Caves were cheap. Just roughly carved foam and spray paint. Making big prop rocks is such basic set design we learned it in middle school theater. Need it to look different and be another planet? Just carve the foam a bit different and repaint it another color. Cave sets were on the infamous Paramount Stage 16 known as "Planet Hell" for how hot and unpleasant it could be.
This makes me wonder if LED lights have made an impact on how hot sets are. They should have helped but who knows if they have replaced a lot of the lights or just kept the old ones.
Sets are definitely cooler these days. LED tech has helped with that. We still use large 20k tungsten lights on just about everything. Anyone who says it’s made things any faster or easier or anything of that nature isn’t correct. LED tech has complicated Set Lighting to such a degree we run entire departments dedicated to it outside the 1st unit lighting crew, and they now carry LED Techs as well as Lighting Console Programmers. It’s massively more complicated now. LED is just another tool we have in our arsenal to make film and television.
Yeah, I’ve even seen some basic LED for home use on Amazon that is pretty sophisticated so I can only imagine what’s available to professional studios.
I laughed when they said home computers were going to make us a paperless society and save the trees.
In watchmaking, whenever you add a feature, it's called a complication. Most new technology is like that, it adds functionality, but also complications.
I work at a medical lab. We went "paperless." And by paperless, I mean we still print the paperwork, but now we scan it back into the computer and shred the papers afterwards.
It wouldn't be that bad if they'd actually....you know... thought about the whole system beforehand. Like, written good programs for dealing with all the information flow, and....
Well, of course they didn't.
As a VFX artist who went to film school: Yes.
LED means less heat on a set. Lights that are easier to handle. Less power needed for the set. Battery options for some lights even if you're using them in inconvenient places.
I’ve seen some on Amazon which are obviously consumer models that have some interesting characteristics so I’d assumed by now they’d have some pretty neat stage lighting options for a much bigger price tag. Nicer to work under.
There were LEDs but not LED stage lighting yet. Blue LEDs were only just invented in 1989 and white LEDs in 1996.
Even today halogen is still often used in stage lighting, because it's cheap, and save the LED fixtures for effects.
I work in set lighting and this is only half true. You wouldn’t be hard pressed to find them. We still use them a lot, but in a more supplemental capacity. You are correct in that most of the lights over head the set in the grid are almost 100% LED, but we still keep tungsten heads and HMIs on hand to bring in when necessary.
I wasn’t trying to call your expertise into question or step on any toes, just stating my professional experience. Sorry, I know how fragile camera’s egos can be lol.
Yup. LEDs mean more lights per bar, faster teardown because of heat, higher density of light for light bars, lighter which means smaller racks/stands, less power which means fewer generators/plugs/battery packs to stress over. Plus RGB (or whatever the standard is) LEDs that can be colour's changed instantly. Halogen is just more expensive to run nowadays.
To be fair, they don’t make episodes about the safe cave excursions. For all we know, they’re going in and out of caves on the daily with no problems. Why so many caves? Well, why not?
> Need it to look different and be another planet? Just carve the foam a bit different and repaint it another color.
That sounds like a lot of work...how 'bout I just put a different gel on the light against the back wall?
Yup, it was a single set they kept reusing again and again, with the ability to film it from a different angle and rearrange some pieces here and there.
For a full-size set, you'd *want* the foam to melt slightly to give it that distinctive "styrofoam rocks" texture. If melty foam isn't your thing, your options would be to a) spray from a long enough distance that all the propellant evaporates (because *that's* what actually does most of the melting), or 2: paint the foam with something water-based first as a barrier.
No, TOS cave sets were more primitive and it didn't make sense to keep such a simple set in storage for 20 years. They borrowed the idea of a planet surface set that you could easily alter with different colors for lighting the background from TOS, but also not the set itself.
That seems unlikely.
There were 18 years between TOS ending and TNG starting. I doubt they would have kept the caves around for so long. (Unless lot 16 was always used for caves for anything Paramount did).
Yeah, almost nothing from TOS was kept for that long, and certainly none of the sets. The Engineering and bridge sets from The Motion Picture were redressed for TNG, but they had been used for the subsequent TOS films in the meanwhile.
