TREKCORE > VOY > EPISODES > DARK FRONTIER, PART II > Behind the Scenes

	Similar to how this episode was scripted in two parts, the installment was also filmed as two separate segments, with Cliff Bole directing the first half and Terry Windell helming the second part. Due to the pressures regarding the amount of alloted time provided for the episode's production, Bole was gratified that there were two directors. Whereas Bole was a Star Trek veteran who was well acquainted with working on productions that involved the Borg (he having directed the Star Trek: The Next Generation two-parter "The Best of Both Worlds" and "The Best of Both Worlds, Part II"), relative newcomer Terry Windell had to do some research. The latter director admitted, "Obviously, I referred to First Contact and the episode where they pick up Seven. I researched about four or five episodes that were strong in Borg. The feature and 'The Gift' were probably the strongest in terms of how to handle the material."
	Brannon Braga was of the opinion that this episode was "very difficult to produce."
	n common with the writing of the script and the casting process, the episode's production took place in November and December 1998. In fact, when Cliff Bole started filming his part of the episode, neither the script nor the guest cast were ready yet. "A lot of times when they were looking [for actors], I was shooting, so that added to it," Bole stated. "We were putting [the guest cast] together pretty much at the fifth hour, and I had to depend on the boys upstairs to do some casting without me, because my plate was full [....] We started shooting before we had actually had a completed script [....] The phone was ringing all the time; that's how Brannon and I had to work, because he was working so hard on the second part and finishing the first one. I mean he answered the phone immediately and we hammered our way through it."
	Cliff Bole was attracted to the possibility of utilizing a steadicam for this outing. "I used the steadicam quite a bit and the town was so damned busy, it was tough to line up the guys I like and the cameramen I like," Bole reflected. "[The steadicam] became my main tool by the nature of the design of the set. It became more of a tool than a creative piece, because it just handled all the problems that came out of the design."
	he reason that the Hansens were cast late was, as Cliff Bole explained, "because that part of the show we did towards the end [of the production schedule], because we weren't sure how much we were going to do on it."
	The casting of the Borg Queen also had a correlation on the production process. Cliff Bole recounted, "They hadn't quite got the Queen yet, she wasn't available; so I had to come back to shoot. I had to come back after I'd finished filming, about a week later, to shoot my part with the Queen, which was just the ending [of the first part of the show]."
	Cliff Bole and Terry Windell worked together in an attempt to ensure that the transition between their scenes was seamless. Windell remembered, "I actually went on the set and watched what Cliff was doing so that we would have continuity. The biggest aspect was he didn't introduce the Queen's lair until the last act of his show and the majority of my show takes place there, so that was the big sequence we had to collaborate on, and we actually were there on the same day when he was filming his sequence."
	As Borg corridors had repeatedly been shown on Star Trek, Terry Windell intended to make the ones here seem a little atypical by giving them a cramped look, such as in the shots where an appalled Seven passes victims destined for assimilation, and various Borg drones. "I tried to lens it a bit differently than I've seen before: I tried to use longer lenses and compress a lot of the space, just to get a sense of claustrophobia," Windell related. "What I've seen before a lot in the Borg corridors is wide lenses to give that kind of distorted perspective and, you know, get a little disjointed, and it tends to make the set look really open and big. Once the Borg Queen orders Seven to go back in and actually participate in assimilating another race, we felt that it should be in Seven's mind's eye, what the corridor was all about. I felt it should be very claustrophobic."
	Working the lighting effect that was characteristic of the Borg Queen into the production caused Terry Windell some scheduling problems. "What we would do is rehearse and when we had the blocking down with Susanna, then we would program the lights accordingly and she was fantastic about hitting her marks [....] In terms of difficulty, what that did, the actual time to program the lights is something you don't really see when you're blocking out a week's worth of work." (Star Trek: The Magazine Volume 1, Issue 1, p. 61) Nevertheless, Windell was still proud of the work of those responsible, including himself, for creating the dramatic atmospheres in the Borg sets. "I think that what we did in the Borg corridors and the Queen's lair was [...] featuresque, the drama and the lighting, so that it's not always about seeing everything in total clarity; it's about using light and smoke.
