She died a few months ago. But she was on set in the final year... "Turnabout Intruder", actually. That's the visit covered in "Star Trek Lives!"
Kirk's Tunic Color?
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She died a few months ago. But she was on set in the final year... "Turnabout Intruder", actually. That's the visit covered in "Star Trek Lives!"
If you look at the box art for the re-release of the AMT Enterprise model kit, the side panel with a photo of Kirk shows the exact green color that his uniform shirt looked on set:
http://www.hobbytalk.com/bbs1/showthread.php?t=241052
http://www.hobbytalk.com/bbs1/showthread.php?t=241052
The life size standee I have of Kirk on a transporter pad shows the tunic as a light olive drab.
I just posted this in the "moral compass" thread as an aside, but found this thread now.
Just saw a season three command tunic at the Trek Exhibit in Detroit. It was under two white lights in a clear case.
It was . . . greenish gold. Gold with a tint of green. I am sorry to be a fence sitter, but I went back several times to make myself pick which color. Even (truly) walked into the room with my eyes closed, opened them, and . . . it's really neither green nor gold, but a weird in-between color. Definitely has a greenish cast to it though. Like how it photographs on the bridge, season three and on location, esp. Omega Glory IIRC.
Keep in mind you're looking at a garment that's around forty years old and spent a lot of time under harsh studio lights. It's rather shocking how much colors can fade and change over time. The blue tunics from the pilots have turned lavender, for example.
By all accounts, and as can be seen in some publicity photos taken under much more forgiving lighting conditions, the command tunics were something of an olive drab/avocado color. Where it gets weird is thanks to the nature of velour, and how it can refract light and actually appear to be a different shade than it really is, especially really bright yellow-white incandescent stage lights that had to be turned off between scenes lest they catch the set on fire. What doesn't help things is some of the color mixers never got the memo that Leonard Nimoy was supposed to be yellowish and promptly went about color correcting the film to give him a healthy pinkish skin tone (this is mainly a problem with local stations tweaking their broadcast signal; the studio nitwits got the point fairly early, after the first dozen phone calls from Bob Justman demanding to know why their alien first officer didn't look alien). This sort of thing, naturally, effected all the colors, not just Nimoy's face, making those command tunics not only look greenish-gold, but downright orange at times.
Pay special attention to the darker, moodier scenes; you'll see those "gold" command tunics suddenly look green.
Besides, Bill Theiss said on more than one occasion that the command color was green, as shown in the dress uniforms and that wraparound tunic of Kirk's. It was just the choice of material for the standard tunic that made the difference.
By all accounts, and as can be seen in some publicity photos taken under much more forgiving lighting conditions, the command tunics were something of an olive drab/avocado color. Where it gets weird is thanks to the nature of velour, and how it can refract light and actually appear to be a different shade than it really is, especially really bright yellow-white incandescent stage lights that had to be turned off between scenes lest they catch the set on fire. What doesn't help things is some of the color mixers never got the memo that Leonard Nimoy was supposed to be yellowish and promptly went about color correcting the film to give him a healthy pinkish skin tone (this is mainly a problem with local stations tweaking their broadcast signal; the studio nitwits got the point fairly early, after the first dozen phone calls from Bob Justman demanding to know why their alien first officer didn't look alien). This sort of thing, naturally, effected all the colors, not just Nimoy's face, making those command tunics not only look greenish-gold, but downright orange at times.
Pay special attention to the darker, moodier scenes; you'll see those "gold" command tunics suddenly look green.
Besides, Bill Theiss said on more than one occasion that the command color was green, as shown in the dress uniforms and that wraparound tunic of Kirk's. It was just the choice of material for the standard tunic that made the difference.
Thank you, Captain April for being the voice of reason. You can see the command uniforms also "change color" at times in the middle of a scene during TNG, and it even happens with J.J.'s uniforms.
We didn't have color TV until 1975. So I spent a lot of time in the TV section of Two Guys on saturday mornings.
Except that the "primary colors" are red, blue and yellow - they are the colors from which all others can be mixed e.g. green is created by mixing blue and yellow. (Don't ask about tints and shades etc.
