One-Stop 11' TOS Enterprise Reference Thread: NCC-1701, No Bloody A...

[TimeyWimey]

Do we know if this kind of close-up photographic documentation was done of the model before the early-90's restoration? I've seen the pictures at the model shop where it's been disassembled, but I've never EVER seen photographs of the model at this level of detail until now. But sadly, it's AFTER it was changed. I wish I could see it at this level of detail in its near-original state. I'd like to see what the original paint job at that time looked like.

The top of the saucer, with theoretically original paint is VERY green compared to the restoration paint, and much greener than it ever looked on TV (but that doesn't mean much I admit). I'm wondering how much of that green is original, and how much is the paint yellowing over time, as paint tends to do.

P.S. - Also, the flash from flash photography doesn't even begin to wash out the heavy-handed weathering, definitely putting the lie to the notion that this was how it was originally painted, but it was washed out by studio lighting.

 

[TimeyWimey]

Somewhere I have the Star Trek Poster magazine with photographs of the model as it looked right after the first restoration ("turkey red" bussard collectors and all). If I can find it, I'll scan those images.

 

[asalaw]

P.S. - Also, the flash from flash photography doesn't even begin to wash out the heavy-handed weathering, definitely putting the lie to the notion that this was how it was originally painted, but it was washed out by studio lighting.

The flash on your camera is less than a kitchen match compared to film lights. We're talking thousands of watts, even tens of thousands of watts.

Go look at the Bird of the Galaxy pictures of the FX shoots (the link is up top), you'll see guys working the model with their shirts off. It ain't for sex appeal.

For regular interior scene lighting in the 1980s and 90s (when I was in the industry), when film stocks were many times faster than what they had to work with in the 60s, 500-watt lights were used as kickers, meaning little accent lights to highlight some little thing on the set, or as eyelights, to highlight an actor's eyes for the camera. Those are called inkies. They didn't get that name by being the biggest lights on the set.

Yes, 500 watts to do what you do at home with a little 15-watt accent light. Not a typo.


An inkie, or "Baby Mole." 500 watts, mofos!
For scale, the fresnel lens is about 3" in diameter.

No, the biggest lights on an interior set could be anywhere from 2,000 watts (a "2K") to 10,000 watts (a "10K"), depending on the size of the set and how much light you needed and the contrast you were after.


Here's a huge Hawaiian dude with what (I'm pretty
sure) is a 5K. Very common interior key light for film.

But the regular interior lighting I'm talking about is completely inadequate for model photography of the sort they did back then. In order to keep the entire model in focus, you need to stop your aperture down as far as possible. A prosumer camera lens usually stops down as far as ƒ22. But pro lenses, even back then, could go to ƒ32 or smaller. Also, you shoot with wide lenses. You stay back from the model as much as possible, one of the things that drive large model sizes.

But mainly, you need thousands and thousands of metric ****ktons of light. Especially since they were shooting at 24 fps or faster, which meant a minimum exposure speed of 1/48 sec. -- ten years later, for Star Wars, the Dykstraflex enabled long exposures and even the use of a tilt-shift lens to really squeeze DoF out of smaller models. But TOS had no such technology. They were dollying a regular production Mitchell camera around that model in real time by hand. [EDIT: Wrong! According to Joseph Westheimer in American Cinematographer, the dolly was motorized. https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2oupUwvgx5FbzRzcHRpajF0d1U/view?usp=sharing ]


Old school, you bastards!

It would not surprise me in the least to learn that for any given shot, they were putting as much as 20,000 watts of light on it. Not counting another 10K or so to light up the bluescreen.

Oh, and 10K isn't even the biggest light I saw used indoors on a stage. I've seen 20K tungstens and even carbon arc lamps used indoors. Those require an operator to keep the carbon rods in tune as they burn down, to keep the light at a constant value. Very often used outdoors as fill in daylight, or even as a key if the sun goes behind a cloud. Indoors, you have to run ventilation hose from the lamp to send the smoke outside, because AIDS-cancer ****kdeath.


An arc lamp, or "brute," or "brute arc," or "GAAAAAAHHH!!! MY EYES!!!!!"

So long story short, no flash popped on that model all the live-long day Saturday even came close to the incredible amount of light blasted on it onstage. Not even all of them at once. Yes, it's plausible, and even definitely the case, that the paint was washed out during photography.

Like this:



And as you can see above, that's not even getting into the horrific amount of grain and contrast created by their compositing process...

- - - Updated - - -

Somewhere I have the Star Trek Poster magazine with photographs of the model as it looked right after the first restoration ("turkey red" bussard collectors and all). If I can find it, I'll scan those images.

Gary Kerr often alludes to high-res images he has, but it's not clear how long before the '91 kreplach they were taken, since he can't disclose them publicly. I assume he's under NDA.

 

[Shaw]

Gary Kerr often alludes to high-res images he has, but it's not clear how long before the '91 kreplach they were taken, since he can't disclose them publicly. I assume he's under NDA.

