Having served as director of photography on nearly 20 indie films (including Ocean Tribe, see coverage of L.A. Independent Film Festival in AC June 1997), Done knows something about making movies on the cheap. For his directorial debut, an award-winning thriller called Sand Trap, he created "moonlight" for desert night scenes by covering car headlights with colored gels.
For Trekkies, Done used his Eclair NPR 16mm camera, which he had bought for $5,000 after graduating from USC's film school, and three 400' magazines. "The Eclair was one of the workhorse documentary cameras of the late 1960s and 1970s," explains the cinematographer. "It was the first camera with coaxial snap-on magazines, which don't need a whole lot of threading. The camera doesn't have a videotap, but it works just fine. Sure, I'd prefer to use an Aaton, but for a 'freebie,' the Eclair makes great sense."
Production got under way during the weekend of Aug. 2, 1996, when Neo provided $3,000 for 30 rolls of film to shoot a big Star Trek convention in L.A. "Most of the original Trek cast members were going to be there," Nygard says, "so it was do or die."
Done was accompanied by sound man Larry Scharf, who utilized a mono Nagra recording unit.
The cinematographer shot mostly without filters to ensure a sharp blow-up to 35mm. He brought along Kodak's 100 ASA 7248 film stock for exteriors, as well as some 200 ASA 7293 and 500 ASA 7298 for interiors, though he was not happy with all of the results. "A lot of the time we were shooting recans, because we were low-budget, and we had a bad experience with recans of the 7298 early on," Done says. "The older 98 got grainy and muddy on us, so we ended up buying fresh 98 whenever we needed it."
Done's humble set of lenses performed just fine, however. To create a portrait look during formal, sit-down interviews, he utilized his Angenieux 12-120mm zoom. While doing handheld work on the dimly lit convention floor, he used a wider, faster Angenieux 9.5-57mm zoom to capture the expansive vista of Trekkies and "Trekabilia." In a dark auction room at the convention center, for example, Done was forced to shoot with the Angenieux wide open in order to capture a fierce bidding war over a Klingon headpiece.
The filmmakers "ambushed" six of the nine cast members of the original Star Trek series and convinced them to be in the film — a feat facilitated by the participation of fellow Trek veteran Denise Crosby. "We almost always had to interview the actors at a convention where they were appearing, because any time we tried to go through an agent, it never happened," producer Keith Border says. "William Shatner said no to us seven or eight times, but we just kept asking and asking."
When stars like Nichelle Nichols (Lieutenant Uhura) and James Doohan (Engineering Officer Scotty) agreed to be interviewed, Crosby immediately shuttled them over to the camera. "We usually did the interviews in bare rooms that we could commandeer in conference centers or at hotels," Nygard recalls of Trekkies' nine-month production schedule. "During a sit-down interview, there's not much you can do except zoom in and out and get different frames, but what you can do is lighting and set design. That first weekend, we raided the hotel for things we could use as background props for our interviews. We were pretty sneaky, and our subterfuge pretty much went unnoticed. Keith and I would often be out pilfering plants. We even 'stole' a picture off a wall in an elevator so we could hang it behind Nichelle Nichols. We kept changing the backgrounds so it would look as if every interview was done in a different actor's living room.
"The best trick we learned was to take a colored light and beam it on the wall behind the subject," Nygard continues. "We'd just add a blue, green, or a red gel to create a colored wall! It was all done on the same wall, of course. That way, we could change our location without actually having to move."
Done adds that the saturated, primary gel colors lent the interviews a hint of the visual style that graces the original Star Trek TV series. Not incidentally, director of photography Gerald Perry Finnerman, ASC has described using this same lighting technique while shooting the original Trek series, in order to create different moods on the show's limited sets (see AC Oct. '94.).
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