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Glenn Derry is founder and current Vice-President of Visual Effects of The Fox VFX Lab, the in-house visual effects company of Fox. On The Orville, he worked with model supervisor Rob Legato to design, build, and film the physical, scale model of the USS Orville.

Background[]

The Orville[]

Creator Seth MacFarlane sought to re-create classic science-fiction television of the 1980s and 1990s for his upcoming show. MacFarlane hired Rob Legato, who had an extensive history with Star Trek: The Next Generation, and Legato recruited Derry and his visual effects company. MacFarlane preferred to film physical props over rendering computer-generated art assets, and Legato and Derry set to building a five-foot scale model of the Orville. The model came complete with internal lighting and highly detailed painting. They filmed over a period of eight days and the final product was used by visual effects supervisor Luke McDonald for shots of the Orville in space.[1]

“Old school/New school, as we designed it all in 3D but then we built it and shot it on set over the course of two weeks – which was insane," said Derry. "No one is doing motion control like this anymore, it’s maybe 20 years since one of these has been done. ... These days we get to cheat a bit and use the standard chroma blue."[2] Derry and his team did six passes per shot, starting with a "beauty pass," second a fill pass without key light, third a mate pass, fourth a "weapons-only pass" where the team turned on lights representing weapons, and fifth a "quantum-drive pass" with Pro-Mist filters.[2]

"[Derry] loves the low tech solution to a high tech problem," Legato commented, adding that Derry is not happy with a solution to a problem "unless he can solve something in the 'cheesiest' way possible, - that's the fun part.. almost like a magic trick... here is this great brilliant solution but we just used an iphone flipped upside down, shot into a mirror and that is what worked... and for them, that is even more fun than just spending a fortune."[1]

References[]

  1. 1.0 1.1 Seymour, Mike. "Fox buys Technoprops: Glenn Derry to head Fox Studios' VFX". fxguide. April 6, 2017.
  2. 2.0 2.1 Seymour, Mike. "Orville, a new Seth MacFarlane enterprise.". fxguide. Sept. 14, 2017.
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