"Star Trek: Phase II" Enterprise

[Joe_Atari]

There was a great deal made, for publicity purposes, of the seven million dollar budget for the first seven hours of Battlestar Galactica - "a million dollars an hour!"

A Galactica domestic theatrical release poster I have from 1979 says, "Two years in the making... presented at a cost of $14,000,000"! I guess they were counting the entire series at that point? I'm sorry, "The Lost Warrior" did not cost $1,000,000. Publicists...

Good luck with the PC; looking forward to your next pass on the PII E!

 

[Captain Robert April]

Roddenberry would've nixed any sort of disco music for the same reason he didn't go for any funky 60's style music for the original series, because it immediately dates the program, network execs be damned.

And Magicam was not Trumbull's company. Trumbull was brought in when the project was finally changed to a major motion picture and Magicam was let go. They would've been fine for the small screen (just see how they did with Carl Sagan's "Cosmos"), but not for the big screen.

 

[Chaos Descending]

And Magicam was not Trumbull's company. Trumbull was brought in when the project was finally changed to a major motion picture and Magicam was let go. They would've been fine for the small screen (just see how they did with Carl Sagan's "Cosmos"), but not for the big screen.

I don't know exactly what you're talking about, but didn't Trumbull invent the Magiam system in the first place for The Starlost? I believe that's why the poster above referred to it as "DOug Trumbull's Magicam video composition process".

 

[DestinyCaptain]

Is it just me or didn't the Magicam process footage look just like the chroma key shots from Land Of The Lost? I really don't see why they thought it was gonna work for ANY production...

 

[BolianAuthor]

Roddenberry would've nixed any sort of disco music for the same reason he didn't go for any funky 60's style music for the original series, because it immediately dates the program, network execs be damned.

And Magicam was not Trumbull's company. Trumbull was brought in when the project was finally changed to a major motion picture and Magicam was let go. They would've been fine for the small screen (just see how they did with Carl Sagan's "Cosmos"), but not for the big screen.

Well, the TOS theme was very samba-like, and samba music was HUGE in the 1960's.

 

[Captain Robert April]

From Memory Alpha...

Magicam was a relatively short-lived company specialized in building miniatures. The company, headed amongst others by vice-president Carey Melcher, was a full subsidiary of Paramount Pictures, who created the company to maintain full control over filming models. The most notable contributions of the company are the models built for Star Trek: Phase II and Star Trek: The Motion Picture, most notably the refit-USS Enterprise. The company was in existence from the mid seventies until 1982, when the shop was closed down and Paramount began using Industrial Light & Magic for the pre-production of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.

[snipped list of model makers]

The only credits of the company after The Motion Picture were the TV shows Cosmos(1980) and The Greatest American Hero(1981).

 

[chardman]

Trumbull did develop Magicam. Here's the patent application illustration on wiki.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Magicam-patent.png

And from the Wiki page on the Starlost http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Starlost

Originally, the show was to be filmed with a special effects camera system developed by Doug Trumbull called Magicam. The system comprised two cameras whose motion was servo controlled. One camera would film actors against a blue screen, while the other would shoot a model background. The motion of both cameras was synchronized and scaled appropriately, allowing both the camera and the actors to move through model sets. The technology did not work reliably. In the end a simple blue screen effects were used forcing static camera shots.[2]
The failure of the Magicam system was a major blow — as the Canadian studio space that had been rented was too small to build the required sets. In the end partial sets were built, but the lack of space hampered production.[2]

To the best of my knowledge, the ONLY aspect of Magicam that Paramount ever dealt with was the miniatures fabrication end of things. The acquired it when the agreed to finance Trumbull's "Showscan" project, which utilized a wide format 70mm film (w/ sideways frames, 70mm tall by roughly 150mm wide) shown at 60fps (basically, a more advanced predecessor to IMAX, which utilized the same "sideways" format to more than double the projectable dimensions of 70mm filmstock).

