The other TOS filming models

[Albertese]

Ronald Held said:
Backing up a little, I thought that the planet eater was a windsock dipped in cement.

I had always guessed it was foil wrapped around a tomato cage. Any ideas how they shot the firey maw effect?

 

[Christopher]

Albertese said:
I had always guessed it was foil wrapped around a tomato cage.

Something flexible wrapped around something, but I'm not sure it's foil. Here are some close-ups:

http://tos.trekcore.com/gallery/displayimage.php?album=60&pos=115
http://tos.trekcore.com/gallery/displayimage.php?album=60&pos=190
http://tos.trekcore.com/gallery/displayimage.php?album=60&pos=370

It's evident that its surface is made of wrinkly strips of some kind of reflective material. But on the first one, look closely at the edge of the maw, specifically on the center right of the image. It looks like the strips of material are translucent and visibly overlapping. It looks like some kind of plastic sheeting. In fact, if you look closely at the near side of the forward section on the first image, you can see some diagonal strips that, quite frankly, look like strips of tape holding the plastic sheets together.

Meanwhile, the interior is something rough and orangish-gray. It looks like they made a narrow cone out of some kind of textured material, maybe roughly carved out of wood, and then coated it in strips of clear plastic that they taped together. It's actually a remarkably crude construction, possibly the cheapest filming model since Ed Wood's pie-plate UFOs, and it's amazing that it was so effective onscreen. It's also a cinch that it probably fell apart right after filming, or was just thrown away.

Any ideas how they shot the firey maw effect?

That looks like a pretty basic moire effect, just various radially grooved layers rotated on top of each other with a bright light source behind them and overexposed. Or possibly something using a lens filter designed to create a starburst effect (by refracting the light along radial grooves in the filter), perhaps superimposing several filters and rotating them while shining a bright light behind them.

In this image:
http://tos.trekcore.com/gallery/displayimage.php?album=60&pos=309
you can get a good look at the effect and see the outline where it's matted into the model. You can also get a good look at the texture of the interior -- I really am coming to think it's roughly carved wood -- and at lower left and center left, you can even see what appear to be a couple of the strips of tape holding the plastic coating in place.