TOS Turbolift
- Thread starter Koloth TOS
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Agreed. We discussed this a few posts back:
The debate Mytran and I were having was whether or not that was necessary in this case. The size of the lighting gimmick wouldn't have been an issue in 1x09 WALGMO, of course, because we didn't see the lights in that scene. But lifts C2 and A3 are also really close to soundstage walls and fixtures, and we have seen moving deck lights in those (in both axes), so I still find the question relevant to my project.
Not that I'm aware of (would love to see one!). Earlier this year I read on one of these forums that the mechanism was a slitted drum with a light inside. When I tried to make that work in my 3D model, it turned out that it needed to be much larger than I had originally envisioned. Part of the reason is the unavailability/impracticality in 1965 of miniaturized electronics, battery-powered high-lumens lighting, and such.
Another part is the physics. A light shining through slits in the edge of a rotating drum and projecting onto a planar surface is going to make light bars of differing thicknesses as the bar moves across the plane. Let's make an optimistic starting assumption that a 2-foot-diameter drum would be sufficient.
(6-foot Spock model for scale, since that is reportedly the height of Nimoy in his boots.)
The real drum would be opaque, but I've made it translucent for clarity. There are slits on opposing sides (otherwise you have to crank twice as fast; hard to do, especially in the freefall scene; might've been three or four slits in real life, if this was the solution). Radial lines show the beam cast through the forward slit, and yellow rectangles show the size of that beam on the visible surface inside the lift. There are two yellow bars to show the beam thickness at its narrowest (middle of window) and widest (top of window).
In this example, the beam is about 33% wider at the top of the window. This may not sound like a lot, but the human is very good at seeing differences. As I scrutinized several scenes of vertical light movement for this very effect, I did not observe the expected variation in the beams. So, either a different projection system is being used or the drum is larger – a lot larger. Let's double the diameter to 4 feet.
This is better. The distortion is down to the bars at top/bottom being about 14% wider than in the middle. I still think that would be discernible, but let's keep being optimistic and say it's not. Let's just see how big this thing is from a couple of different perspectives.
And of course the drum has to be rotated 90° in a different axis to make the lights move horizontally:
The cab portion of the turbolift set is a bit over 7 feet wide. Leaving room for a 4-foot drum apparatus on the sides and back means a circle of floorspace around 15 or 16 feet is needed. Maybe a bit more to accommodate whatever frame-on-wheels was needed to move, support, and stabilize this device.
Now I'm not saying my measurements are the right ones, or that this is the only way to build a solution. I'm just trying to use some convenient measurements to show why I believe that, if what I read about a drum was actually a Desilu reality, I think it would have to have been a pretty big drum.
My working theory is that the real apparatus was probably more like a slotted conveyor belt around a rectangular light panel, which could have been somewhat narrower, but I'm still trying to figure out how to build that economically using 1965 tech. This solution becomes even more preferable to me than the drum when I think about how Where No Man Has Gone Before had two stacked panels with the light beams moving across the span of both, and the lower panel was close enough to the ground that I don't think there would have been enough clearance for the enormous drum to not be partly below ground level.
For my scale model, I'm experimenting with an idea more like fluorescent tubes sliding on tracks, oscillating back and forth, off and on, so they are only lit up when moving against the cab's direction of travel. (Like sanding in one direction, picking up the sanding block for the return trip, then putting it back down again for the next swipe. Your hand is oscillating above the wood rather than looping around its back side, but the sandpaper is only "on" in the direction you want.) According to Wikipedia, slimline ballasts were introduced in the mid-1940s, and by the early '50s fluorescent tubes were producing more light than incandescents in the US.
However, although it seems feasible that this could have been a solution, it was definitely not the solution for Desilu becase we can see the apparatus' opaquing material (belt/drum surface) moving continuously in the anti-travel direction; looping, not oscillating. And in a few episodes, if we look closely, we can even see that opaquing material actually being rotated behind the mesh when a turbolift transitions between horizontal and vertical movement (Amok Time 21:55 is a good example). Sadly, this might be the only solution that will be feasible for my model.
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Amazing work! I first read about the "slit in the drum" many years ago and have often wondered how it would look.
For the main series though, I do think that a drum with a regular light bulb at one end seems most likely - that's why the horizontal beam is brighter at the bottom:
For vertical light strips movement, the intensity of the strip varies depending on what position it's at - this is also consistent with a drum structure, with the slit being further away from the mesh at the top and bottom of the wall. Here's a comp from Corbomite:
The conveyor is more likely for WNMHGB but not in the same way - the moving elements are thin shadows, rather than light bars. They also stay present before and after the lift moves. It looks like they had a couple of light sources (bottom, middle) in front of which ran a sort of ladder structure. If it was made of a flexible material it could be fed from a roller at the top and into another roller at the bottom.
