Hi. The TMP Director's Edition crew (Dochterman, Fein, and Matessino) did a commentary where they mentioned that there were storyboards from 1979 for an opening credits sequence that was never used. Has anyone ever seen these? Are they available anywhere?
Only for the abandoned RA&A credit sequence employing Michael Sterling's fonts (and they are currently on the other side of the planet): That said, after Doug Trumbull took over the the film's visual effects duties he brought in commercial graphic artist Richard Foy - who also created the Silent Running titles - to redesign the typeface, and any storyboards that may have been produced for the replacement sequence would have most likely been rendered by the late Tom Cranham (with input from Trumbull, Yuricich, Foy, etc. and subject to approval by Wise). Unfortunately I have so far not been able to acquire a copy. BTW, did Fein, Matessino or Dochterman ever mention why they used that ghastly camel-diarrhea yellow font color with the tacky Gaussian blurs against a recycling starfield background for the DE's opening credits instead of what Trumbull intended? TGT
^ You know, as generic as the titles for TMP were and as much as I understand giving them a bit of a gold color to try to spice it up, I never got the "shimmering/blur" thing when each one appears. It really screws with my eyes and seems ultimately unnecessary.
It was actually Wise's decision, both to not go TOO far from the original movie and also to go with the vibrant yellow. ("It's got balls" he said.) Not that I'm going to change anyone's mind, but where the DE works best is where they stuck to that idea of not going too far. I'd give them about 80%. There are only a couple of shots (Vulcan!) that jump out and scream "Not in 1979 you didn't!" The new sound mix for the bridge is the other thing. Otherwise I'd say the editing is much tighter and it's largely a better paced movie. In any edition it's still one of my two favorite Trek movies. (TWOK is the other one - they're the two sides of the Star Trek coin.) Ultimately I'd like to have the theatrical cut, the TV cut AND the DE. But back on topic, I'm very curious to see what they might have had in mind originally for the titles. Trek titles have never been "flashy". They've never been Superman. I think the most visually interesting titles were probably First Contact. And of course the real reason I want to see the storyboards is I want to see if someone will render them.
I'd heard a bit about these rejected storyboards over the years but had never really seen anything about them until recently and then in this thread. One of those things you assume was true but is buried somewhere in a vault or closet.