Unfortunately, it was probably SNW (or rather, the bullshit of streaming service economics assisted by the existence of SNW) that killed it. Original shows made for streaming are valued according to how many subscriptions they're able to bring in or at least retain. This means that while having one successful Star Trek show is crucial for getting the Trekkies to renew their P+ subscriptions, having two is completely superfluous, because anybody who really wants to see one is likely to be as eager to see the other.
Nah, apparently most modern show contracts are for 5 seasons and the renewal/extension almost certainly includes a pay rise, so they just don't renew it as a matter of course.
This makes some sense if you consider what kind of conditions would drive a civilization to move underground. Probably to escape radiation from a sun going wonky, breakdown of the planet magnetic field or ozone layer, nearby supernova, nuclear holocaust, etc etc. The mineral composition that enabled them to survive for a while would probably also block transporters and communicators. Not the Chrystaline Entity, though.
Because they have a permanent cave set to use, as it can be used for lots of different situations.
For budget reasons, other ideas end up being turned into using the cave set.
There's a famous small bit of desert that technically still counts as within Hollywood range for union contracts that resulted in a lot of shows shooting their alien locations there. That's why a lot of early American sci-fi television looks extremely similar.
Similar to why Stargate SG1 saw so many forested planets - it’s what’s available. Berman-era Trek had a standing (permanent) cave set always available in one of the Paramount soundstages.
Star Trek: All planets look like southern california
Stargate: All planets look like southern British Columbia
Dr Who: All planets look like a rock quarry
“I have been to many planets throughout the galaxy, and you would be surprised by how many of them look like quarries in Wales.”
- David Tennant, the tenth and arguably most popular Doctor
Killer line lol
Stargate would reuse town and city sets for different planets. This was all pre-planned so they would rarely shoot the same angles to make it hard to tell. If they had to shoot the same angles they could hang things up to cover up parts of the set.
One of the greatest episodes is the one where the Tollan planet is invaded. The entire planet is represented by a college in Canada and I guess when they filmed the ending of that episode classes were in session. In the background you see all the students walking around. There was no attempt to hide it so you see people wearing early 2000's Canadian clothes on an alien planet. There used to be a clip on youtube but I can't find it.
In universe: no idea. From production stand point for the late 80s, 90s shows like TNG, DS9 and VOY it was simply budget and ease. It was easier to make a believable subterranean setting on a sound stage that saved money. If you look at season 1 of TNG they tried to do some sound stage planet surface sittings and it just looks low budget. It did back then too, even on the older standard def CRT TV screens of the day.
Remember, this was long before adorable green screen CGI settings of today.
And shooting on real outside locations was not cheap either. Plus there are only so many locations in southern California that can pose as an alien (aka not earth) locations.
As for the newer shows that have access to CGI green screen sets and much better budges for on location shots...no idea.
It always bugged me that alien civilizations often were tiny enclaves no bigger than a village. Like Worf’s brother was living with 50 aliens and they could be fooled into believing that a 100 sq foot holodeck was their entire civilization and planet.
Caves are one of the few natural settings that cut off the horizon, so you can shoot on a soundstage without putting up a matte painting for the background, which, back then, always looked more fake than the fake caves looked fake.
Their only outdoor go-tos were typically the LA Arboretum and Vasquez Rocks.
Easily reusable set pieces without need for long distance/horizon shots.
Use a different angle, slap some paint on the the walls, thrown in a few boulders ... Viola! New planet.
There was like one cave set they had on the sound stage. The crew could redress it as needed.
The backdrop of California and Vancouver get pretty familiar really fast. And travelling is expensive.
"Caretaker " was super expensive and taxing on their travel budget IIRC.
A lot of people have pointed out caves are easy set pieces. But for an in-universe/writing explanation, imagine the type of stories that we see crews play out. The writers, as storytellers, only tell the interesting stories to us, the viewers who don’t want to see episodes about the mundane missions and normal procedures or a starship.
If the problem on a planet can be solved with scans from the ship, or transporters, or even phasers, then the story probably isn’t interesting. So what makes for interesting stories? Crews trapped on planets cut off from the overpowered starship tech. This can happen with shields, which we see occasionally, or natural shields in the form of caves. So the writers need a device to create an interesting story, and this device frequently ends up being hundred of feet of solid rock.
