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The new VFX book for TMP now comes with an art card!

Since the link doesn't mention a publication or shipping date for this book I'm assuming that even these editions with the card will be available in early September. I've already pre-ordered mine through Amazon and am very much looking forward to getting this! If Jeff Bond's recent book about Irwin Allen's career is any indication, this book is going to be a real treat!
 
The book contains a lot of images I've seen before and many I have not (notably storyboards). There's a great photo of the Klingon bridge set taken from outside and you can see how high up it is and that the sections are on wheels so they can be moved around.

On the downside I was slightly vexed that they they completely covered up the city of San Francisco in the deleted Air Tram station matte, covering it with a goddamned sketch. It's the only good look at the film's original conception of the city and they blew it. They also flopped a photo of the painting of the nacelle and dock seen outside the Rec Deck. Tch tch.
 
Really looking forward to this book! A short preview went up yesterday, which includes a few pictures and some brief text explaining the origins of the book:

https://trekmovie.com/2020/08/27/ex...the-art-and-visual-effects-coffee-table-book/

Quoting the last two paragraphs:

“The Star Trek division, John Van Citters, was extremely cooperative,” said Bond. “They allowed us unfettered access.” Paramount even provided the authors with a thumb drive containing thousands of high-resolution production photos. “There were 27,192 photos on this drive,” Kozicki said. “It’s like they have given us access to pretty much every photo they have in their archives.”

With this embarrassment of riches, the authors felt like part of their chore was trying to find photos that fans haven’t seen before, which was quite a challenge considering the material is over 40 years old. In the end, they were able to publish over 400 photos in a big, 192 page, coffee-table art book. “It deserves to be bigger,” said Bond, “because it’s the first Star Trek film and it’s the most visually expansive of all those movies. It’s groundbreaking in its way, and it really deserves to have a big book like this.”
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27,192 photos??!!! :eek:

I don't know how they whittled it down to just 400. I wouldn't have the heart!

That's some editorial undertaking. I'm guessing we might see more of those photos in the future.
 
Got the book. Read the book. It's a bit of a mixed bag.

To most TMP fans it will be fine. There're some nice pix, and a good overview of how the film's design and VFX came together. There's a nice acknowledgement of what ASTRA contributed. Details on things like why the red pinstriping was dropped from the Enterprise, what Mead's design approach was for V'ger (albeit missing that he's said he used Angkor Wat as an inspiration for the biological looking material), etc.

Some quibbles:

A lot of the photos have been seen before if you've poked around the internet for stuff about the film. Some photos of things we've never gotten a good look at are printed too small. There're a few photo mistakes, i.e. p64 features photos of the same subject taken from almost exactly the same angle, and the smaller one doesn't provide you with any additional info. Some pictures are mislabled (notably things described as V'ger interiors which are clearly exteriors).

They covered up San Francisco in the deleted tram station shot?! @#$%!
IMG_3705.jpg

There're a few factual mistakes, notably around the subject of the pre-TMP films, and the summary of "The God Thing" finale is flat out incorrect (I've read the script), and saying Alan Dean Foster was working on the teleplay for "In Thy Image" when i'm pretty sure he only wrote the story treatment. In one place it says the starboard mount on the Enterprise was never used when it was the port; stating shuttles are seen in the hangar deck matte (only true in Probert's concept but not in the matte in the film), inexplicably referring to the Enterprise as having "art nouveau" contours when it's art deco. There are a few places where things are stated authoritatively which are merely logical inferences or based on anecdotes...not always correct.

There's no bibliography.

None of which is to say it's not a perfectly fine book, but it's not quite as definitive or rigorously fact checked as I was hoping.
 
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Just received this too. I can't claim to have anything like Maurice's knowledge of the subject matter, but my initial flick-through impressions were good. Loads of beautiful photos and art that were new to me, or that I'd previously only seen in poor quality. I'm looking forward to reading it fully soon.

And yes, I thought exactly the same when I saw that tram station shot! It was new to me, so I couldn't understand why they'd covered a beautiful painting like that.
 
Daddy Todd said:
It’s a coffee table book. You won’t learn much, if anything at all, but the pictures are splendid.
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Actually there was a bit in there that was new even to me, but I worry how much if this is based on contemporary interviews and looking at other questionable histories.
 
Maurice said:
Actually there was a bit in there that was new even to me, but I worry how much if this is based on contemporary interviews and looking at other questionable histories.
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What was new to you? I don’t remember going “huh, I never knew that” about anything significant. Or, really, anything at all.
But maybe it was minor stuff that you noticed, and I breezed right past.
 
Daddy Todd said:
What was new to you? I don’t remember going “huh, I never knew that” about anything significant. Or, really, anything at all.
But maybe it was minor stuff that you noticed, and I breezed right past.
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I didn't characterize any of it as significant. :) For instance, clearly seeing the Klingon ship model as it was first painted revealed that it then had a two-tone gray and light green color scheme like the TV series model. Reading a different explanation for why the red pinstriping was largely dropped from the Enterprise and that they sealed the mounting plate on the port side of the miniature. Learning that the artificial horizon gizmo in the bubble above the helm was actually floating in water (presumably making it easier to slide around during the wormhole), etc.

I knew a lot of the stuff about ASTRA because I've spent several hours talking to Richard Taylor about all that, so none of that was really new.
 
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