ST:TMP Model work (video)

[Maurice]

I don't see this having been discussed here before, but there's a documentary called Sense of Scale about motion picture model work, and they have an extended clip of the section about ST:TMP on YouTube which has some photos I'd never seen before and some insights into how some of the effects were accomplished.

[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NICojAZ95aM[/yt]​

 

[CorporalCaptain]

That's a very instructive and informative video, but I could have benefited from knowing who all those people were!

 

[Maurice]

That's a very instructive and informative video, but I could have benefited from knowing who all those people were!

Pete Gerard, Mark Stetson, Patrick Mcclung, Mike Joyce, Leslie Ekker, Ron Gress, and Lisa Morton.

Their names are listed in the description of the video, but there are no lower 3rd texts to identify who is whom.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

That's a very instructive and informative video, but I could have benefited from knowing who all those people were!

Pete Gerard, Mark Stetson, Patrick Mcclung, Mike Joyce, Leslie Ekker, Ron Gress, and Lisa Morton.

Their names are listed in the description of the video, but there are no lower 3rd texts to identify who is whom.

Thank you!

 

[Christopher]

Holy moley. The lightning on the Klingon ships and Epsilon 9 was real electricity from a Tesla coil??? I always assumed it was hand-animated. And I suppose the laser-scanning they were talking about was how they created the ripple of light running along the models and "digitizing" them, although there would've had to be an additional optical step to vanish the models. That thing about the dangerous mixture they used to create the V'Ger energy bolts sounded interesting too, but I was unclear on the specifics.

And V'Ger's surface was carved out of surfboard foam! (Well, the initial mold, with the final model vacuformed over it.) Good to know who's responsible for the intricate, organic textures on V'Ger; they were Syd Mead's designs. Not surprising.

 

[Maurice]

If you're interested in TMP's effects you really should get your hands on a copy of Cinefex #1 and #2 which goes into a lot of this. TMP included a lot of tesla coil and laser effects. There was a crude clay model of Ilia which got lightning zapped, for instance. There's also hand animated lightning in some sequences.

The lasers were used for the photon torpedoes (shot through a rotating crystal), the wormhole (all of it), the transporter beam (laser shot through crystal fragments), the digitization effect (first run the laser over the model "clean" to get the ripples, then wrap the model in foil and run the laser across it again, which creates all these flashes across the uneven surface for the foil), the cloud above V'ger during the flyover [Christopher mentions this in his reply, below, but I missed it at first, hence this edit], etc. There were also tests done to try to use the laser to actually create V'ger itself that Trumbull thought promising but ultimately they went for the huge physical model.

There's a hilarious photo of the Klingon ship wrapped in aluminum foil in preparation for the laser scan passes in which you can see some card on the Apogee crew affixed huge turkey leg frills onto the tail end of the nacelles...that ship's goose is cooked!

As to the V'ger energy bolts, to clarify what was described, image taking a film can and setting it on a hotplate with this liquid in it full of bits of metal and having the camera directly above it and shooting down into it. What you get is all the moving strange sparkles spreading out from the center (hottest spot) but confined in a circular area. From his description I think these were the BIG bolts fired into Earth orbit rather than the ones fired at the ships (which I believe were tesla coil lightning with a blinding xenon light), but it's possible that same element is in both.

 

[Christopher]

I knew about the use of lasers for the torpedo and wormhole effects. The clouds above the V'Ger surface miniature were also done by a laser sweeping conically through smoke from a smoke machine, IIRC.

What I still don't get about the film-can energy bolt effect is, where is the light source? Is the film can hot enough to be incandescent? That seems unlikely, since then it would melt or ignite the liquid. Or is there a spotlight shining down and reflecting off the liquid and the metal bits?

 

[Maurice]

I knew about the use of lasers for the torpedo and wormhole effects. The clouds above the V'Ger surface miniature were also done by a laser sweeping conically through smoke from a smoke machine, IIRC.

What I still don't get about the film-can energy bolt effect is, where is the light source? Is the film can hot enough to be incandescent? That seems unlikely, since then it would melt or ignite the liquid. Or is there a spotlight shining down and reflecting off the liquid and the metal bits?

Probably a light and likely photographed with high contrast film.

 

[Christopher]

Yeah, and they mentioned shooting through various gels to tint it -- I guess that's where the green came from.

 

[Hober Mallow]

Ah, the good old days, when special FX were more interesting than a guy sitting at a computer...

 

[Maab]

Really, really interesting, thanks!

I wrote to them to get a copy of the DVD. I wish they included the pictures as high resolution files on the DVD, but this is not the case. Never mind.

Best,
Maab

 

[Maurice]

"Never mind" meaning you're not buying it?

 

[SeerSGB]

Ah, the good old days, when special FX were more interesting than a guy sitting at a computer...

Yeeeup. CGI has come a long, long way, but I'll always throw my lot in with classic physical miniatures.

 

[Maurice]

They did all kinds of tricks in TMP to try to make things look more real, like putting bits of foil in the camera to refract out of shot lights through the lens during the drydock scenes...sorta like JJ lens flare courtesy Doug Trumbull.

 

[SpHeRe31459]

Ah, the good old days, when special FX were more interesting than a guy sitting at a computer...

Agreed. The ingenuity of the "old school" VFX guys never ceases to amaze and impress me.

 

[SpHeRe31459]

I see Trek model maker extraordinaire Greg Jein is interviewed for the doc.
http://www.senseofscalefilm.com/TRAILER.html

 

[Maab]

"Never mind" meaning you're not buying it?

No, no, I'm buying it anyway.

Best,
Maab

 

[Maurice]

I just back from from a VES (Visual Effects Society) event where they had a tribute to the late Ray Harryhausen, speaking of ingenuity.

Oh yeah, and I got to chat up Henry Selick.

 

[Joe_Atari]

Very cool video; always great to get new insight into TMP's VFX, particularly from those directly involved. And yeah, captions would have been great! But how did the still from the DE make it in there?

Also, how on earth did the second guy work in VFX in Hollywood in March 1979 and not have heard of Douglas Trumbull? I was like 9 years old living in central Illinois at the time and even I knew Trumbull's work from 2001, Silent Running, and especially CE3K.

 

[drt]

If you're interested in TMP's effects you really should get your hands on a copy of Cinefex #1 and #2 which goes into a lot of this.

I recall from #1 Trumbull lamenting the small size of the refit model he inherited upon taking over, and that he would have built it more like thirty feet long instead of seven, which I bet would have looked much better in some shots.