{"id":430,"date":"2009-09-12T15:30:37","date_gmt":"2009-09-12T22:30:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/davidstipes.net\/?p=430"},"modified":"2015-11-09T01:46:57","modified_gmt":"2015-11-09T08:46:57","slug":"restoring-terrys-figure-with-vis-efx","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidstipes.net\/?p=430","title":{"rendered":"Restoring Terry’s figure with Vis Efx"},"content":{"rendered":"

Terry Farrell’s contract was up on DS-9 and she was leaving the show. The story going around was that she did not wish to leave but the producers would not grant her contract requests. As the visual effects supervisor, I was on the DS-9 set to oversee the effects needed for her last scenes on the series. Terry was not very happy and was giving tearful goodbye hugs to her production crewmates.<\/p>\n

I have seen actors who were really obnoxious and uncooperative when they didn’t get what they wanted so I was watching Terry with interest as the day unfolded. For every shot when called, she dried her tears, went on set, became her character, Dax, and delivered the best performances she could. She did not give an attitude, whine or make excuses. She did her job.<\/p>\n

To give Terry an exit from the series, the DS-9 writers had bad boy Gul Dukat kill Jadzia Dax in the episode called \u2018Tears of the Prophets’. Dukat, possessed by the Pah-wraiths, uses an energy force to lift Dax off the ground then kill her.<\/p>\n

\"tearsofthephrophets_595\"<\/p>\n

To accomplish this, Terry would have to wear a special flying harness which wrapped around her hips. Unfortunately the rig, made of thick leather and straps, was\u00a0very uncomfortable and did nothing to flatter Terry’s figure. In fact … she was horrified at how she looked.<\/p>\n

Terry came up to me with a look of desperation on her face; the harness around her hips made her look huge! Was there anything I could do to make her look better in her last shots?<\/p>\n

I was so impressed with her qualities of character and professionalism that I assured her that I would do what I could to help her look good in the final shots. With that she appeared relieved and we went on to do the final death scene.<\/p>\n

When we got the footage into the digital compositing bay we began looking at techniques and options to see what we could do to help Terry regain her figure. Since we were on a budget for a limited effect for the death scene, we\u00a0had to squeak this in somehow. We decided to cover Terry’s torso and hips with effects elements rather then try to rotoscope or otherwise distort her filmed image frame by frame which would have cost a lot in man-hours and bay time.<\/p>\n

Luckily, we had some resources. Over the years of production, we had amassed a collection of visual effects footage elements like fire, smoke and liquid nitrogen. We began experimenting with the elements over Terry’s footage to see what worked. We decided to use licks of liquid nitrogen vapor fluttering out from the edge of the body and hiding her rig-thickened profile.<\/p>\n

\"tearsofthephrophets_591\"<\/p>\n

While not a perfect fix, we did it within the budget we had. Months later at the DS-9 wrap party, Terry came over and gave me a warm thank you for making her look good. I told her how impressed I was with the way she handled herself in that situation so it was a pleasure to help her.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Terry Farrell’s contract was up on DS-9 and she was leaving the show. The story going around was that she did not wish to leave but the producers would not grant her contract requests. As the visual effects supervisor, I was on the DS-9 set to oversee the effects needed for her last scenes on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[29,41,50,79,30,51,78],"class_list":["post-430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-visual-effects-techniques","tag-david-stipes","tag-ds-9","tag-liquid-nitrogen","tag-star-trek","tag-stipes-universe","tag-terry-farrell","tag-visual-effects"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidstipes.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430","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=430"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/davidstipes.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":770,"href":"https:\/\/davidstipes.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430\/revisions\/770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidstipes.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidstipes.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidstipes.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}