THE ORIGINAL

(Without the beam that someone added in the new “best of” book).

Interesting fact: this is based on a scene that was cut from the one and only Ron Moore “Voyager” script, a moment where Borg cubes were supposed to be hovering over a forest, searching for renegades.

The image of trees is an actual photo of a forest that had been decimated by acid rain. Although the credit for the image was given to Steve Burg (an extremely talented man), it was actually conceived and rendered by MOJO.

Steve’s primary involvement was helping me with the near-impossible task of compositing the cubes behind the trees… without his Photoshop help I never would have finished the shot! I remember the late night as his place… We played around with various Photoshop tools until it finally worked :-)

Why was the shot cut? I have no idea. They routinely cut VFX shots from Voyager as being “too expensive” before ever even asking the crew that would be doing the work. It just took a long time for them to finally shake the “motion control & miniatures” mind set – but they finally got on board with what CGI could do for them with the amazing two-part epic “Scorpion.”

I have plenty of stories about the FX for that episode…