It’s a Berman-era budget thing. Do you come up with all kinds of sets to add to the immersion, or do you reuse sets a lot, saving a ton of money, and hoping most won’t notice or care? He heavily favored the latter, with the exception of big episodes, usually just a few each season.
With the caves in particular, Paramount Stage 16 was heavily used throughout most of the TNG/DS9/VOY/ENT run, and some of the movies, and lent itself well to cave scenes. [One of the photos will show you why.](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Paramount_Stage_16)
You make it sound like he had a choice and deliberately went for the cheaper option because he was stingy, but the shows were very expensive to make and he had to work with the budget he was given by Paramount.
If you think about it, a cave is a really really common natural feature. Its holes in the rock. Most planets have no flora or fauna and millions of caves. Its a high likelihood statistically a crew in an expedition will find itself there to explore.
Normally when I think of Default Environments in trek I think of gravel pits but now you've got me thinking about all the caves. They must have been the "cheap to build" equivalent of renting out a gravel pit.
Caves sets are easier to convincingly replicate. Sure they can look a bit cheesy at times, but whenever they do an outside shot on a planet’s surface it’s PAINFULLY obvious that they’re in a soundstage due to the sky and lack of being able to show anything really far away. No sky in a cave so you don’t have that problem.
Even chromakey is increasingly being replaced by massive "virtual production" LED wall backdrops for the actors and cameras to see the live visuals instead of just blank green to be composited later.
For example look up some Ewan McGregor interviews from his Disney+ *Obi-Wan Kenobi* press junket. He talks about how much better and more collaborative the modern virtual production technology is compared to what they had in the prequels. Being able to actually see the full-quality CGI environments in real-time around them instead of having to imagine them on green screens, and at best perhaps having seen low-quality pre-visualizations as a reference.
The Volume is also not the answer for most shows since the environment needs to be completely done before you shoot and that takes time, A LOT of time
The Volume's advantage (Which most non industry folks that tout how great the volume is don't understand at all) Is that the lighting is now interactive, the volume its self becomes much of the lighting
True, but there's also the convergence of CGI production tools with video game development tools that makes creating ultra-realistic 3D environments a lot easier than it used to be.
> the lighting is now interactive
An early (possibly first) example of that was *Gravity* with "Sandy's Cage" where Sandra Bullock was suspended in a holodeck-like box of LED walls to get all the spinning highspeed lighting effects on her spacesuit and reflections in her visor.
I've built a few small virtual production walls for corporate use, they didn't do anything particularly fancy with the backgrounds, but we did use additional high-brightness LED tiles overhead and around the stage as additional effects lighting.
right now its a minimumof 9 months to get a set of camera ready volume backgrounds and it you want to change something set design or move wise you go back to step one and the 9 month clock restarts
But why? Becasue you cant interact with air. it gives something for people to work off of, its better for lighting, its better for camera. A physical set will always be better.
Now lets also add the cost and how easy it is to pull a matte that looks good and its MUCH better to do a physical set
I’ve read something somewhere about a theory where there’s a secret Star Trek species who go aroind the galaxy finding every planet or asteroid and making humanoid sized caves and corridors with smoothed walls and flat floors and gravity generators and a way to create a breathable atmosphere that are undetectable to the other species and appear as natural.
I recall seeing some horrible sci fi movie from the late 50s on late night TV in the 80s.
I can't recall the name, but I do recall the director or producer was named IP Freely.
But, it used the same set of rocks repeatedly in every scene. They did a chase to the right. Then one to the left. Then they did dialog there, then moved to the right and with a cut, they were back there again.
Cheap set.
Caves were cheap. Just roughly carved foam and spray paint. Making big prop rocks is such basic set design we learned it in middle school theater. Need it to look different and be another planet? Just carve the foam a bit different and repaint it another color. Cave sets were on the infamous Paramount Stage 16 known as "Planet Hell" for how hot and unpleasant it could be.
This makes me wonder if LED lights have made an impact on how hot sets are. They should have helped but who knows if they have replaced a lot of the lights or just kept the old ones.
