Favourite original FX shots...
- Thread starter Warped9
- Start date
A lot of the cost is that they contracted a bunch of actors and when the show was canceled they had to still pay them and then negotiate new contracts for the movie.
Given the years (1978-79) - I doubt it overrun THAT much (tens of millions) - The average A list feature film cost 10 million on average.
And if the wiki entry is accurate - the costs for the actual final film sets used cost a little under 2 million.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_The_Motion_Picture
And the suits at Paramount ended up hiring Dykstra and Trumble, which saved the day for the film’s release date.
Well, the release was still crazy. One of my old friends from high school was assisting the projectionist at Grumman's Chinese Theater as an apprentice projectionist the day Star Trek: The Motion Picture opened. They received their copy of the film by courier just 30 minutes before the first showing, and the showing was late because the film in the canisters was still wet, and they had to be extra careful as a result when they were threading the film canisters into the projectors.
My friend asked the projectionist if this was a regular type of occurrence, and the projectionist responded with a firm "No" and told him this was the first time he ever had anything like this happen.
I wonder if they changed the AMT bridge on that a bit...
That was the AMT I had that my Dad made for me. Simple aft nacelle cap--which was accurate...the rectangle and the vents were painted or decaled on.
Abel was mostly shooting tests at the point they were canned. ILM was in a similar position 10 months before Star Wars came out, but ILM was not shut down but Abel got the boot. I don't think it was tens of millions, because means a minimum of 20 mil was spent. Abel had burned through the budget they had and said they would need a shit ton of money to finish the movie, but got canned. I talked at length about this with Richard Winn Taylor.
I bet that figure's based on the set costs listed in the Making of TMP book and I don't believe it includes the construction costs for the TV sets that were then extensively revamped.
This shot from TWS where Kirk and McCoy start to de-materialize, but they still were capable of moving.
I've always loved that little sparkle. 
I recognize the not moving was a limitation of the matte technology of the time, but I actually preferred people not moving when transported. When moving transportees was introduced in TWOK(?) (though now you've shown it came earlier...) it really bothered me.
This may bother you also,
but moving transportees happened in TMP.
The idea of moving while transporting, being able to talk in the beam, to see what's happening as you're beaming out and then later as you're beaming in, that's a neat solution to a couple of problems: the problem of keeping people alive (they're always alive in the beam and they continue to exist as living beings throughout the whole process), and the problem of duplication (the transportee isn't disassembled, they're just converted into one form of energy and then converted back to their original material form), malfunctions and accidents notwithstanding.
Just food for thought, I don't want to hijack the whole thread to discuss transporters.
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Ah thank you. And now that I think about it, moving in transporters in TMP was NOT a good thing for some people...
And yeah, if transporters work that way, it keeps the worm can upright. Though as I recall, there is onscreen evidence to the contrary.
I've never heard that phrase before, but in context I think I get the meaning!
I don't disagree with that. It's practically inevitable, when the answer to ,"How does it work?" is, "Very well, thank you!"
Another poster indicates that, in an orbit like this, the Enterprise would be orbiting with its bow about 45 degrees away from the planet, instead of pointing directly at it. This would help justify the bridge being on an angle, in that while in orbit, the Bridge would be facing more towards the planet's surface that out into space, if that was for some reason necessary or helpful
