Creating the Containment Effect for ST:TMP
Doctor McCoy beaming into the Enterprise during ST:TMP
I have only seen a couple of extremely brief descriptions about how the transporter effects were created for ST:TMP. The white swirling reintegration effect was accomplished by photographing glitter and then distorting the effect by reflecting the glitter off a piece of mylar plastic, possibly using front projection. The resulting effect was bound into the shape of the person being transported by using a cover matte.
The containment effect was accomplished by first finding a stiff wire that was probably painted white. This wire was trimmed to a specific length. Next, this wire was attached vertically to a turntable of some sort that was painted black. The distance away from the center of the turntable that the wire was attached, along with the length of the wire, determined the resulting width and height of the containment effect on the screen.
The turntable with its attached wire were then sent spinning and the room in which the apparatus was located was made completely dark. Next, several laser beams were aimed at the rotating wire from different directions. Before hitting the wire though, each beam was first bounced off of some sort of reflecting media so that the beams were perturbed in some interesting way. I perturbed my laser beams by bouncing them off pieces of Saran Wrap. I don't know how the Star Trek effects crew perturbed their laser beams.
Once the now perturbed laser beams hit the rotating white wire, they traced out a cylindrical shape in real 3D space. A camera was mounted in front of the turntable and the exposure time for each frame of film in the camera was set so that the wire would make at least half, but maybe a whole, rotation during each frame's exposure. The result of this was that a 3D cylindrical shape was recorded onto each frame of film. While the frames were being recorded, the reflecting media was also constantly modified in some way so that the resulting pattern projected onto the wire also constantly changed.
When the sequence of film was developed and viewed, all you would see was a cylinder of sinuous color. This effect was then scaled, possibly color shifted, positioned, and superimposed in the optical printer so that it overlaid the transporter room at the correct spot. Finishing the effect required that the transportee to also be matted into the center of the cylinder.
Last Updated: January 23, 2002
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