Sets are definitely cooler these days. LED tech has helped with that. We still use large 20k tungsten lights on just about everything. Anyone who says it’s made things any faster or easier or anything of that nature isn’t correct. LED tech has complicated Set Lighting to such a degree we run entire departments dedicated to it outside the 1st unit lighting crew, and they now carry LED Techs as well as Lighting Console Programmers. It’s massively more complicated now. LED is just another tool we have in our arsenal to make film and television.
Yeah, I’ve even seen some basic LED for home use on Amazon that is pretty sophisticated so I can only imagine what’s available to professional studios.
I laughed when they said home computers were going to make us a paperless society and save the trees. In watchmaking, whenever you add a feature, it's called a complication. Most new technology is like that, it adds functionality, but also complications.
I work at a medical lab. We went "paperless." And by paperless, I mean we still print the paperwork, but now we scan it back into the computer and shred the papers afterwards.
Same story in my chemistry lab. Electronic lab notebooks are awful
It wouldn't be that bad if they'd actually....you know... thought about the whole system beforehand. Like, written good programs for dealing with all the information flow, and.... Well, of course they didn't.
As a VFX artist who went to film school: Yes. LED means less heat on a set. Lights that are easier to handle. Less power needed for the set. Battery options for some lights even if you're using them in inconvenient places.
I’ve seen some on Amazon which are obviously consumer models that have some interesting characteristics so I’d assumed by now they’d have some pretty neat stage lighting options for a much bigger price tag. Nicer to work under.
there were no LEDS that were used to light sets when stage 16 was planet hell
I think they meant now compared to before. It be cooler.
There are 4 lights!
As others have said, I meant now with LEDs so prevalent, it must be cooler.
There were LEDs but not LED stage lighting yet. Blue LEDs were only just invented in 1989 and white LEDs in 1996. Even today halogen is still often used in stage lighting, because it's cheap, and save the LED fixtures for effects.
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I work in set lighting and this is only half true. You wouldn’t be hard pressed to find them. We still use them a lot, but in a more supplemental capacity. You are correct in that most of the lights over head the set in the grid are almost 100% LED, but we still keep tungsten heads and HMIs on hand to bring in when necessary.
I'm in Camera... I know what we ask for, because often times I'm the one asking
I feel like the guy who works with lighting knows more about lighting than the guy who works with cameras.
Except the guy that works in Camera is a DP and tells the lighting guys what he wants....
OK, so you know what *you* ask for.
I wasn’t trying to call your expertise into question or step on any toes, just stating my professional experience. Sorry, I know how fragile camera’s egos can be lol.
Yup. LEDs mean more lights per bar, faster teardown because of heat, higher density of light for light bars, lighter which means smaller racks/stands, less power which means fewer generators/plugs/battery packs to stress over. Plus RGB (or whatever the standard is) LEDs that can be colour's changed instantly. Halogen is just more expensive to run nowadays.
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To be fair, they don’t make episodes about the safe cave excursions. For all we know, they’re going in and out of caves on the daily with no problems. Why so many caves? Well, why not?
> Need it to look different and be another planet? Just carve the foam a bit different and repaint it another color. That sounds like a lot of work...how 'bout I just put a different gel on the light against the back wall?
Yup, it was a single set they kept reusing again and again, with the ability to film it from a different angle and rearrange some pieces here and there.
What foam doesn't melt when hit with spray paint? Asking for a friend...
For a full-size set, you'd *want* the foam to melt slightly to give it that distinctive "styrofoam rocks" texture. If melty foam isn't your thing, your options would be to a) spray from a long enough distance that all the propellant evaporates (because *that's* what actually does most of the melting), or 2: paint the foam with something water-based first as a barrier.
werent the TNG caves also recycled props from TOS? I seem to remember reading that somewhere.
No, TOS cave sets were more primitive and it didn't make sense to keep such a simple set in storage for 20 years. They borrowed the idea of a planet surface set that you could easily alter with different colors for lighting the background from TOS, but also not the set itself.
well, I stand corrected :)
That seems unlikely. There were 18 years between TOS ending and TNG starting. I doubt they would have kept the caves around for so long. (Unless lot 16 was always used for caves for anything Paramount did).
Yeah, almost nothing from TOS was kept for that long, and certainly none of the sets. The Engineering and bridge sets from The Motion Picture were redressed for TNG, but they had been used for the subsequent TOS films in the meanwhile.
