I’ve been waiting almost a year now to tell you about all the cool Flash work that is featured in the new Star Trek movie. OOOii, which was formally named BlackBox Digital, is a live visual effects company run by Kent Demaine and is located in the heart of Hollywood. They design a lot of the amazing interfaces that you see on computer screens and other surfaces in feature films. Their credits include Enemy of the State, Minority Report, and The Island.
For Star Trek, senior developer Dave August created a complete ActionScript 3 framework for compositing and sequencing various effects that was used live on the set during filming. He also created an AIR application which was used for authoring the various sequences and also to control them as the actors manipulated them.
Today I flew down to Hollywood to interview them about their work. Below is a little teaser of some of the footage. These guys have the coolest Flash jobs in the world! Check out their site and go see Star Trek to witness Flash on the big screen.
Lee
Very cool. Looking forward to the full interview.
I had no idea they used an OOOii GUI.
Thx Lee,
Very cool! Gonna see the film tonight. Looking forward to the full interview.
Slick!
Great interview, I love the work these guys put together. Minority Reports gesture interface was cool.
Looking forward to the full interview. I previously didn’t know they made the screen interfaces for those films with Flash and Flex. It kinda makes sense now.
Some of us are so lucky, really great work.
That’s going to be an awesome interview! I’ve always wondered how certain effects are created in movies, but I always thought flash was too slow to render most of the things I’ve seen. I always thought prerendered graphics were added to the scene post production.
Very cool! Didn’t know they used Flash for that kind of thing. Envy of their jobs …
Wow, that was amazing and inspiring! That makes me even more excited to be a Flash developer. Looking forward to the full interview!
Greeeeeaaaat… now when clients ask for “something like minority report” I can’t just say that’s some crazy hollywood thing that’s not possible.
Seriously, that is awesome. Glad you did the interview. More technical details will be welcome. Thanks!
Very cool! Flash.
Is this framework available in any way? Open source, commercial?
This makes no sense at all. There’s a lot of software that can handle video in high resolutions, and Flash can’t. Did Adobe pay you guys?
freaking sweeeet. can’t wait for the full shebang!
Those displays looked rather big.. like even bigger then full HD.. i do wonder how they made it run so smooth, with alpha-blending and filtering and all. Did they use special hardware or modified Flash Player? Or just some Uber-fast PC’s?
@Mathias No we didn’t pay them. This industry has been using Adobe tools since the beginning. We wouldn’t even have known about this if I hadn’t run into them at a conference. And they are using Flash so that it is interactive and they can control it during filming.
@Jeff They are using high-end Macs but are not running any special version of Flash. I wish there was one! They render out a lot of stuff in AE and then bring it into Flash so that helps. But they do run into performance issues just like the rest of us.
I thought that looked very flashy when I saw Star Trek. Sounds like a cool project would have been fun to work on for sure.
Good job guys and thanks for sharing the interview!
-erik
What exactly did these guys do for Minority Report? I thought that was mostly done by Imaginary Forces. Flash was not capable of doing any of the stuff in that movie when it came out. That was back in the Flash 5 days. Star Trek stuff looks really cool though.
Although I agree with Mathias. I am not sure why they would use Flash for that stuff.
Very cool indeed.
@Len They used all After Effects for Minority Report. The reason they use Flash is because it is interactive. They are literally off camera controlling these animations with buttons and sliders as they are filming. It is a mixture of After Effects and Flash and the AIR app controls it all.
Re 35: Lee, does that mean they are controlling the interactivity so it appears that the actors are using touchscreens?
I suspect the amount of Flash interactivity is a giant invisible button for actors to click on, which triggers a series of alpha blended videos.
Using a MIDI controller to fake touchscreen interactivity is another possibility.
You could also use Scaleform and the Unreal engine to create realtime interactive 3D “flash”.
I suspect it’s too costly/time consuming/challenging to build full-blown interactive displays. All of these displays could easily be “playbacks” authored in After Effects.
Looking forward to a full interview. I’m interested to see what their tech stack and workflow is like.
I’m not telling, acting captain…
And one in the eye for all the flash haters… I love it.
Yeah, right…
Flash is the technology of the future, but I spent the last 3 hours trying to set the focus on my flash movie with Firefox on windows.
A two years old bug, at least.
After four years of frustration caused by some stupid bugs and limitations (I want my right click, damn it!), 2000$ of license fee, and some new technologies coming I am not sure Flash will be the technology I’ll use for my spaceship.