 

[Maurice]

Trumbull did develop Magicam. Here's the patent application illustration on wiki.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Magicam-patent.png

And from the Wiki page on the Starlost http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Starlost

Originally, the show was to be filmed with a special effects camera system developed by Doug Trumbull called Magicam. The system comprised two cameras whose motion was servo controlled. One camera would film actors against a blue screen, while the other would shoot a model background. The motion of both cameras was synchronized and scaled appropriately, allowing both the camera and the actors to move through model sets. The technology did not work reliably. In the end a simple blue screen effects were used forcing static camera shots.[2]
The failure of the Magicam system was a major blow — as the Canadian studio space that had been rented was too small to build the required sets. In the end partial sets were built, but the lack of space hampered production.[2]

To the best of my knowledge, the ONLY aspect of Magicam that Paramount ever dealt with was the miniatures fabrication end of things. The acquired it when the agreed to finance Trumbull's "Showscan" project, which utilized a wide format 70mm film (w/ sideways frames, 70mm tall by roughly 150mm wide) shown at 60fps (basically, a more advanced predecessor to IMAX, which utilized the same "sideways" format to more than double the projectable dimensions of 70mm filmstock).

I've always been amazed at how little there is about Magicam out there. I've started compiling references in order to write a Wikipedia entry on the subject, but not quite gotten to the point where I have enough material to make anything more than a stub out of it.

1. All of the development costs for prior aborted Trek projects (ala TMP) -- estimated at about $500,000.

What's the source for this number?

 

[chardman]

I've always been amazed at how little there is about Magicam out there. I've started compiling references in order to write a Wikipedia entry on the subject, but not quite gotten to the point where I have enough material to make anything more than a stub out of it.

It's not all that surprising to me, as it was a technology that just didn't work reliably, and was quickly abandoned. The only reason the company stayed around as long as it did had little or nothing to do with the Magicam technology itself, but because of the incredible model-making crew they had, and their ability to stretch standard chroma-key composites to their very limits. Keep in mind that the ONLY screen credits the company has beside ST:TMP are "Cosmos" and "The Greatest American Hero". And while they used the actual Magicam technology in "Cosmos" for Sagan's visit to a virtual Alexandrian Library, ALL the other effects were standard chroma-key shots that didn't utilize any aspect of the Magicam process, or simple miniatures shots. And the effects for Greatest American Hero were limited to a few standard miniatures shots (the alien craft of the guys who left the super-suit) and fairly pedestrian chroma-key flying shots.


Years ago, I saw a video film on late night television, which was apparently the only project to utilize the Magicam process extensively. I don't know what it was called, and can't find any reference to it at all, and remember only that the effects looked pretty crappy.

 

[USS Mariner]

I'm surprised no one has actually tried to do this with modern technology. It shouldn't be hard to write a program for and build a rig that would accurately translate and scale both cameras in sync.

Sure, we can bypass this thanks to CGI, but I'd just like to see this done as a proof-of-concept.

 

[BolianAuthor]

Not a problem, if you have the audacity to acquire one...

I do and will.

 

[Mytran]

I've heard the software can be twitchy with some sound card setups, but it's definitely worth a try

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gr8A8Uxd8CY&fmt=18[/yt]

This is it.

I've got an HD version but can't figure out how to get it to display in HD at youtube.

 

[Captain Robert April]

The ship looks a lot better, and the credits are pretty spiffy (maybe a little too nice for the mid 70's). Oh, and it was Willard Decker, not William.

I wonder how it'd play with the opening narration bit from the "Secrets of Vulcan's Fury" clip that's been floating around (I rather like Shatner's moodier reading).

 

[JJohnson]

That clip is amazing. It looks great. You did a really good job!

 

[BolianAuthor]

Aye, the credits look spot-on.

 

[TrekkieMonster]

That, was wonderful!!!

Just reminds me of being a teenager in the '70s and scrabbling around anywhere I could for any scrap of information about the new show. I remember my family took a trip to the California Bay Area for Thanksgiving ... I think it was 1977 ... and I insisted on dragging my parents to the only "Star Trek Place" I knew of, which was in Berkley. I think it was called The Federation Trading Post. They had a painted looking poster of the Phase II Enterprise -- I think it was probably the one that's been posted on here many times. My jaw literally dropped. I was like a kid in a candy store, and got to talk to some of the folks who worked there about all the news and rumors and any scrap I could get hold of about the new series -- no, movie -- no, series -- no, movie.

Ah, life before the interwebs ....

Sorry if I digressed. You just took me back a few decades with this brilliant piece.

Thanks, Dennis, as always!

 

[Santaman]

Looks good!

 

[Sarvek]

Great work Dennis. You really make Star Trek: Phase II come to life.

 

[Sean_McCormick]

This is it.

I've got an HD version but can't figure out how to get it to display in HD at youtube.

...and again, SONY got there first.