Supernova: The Movie

 I worked on Supernova which was the worst movie ever made. After they shot everything with models, they re-shot it ALL using 3-D digital CGI. There was a life size model of the space ship on the green screen stage and it was very cool, but apparently the motion control didn't work effectively enough. This was a long time ago at Digital Domain 1.0, and it was occasionally great fun times to work there.

 I thought that Supernova was the first movie that was so bad that even "Alan Smithee" would not accept credit as director. Traditionally, the "Alan Smithee" name is used whenever no director wants to be associated with the movie any longer. The movie was credited to fictional director Thomas Lee.  It was the first credit for the Thomas Lee moniker. The link below explains the history.

 Also, even though the name of the movie is Supernova, there is NO SUPERNOVA in the movie. The film went over budget and they could not afford to film, or create, a supernova image.

 Film dailies were a lot of fun on Supernova at Digital Domain 1.0 and the 3-D animators made a lot of funny "spoof shots" that no one will ever see.  At that time the final shots were still delivered on film.  Every morning at 9 AM we would watch the film loops of the FX shots that had been "recorded" on the film recorder the night before.

 One Friday during post production, I met two women at an art opening in the neighborhood and I brought them back to Digital Domain 1.0 so they could see the huge model space ship on the Green Screen stage.  The model ship was about fifty feet long and was mounted about sixteen feet in the air on a huge hydraulic lift.

 As far as I know, none of the people that worked on Supernova at Digital Domain 1.0 doing digital paint and rotoscoping are still employed by the film industry in that capacity, or in any capacity at all.

For more information check:   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Smithee

copyright (c) 2017

William Schaeffer