I new this post would bring out the haters
Well, I love what I can do with Flash, so I love Flash.
And I’m glad Spock found happiness playing with his fake UIs.
But after an afternoon of unsuccessful search for another basic stuff that gets very complicated, I am way less enthusiastic than him over Flash.
@VisitorG, you will use Flash on your ARM devices at home soon, so using it for your spaceship would not be surprising
@lee, why don’t you just confess you pay $5 for each comment that supports Adobe
Hope to see further examples and interviews that give more specifics as to their contribution to Star Trek and what other tools were used (After effects, etc). One of the most popular presentations at this years FITC was MK12′s presentation. MK12 created the main titles and smart table sequences for the latest James Bond saga “Quantum of Solace”.
@VisitorG no doubt they were swearing at Flash and many other tools too. But, the trick (in my opinion) is to find workarounds to make the tools do what you want. Sure, I’ve found hundreds (probably even thousands) of bugs in Flash but it’s still possible to pull through and make a project work.
What I think some people are missing here is that it’s a movie–it’s totally fake. There are tons of tricks to make stuff look like they want you to see it. And, they just happen to use Flash because it was a tool that DOES work for that purpose… and it’s a tool they know. (Plus other tools like AE)
screen saver?
oh cool…. looking forward to the full interview.
UI Design is by far my favorite thing to do…I have a new goal in life. Work for OOOii.
i LOOOOVE it!
Only in the geek world would people get semantically caught up in the subtle difference between “were the actors using a real touch screen on the fake spaceship?” and the very disappointed “so someone was controlling the fake touchscreens on the fake spaceship off stage?” alternative! It’s friggin’ Hollywood people! Get over it and be impressed anyway!
As well, between a purist well optimized solution to a problem and a quick kludge band aide solution, the band aide is always declared the winner. There might bet better tools out their but I am sure there will always be a better something that takes a backseat to a faster/cheaper/more-beautiful-but-less-perfect alternative that shows up at the right time in front of the right people.
I just hope flash gets its due, though I am almost certain I didn’t see “flash” walking the red carpet at the movie’s premiere.
Looking forward to the rest of the interview when you have time Lee. It looks great so far (aesthetically speaking.)
I love it.
Cant wait to see the whole interview, but as it stands right now…Total Crap!!
90% of the screens were Adobe After Effects generated animations and played in Apple Quicktime or thru Adobe Director. The flash component didnt work well at all and was scrapped early on.
@Come On = douche who doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
I KNEW IT!
They use Flash !
Gotta love Flash…
Though it gets more advance by the day, the basic spirit of Flash; an animation tool, combined by the fact that it’s still vector based makes it THE tool for interface prototypes.
Besides Flash was also responsible the whole Star Trek LCARS craze years ago, even till now
FLASH Rocks !
This is such a load.
I have friends that worked on this movie along side these guys. 95% of the work was done in Director and Quicktime playback with motion elements created in After Effects.
Dave’s system and flash was used in only one set because of all the problems it caused. Once off the set, they scrapped it and went back to the tested method of Director or QTime Loops with all the rest of the movie. They wanted to scrap it earlier but opted to suffer thru until off that set.
Its amazing how some of these guys with all their talent, still need color the perception of things to their advantage. Come on guys…you’re talented…let your talents speak for themselves. Stop candy coating things!! Kent comes from a line of talented projects from Black Box.
Its hard to even look at this interview with a straight face. On top it, Ooii wasnt even arround for Minority Report! LOL… That was Black Box which Dave wasnt even a part of doing. Kent and Will, the principles of Black Box, did Minority Report. Two very talented individuals. Its unclear to me why Dave is taking credit for something he didnt even do?!
Just trying to set the records straight here on what really happened. How about interviewing the other company that worked along side these guys, Monte Swann’s company, Cygnet Video. You might find that there is more to the story that what is captured in this interview. Contact him if you want the level headed story of how well this flash system worked.
thanks for informative post..
really useful..
I love david,
Naomi
Hey!!
Seems like lee and a lot of you guys visiting this blog are experienced persons.
I have been working, rather creating Flash videos for quite a long time and have created some brilliant video animations but I still wonder how to create effects like the following videos. Does anyone have any idea which software may have been used to develop these?
1) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMSqxSDsXdM
2) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsZMxvROR_M&feature=player_embedded
I just keep wondering how magnificently the screen shots have been animated with a 3D feel. Everything seems to be so 3D but I cannot imagine this to be a 3D max output.
Can anyone help!
Regards
Moloy
After effects.