Star Trek: 10 Secrets Of The USS Kelvin You Need To Know

One of the more novel aspects of Star Trek (2009)'s production was the prominent use of real life locations standing in for otherworldly, 23rd century locales. Location photography for the film included the American Legion Hollywood Post 43 standing in for the Shipyard Bar, SkyRose Chapel doubling for the Vulcan council chamber, the Tustin Naval Air Station appearing as the Starfleet Academy hangar, and, controversially, the Anheuser-Busch brewery in Van Nuys, California appearing as the engine room of the USS Enterprise.

For scenes set in the bowels and engineering sections of the USS Kelvin, the production traveled to Long Beach, California and filmed at the NRG Power Generating Station. Built in 1910, the Long Beach Generating Station gave director JJ Abrams the lived-in, industrial look he wanted for the older, grimy-er Kelvin, and helped give the film its grand scale.

Initially scouted for the deleted Klingon prison planet sequence, the look of the Long Beach Generating Station as the Kelvin's engineering section actually informed the look of the same sections aboard the Enterprise.

According to Scott Chambliss:

...For the Enterprise, we needed to find a clean, spanking new version of the same thing with enormous scale to shoot in... Because again we'd never be able to afford to build a set like that on a stage, our brilliant location manager, Becky Brake, came back with photographs from the Budweiser plant in Van Nuys.

And thus Bud-gineering was born.