)Back durring the original series, when I was a minnow, I actually thought that the GR and Theiss had designed the command shirts using the idea of the three primaries for the three major area os service - as an art student, I was pleased and impressed.
Oh well. I now accept that the command shirts were indeed a very "goldish" green, a very 60s color BTW.
Except that the "primary colors" are red, blue and yellow - they are the colors from which all others can be mixed e.g. green is created by mixing blue and yellow. (Don't ask about tints and shades etc.
Back durring the original series, when I was a minnow, I actually thought that the GR and Theiss had designed the command shirts using the idea of the three primaries for the three major area os service - as an art student, I was pleased and impressed.
Oh well. I now accept that the command shirts were indeed a very "goldish" green, a very 60s color BTW.
Primary colors...it depends. It actually depends whether you're talking about the primary colors of light or pigment (eg, paint). The primary colors of light are red, blue, and green. The primary colors of pigment, as Rackon noted, are red, blue, and yellow.
I am merely reporting what I saw. I do not dispute Theiss' report of them being green. He is unimpeachable, plus there's the logic of the casual and dress unis. The one I saw was definitely greenish, just not "green." The tunics I saw were all third season (non-velour). Spock's looked correct, not lavender. McCoy's medical short-sleeve was surprisingly greyer blue, and scratchier (rougher fabric) than it appears on film.
I read somewhere that the tunic colors corresponded to the rgb of tvs, as NBC wanted a splashy color show as it moved to being the all-color network.
aside: Picard's was surprisingly raspberry-er than the maroon that appears onscreen.
I read somewhere that the tunic colors corresponded to the rgb of tvs, as NBC wanted a splashy color show as it moved to being the all-color network.
aside: Picard's was surprisingly raspberry-er than the maroon that appears onscreen.
Except:
if you're mixing lights, as is often done in a TV studio, the primary colors are red, blue and green.
If you superimpose a green light with a blue light, you get yellow!
I noticed that, too; especially that jacket he wears sometimes. Very raspberry -- even on screen. ( I'm rewatching STNG at the moment; up to Unification 2 today.)
This comes from the tendency to think in "primary colors" for some folks.
The color of the tunic is not "yellow" but is not "green" either. It's actually a somewhat "green-brown-tinged" gold.
There are those who take the small element of green in the total coloration and assert that this makes it "green" while this is far from the case.
Kirk's wrap-around is truly green, as is his "dress jacket," but the standard tunic is really an "aged gold" coloration.
That's what I saw. Whether it was greener 41 years ago as someone suggested: sure, maybe.
Well, according to Star Trek XI, it's Gold, I guess. But if you look at some of these shots from TOS, I think you can see why Theiss and others described the colour as green, or drab olive, or avocado-lime....
Here's one from the Trading Cards:
This shows the high contrast of the three uniform colours:
Scotty, Beam down the guy with the avocado uniform and his two friends in blue:
The Simpsons would not have gotten wrong, would they?
And, final proof, from our friends at Diamond:
Q.E.D. Captain Kirk wore a Green uniform, though the lighting and material tricked us, but we should've known from his wraparound and his dress uniform.
Here's one from the Trading Cards:
This shows the high contrast of the three uniform colours:
Scotty, Beam down the guy with the avocado uniform and his two friends in blue:
The Simpsons would not have gotten wrong, would they?
And, final proof, from our friends at Diamond:
Q.E.D. Captain Kirk wore a Green uniform, though the lighting and material tricked us, but we should've known from his wraparound and his dress uniform.
We didn't have color TV until 1975. So I spent a lot of time in the TV section of Two Guys on saturday mornings.
So my siblings and I weren 't the only ones...
We didn't have color TV until 1975. So I spent a lot of time in the TV section of Two Guys on saturday mornings.
So my siblings and I weren 't the only ones...
No, you're not alone in that respect. Besides, we also had the every three year family vacation/road trip where we got to enjoy color TV in the Holiday Inn.
BTW, what I consider to be the nicest shots of the color of the command shirt is The Omega Glory Viewmaster reel (especially the one of Kirk in his chair). Arguably, the 3-D side view of Uhura is the best shot of those reels, but that's another subject.
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