Kerr can release pretty much anything of his he wants to. The only NDA he had was a version of his plans which were to be part of a book that wasn't published. Kerr doesn't disclose information freely because if he does that, there isn't any reason to pay him for it. There are things shared between people with the express condition not to make them public (I have photos I got this way), but anything I personally produce I have generally been willing to make publicly available (under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license).

And in all my years of researching this stuff I've made, roughly... $0.00.

I don't blame Kerr for not sharing.

 

[asalaw]

Well, that was more of a diplomatic assumption on my part... and I'm not terribly surprised... though I didn't realize they were his own photos. I thought he'd gotten them from CBS or Paramount archives or something.

If the book wasn't published, I wonder if the NDA is still valid. Of course you can contract around subject matter issues (and damn near anything else), so for all I know he's still stuck with it.

 

[TimeyWimey]

So long story short, no flash popped on that model all the live-long day Saturday even came close to the incredible amount of light blasted on it onstage. Not even all of them at once. Yes, it's plausible, and even definitely the case, that the paint was washed out during photography

Ok, fair enough. But we also have that one photo of the model being exhibited minus its deflector dish in the late 60s (I think) absolutely not under bright studio lighting, and there's no sign at all of all that heavy handed panel weathering. Unless we want to argue that it got a repaint prior to that point.

 

[asalaw]

Argue? Definitely not.

Mind you, I'm not saying EM's paint job was accurate or even pretty, just plausible. For instance, I've seen absolutely no evidence that all those grid lines he put all over the model have any basis whatsoever. Even the saucer lines are just pencil. But that's just going from what I've seen around the Interwebs, YMMV.

The streaking on the secondary hull and nacelles was definitely there. You can see it (barely) in production shots of Space Seed and others. But that says nothing about all the rest of it. What truly sucks Andorian tailpipe is that Miarecki went all the way down to bare wood, which I'm pretty sure Dr. Weitekamp said was consistent with practice at the time (anyone else who was at her presentation, please pipe up if that's not correct).

This shot's pretty good -- you can just make out the streak at the base of the pylon, but no visible gridlines all over the hull:


Space Seed: Again, the streaking on the hull and nacelles is there, the leading edge of the dorsal shows that darker color, but still no gridlines:



But neither of these shots really shows what's going on color-wise. They're not even that close in hue to each other, let alone reality.

One interesting thing, though: however bright the studio lighting was, it didn't completely wash out the model's own lighting. You could still see the lit windows and saucer domes. The engine effect, though, was pretty washed out on the show, and in many shots all you could see was the rotation.

So, early repaint? Not sure, though I recently read something implying some sort of fix-up in '74 prior to display. Can't remember where. Anyone?

 

[WinstonWolf359]

I remember from somewhere that the original stand also has some of the hull paint on it. It would be interesting to compare the paint on that to how the saucer appears today, since the stand was lost in storage somewhere until 2000 or so. It could confirm if/how much the base hull color has changed.

 

[asalaw]

I don't recall ever seeing that, but I've never looked closely. But the top of the stand appears to be stripped down to the rebar. [Not rebar, just rod -- don't know why I thought I was looking at rebar all those times.]

EDIT-- just had another look at the stand on the Smithsonian page. The only paint left is actually on the legs, but there's enough to sample. Malcolm Collum said there's almost no resin or binder left in it, so the paint is almost like a chalk and should still be close to the original color. But bear in mind the saucer and the stand are done in completely different kinds of paint and certainly different colors, so it's not a straightforward comparison.

Here's their photo of the stand when it was at the gift shop.

 

[spockboy]

I think this is a good shot. It isn't restored, and the ship isn't under production lights.
I said in another thread if Mr. Thompson could be contacted perhaps he has several more shots that could be properly scanned to help the committee see it's true appearance before any restorations.



Spockboy

 

[Tallguy]

That's a fair amount of weathering, IMHO. No, it doesn't have stark gridlines on the hull, but it's certainly not a smooth gray. In other words it looks a lot like the top of the saucer.

 

[asalaw]

I remember that shot. Cool!


Hey guys, I added a link to the main post -- The article from American Cinematographer, October 1967, "Out-of-this-World Special Effects for Star Trek.'" By Howard Anderson, Linwood Dunn, and Joseph Westheimer. Very interesting reading!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2oupUwvgx5FbzRzcHRpajF0d1U/view?usp=sharing

I got it via e-mail from the Library of Congress. They kindly scanned the article for me and sent me the files, and I combined them into a single PDF in Photoshop and Acrobat. The lineup isn't perfect, owing to the binding of the magazine, but it's perfectly readable. Should be searchable too, since I ran OCR in Acrobat.

Please let me know if you have any issues opening or downloading.

Enjoy!

 

[CessnaDriver]

I think this is a good shot. It isn't restored, and the ship isn't under production lights.
I said in another thread if Mr. Thompson could be contacted perhaps he has several more shots that could be properly scanned to help the committee see it's true appearance before any restorations.
View attachment 434471
View attachment 434470

Spockboy

I think he said that was all he had.
I am convinced that there is no way there are not more pictures though.
Surely someone took some, sitting in some shoe box forgotten or sadly thrown out over the decades.
Or maybe they are kept non-public. Seems pictures of high quality get held closely and guarded.

