copyright 1998 Charles L. Barbee
copyright 1998 Charles L. Barbee
The director, Rob ert Burnett, wanted William Shatner (playing
himself) to appear in the kid's P.O.V., "out of pure whiteness", and take full
form in one continuous shot lasting about 5 seconds. The kid has just been knocked silly
and it makes sense that his POV would be a totally white field. Not a difficult effect for
any normally budgeted film, but 'FREE ENTERPRISE' was not a normally budgeted feature. If
I could do this effect 'in-camera', as I thought I could, it would look great and not cost
anything extra. Producers love stuff like that. Around 1983 or so I designed and built a
compact, lightweight front projection system to create an in-camera effect for AUTOMAN, a
Glenn Larson / 20th Century Fox TV series. I decided I could use the front projector to do
this effect. I put Shatner
in front of an 8' x 8' Shooting with 5277, rated at EI 200, I got a reflective reading from the screen of better than f 128 across the entire field, when the dimmer was up full. At this maximum setting, the incident reading on Shatner was a mere f 1.4. I then lit Shatner so that he was keyed to an f 8. |
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The shot starts with the taking lens wide open
(at f 1.3) and the screen at full brightness.This overexposed Shatner by 5 stops and his
background by 13 stops. The resulting overexposure of the background would be so severe
that no image would be visible in the foreground, in spite of the fact that Shatner was in
dark clothes.
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On a count of 5, we began dimming
the screen and irising the lens down toward f 5.6. I set the low end of the screen
brightness at f 22, so that it was about 3 stops overexposed at its darkest. |
I felt this would be enough overexposure to keep the background from reading too 'warm' due to the low color temperature of the dimmed tungsten source. |
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The effect worked beautifully. When we saw the dailies, it was as if watching a finished effects shot. From a blindingly white field, in which there is not the faintest hint of an image, the shape begins to appear. It's amorphous at first, but quickly gathers form and then, suddenly, it is a fully formed, normal image of Shatner, looking as though he is standing in 'white' limbo.
At that point, we cut to the high angle, wide shot of Shatner and the boy. This was done on a stage, in front of a white cyc. It was lit from above with a single 5k Xenon Arc, with 4 x 4 bead board bounce fill for the close ups.
How does it end? Well, the rest of the sequence is dialogue between Shatner and the kid. Unlike Capt. Kirk, Shatner tries to talk the kid out of fighting. But when the kid tells him the fight started because the bully said, "Hans Solo was better than Kirk", Shatner tells the kid to, "kick the little f...er's ass. Cut to reality; back to the fight. The kid wakes up and beats the tar out of the bully.
Last Update: March 26, 2008 Web Author: Chuck Barbee
Copyright ©1999 Charles L. Barbee - ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
sheet of 7610, approximately 30 feet away from the
camera, on an 85mm lens. The camera and beam-splitter assembly are mounted on a standard
fluid or geared head. The screen and Shatner were then lit, through the beam-splitter,
with a 1k Baby on a variac. 