For the main series though, I do think that a drum with a regular light bulb at one end seems most likely - that's why the horizontal beam is brighter at the bottom:
For vertical light strips movement, the intensity of the strip varies depending on what position it's at - this is also consistent with a drum structure, with the slit being further away from the mesh at the top and bottom of the wall. Here's a comp from Corbomite:
For vertical light strips movement, the intensity of the strip varies depending on what position it's at - this is also consistent with a drum structure, with the slit being further away from the mesh at the top and bottom of the wall. Here's a comp from Corbomite:
For what it's worth, I measured the height of the four light bars in that image, and on my screen, the bottommost one is about 12 mm high, the one above it is 11 mm, the third is 10, and the topmost one is about 11. That would make the bottommost strip about 20% wider than the middle one, which would suggest a drum size in between the two depicted in Just a Bill's post above. Maybe a 3-foot diameter?
Oh yeah, I forgot the light and shadow were inverted. That's what I get for running from memory!
Nice work guys, and thanks for correcting my sloppiness. I was so focused on the widths of the beams that I didn't pay any attention to the intensity or falloff at the ends. Attention to detail is great when you pick the right details!
It feels like we're closing in on the answer here. A three-footer is still pretty big, but it's looking more like the drum approach is the real answer after all. Here's what 3 feet looks like:
I've actually wondered if there was some kind of standard Hollywood apparatus for things like this; say, when you're shooting a night scene inside a vehicle mockup, and in the background you want fake headlights of other cars occasionally skimming across the story vehicle's windows. You'd want some degree of control, consistency, and repeatability, not just the gaffer's nephew waving a couple of flashlights around. I imagine there could be different "opaquing stencils" that you could slide inside the drum's perimeter to make the light shape a perpendicular bar, searchlight dot, pair or cluster of multiple small spots, etc. In this hypothetical Delusionlu Studio, you could make more stencils on the fly out of stiff but bendable black cardstock or vellum or something. So maybe the Trek crew could have had stencils with varying numbers of slits around the perimeter, to make it easier to simulate slow, fast, and freefalling turbolifts.
Anyway, if such a thing exists I didn't know what to call it and couldn't find anything in my (admittedly brief) web searching. Any knowledgeable BTS movie folks out there got an answer?
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Using sweeping lights to create the illusion of an elevator rising/descending is a pretty common trick, although usually it's meant to suggest something like corridor lights shining through a partly transparent elevator door or window. So yeah, it does seem likely that there's some kind of standard apparatus for such things.
My Yale-educated brother didn't understand why the original ENTERPRISE model at the Air 7 Space Museum was only painted on one side. So I explained to him the advantages of symmetry and the cost-cutting of television.
Were there ever shots that shifted between vertical and horizontal movement? If so, that would require a rig with two drums that would have to be slid over mid-shot from one drum to the other, or both drums would have to be set back a bit from the window.
BTW, I'm not saying this is how they did it, but I've done a trick like this on a film set. You don't necessarily need a big drum: you can get away with something smaller with a skinny slit for a very bright light to pass through. You don't even need the light inside the drum if you have a mirror in it at 45°.
BTW, I'm not saying this is how they did it, but I've done a trick like this on a film set. You don't necessarily need a big drum: you can get away with something smaller with a skinny slit for a very bright light to pass through. You don't even need the light inside the drum if you have a mirror in it at 45°.
Yep:
One drum, mounted on something that lets it rotate about an axis parallel to the cab centerline (the two blue drums shown in my previous post are actually the same drum, just rotated 90° and moved to a different window).
Just wanted to make mention that the turbolift deck lights in "The Corbomite Maneuver" are some of my favorite. Four lines being visible is a cool variation on the theme.
So, to be clear, the envisioned mechanism is operated as follows:
After the elevator is shown moving horizontally, the whole the drum assembly is turned 90 degrees about the secondary axis within at most a few seconds, and then the elevator can be shown moving vertically?
It's fascinating to me that we have no pictures of this apparatus, given that the turbolift was such an important recurring part of the set.
After the elevator is shown moving horizontally, the whole the drum assembly is turned 90 degrees about the secondary axis within at most a few seconds, and then the elevator can be shown moving vertically?
It's fascinating to me that we have no pictures of this apparatus, given that the turbolift was such an important recurring part of the set.
The DISCO funhouse?
Get. Out.
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