Masters of FX by Failes Ian;

Author:Failes, Ian;
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-317-54092-2
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (CAM)

[1] Robert Legato.

Legato considers early contributions to the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine (for both of which he received Primetime Emmys) as a training ground for his current approach to visual effects—getting things done in a short period of time, prioritizing, and doing more quality work with less.

“Because Star Trek was a TV show and you didn’t have much time to explore things in advance, you’d just try different approaches from week to week,” he says. “I also considered only designing my shots to emulate feature film shots—all of which were shot on film, incidentally—rather than limiting my own vision by only designing for television’s smaller scope and budget.”

With so many visual effects to complete for each Star Trek show, Legato soon found that he was gaining wide experience of the entire filmmaking process and would use that to help design shots. “I learned very quickly that if you only designed a wide shot, you limited what could be done to enhance the visuals with sound effects for example. But if you decided to break it down into two or more shots, and could get in really close to some moving parts or some macro action, then the SFX designers had much more to work with. The added sound created a much bigger feature film experience. I also explored very graphic lighting and more interesting and sophisticated camera choreography from week to week. I became much more of a ‘sequence’ director and supervisor, rather than just a shot-driven one. Having several pieces of film edited together—illustrating a moment, rather than that one shot—created a more interesting filmic experience and powerful storytelling opportunities.”

“Because I’m also an editor, I could design, shoot, and then edit to maximize the effect I was going for,” adds Legato. “I’d be able to alter or improve the idea after the fact to make it work much better. I always thought there was something more interesting I could add later, rather than having to solve all of the problems on the stage. Consequently, every shot or sequence was a work in progress, and that was a philosophy that I took to movies.”

Star Trek was also Legato’s first exposure to digital compositing and helped him break into the visual effects studio Digital Domain. Here he would combine his on-set practical and miniatures expertise with the digital knowledge and directly apply that to films such as Interview with the Vampire, Apollo 13, and Titanic. Still, according to Legato, many visual effects challenges remain photographic in nature, such as his experience in shooting and lighting the miniature underwater submersible scenes for Titanic.

“I was struggling to get the right look,” says Legato, “and cinematographer Caleb Deschanel—who was originally going to work on the film—said something strange to me at the time, which was, ‘Why don’t you just backlight the ship?’ As the Titanic was so deep, the only logical light source would have to come from the on-board lighting from the Mir subs. I just thought it was crazy to consider lighting from anything besides the real on-board Mir lights.

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