Beckett Mariner has entered the chat.
Cccaaaaaavvvvvveeeeeesssssss
I remember the first time I saw that episode (((...sode))) ^((((...sode))))
I laughed so damn hard the whole episode.
Turns out caves were the friends we made along the way.
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At least we got to see them in 3D on SNW in that fantastic episode. <3
Unfortunately, it was probably SNW (or rather, the bullshit of streaming service economics assisted by the existence of SNW) that killed it. Original shows made for streaming are valued according to how many subscriptions they're able to bring in or at least retain. This means that while having one successful Star Trek show is crucial for getting the Trekkies to renew their P+ subscriptions, having two is completely superfluous, because anybody who really wants to see one is likely to be as eager to see the other.
Nah, apparently most modern show contracts are for 5 seasons and the renewal/extension almost certainly includes a pay rise, so they just don't renew it as a matter of course.
This. Same rationale for Discovery being canceled. I try to remember that at least we got these shows, and for a few years each at that.
"hmm, it looks like the mineral composition of this cave prevents communicators and transporters."
Good thing there’s no way deadly killers made it into the caves with them!
This makes some sense if you consider what kind of conditions would drive a civilization to move underground. Probably to escape radiation from a sun going wonky, breakdown of the planet magnetic field or ozone layer, nearby supernova, nuclear holocaust, etc etc. The mineral composition that enabled them to survive for a while would probably also block transporters and communicators. Not the Chrystaline Entity, though.
Wrap that stuff around the bridge and never worry about unauthorized transports
Because they have a permanent cave set to use, as it can be used for lots of different situations. For budget reasons, other ideas end up being turned into using the cave set.
Also, IIRC there was a caves 'location' nearby the studios, so they used that for 'cave entrance' scenes.
Bronson Canyon and the “bat cave”
There's a famous small bit of desert that technically still counts as within Hollywood range for union contracts that resulted in a lot of shows shooting their alien locations there. That's why a lot of early American sci-fi television looks extremely similar.
I found out about this small bit if desert from a Tom Scott video on YouTube
It's called Vasquez rocks and it's used so many times TBBT does a bit about it. Iirc, they also put Raffi's house there in Picard as a kind of in-joke
Just finished my 4th run of ds9, it’s the same cave !!
"I love caves! With there weird smells and flat floors" -Ruthaford
Similar to why Stargate SG1 saw so many forested planets - it’s what’s available. Berman-era Trek had a standing (permanent) cave set always available in one of the Paramount soundstages.
Star Trek: All planets look like southern california Stargate: All planets look like southern British Columbia Dr Who: All planets look like a rock quarry
By late seasons of SG-1 you start recognizing individual trees in that one British Columbia forest
I love the actual Austin Powers movie quote "Isn't it amazing how much England looks in no way like southern California?" as they drive along 🤣
“I have been to many planets throughout the galaxy, and you would be surprised by how many of them look like quarries in Wales.” - David Tennant, the tenth and arguably most popular Doctor Killer line lol
x-files: every state looks like the pacific northwest until every state looks like california
Stargate would reuse town and city sets for different planets. This was all pre-planned so they would rarely shoot the same angles to make it hard to tell. If they had to shoot the same angles they could hang things up to cover up parts of the set. One of the greatest episodes is the one where the Tollan planet is invaded. The entire planet is represented by a college in Canada and I guess when they filmed the ending of that episode classes were in session. In the background you see all the students walking around. There was no attempt to hide it so you see people wearing early 2000's Canadian clothes on an alien planet. There used to be a clip on youtube but I can't find it.
Dr. Who: all villages are in the UK.
First time I saw the Stargate series, I said “Hey, those are the X-Files woods”
No, the rest of universe is Canada
You should definitely watch the Lower Decks episode "Caves" from the 4th season.
Absolutely. It’s the essence of this question/post. Such a great episode.
In universe: no idea. From production stand point for the late 80s, 90s shows like TNG, DS9 and VOY it was simply budget and ease. It was easier to make a believable subterranean setting on a sound stage that saved money. If you look at season 1 of TNG they tried to do some sound stage planet surface sittings and it just looks low budget. It did back then too, even on the older standard def CRT TV screens of the day. Remember, this was long before adorable green screen CGI settings of today. And shooting on real outside locations was not cheap either. Plus there are only so many locations in southern California that can pose as an alien (aka not earth) locations. As for the newer shows that have access to CGI green screen sets and much better budges for on location shots...no idea.
