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film-vfx-history","category-visual-effects-techniques","tag-v","tag-david-stipes-productions","tag-film-history","tag-visual-effects"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidstipes.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidstipes.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidstipes.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidstipes.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidstipes.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=239"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/davidstipes.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":254,"href":"https:\/\/davidstipes.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239\/revisions\/254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidstipes.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidstipes.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidstipes.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}