ASTRA stage sketches for TMP

[Ottens]

Ottens here, from Forgotten Trek. I have a bunch of sketches were were produced for TMP by Robert Abel's ASTRA team; they're for sets that were originally supposed to be part of the visual effects for the film, several of which were envisioned for the infamous Memory Wall sequence. Trouble is, I don't really know what they're all for, specifically, and I'm hoping some of the people here will be able to help me out. So here goes....

1:

This one may have been intended for the Memory Wall scene, where they wanted this "moving skin" or something... At least it reminds me of this concept art...



2.

This image also reminds me of above concept art. Seems they wanted Kirk and Spock to go into some kind of "tunnel" ? :S

3.

Not sure what this is supposed to be... Seems they wanted the Enterprise model to be filmed on this stage to make it looks as if it were entering the cloud ? Again, I was reminded of a concept art drawing:


4.

I have no idea what this is supposed to be about.

5.

Don't know what this is either. "various visual effects" Spock's space walk perhaps?

7 & 8.


Tanks with liquid? Maybe to film V'Ger's "skin"??

Any help would be much appreciated!

 

[Data Holmes]

You want to talk to The God Thing... He'd know.

 

[Captain Robert April]

I think that was for when Spock is flying around inside V'Ger and sees all those memory files of stuff V'Ger has converted into ginormous jpegs.

 

[Griffworks]

I say they were more like ginormous .png's 'cause they seemed to be layered....

 

[Ryan Thomas Riddle]

Ottens said:

4.

I have no idea what this is supposed to be about.

5.

Don't know what this is either. "various visual effects" Spock's space walk perhaps?

7 & 8.


Tanks with liquid? Maybe to film V'Ger's "skin"??

Any help would be much appreciated!

Some of those sketches appeared in either the Star Trek: The Magazine or Star Trek: Communicator; in an issue related to the release of TMP on DVD. IIRC, Abel and Associates wanted V'Ger to have a more luminescent surface that would interact/react with the Enterprise; almost like the bio-luminescent creatures of the deep ocean.

There were some pre-production paintings that depicted the skin of V'Ger reflecting the Enterprise in an almost abstract, Eischer-like rendering with multiple iterations of the ship.

The God Thing, our resident TMP expert, would know a great deal more. He's also posted other pre-production art from Abel and Associates in the movie forum.

 

[Maurice]

I think most of these represent the "living" surfaces that were to be seen as the Enterprise was drawn into V'ger, as indicated the the scale and the indications of backdrop paintings and forced perspective.

7 & 8.


The former has a note about the "mind mend", and you can see a hand in a sub-sketch to the lower right. Apparently, this was the surface Spock was going to touch when he mind melded with V'ger, and the liquid was to allow the hand to distort/ripple the surface, while a slide projector shot images onto the reflective surface, showing what images were flashing through to Spock. There's mechanisms for moving the surface, and well as things to project interactive lighting on both the hand and the surface, making them "marry" in a way that you wouldn't get in a matte shot.

 

[Cary L. Brown]

Yeah, that could all be associated with the lost "Memory Wall" sequence. Since we've never seen the whole sequence, only clips of a few shots that were abandoned, it's hard to say what was intended to fit into it.

But it also looks like it COULD be associated with the flight into the "V'Ger Cloud." the displaced membrane with lights behind it... it reads like it COULD be how they achieved those trippy light effects. Remember, that whole overblown scene (which had audiences falling asleep) was basically just a whole series of bizarre light-and-vapor scenes intended to make the audience be convinced of how awesome V'Ger was... though I think the main effect was to cause people who took acid before the flick to go onto a bad trip.

Short of anyone who "really knows" telling me otherwise, that's going to be my assumption here.

 

[Christopher]

Keep in mind that the original sequence had both Kirk and Spock spacewalking into V'Ger. The "Spock Walk" sequence as we know it was not in the script, but was concocted by Douglas Trumbull's team as a replacement for the failed "Memory Wall" sequence.

 

[Ryann866]

It's amazing to me what these FX guys had to do back then. The imagination it took to dream up and construct some practical means of creating these visual effects...

Today, you can pretty much create anything you want on a computer with CGI... and to think what these guys went through back in the 70's just to come up with a strobing light effect!

I still say the old effects look more believable in most cases.