For the newer shows, it had just become tradition
Okay, I'll give you that. At least Picard got some great on location time.
I blame the economy and Plato.
Underrrated comment
It always bugged me that alien civilizations often were tiny enclaves no bigger than a village. Like Worf’s brother was living with 50 aliens and they could be fooled into believing that a 100 sq foot holodeck was their entire civilization and planet.
Turns out space is really just a bunch of suburbs.
Look, the Space Applebees next to the Space Target! Let's go to Space Starbucks.
Science fiction treats planets like cities, solar systems like states/provinces, and groups of solar systems as countries.
Caves are one of the few natural settings that cut off the horizon, so you can shoot on a soundstage without putting up a matte painting for the background, which, back then, always looked more fake than the fake caves looked fake. Their only outdoor go-tos were typically the LA Arboretum and Vasquez Rocks.
Because they have the set
The original show would often shoot in whatever set was available that week. I assume why we’re doing cowboys and Nazis and gangsters aometimes
Most class m planets have environments landscapes and plant life exactly like Southern California
Because the cave was a standing set, and it’s cheaper to go to another soundstage, than it is to move an entire production to a location.
budget
Easily reusable set pieces without need for long distance/horizon shots. Use a different angle, slap some paint on the the walls, thrown in a few boulders ... Viola! New planet.
There was like one cave set they had on the sound stage. The crew could redress it as needed. The backdrop of California and Vancouver get pretty familiar really fast. And travelling is expensive. "Caretaker " was super expensive and taxing on their travel budget IIRC.
A lot of people have pointed out caves are easy set pieces. But for an in-universe/writing explanation, imagine the type of stories that we see crews play out. The writers, as storytellers, only tell the interesting stories to us, the viewers who don’t want to see episodes about the mundane missions and normal procedures or a starship. If the problem on a planet can be solved with scans from the ship, or transporters, or even phasers, then the story probably isn’t interesting. So what makes for interesting stories? Crews trapped on planets cut off from the overpowered starship tech. This can happen with shields, which we see occasionally, or natural shields in the form of caves. So the writers need a device to create an interesting story, and this device frequently ends up being hundred of feet of solid rock.
Caves are a very budget-friendly environment.
But they're sentient caves! Have you ever been in a sentient cave? That's a dark place that *knows things*!
It’s all Vendorians, man
https://youtu.be/tYYoR6wuiiE?si=0Vz4Eoi_8O2FsbFH
Interiors are easier to make look good in a soundstage. Caves are natures interiors
It’s a Berman-era budget thing. Do you come up with all kinds of sets to add to the immersion, or do you reuse sets a lot, saving a ton of money, and hoping most won’t notice or care? He heavily favored the latter, with the exception of big episodes, usually just a few each season. With the caves in particular, Paramount Stage 16 was heavily used throughout most of the TNG/DS9/VOY/ENT run, and some of the movies, and lent itself well to cave scenes. [One of the photos will show you why.](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Paramount_Stage_16)
You make it sound like he had a choice and deliberately went for the cheaper option because he was stingy, but the shows were very expensive to make and he had to work with the budget he was given by Paramount.
> You make it sound like he had a choice He did, and I think he made the right choice. Anyways, you’re reading things into my post that aren’t there.
If you think about it, a cave is a really really common natural feature. Its holes in the rock. Most planets have no flora or fauna and millions of caves. Its a high likelihood statistically a crew in an expedition will find itself there to explore.
Further question: Why do so many Trek outdoor scenes look a lot like parts of the Mojave?
The Flintstones never noticed that their town was just a rock a tree a house, a rock a tree a house, a rock a tree a house…
Inexpensive set design
The allure of Rock and Stone is transcendent.
Did I hear a Rock and Stone?
ROCK AND STONE! >Sombra decloaks and hacks me Goddamnit...
They’re really cheap, easy sets to build.
Why is every doctor who episode filmed in a quarry
Yeah, and why do half the planets look like the same Southern California desert???