	Susanna Thompson's long days of enduring her makeup and costume generally consisted of around 21 hours. (Cinefantastique, Vol. 31, No. 11, p. 32) She reflected, "My days were very long. I had no idea; they were 20, 21 hour days. One day I think I did 22 hours." Terry Windell offered, "By the time I'm at the end of a normal day, she's almost into 20 hours."
	Terry Windell remarked on the usefulness of the episode's visual effects; "I think that the visual effects give it the production value. When they describe the multitude of Borg vessels you have to see that."
	The CGI for both parts of the episode was done by Foundation Imaging, involving the input of Foundation's visual effects supervisors Robert Bonchune and Adam "Mojo" Lebowitz as well as director of animation John Teska. (Cinefantastique, Vol. 31, No. 11, p. 32) Bonchune handled the visual effects of the episode's first half, whereas Mojo dealt with the VFX of the second part. (Star Trek Monthly issue 58, p. 44) The episode also incorporated contributions from Foundation Imaging staffers Koji Kuramura (who was responsible for most of the Borg Unicomplex's construction, based on a maquette created by Dan Curry, and for the revamping of the damaged Borg sphere), David Morton (who created numerous Astrometrics graphics), Dan Ritchie (who both built and blew up the Borg probe), and Brandon MacDougall (who built and designed the Borg Queen's vessel). (Star Trek Monthly issue 58, pp. 44 & 46) Dan Curry was also involved in modeling the queen's ship.
	Star Trek: First Contact provided a precedent on which the visual effects artists based the episode's variety of new Borg ship designs, as well as the look of the Unicomplex. "We had the feature, to some degree, to refer back to, to make sure that this appears to be in the same universe," noted Mitch Suskin, who acted as the visual effects supervisor for the first half of the episode.
	A visual effect whose creation was particularly hurried was the interior view of the Borg probe's destruction. Mitch Suskin remembered, "As they cut the show, they looked at it and said, 'We really want more action, more drama.' We found out about that as they were finishing second unit photography." With the visual effects team having had little notice that the effect would be wanted, Art Codron (the visual effects coordinator for the episode's first half) subsequently ran across to the set and obtained the necessary background plates. Suskin described the effect's creation as "a true team effort" that involved a Borg drone CGI model from Foundation Imaging. He continued, "John Teska gave us a couple of variations of [the single] Borg flying backwards, with interactive light passes. Then we took it into the bay, dug through our vast library of explosions, and pieced it together in an afternoon, between his animation, the elements we had, and a little bit of Harry [animation] work here and there to stitch it all together. It's the one shot in the film when you see an explosion ripping through and the Borg getting blown backwards."
	Mitch Suskin noted that some of the effects for the episode's first half were harder to create than others; "The big challenges in that show, as far as I am concerned, were the Borg city, the Unicomplex, and the scene where [the Borg Queen's body is assembled]." (Cinefantastique, Vol. 31, No. 11, p. 32) Suskin also believed that the writers were not alone in wanting the queen's construction to look impressive, a similar sequence having been created for Star Trek: First Contact. "We all secretly wanted it to be at least as good as what was done on the feature," recalled Suskin. "We wanted to be a little bit different."
	By examining the set for the Borg Queen's lair, Dan Curry came up with the idea of having the queen's lower body enter from below, via floor panels, and then robotically assemble. Curry then mapped out the sequence with storyboards that, despite being quite detailed, also left ample room for the other team members to be creative. (Star Trek: The Magazine Volume 1, Issue 1, p. 62) Live action footage of Susanna Thompson's head, made-up to match that of the Borg Queen, was shot for the sequence. (Star Trek: The Magazine Volume 1, Issue 1, p. 63) Mitch Suskin reflected, "We shot a plate of the actress, [...] a closeup that they tracked in. She's just standing on the stage in front of a bluescreen, but we actually had the camera tilting, and coming down, so we'd have a little bit of a perspective change. It was tracked in and composited at Foundation Imaging." (Cinefantastique, Vol. 31, No. 11, p. 33) Indeed, most of the sequence was done with CGI by John Teska. (Cinefantastique, Vol. 31, No. 11, p. 32; Star Trek Monthly issue 58, p. 45, et al.) This was because the queen's unique alcove did not actually work as an elevator.
