So, after having just watched FC on BR for the first time, I was checking some of the extra's, and in the segment called 'From A to E' there are two images of concept art for alternate bridge designs for First Contact, one in the first few seconds and another one a few moments in. I googled it just now, and could only find a small image of one of them. Does anyone know if there are some highres images of these two pieces of concept art online??
I haven't seen the extras you mention, but the full design history for FC is very well documented in the book John Eaves co-authored, it is the STAR TREK THE NEXT GENERATION SKETCHBOOK for the movies TNG and FC, there are several pages on the bridge design as I recall (every copy I get falls apart after a day, so I don't even have pages of it anymore, but it is a great reference.) I just checked and my original rave about it from 15 years ago is still right there on Amazon's page, I think it is the only time I ever posted anything there.
That sketchbook is very good, I got it when it first came out. Lists of stuff on the Enterprise-B and E as I recall. Annoyingly I can't find my copy. I've been looking for it recently and I just can't find it!
I have the book too, and it's great. Unfortunately I've no scanner. I don't know if Eaves has anything about it on his blog site, it doesn't seem to have articles tagged by subject and no way to search that I can find. He does have some stuff from the Enterprise tv series. http://johneaves.wordpress.com/
It is an awesome resource, but he's not kidding about the flimsiness of it. The spine comes apart pretty quickly and the pages start falling out. If you get it, treat it like some ancient manuscript out of the Vatican Library and only handle it with tweezers and latex gloves in a room without any UV light coming in.
Not sure why you guys have so much trouble with it; I've had a copy for well over a decade and it's still in perfect condition. Maybe they used better glue when they did the version that got slip-cased with Herb and Yvonne Solow's TOS Sketchbook? edit: They have screencaps of the special features over at TrekCore. Here's the two screencaps the OP was referencing: Earlier concept: http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/bonus_fc/productiondocs/fromatoe/atoe_004.jpg Closer to the final set design: http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/bonus_fc/productiondocs/fromatoe/atoe_033.jpg One thing I'd love to see is any sketches Eaves did based on Braga and Moore's early description of the Enterprise-E bridge in the Resurrection draft of the script. To wit: I think that design was one of those things that probably looked cool in their minds while they were writing it, but would have sucked if they actually tried to build and film it.
There's a category list on the right hand sidebar. John hasn't been the best about assigning categories, a few years back I was helping John with his blog and I tried to keep reminding him about it. When I see posts without categories I try to log in and add them. This category link is for his work on the TNG movies: http://johneaves.wordpress.com/category/trek-movies/
Well, remember these were the guys with the brilliant idea in the script that the spacesuit helmets were formfitting ... around the face! Very early on folks realized that death would be the first sign of trouble with implementing that one. I'm hell on books, especially trade paperbacks (my MAKING OF JUDGE DREDD didn't even make it home before I had pages coming out of it.) The only books I've never damaged are some of the huge ones that I figure I'll resell at some point (the magnificent STORY OF THE FIFTH ELEMENT, a SYD MEAD or two, the book about the Ken Adam retrospective, plus THE MAKING OF THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS (which was a pretty huge disappointment actually) and the original printing of the KUBRICK ARCHIVES book, with the frame clip from the Floyd/Russian contretemps on the space station.)
I completely forgot about Trekcore!!!! I've google-imaged the hell out of it, could only find a low-quality image of one of them, and it was there all along! Thanks!!!!
...I'm somewhat relieved in a way to hear that everyone else's copy of the TNG Sketchbook also fell apart. I thought it was just me.