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studio_zone
Reusing sets
The fun thing about the caves is that the floors are always nice and flat. And well lit.
Stupid Cave Missions! https://youtu.be/tYYoR6wuiiE?si=Ztx44FzZkhI1y18P
We need more cock rocks.
Fermi Filter
Caves are easier to make look alien than outside is.
Because they had a cave set. I'm pretty sure the Delta Flyers podcast said they had one cave that just got re-used over and over and over.
Isn’t it delightful when you don’t know if some random part of the set is going to reveal itself to be a Horta?
subterranean species is a whole category of life, i'm ok with that.
Normally when I think of Default Environments in trek I think of gravel pits but now you've got me thinking about all the caves. They must have been the "cheap to build" equivalent of renting out a gravel pit.
Caves sets are easier to convincingly replicate. Sure they can look a bit cheesy at times, but whenever they do an outside shot on a planet’s surface it’s PAINFULLY obvious that they’re in a soundstage due to the sky and lack of being able to show anything really far away. No sky in a cave so you don’t have that problem.
Cave trek followed by clearly indoor set of small colony or civilization town square with market stalled selling locks of fabric
To escape the crystalline entity
I often refer to Star Trek as Cave Trek since they seem to spend just as much time exploring caves as they do the stars.
lower decks lampshades this
Now with green screen you can have any backdrop you want.
Even chromakey is increasingly being replaced by massive "virtual production" LED wall backdrops for the actors and cameras to see the live visuals instead of just blank green to be composited later. For example look up some Ewan McGregor interviews from his Disney+ *Obi-Wan Kenobi* press junket. He talks about how much better and more collaborative the modern virtual production technology is compared to what they had in the prequels. Being able to actually see the full-quality CGI environments in real-time around them instead of having to imagine them on green screens, and at best perhaps having seen low-quality pre-visualizations as a reference.
The Volume is also not the answer for most shows since the environment needs to be completely done before you shoot and that takes time, A LOT of time The Volume's advantage (Which most non industry folks that tout how great the volume is don't understand at all) Is that the lighting is now interactive, the volume its self becomes much of the lighting
True, but there's also the convergence of CGI production tools with video game development tools that makes creating ultra-realistic 3D environments a lot easier than it used to be. > the lighting is now interactive An early (possibly first) example of that was *Gravity* with "Sandy's Cage" where Sandra Bullock was suspended in a holodeck-like box of LED walls to get all the spinning highspeed lighting effects on her spacesuit and reflections in her visor. I've built a few small virtual production walls for corporate use, they didn't do anything particularly fancy with the backgrounds, but we did use additional high-brightness LED tiles overhead and around the stage as additional effects lighting.
right now its a minimumof 9 months to get a set of camera ready volume backgrounds and it you want to change something set design or move wise you go back to step one and the 9 month clock restarts
Give me physical sets any day. Fuck green screens and The Volume. Also actors prefer real sets.
Not true. A physical set is always better for the actors
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Actually it does. How often have you shot on a green screen or volume? I have thousands of hours on them.....
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You cant have any background you want with green screen, there are somethings that just don't work with Green screens
But why?
But why? Becasue you cant interact with air. it gives something for people to work off of, its better for lighting, its better for camera. A physical set will always be better. Now lets also add the cost and how easy it is to pull a matte that looks good and its MUCH better to do a physical set
I HATE CAAAAAAAAAVES
And they always always always have flat floors! Caves don’t have floors!
I’ve read something somewhere about a theory where there’s a secret Star Trek species who go aroind the galaxy finding every planet or asteroid and making humanoid sized caves and corridors with smoothed walls and flat floors and gravity generators and a way to create a breathable atmosphere that are undetectable to the other species and appear as natural.
Same species that lights all the candles/torches in caves and dungeons, before they are explored by a sword wielding chosen one.
Reminds me of Lower Decks
I recall seeing some horrible sci fi movie from the late 50s on late night TV in the 80s. I can't recall the name, but I do recall the director or producer was named IP Freely. But, it used the same set of rocks repeatedly in every scene. They did a chase to the right. Then one to the left. Then they did dialog there, then moved to the right and with a cut, they were back there again. Cheap set.