Page "Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home" Paragraph 36

Nimoy approached ILM early in development and helped create storyboards for the optical effects sequences.

Many shots used matte paintings to extend backgrounds and create establishing shots without the cost of building a set.

Matte supervisor Chris Evans attempted to create paintings that felt less contrived and more real — while the natural instinct of filmmaking is to place important elements in an orderly fashion, Evans said that photographers would " shoot things that [...] are odd in some way " and end up with results that look natural instead.

The task of establishing the location and atmosphere at Starfleet Headquarters fell to the matte department, who had to make it feel like a bustling futuristic version of San Francisco.

The matte personnel and Ralph McQuarrie provided design input.

The designers decided to make actors in the foreground more prominent, and filmed them on a large area of smooth concrete runway at the Oakland Airport.

Elements like a shuttlecraft that thirty extras appeared to interact with were also mattes blended to appear as if they were sitting by the actors.

Ultimately the artists were not satisfied with how the shot turned out ; matte photography supervisor Craig Barron believed that there were too many elements in the scene.