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How was CG not so much more expensive than Star Trek 2?

posted 10 years ago by Angus-8
7 replies | jump to latest

As any fool knows, in the same year, Star Trek II (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084726) was released with a CG sequence not lasting more than a minute. As I understand it, this scene was a significant portion of the budget. Now looking at the budgets for the 2 movies, Tron had a much bigger budget, but it was not orders of magnitude bigger. However, the CG in Tron was orders of magnitude bigger. Can anyone explain that?
My best guess is that the CG in Star Trek was much more complex, while the forms were much simpler in Tron, but it's a pretty wild one.

[–] JamesMcFly 9 years ago

You are correct!

[–] regularfellow 9 years ago

Another reason is because the film had a lot of hand drawn effects that you're mistaking as CGI.

[–] Angus-8 9 years ago

Such as?
One thing I noticed about that movie--I'm sure there's a technical term for it--but it had a lot of that shifting perspective I've come to expect from CG. CGless special effects usually have a fixed perspective, that, at its most advanced, rotates but doesn't otherwise move.

[–] regularfellow 9 years ago

Such as?

Pretty much entire Grid was hand drawn, animation such as when the MCP was vanquished. The changing of the color into a free system. Not CGI.

[–] !!!deleted!!! (9347176) 9 years ago

What's really cool is that the laser lab where Flynn sets up shop and gets zapped is at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where the starfield and other CGI FX for "Star Trek II" were produced!

-Rod

[–] ebright99 9 years ago

I think the total CGI in Tron was around 15 minutes. Most of the what's going on is conventional animation techniques.

[–] shoobe01-1 8 years ago

Yup. Lots of optical matteing, lots of matte painting, lots of weirdly complex manual (ink and a pen) rotoscoping.

I swear I remember making-of things at the time talking of in-camera stuff like reflective tape and funny lighting but cannot find proof of it now. One article summarizes some FX here: https://fronteffects.wordpress.com/2014/04/17/tron-1982-the-cult-movie-visual-effects-seen-through-interviews-with-harrison-ellenshaw-and-chris-casady/

Note, the table of contents opens new pages, so click those links. Scrolling won't get the whole article. Best stuff under "INTERVIEW WITH CHRIS CASADY"