First Contact, page 22
“We’re living in a world now where we have much tougher competition in visual effects,” he says. “You see the heavily visual-effects films that are out today—and these are films that in my opinion are nothing but visual effects—but it’s still hard to compete with them because the visual effects are so remarkable and so much money is being spent on them.
“For First Contact, we need to find ways to at least stand up to these films. I think in terms of the story and the plot and the performances, we are in a position where we’re going to outshine all of these films. But in terms of the visual effects, the time and money involved is a little bit more limited. So we had to come up with clever ways to achieve some of our effects, by putting the money where it would count. And I think we have done that. First Contact certainly has more visual effects than Generations.”
Herman Zimmerman is equally pleased with ILM’s state-of-the-art contributions to First Contact. In fact, the movie’s opening shot is technically similar to one imagined by William Shatner for the opening shot of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. Shatner, who directed that film, hoped to include an “infinite zoom,” in which the camera would open on the Earth in space, then push in closer and closer until it ended up in close-up on Captain Kirk climbing up the side of a mountain. But ten years ago, the technical demands of that sequence were beyond the budget of the film, and the shot was dropped.
But now, for First Contact, ILM will create the same camera movement in reverse, starting in extreme close up on Patrick Stewart’s eye, and then, as Zimmerman describes it, “pulling back to reveal his face, then his uniform, and then that he’s in a Borg regenerative alcove. Then the pullback continues to show that he’s standing next to a dozen other alcoves, and then in a tier of twelve hundred, and then in a hive of one hundred and fifty thousand, and then outside into a Borg ship, and then outside the ship into space. It will be one of the longest pullbacks ever done.”
For the eagerly anticipated hull battle, ILM will once again seamlessly combine its computer magic with live-action footage. On the stunning deflector dish set, actors in spacesuits, suspended by “flying rigs” to simulate microgravity, will be pulled away from the dish as if they have been blasted into space. But after only a few feet of travel, the live-action actor will be replaced with a computer-generated double that will be able to tumble and fall away in a much more realistic manner, in a way that would be time-consuming and dangerous to attempt with real stunt people on a live stage.
And, Ron Moore adds as he describes this sequence, in addition to all the action, “we’ll have the Earth hanging out there and casting light on the hull, and it’s going to be pretty groovy.”
However, despite the first look at untold parts of Star Trek’s history, the enthusiasm and respect for Star Trek of its first-time director, and the emphasis on catapulting the Next Generation crew into their first, flat-out action adventure, perhaps no single element of First Contact is more eagerly awaited than the unveiling of the first new Enterprise in almost a decade—the NCC-1701-E.
As production designer, Herman Zimmerman led the creative effort to update what Gene Roddenberry always felt was as much a character in Star Trek as any of her flesh-and-blood crew. The key illustrator for the E was noted Star Trek artist John Eaves, who has also been responsible for many distinctive elements of Star Trek productions, past and present.
With thirty years’ of tradition behind the basic design of the Enterprise’s various forms, Herman Zimmerman admits the task was, at first, daunting.
“This is the second time I’ve had the opportunity to start with a blank sheet of paper on a Star Trek project,” he explains. “Deep Space Nine was essentially built from the ground up. And once again, with the destruction of the Enterprise-D in the Generations film, we had the opportunity to redesign the Enterprise.
“We had no prior concepts to limit us, except the tradition of the Enterprise that we’ve seen for nearly thirty years. What we came up with was an Enterprise that owes as much to the original Matt Jefferies design as it does to Andy Probert’s design for the Enterprise-D.
“We followed the established conceptual ideas for the Enterprise-D more in the interior space, in the ready room, the observation lounge, and the bridge. But the exterior of the ship is sleeker, more aerodynamic. That’s not a word that is important in space, but it was always important to Gene Roddenberry. More for esthetics than for the necessity of streamlining.”
The initial stimulus for this latest version of the Starship Enterprise came, as do all things in the world of movies, from the script. “We described the new Enterprise in some detail,” Ron Moore says. “We said we want a sleeker look, with more of a muscular, almost warship kind of a look to it.”
Zimmerman and his team were up to the challenge. “It’s a ship that’s not as comfortable in the sense of being equipped to handle families for long periods of time in space,” he says. “It’s basically a ship that is intended to—as much as anything else—be able to fight the Borg.”
Choosing his words carefully, Zimmerman goes on to say, “We never couched the starships of the Federation as warships. Instead, they are ‘research vessels with heavy armaments.’ And we had to develop some new weapons in our minds to equip this ship properly for that service.
“I think the thing that will strike the Star Trek fan about the ship is that it’s in the same vein as other starships we’re familiar with, but it’s more beautiful, more esthetically balanced, if you would. It’s got all the same basic elements: two warp engines and a saucer section, which may need to separate at some time. That’s not in any of our plans for the near future, but it’s always a possibility.”
The final design of the Enterprise-E, as shown in these pages and in First Contact, was the result of an ongoing collaborative process. “We just did a number of sketches,” Zimmerman explains, “and kept winnowing the sketches down, saying, ‘This looks good, this doesn’t. This works, that doesn’t work. Let’s raise the nacelles, let’s lower them, let’s make them smaller.’ Basically, we took all the elements that we’re all familiar with and tried to make the best-looking and fastest-looking ship that we could come up with.”
One aspect of the Enterprise-E’s design process was also a first for Zimmerman. Not only must the ship’s design fulfill all the needs of the script and the expectations of the production team and the audience, but it had also to accommodate the demands of the unprecedented hull battle.
Zimmerman admits that after building the full-scale deflector dish on the sound stage, “We did have to make some modifications to the exterior of the model.” To simplify ILM’s work in matching the full-size set and the live actors to the model of the Enterprise, long, raised edges were added to the sides of the dish, cutting down on the amount of background that had to be digitally replaced.
But, Zimmerman points out, “Our biggest challenge with the deflector dish set was its size. We had to compromise. The set we built on stage is about fifteen percent smaller than it would be in actual size, if we were building the Enterprise for real.” Fortunately, Zimmerman is confident that the size discrepancy will not be apparent in the final film, thanks to the judicious use of wide-angle camera lenses, which will make the set photograph much larger than it actually is.
Untold history, all-out action, and a brand-new starship… they’re still just the tip of the iceberg of the Star Trek firsts in First Contact.
There’s the matter of the film’s uplifting climax, when we are witness to the historic first contact between humans and our first alien visitors, the Vulcans. The familiar-looking triangular scoutship in which they arrive bears an interesting resemblance to reports of triangular-shaped UFOs from the late twentieth century.
Then there’re the crossover elements, especially meaningful in Star Trek’s 30th anniversary year. Star Trek’s favorite Klingon takes leave from Deep Space Nine to rejoin his former crewmates on the bridge of the new Enterprise. But watch for a crossover from Voyager as well. In fact, with Zefram Cochrane’s character having been established in the Original Series, First Contact combines elements from all four Star Trek series. Another first.
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Star Trek: Discovery: The Way to the Stars
Star Trek: Discovery: The Enterprise War
Star Trek: Discovery: Dead Endless
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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Copyright © 1996 by Paramount Pictures. All Rights Reserved.
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ISBN-13: 978-1-9821-4364-0 (eBook)
ISBN: 0-671-00316-X
First Pocket Books hardcover printing December 1996
POCKET and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster Inc.
All photographs by Elliot Marks
J.M. Dillard, First Contact
