Star Trek Transporter Effect
- Thread starter micdavis
- Start date
robn1
Master Member
The transporter sparkles were actually Alka Seltzer bubbles. There's some info on the Star Trek Phase II site.
Rob
Rob
Galactifan
Sr Member
Last edited:
I believe the Original effect was done by photographing glitter swirled in water. On one of the extras for the DS9 DVD boxsets I think Dan Curry mentions that when they made "Trials and Tribulations" he found the exact glitter in an old storage box so he was able to recreate the effect exactly.
If you don't have a lot of experience in doing such things practically, you could either create a yellow particle effect in a program like After Effects blur it slightly and then overlay it onto your crossfade effect.
Or
There's a program called Particle Illusion by Wondertouch. They have a lot of presets, and many transporter effects in their library, in fact one of their 2007 emitter libraries is purely transporter effects!
The Software itself is a bit pricey, but for the versatility you would be hard pressed to match quality for price elsewhere.
I've used this software before, and it's really intuitive and pretty straight forward to use. There are forums on sites like Creative Cow where they discuss VFX from shows such as Star Trek, Charmed, etc and how to recreate them.
Good luck.
If you don't have a lot of experience in doing such things practically, you could either create a yellow particle effect in a program like After Effects blur it slightly and then overlay it onto your crossfade effect.
Or
There's a program called Particle Illusion by Wondertouch. They have a lot of presets, and many transporter effects in their library, in fact one of their 2007 emitter libraries is purely transporter effects!
The Software itself is a bit pricey, but for the versatility you would be hard pressed to match quality for price elsewhere.
I've used this software before, and it's really intuitive and pretty straight forward to use. There are forums on sites like Creative Cow where they discuss VFX from shows such as Star Trek, Charmed, etc and how to recreate them.
Good luck.
I don't know about T&T, but my recollection is that when TNG was doing "Relics", one of they FX guys (Curry?) had recalled that years before he had worked at the same effects house (or its descendant) that had done the effect for TOS and on a shelf was a box of film labled "Star Trek Transporter Sparkle". I believe THAT was what was in the box mentioned, not the glitter itself.
Anyway, the guy called up the place and they still had it, so that's how the modern Trek series reacquired the original effect.
...or so I recall. :lol
IndyFanChuck
Sr Member
Am I the only one that is thinking "What exactly are you up to???" Spill it! Tell us what youre cooking up.
I KNOW you are working on something awesome......
(pokes you with a phaser, demands to know!):lol
I KNOW you are working on something awesome......
(pokes you with a phaser, demands to know!):lol
Treadwell you are right. I've been watching a lot of the extras from all series of Trek recently and couldn't remember exactly where I had heard Dan Curry talk about the box with the "Transporter Sparkle" inside. It was from "Relics" not "Trials and Tribulations"
Ham Salad
Well-Known Member
Yeah, my buddies who worked on the show in the old days said they just dropped glitter by hand into a tank of water,...it comes down unevenly. They shot it with a gold spot, against a black background, shot in slomo. Then you just shoot the actors in a freeze, then have them step off...and shoot the same scene again with no actors. Make a contrast matte and use the resulting black silloettes to cross dissolve between the two original shots.
I recreated the same effect digitally by just drawing gold specks against a black background in photoshop...I varied the densities (adding more or less specks) in waves top to bottom. The artwork looked like a tall strip of specks that got more and less dense.
Then I uses adobe premiere for animate the strip by just moving it slowly vertically, dissolve it in and presto! It looks exactly the same as the TOS effect. The varying densities appeared like the 'waves' of particles flowing from top to bottom.
I recreated the same effect digitally by just drawing gold specks against a black background in photoshop...I varied the densities (adding more or less specks) in waves top to bottom. The artwork looked like a tall strip of specks that got more and less dense.
Then I uses adobe premiere for animate the strip by just moving it slowly vertically, dissolve it in and presto! It looks exactly the same as the TOS effect. The varying densities appeared like the 'waves' of particles flowing from top to bottom.
Last edited:
Ham Salad
Well-Known Member
Well, personally what I did was make a very cheesy TV show called ' the adventures of ensign expendable'. Most decorated officer in starfleet: 72 purple hearts.
