Cool Pic

[Graham Kennedy]

The "Aint it Cool News" site has been running a series of pictures taken on the sets of iconic movies and TV shows. I thought folks here might like to see todays :

[Mikey]

I never thought of it before, but I'd say that that set pic looks just about exactly how I'd have imagined it.

Except for the can light sitting on the floor. Don't they get a bit hot to leave sitting on a tarpaulin?

[Tyyr]

That is pretty damn cool.

[Atekimogus]

So basically the modell of the original Enterprise was about as big as other Enterprise models. What would interest me is why, after producing a rather gorgeous model, they didn't really do much with it. What I mean is that they didn't really make much with camera movement to suggest the ship is actually maneuvering and I cannot think of a good reason why this is so. Where cameras that big that it was impractical?

Now I get that money is a factor so of course phasers and photons are expensive and not as good looking as later on, but the ship itself and the studio is probably not that different a setup than later for Wrath of Khan I would imagine..... .

[Mikey]

Even for camera movement, remember that there was less automation and zero computer control. Also, maybe more importantly, there was really no precedent or example of how to do spaceships.

[Nutso]

So awesome. It would be a dream to own that.

[Graham Kennedy]

The model itself looks too big to move, and the camera couldn't move except to slide down the tracks on the floor. So they were pretty much limited to pushing a static camera past a static model. Even that was expensive, hence the extensive use of stock shots.

[RK_Striker_JK_5]

Yeah. There were simple technical and mechanical limitations to how to film the E-nil. And damn that's a gorgeous pic. Thanks, Graham!

[Atekimogus]

The model itself looks too big to move, and the camera couldn't move except to slide down the tracks on the floor. So they were pretty much limited to pushing a static camera past a static model. Even that was expensive, hence the extensive use of stock shots.

On the other hand the refit Enil for the first three movies was easily as big and heavy. Now I am aware that there obviously were technological limitation, I was just interested in what they actually were, since it seems to me that the technology for TOS and TMP and TWAK for example did not change very much. (Sure, they had computers in the 80s but those where not used for filming the models afaik)

So was the only limitation really just that cameras where too big and unwieldy so that you couldn't simulate a moving ship with them or was it more that they just hadn't worked out how to film it properly?

Also, while I am aware that they used stock shots as cost saving measure, on a personal note I find it rather sad that they would go to lengths to produce such a gorgeous expensive model and then do only very little with it. Shame, really. Now I don't know what the prize of the model was back then but it sure would be interested how much it would be today.

[Mikey]

#1 - there was a decade between TOS and TMP. #2 - TMP had a movie budget; TOS had no budget.

[Reliant121]

TMP is still one of the most costly trek's ever I believe. TOS had a puny budget by comparison.

[Atekimogus]

#1 - there was a decade between TOS and TMP. #2 - TMP had a movie budget; TOS had no budget.

Sure sure, it is just that it seems to me - and I might be completely wrong since I admittedly have not much clue about the movie business - that first, in this decade the technology didn't change that much and secondly that the expensive part of the equation is the production of the models.

Once you have the model, the studio, the cameras, the setup was it really that much more costly to shoot 2 hours of footage instead of twenty minutes (just for instance, no idea how long all the stockfootage is, of course)?

So forgive my ignorance, it is just from my todays point of view - that it doesn't make much difference (if you already went to the length of constructing the model etc.) to shoot the damn thing for as long and from as many positions as possible. It seems like buying a ferrari for a million dollar and than only driving him only one mile because you want to save fuel....... .

(Maybe it is just so expensive because of strange union rules? I heard a thing or two, or were the tapes so expensive back then, I really have no idea)

[Captain Seafort]

I'm no expert on sfx, historical or otherwise, but here goes.

in this decade the technology didn't change that much

It certainly did. Not the mechanical side of things, but the computerisation.

were the tapes so expensive back then

Very. So expensive that the BBC routinely wiped old tapes and reused them to save money. The policy didn't change until around 1970 - that's why so many of the early Doctor Who serials are missing.

[Atekimogus]

I'm no expert on sfx, historical or otherwise, but here goes.

in this decade the technology didn't change that much

It certainly did. Not the mechanical side of things, but the computerisation.

To clarify, I meant the decade between 69 and 79. I really don't know if or how they used much computer-tech for TMP to be honest.

Very. So expensive that the BBC routinely wiped old tapes and reused them to save money. The policy didn't change until around 1970 - that's why so many of the early Doctor Who serials are missing.

Interesting, didn't know that. Alas the drawbacks of growing up in the digital age:)

[Graham Kennedy]

Having seen a lot of the extras on TNG DVDs....

Take a flyby by the Ent-D compared to the Ent-nil.

For the E nil, a guy pushes the camera past the model and films it. Then they replace the blue background with a shot of space using colour substitution.

In the Ent D, they might have the ship making a nice lovely curve through space as it orbits some planet or whatever. To do that, they keep the model still and pan the camera past on rails.

But that's only part of it. You do that for the model. But now you need all those little window lights. You black out the scene and do the same pan past, this time with the model's inside lit up so the window lights show up.

Now you do it again, with nothing but the nacelles lit up.

Now you do it again, with nothing but the deflector dish lit up.

Now you composit all those images on top of one another, and put it on top of a background image, and that's how you get what you see on screen.

And to do this, the camera has to move and pan past the model in EXACTLY the same way every time. That means that rather than have some guy simply shove it past, you have to have a computer attached to the motors on the rail and on the tilt and pan of the camera, so that it can run that camera down those rails tilting and panning it precisely the same, every time.

If there's another ship in this image and it's moving independently of the E-D - a shuttle, say - then you have to repeat the entire process all over again for that ship. And indeed for every and any moving object in the image. In fact it was only with the invention of computer controled movement that it became possible to have things like spaceships moving independently of one another in FX shots. 2001 is a truly beautiful rendition of Things In Space but not once do you see any two ships move relative to one another, because it wasn't until a couple of years later that Lucas invented the technique so he could have space dogfighting in Star Wars.

As you can imagine, this is an insanely time consuming and expensive effort. One single 10 second shot of the E-D flying past probably takes a whole crew several days and tens of thousands of dollars to film.

Of course, nowdays you do it all in a computer and the expense is in hiring many animators and buying computer rendering time or machines. But that has it's own costs. I remember an episode of Stargate where O'Neill walked through the gate. On a whim, the actor turned and tapped the event horizon with his finger before walking on and doing the rest of the scene. The following week he got an irate call from the FX department; "We had to re-render the iris footage to add ripples around your finger. It took two days and fifteen thousand dollars of rendering time! Please don't ever do that again!"