Adobe® After Effects® Customer Profile
VFX and motion graphics experts use Adobe
After Effects on Star Trek Into Darkness
Andrew Kramer focused on movie titles while OOOii team created
stunning graphics and heads-up displays for blockbuster film
OOOii
Los Angeles, California
www.oooii.com
Resurrecting the classic science fiction franchise of Star Trek is certainly a challenge that any motion graphics and
VFX artists would gladly accept. For the latest installment, Star Trek Into Darkness, Andrew Kramer of Bad Robot and
author/owner of the site Video Copilot was the lucky one tapped to create more than 30 title sequences for the
movie. Production studio OOOii eagerly took on the job of designing all user interfaces and future technologies
within the movie. Kramer, OOOii CEO Kent Demaine, and Lead Designer Jorge Almeida all shared their great
experiences working on the latest seminal Star Trek film (available on DVD September 10, 2013).
Andrew Kramer
Los Angeles, California
www.videocopilot.net
Star Trek Into Darkness
www.startrekmovie.com
Adobe: What were some of the unique challenges of creating titles for Star Trek Into Darkness?
Kramer: I’m sure the folks at OOOii will agree that one of the biggest hurdles was that the film was shot in stereo so
everything had to be “true” 3D from start to finish to look realistic and fully dimensional. We used After Effects and
Video Copilot’s Element 3D plug-in to create real 3D object-based particles within After Effects. We had a short
timeline to create 30-plus titles, so we did not have the hours or need to delve into what people might consider a
full-fledged 3D tool. The other challenge was that we had to stick to the same basic Star Trek aesthetic, but make
everything more refined and pay strict attention to details.
Adobe: Tell us about the work you did on the film.
Kramer: With a short timeline to create and finalize the titles—filled with very long days and nights—we created
more than 30 different titles. JJ Abrams, the film’s director, asked me to come up with a more refined, updatedlook for the extreme space fly through title sequence. We had a small modeling team that created a library of
high-quality 3D planets, from moons to asteroids and ice planets. The planets were color-corrected and we even
designed a planet that broke into pieces of debris. We replicated the pieces hundreds of thousands of times and
had them breaking off to give the scenes a sense of depth.
There were multiple “spacescapes” and we needed to make sure they were colorful, vivid, and tangible with
debris, asteroids, lens flares, and so on. The cool thing about the lens flares is that they are built from scratch by
filming them and then isolating each individual lens flare frame iris in Photoshop® and then adding textures. We
got some really fun effects. Ultimately, we wanted each title scene to have its own unique world. For example,
we created one unique world with the sun burning with hot-looking tendrils as the core. We built a texture
using animated fractal noises. As you can tell, we had a lot of fun and tried new techniques that we never had
before. The ability to work natively in After Effects for a stereo workflow, not having to render out each planet
individually, and being able to make changes dynamically that affected all of the designs was pretty critical.
Adobe: Kent, what was your team’s primary role?
Demaine: OOOii worked closely with the art team and the Production Designer Scott Chambliss to develop
iconography and a visual language for this iconic film. Our interfaces and vision of future technologies helped
define the revamped USS Enterprise and Starfleet and support the unique vision of the filmmakers. Our specialty
is information technology design and human-technology interaction. This involves the creation of things such as
holograms, digital signage, and interfaces on devices. Our use of this expertise in films helps provide a vision into
new interaction modalities with technologies such as mobile phones—everything we do focuses on natural
interaction models that happen between users and information.
Almeida: All of our designers are set up with full Adobe Creative Cloud™ pipelines. We started by creating some
concept art that gave an idea of the style and then we designed based on those concepts, using the previous
movie as a guide. Initial designs were done in Illustrator® and Photoshop, but by the middle of the film when we
had a lot of the elements built we would just go straight into After Effects. Once we hone in on a look everyone
likes, we start showing animation tests. There is a lot of back and forth, but as the production moves along
everything becomes more specific.
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Adobe: Can you give us an idea of the scope of the work that OOOii did on the film?
Demaine: We created more than 300 production and post-production shots over a year’s time. We do the designs
and we often composite them, too, but in this case ILM composited the graphics and HUDs into the scenes.
Adobe: Here’s a question for both you, Andrew and Kent: did you use Adobe Premiere® Pro for any of your work on
Star Trek Into Darkness?
Kramer: We used Adobe Premiere Pro for editing, timing, and prepping primarily. We would do all of our timing
and figuring out the music beats, bring in the score, and lay in the still frame designs before we did the camera
movement and final compositing. We also used Adobe Premiere Pro to determine reference points of different
locations for animators so that everything moved in one flowing, orchestrated whole. This was important
because there were thousands of layers involved because of the complexity of our stereo camera rig.
Also, one of the key things in the title sequence was getting the color right. For that, we used Adobe Bridge to
open the screen shots of each planet design, for instance, and show them all on the screen at one time to see
what color palette looked the best: blue highlights, green highlights, too much red, needed more monochrome,
and so on. We used it as a color reference for final output before animation.
Demaine: We were traditionally an Avid or Final Cut Pro shop but we’re now exclusively Adobe Premiere Pro. We
do a lot of plate acquisition through RED cameras, and with Adobe Premiere Pro we’re able to drop whatever we
are given onto the timeline. We can get camera data from ILM and render out graphics using that information.
Like Andrew, we also used Adobe Bridge as a file management tool because it let us preview files, visualize layers
in files, and drop them into different programs with ease.
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Adobe: What about Adobe Creative Cloud? Are you using it, and if so, what are you most enjoying about the
newest version of Adobe’s cloud-based video and creative software?
Kramer: I’ve been using Creative Cloud for a while now and, although I know it’s not an entirely new feature,
the Warp Stabilizer in After Effects is definitely more advanced and mature. The stabilization movements seem
more fluid, and that saves a lot of time. Also, After Effects seem to work more responsively with plug-ins, with
faster GL rendering speed, so that saves a lot of time. The quality is magnificent, akin to IMAX feature quality.
Almeida: I’m having a lot of fun using the 3D features in After Effects to build animations. I’ve also just started
to dive into Cinema4D and look forward to exploring what that integration can do. The speed and flexibility of
After Effects are what I like the most. I often get to the point in post where I’m designing directly in After Effects as
much as anything else. I actually prefer it because I can start building things that are more of a finished product
and After Effects just lets me design on the fly.
Demaine: Adobe Creative Cloud came along right when we were finalizing this project, but we were already beta
testing it and we are impressed. We really like the instantaneous feature updates and more predictable pricing that
Creative Cloud offers. I think it’s a good step forward that will let us take advantage of Adobe innovations even faster
than before. We’ll also continue to venture into other areas of Adobe’s tools without additional charge. For example
on this project, we worked with BlackBox Digital and used Adobe Flash® Professional and Adobe AIR® extensively to
create a cool mobile app that revolves around some of the most impressive VFX scenes in the movie. We think
this is just the beginning of what Adobe Creative Cloud will facilitate.
Learn more about the video apps and services in Adobe Creative Cloud
Download a free trial of Adobe Creative Cloud
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