Tricks of the Trade

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Gerald Perry Finnerman, ASC

On the original series Star Trek, we had to have new sets every week. We had a small budget and tried to make the most of it. My solution was to have all the standing sets painted egg shell white. I would cut the white light off the walls and paint my colours with the lamps. I lit the walls with the coloured lights, creating a mood for each segment (warm look for love, cold for evil, etc.). I did the same for exterior planet sets—mixing different colors for a variety of looks.

I also used many different types of net diffusion in front of the lens, and shot wide open (T2.3), to enforce a shallow depth of field and throw the background out of focus.

Since the sets were very small, I used 9mm and 18mm lenses to force perspective and I always kept the camera low—as high angles showed the size of the sets, but the low, wide angle shots made the planet sets look much larger.