Lens flares suck, and JJ Abrams knows it. “Yeah, I went too nuts…”
In an interview with Crave Online, JJ Abrams copped to the fact that the lens flares in Star Trek Into Darkness were anything but easy to deal with.
He even admitted that the lens flares were so distracting that he had to put a team from Industrial Light and Magic (ILM) to work actually removing some of the lens flares to make it more watchable.
“I know I get a lot of grief for that,” says Abrams. “But I’ll tell you, there are times when I’m working on a shot, I think, Oh this would be really cool… with a lens flare. But I know it’s too much, and I apologize. I’m so aware of it now. I was showing my wife an early cut of Star Trek Into Darkness and there was this one scene where she was literally like, I just can’t see what’s going on. I don’t understand what that is. I was like, Yeah, I went too nuts on this.”
“This is how stupid it was,” J.J. Abrams added. “I actually had to use ILM (Industrial Light & Magic) to remove lens flare in a couple of shots, which is, I know, moronic. But I think admitting you’re an addict is the first step towards recovery.”
He says he realised that the flares were distracting when he screened the film to his wife who “couldn’t tell what was going on”.
Poor JJ. Admitting you have a problem is the first step to recovery. [io9]