When The Black Hole finally comes to the screen in December, viewers will be in for a real treat: a science-fiction film with a look that does not imitate Star Wars, 2001 or even Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Instead, they will find a new approach to the visual aspect of the hardware and effects, one every bit as fascinating and believable.
The man responsible for this style is Peter Ellenshaw, a longtime veteran of fantastic filmmaking for Disney and dozens of other larger-tha-ife movie-minded studios. When The Black Hole was in its final stages, he revealed some of those techniques for MEDlASCENE.
"This kind of film has always been a challenge, especially when it comes to the hardware. I decided that everyone seemed to be designing spaceships the same way lately." Ellenshaw explained. "The look has become firmly established now, but it is realty just a contemporary designer's view of space technology. I felt that, by the time our picture takes place, things will certainly have changed, gone beyond what is commmonly referred to as the 'high tech' look.
"I think that somewhere along the way somebody put slab sides on the spaceships to get an effect, than everybody copied that way of thinking. I believe that when we do get out in space, it will be impractical to put those big slabs on a ship, simply because if something goes wrong, like a meteor shower, they'll just be torn off. Plus, if you have to do repairs outside, why obstruct yourself with needless obstacles? I thought that it made more sense to construct the ship's skeleton on the outside so that it could be repaired easily."
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