Robert McCall TMP spockwalk sketches
- Thread starter trevanian
- Start date
Hey TGT. I'd already edited my post and changed it when I'd looked at the photo again and re-evaluated the coastline, so I'd already edited out the reference to the wharf and Alcatraz. Apparently you'd hit reply before my edit "took". lol
It sure would take a major seismic even to change the coastline like that, because there's not only stuff disappearing under the water, but new land (apparently) risen up. Now, this kind of thing happens where there's volcanic activity (say how Wellington NZ suddenly had a bunch of new land thrust up out of the ocean in the late 1800s), but not so commonly along the kinds of faults around these parts...but I'll ask my geologist friend!
All of this points to the stunning lack of imagination in most sci-fi shows by comparison. In TMP it looks like they tried to imagine a changed world, where in most of the other stuff they put a few Jetsons skyscrapers in and call it a day.
It sure would take a major seismic even to change the coastline like that, because there's not only stuff disappearing under the water, but new land (apparently) risen up. Now, this kind of thing happens where there's volcanic activity (say how Wellington NZ suddenly had a bunch of new land thrust up out of the ocean in the late 1800s), but not so commonly along the kinds of faults around these parts...but I'll ask my geologist friend!
All of this points to the stunning lack of imagination in most sci-fi shows by comparison. In TMP it looks like they tried to imagine a changed world, where in most of the other stuff they put a few Jetsons skyscrapers in and call it a day.
This thread shows why there are a few fans on this forum who should serve as "consultants" on any "TMP finishing project" by paramount...
GodThingFormerly
A Different Kind of Asshole
It's from the Super Bowl XLIII spot, apparently.
Ah, sorry. I was a touch distracted by a phonecall from my malignantly narcissistic cousin when replying to your post.
I think it may be something of a mistake to ascribe all of the coastal changes glimpsed in ST:TMP to purely natural tectonic and hydraulic processes. For example, my own personal rationalization - which was in large part inspired by this Chesley Bonestell illustration - for the extended landmass on the western (Pacific) shore of San Francisco Island is that it is the remnant of some nightmarish land reclamation project dating back to the 21st century when NYC developers and corrupt state and city governments colluded to turn the Bay Area into a Blade Runner-ish overpopulated, highrise-crammed urban shithole so as to leverage property values to the greatest possible extent. After all, Livingston's ITI teleplay when describing the seemingly endless groves of trees in 23rd century San Francisco mentions that "many of them are a century or more old", obviously implying that they were planted sometime in the mid-late 22nd century. Needless to say, a lot can happen to city in three hundred years.
...but I'll ask my geologist friend!
Please do. I would very much like to hear their opinion on the subject. Beyond that, this thread has finally convinced me to buy buy three monographs from Amazon.com that have been sitting in my shopping basket for months.
You forgot the recycled backdrop from The Towering Inferno.
That ship sailed thirty years ago, ol' buddy.
TGT
It was marvelous to get rid of some of the really unpersuasive mattes used in the original version.
trevanian
Rear Admiral
Fortunately they're not really gone ... as long as we remember them (sorry to invoke TWOK to defend TMP, but you use the material that is recognizable and available.)
http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c339/thegodthing/SF_North.jpg
http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c339/thegodthing/SF_South.jpg
http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c339/thegodthing/SF_North.jpg
http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c339/thegodthing/SF_South.jpg
Coit Tower. Apparently it was moved! The coastline in those shots is radically different than what it is now.
GodThingFormerly
A Different Kind of Asshole
Marin-side? This matte plate was photographed looking south from Marin, although it was mirror-reversed so the bridge appears to be the right of the viewer as opposed to the left side as it appeared in a bunch of other films (i.e, Dirty Harry when SFPD pulls that naked dead girl out of the ground after she was kidnapped by Scorpio). As this east-looking unused composite demonstrates, the skytram terminal is on the same side as the city. If you look on the horizon behind the Soleri-esque futuristic cityscape, you can see the "museum city" that contains the Transamerica pyramid as well as the Bank of America HQ and 345 California Center (aka "Tweezer Towers" - seven years before it was actually even built!).
TGT
Well, while I can see Coit Tower and the pyramid in the unused composite, the south angle only shows the one white tower. I guess it could be the Pyramid (image is fuzzy), but if it were either Coit Tower or the Pyramid, the BofA building would be to the right of it in that view...but there's no other tall buildings I can see.
GodThingFormerly
A Different Kind of Asshole
^ It should be somewhat clearer on the 1080p24 Blu-ray Disc. This 720p24 bootleg was taken from a worn print and poorly encoded at a low bit-rate, presumably to keep the files size relatively small (4.6 Gigs).
TGT
TGT
trevanian
Rear Admiral
OK, maybe I've spent too much time talking with the ILM guys ... I mean, SFC in TUC is definitely the Marin side, and I don't remember TVH well, but I'm pretty sure it was in Marin there too. And the Michaelson comments in FANTASTIC FILMS said something about the ship going into a hole in a mountain in Sausalito, right? (the way the piece is written, it made it sound like the Enterprise went into the hole, but we've assumed he meant the tram.)
I just looked at it again ... I guess you're right, but it makes me even more pissed about how ILM has screwed with this stuff now that it is tripping me up.
GodThingFormerly
A Different Kind of Asshole
Yeah, and ILM also mirror-reversed the matte plate they shot from Fort Point for ST:TUC without bothering to obscure the fact.
My copy is still in a box, but I am pretty sure that Michelson is discussing the storyboards he drew for the sequence that have the skytram flying into the frame from the direction of Sausalito (which the DE producers skillfully ignored).
ILM wrecking San Francisco for the Post-TMP films I can handle easily. Drexler and Okuda wrecking SF for ST:TMP-TDE? Not so much, especially when Matthew Yuricich's protégé Rocco Gioffre was then and is today a successful VFX designer who could have Photoshopped replacement mattes that would have looked virtually indistinguishable from the originals. Actually, they would have looked better since the digital files would have been correctly "photographed" (i.e., no smudges obscuring the far end of the Golden Gate Bridge).
TGT
^^^As I've pointed out many many times on these boards, it's very easy to tell which end of the bridge you're looking at, because the south tower stands in the channel, while the north is at the shoreline...except in the DE, where they shot plates only from the Marin side, and thus the bridge changes form from shot to shot. Oy.
DE images
Click to see a slightly cleaned-up version of the unused shot TGT pointed us to.
DE images
Click to see a slightly cleaned-up version of the unused shot TGT pointed us to.
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GodThingFormerly
A Different Kind of Asshole
If they need to house people inside multi-kilometer high arcologies out in Podunk, Iowa as per the trailer, that would strongly imply a planetary population in the hundreds of billions (if not a trillion a la the 1967 LitSF novel A Torrent of Faces by James Blish & Norman L. Knight). Add a dirty and dangerous starship construction industry to the mix, and I am surprised that there is even a single molecule of free oxygen left in Earth's atmosphere.
But don't you understand, DS9Sega, this is how it was supposed to look like from the very beginning!
TGT
Oh yes, the "original vision".
But don't you understand, DS9Sega, this is how it was supposed to look like from the very beginning!
TGT
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trevanian
Rear Admiral
I haven't been on stopmotionanimation.com forum for awhile, but I think Rocco still does the occasional on-glass matte shot for his own amusement in addition to digital ones for day-jobs.
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