	Not only was the bluescreen footage of Susanna Thompson used for close-ups of the Borg Queen's head, but the sequence also involved CG models of the queen's head and body as well as the apparatus that physically assembles her. (Star Trek: The Magazine Volume 1, Issue 1, p. 63) Rob Bonchune recalled of John Teska's work on the sequence, "He built all the piping. I mean, basically, there was nothing in there. There was a thing in the background where she came down live, but he meshed the live actress to CG stuff [...] and he built all the piping when it comes up through the floor. All we had was this plate, and he actually put the images on CG stuff and blended it in, and you see holes on the floor." (Star Trek Monthly issue 58, p. 45) Teska also lit the apparatus. A shot wherein the combination of CG and live action elements was used to represent different parts of the Borg Queen is the one where the upper and lower portions of her body are fastened together by small hooks that latch into her. "[That] was just a production shot of her," said Suskin. "Everything that latches in was done at Foundation." (Cinefantastique, Vol. 31, No. 11, p. 33) Following this shot, the episode concludes solely with live action footage. The effect itself incorporated only six cuts and hardly any work for Susanna Thompson.
	When Rob Bonchune saw the first test of the assembly machinery rising out of the floor, he was pleasantly surprised by how real John Teska had managed to make the effect seem. (Star Trek Monthly issue 58, p. 45; Cinefantastique, Vol. 31, No. 11, p. 33) The sequence was so effective that it fooled people into thinking it had been done entirely on set. "Mitch [Suskin] told me," recounted Bonchune, "that when they were viewing the tape over at Paramount, people would walk in to look at it and say, 'Oh, you guys shot that practical?' That's good [....] It's pretty impressive."
	As transwarp travel had previously been shown (visualized with the same effect) in both "Threshold" and "Distant Origin", the visual effects artists initially intended to make another reuse of the same effect in this installment. "We pulled out that reference," Mitch Suskin stated, "because we assumed since it was the same term, that we would use that again. Peter Lauritson and the other producers looked at it and wanted something flashier. The thing that they actually liked was from [the fourth season finale] "Hope and Fear", the slipstream. What we did was basically take the slipstream effect and change the color a little bit."
	he Raven was also revived for this episode, a previous version of the starship having been featured in a fourth season episode of the same name as the craft. "It was really a matter of almost starting over from scratch," explained John Teska. A basic framework of the craft was in Foundation Imaging's possession, of which they did a render that they sent to Star Trek: Voyager Senior Illustrator Rick Sternbach. (Cinefantastique, Vol. 31, No. 11, p. 33) He remembered, "I got a printout of the ship from Foundation, so I would have a three-quarter perspective [....] We cut it down from eight or nine decks to four decks tops. This changed the scale of the windows and the entry hatches, and that sort of thing." (Star Trek: The Magazine Volume 1, Issue 1, p. 59) Foundation Imaging then built the craft from Sternbach's refinements.
	The transporter effect used in the flashback scenes corresponds with the effect used in Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
	The wide shot of the Delta Flyer being retrofitted with the transwarp coil was a re-use of the matte shot from "Extreme Risk". The shot of the Delta Flyer exiting Voyager's shuttlebay was another example of reused footage, having been used in both "Extreme Risk" and "Thirty Days". Both shots were scripted to be stock optical shots.
	All the visual effects were transfered between the first and second halves of the episode, as Ronald B. Moore took over the supervising of the VFX. He commented, "We did all of the Queen interiors, and a lot of the ships, exploding the Queen's ship and going through the Borg city, the unicomplex. Foundation did some great work. I think the quality of the images we got was really terrific."
	Much of the visual effects footage of the climactic battle involving the Delta Flyer and Borg Queen's vessel inside a transwarp conduit was added late by Rick Berman. Ron Moore remarked, "At the end when Berman was making the final cut, he put some of those [shots] back, the interior of the warp conduit, the firing, and the chasing, which I thought was fabulous. Just before finalizing the cut, he felt that we needed the shots, so we put them back in, in a rush, because at that point we are usually talking about having another two weeks to work." Moore also expressed gratitude that the visual effects team were able to pull together the effect, despite the rush.
	Jeri Ryan was thrilled with this episode's optical shots, stating, "The effects were amazing."