How does LeVar Burton actually see outta that thing?

The groves of Geordi's VISOR are so thin that I wouldn't be surprised if I were to interview him to tell me that he's been crashing into things when walking around on the sets.

I mean, the way they made it... so strange... in a funny way.

But in First Contact, he doesn't wear it anymore. Could it be that some point between Generations and First Contact, Beverly found some other way to see without the VISOR?

Not that I don't like Geordi with the VISOR on, in fact, I'm not that used to seeing him without it, it's just that I wonder how his actor portraying him manages to see through it without bumping into the cast and crew and into things.

 

There are slats in the VISOR prop that he can see though. It's like looking through small open window blinds.

 

It was probably made out of the same material they use for foil sunglasses. They would allow him to see out of the visor, whilst the foil covered up his eyes. Burton did mention in interviews that it still restricted his vision, so we have to assume he learnt ways to manage.

I think they switched to the optical implants in FC to make it easier for Burton. It must be extremely hard as an actor being unable to fully convey facial expressions with such a device covering your eyes. It did make sense to switch to them as it's been mentioned that the VISOR caused Geordi pain and we have to assume that the implants negated this pain. The implants also seem to have more functions, such as a zoom function (as seen in FC).

 

The first VISOR prop was based on a hair barrette. The key is that when the rods were that close to his eyes, they'd blur enough that they wouldn't really obscure his vision too much. Later on, they switched to a different VISOR which I'm pretty sure had the "rods" printed on a flat, translucent surface, so it was more like seeing through mirrored sunglasses.

 

[YT]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeyr7DKHZu4[/YT]

 

Oh, really? I thought that was the same VISOR prop worn by him in all seven seasons of the show.

Repost that picture?

 

But Burton *couldn't* see out of that VISOR!

I recently watched some interviews with Burton on the interwebs and he spoke about wearing the VISOR, how it really did obscure his vision. He could only see directly in front of him, limited peripheral range, and so on. I can believe it.

 

The first time Geordi actually didn't need to wear the VISOR in long scenes was in the series finale All Good Things with all the scenes that took place in the future. He looked waaay better without it.

Not sure why they went back to the VISOR look in GEN and THEN go back to the optical implants in FC. They should have had him VISOR less starting with GEN.

 

They didn't have the time, there was only a few weeks break between the wrap of AGT and the filming of GEN. Everything was quickly put together and only small cosmetic changes were made to existing sets in order to make the more cinema friendly.

 

I don't think giving Geordi the All Good Things look for GEN really would have taken too much effort. Just replace the VISOR with blue contacts. They can explain his new look the same way they did in FC, with one line and a single visual effects shot.

 

So... he could see.

 

I liked how Geordi in the possible future in AGT had blue eyes and in FC has blue ocular implants.

In real life Levar Burton has really brown eyes.

 

As far as I know, both the original and revised VISOR props used thin brass rod set into the prop's aluminum frame. Here's a photo of a screen-used one from Generatons that clearly shows the thickness. This is a fan-made one built along the lines you describe, and it doesn't look right.

EDIT: In fact, one of the prop makers from HMS Props describes exactly how they built the thing later in that same thread.

 

That's addressed in the e-novella Slings and Arrows Book III: The Insolence of Office by William Leisner, part of a miniseries about the first year or so that the Enterprise-E ws in service. In it, Admiral Hayes orders Geordi to give up the VISOR because of the security risks it's been shown to pose.

Okay, I'll take your word for it. All I know for sure is that the later VISOR looked different; in the original, the rods alternated being connected only to the top or only the bottom, like the hair barrette it was inspired by, but in the later one all the rods went all the way from top to bottom. It looked to me like it might have been done the way I described, but I was just guessing.

 

There was also that VISOR they used for only one episode before deciding it was too heavy to use for filming every week:

http://www.gizmodo.com.br/files/2009/10/01/cdbf49b0a4076157_large1.jpg

 

I seem to remember someone saying they took the "banana clip" VISOR away as it was messing with LeVar's eyesight, if you hold one of them up to your eyes for any length of time (yes, I have done) it really does make your vision go wonky

 

LeVar tells the story of how his girlfriend accompanied him to a meeting of the producers of Star Trek and she was wearing that hair comb. They asked her to take it off her head and then figured out how it would become the visor we all know.

And yeah, when I saw him wearing one, I took it off my head and tried it out. (Yeah, I'm a TRUE geek, I admit it!) You can only see straight ahead with one of those over your eyes.

 

Yeah I always thought it was pretty useless making Geordi blind. They barely ever talked about it and they didn't do any stories about it either. If they were gonna make him wear that thing they might have made it a little bit useful.

 

The problem is that the "they" who originated the idea weren't the same "they" who ended up producing the majority of the series. Of the people who developed TNG -- Gene Roddenberry, David Gerrold, D. C. Fontana, Bob Justman -- all but Roddenberry had been driven out by the end of the first season, and I'm not sure if Roddenberry made any substantial contributions beyond the second season or so, given his declining health. And so a lot of the original intentions behind the show fell by the wayside. The original developers wanted the Enterprise to be charting the deep, unknown frontier, away from home for so many years that the crew needed to bring their families with them. They wanted the families and civilians to be a major part of the series, to have the Enterprise be not just a ship but a community in space. They wanted to focus on new aliens in that uncharted frontier and keep familiar aliens to a minimum. Instead, the E-D spent most of the series on diplomatic or political or military missions in known territory; we ended up seeing a lot of the Klingons and Romulans; and the civilian scientists aboard were forgotten, with the only civilians we ever saw being families of the Starfleet crew. Data was originally meant to be capable of emotion, just inexperienced at dealing with it, but Michael Piller retconned him as an emotionless being. And the original creators no doubt had ideas about what Geordi's VISOR could be used for -- see "Heart of Glory" -- but their successors evidently had little interest in the idea.