In a recent production focus article, CGsociety writer Renee Dunlop gets indepth info from ILM & Digital Domain about the two studios work on the new J.J. Abrams film 'Star Trek'.

Space may be the final frontier, but the ever-expanding capabilities of visual effects are nipping at its heels. And where the two meet, there is Star Trek.

In just six months, roughly 800 visual effects shots from Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) and 150 from Digital Domain (DD) in four months helped to bring J.J. Abrams’ vision to the big screen.

“Growing up, I wasn’t a big Star Trek fan, but I thought the script was great. Getting to see these iconic characters with J.J.’s touch made me a bit of a fan, I have to say.”  Russell Earl, ILM Co-Visual Effects Supervisor

ILM

Abrams wanted to maintain familiarity while basing everything in reality, so there were many discussions about how form follows function. Some of the ILM Star Trek aficionados added back-stories for what the ship does here and what the crew stored there. Abrams desire for reality required extensive research into the fantastic, finding a blend of science and art to compliment scenes like the battle in the black hole, the transporter, or the ice planet. Co-VFX Supervisor Russell Earl explained. “We tried to develop different, what we called neighborhoods in space. We didn’t just want a black void of space with stars. There are different beats in the film, so we have distinct areas.” Abrams brought in Carolyn Porco, leader of the Imaging Science team on NASA’S Cassini mission at Saturn to advise ILM on the look and attributes of Saturn’s rings. “We spent time talking to her so we could nail the true science.”

Digital Domain

As so often happens in production now, the production schedule was so tight shots needed to be distributed to other FX companies. The original release was set for November of 2008 so Digital Domain (DD) was brought in to help. Even though the release was pushed back to spring of 2009, both studios were still restricted by the original budget so couldn’t enjoy a break in the schedule. DD only had roughly four months to complete their portion, and though it wasn’t that many shots, the lighting and tracking work was substantial.

Character work included the robot policeman who pursues young Kirk in the beginning. Late in the game Abrams decided the scene needed an authority figure that was more threatening. ILM did several character designs, Abrams picked one, and DD modeled everything and articulated the mask, matched up the plates and the lighting, added animated apertures in the eyes and added subtle high frequency animation to represent the speech. All that was done within the last couple of weeks of production. (source CGsociety.com)

Read the full article here.