Cravenomena

Here’s another commercial Craven produced during his tenure as a staff producer for KKCO-TV, Grand Junction’s local NBC affiliate. While not perfect, there is much which tickles Craven in this spot.

The assignment was to produce a 30-second commercial which would promote KKCO’s in-house production department and the station’s advertising efficacy. I think it was my idea to create a STAR TREK pastiche, which led to delightfully ridiculous notions like a space-going retail store and alien “paying customers.”

The spot required more actors than usual, but thanks to Craven’s theatrical ties, he was able to secure the efforts of Michael Dean Becker (as the Captain) and Sheri McConnell (as the sales clerk in the final shot). The other performers were Michael Combs (as the Vulcan), Moe Taylor (as the transporter room ensign) and Adelle Roberts (as the blonde navigator), who, at that time, were all part of KKCO’s production staff.

After drafting the script and drawing up a simple storyboard, I bought orange sweat shirts on sale at Target (with glued-on pseudo-Federation emblems affixed to the breasts), picked up a cheap pair of latex pointed ear prosthetics at a local novelty store and enlisted a beaten-up office chair from the news department. With these and some gelled Omni lights, we were ready to shoot.

One of the difficulties in producing a spot like this with the minimal resources of a small station like KKCO was that the limited bluescreen real estate of the station’s weather station prevented us from shooting the bridge crew in one shot. So we shot each actor separately, and they were subsequently composited together. (Note Michael’s left hand on his chair’s armrest; he had to position it just so to hide a big, ugly rip in the chair’s upholstery.)

After shooting the live-action elements, I began modeling the necessary sets in Newtek Lightwave Modeler. I was hopeful I might find actual blueprints for the original STAR TREK bridge and teleporter room sets online, but wasn’t so lucky. But I did find some beautiful fan-rendered architectural drawings which were clean and clear enough for me to build pretty accurate simulacra.

Because the shots were locked off, I only had to render a single frame for each of my sets. However, both the bridge and transporter room sets required a number of animated screens and heads-up displays, which took some work.

Michael Combs gives a nice performance as the Vulcan; he maintained an admirable gravitas given the shoot’s essentially absurd nature. But it took a little work in Adobe AfterEffects to minimize the ugly seam between the ear prosthetics and his real ears. I also finessed a matte from his fleshtones and color-corrected his face and hands to give them the proper Vulcan greenish cast.

My biggest criticism of the spot concerns the final shot. Despite the lovely Sheri and a handful of STAR TREK gags (including the pile of Tribbles next to Sheri), I’m not thrilled with the shallowness of the digital set and the alien customer’s animation. But given what we had to work with in the way of time and resources, I think the spot turned out well.