 

[TheDuc]

I hate to ask this, but has anyone here ever emailed/spoken to Mr Thompson directly? I have always loved the classroom pictures, and I have always wondered how cool that must have been.

 

[spockboy]

My good friend Rick Kelvington sent me an interesting email.
I think he has the perfect idea for the display...and other things

OK so this is broken down into several areas.

1. The original model
2. Displaying the Enterprise
3. Star Trek TOS/Remastered
4. Future remastering

1. The original model
I think, we have to make the original model look as close as possible to how it looked when it was first filmed. Forget the drooping bit on the saucer under section and other things that occurred when the hot lights effected it. You want the model to look as close to its delivery day as possible. This is THAT moment in time, when it was delivered and given to Anderson & Co. to shoot. All things being equal I would have it with it's blue base and a mannequin holding a clip board near it. That's THE Enterprise, filming day one. We need to preserve the original model in that fashion, in that moment in time. So that every fan of Trek TOS can still see her just as she was, the day she arrived. In my mind that is of paramount importance. People need to see how it was filmed, how great she looked, even before she hit 4x3 film. It's history, we don't add jet engines to the Spirit of St. Louis, we don't add skin to dinosaur bones we find. We display them AS they were, and are. We should endeavor to keep her the same. That said...

2. Displaying the Enterprise
With advancements in laser-scanning, 3D printing and what not, we should be able to replica the original model so closely, and then make it better, so after you walk through the first half of the exhibit with the original filming model, near the end you get to see her imagined version, completed port side, perfect paint job, LED lights, and have her move, it wouldn't have to move much, but move enough in front of a star field (even a projected one) to give you a sense of what she is, and how she would look in space. Have her go up and down or encircle the room, so you can see this perfect one, with all it's amazing angels and mass. This is the Enterprise you see in your mind, this is the Enterprise you dream about. She deserves that much.

3. Star Trek TOS/Remastered
Every known and unknown copy of the remastered episodes should be rounded up, like the Star Wars Holiday Special and destroyed, all those who were involved with the project, particularly the CGI team, should be put into an agony booth and left there for a period of time lasting no more than 80 hours but no fewer than 79. After that point a new team should be put together to find as much of the original footage that possibly exists and have it scanned, cleaned, and readied for assembly. TOS should be given the whole TNG treatment. But in place of CGI, get the updated model and shoot all the same shots as the original, not one frame more, or less. Recreate models from the series, in their original scales, and re-shoot them, using the multi-pass techniques that were developed on TNG and DS9. Create a perfect replica, shot for shot of the original series, but with cleaned up model/blue screen shots. These redone episodes will become the NEW master episodes, maintaining the look and feel of the originals, but merely cleaned up. No extra bull****, nothing that didn't exist before 1970. The golden masters as it were.

4. Future remastering
Once the techniques exist to roto people EASILY out of shots, and every scene is roto from every episode, you can update the interior look of the Enterprise "a bit" you can use computers to extend the shots into 16x9, and ILM who will be virtually put out of business by the lack of Star Wars like movies to create, will spend ten million man hours to create prefect CGI replicas of the ships and planets of the original series. Then and only then, can you monkey around with the original series. Only so long as the versions created in part 3 still exist and are easily available on everyone's phone, or TV, or eye implant, what ever is around at the time. CBS-D got it totally wrong, they took something that didn't need fixing, and fixed it. TOS only needed cleaning and a bit of patching to be great... because it was ALREADY great, it filled the imaginations and minds of children and adults from day one. I didn't need fancy effects only cleaned up ones. It didn't need new phaser shots, or better transporter effects, or anything. It needed touched up, not felt up. It was a classic before, only the cob webs needed removed to make it a classic again.
The Enterprise I saw all those years ago, with its red nacelles, and it's unfinished side, made my heart skip a beat, it wasn't because it was made of plastic and wood, and some lights, it was because, something that lived in my mind as vividly as any memory, was within my grasp. And every person I saw who looked up at her, felt exactly the same way.

-Rick kelvington

 

[spockboy]

I remember that shot. Cool!

Hey guys, I added a link to the main post -- The article from American Cinematographer, October 1967, "Out-of-this-World Special Effects for Star Trek.'" By Howard Anderson, Linwood Dunn, and Joseph Westheimer. Very interesting reading!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2oupUwvgx5FbzRzcHRpajF0d1U/view?usp=sharing

I got it via e-mail from the Library of Congress. They kindly scanned the article for me and sent me the files, and I combined them into a single PDF in Photoshop and Acrobat. The lineup isn't perfect, owing to the binding of the magazine, but it's perfectly readable. Should be searchable too, since I ran OCR in Acrobat.

Please let me know if you have any issues opening or downloading.

Enjoy!

Thanks for the article.
Great stuff!

Spockboy

 

[TheDuc]

Hey Spockboy, a huge BRAVO to the Rick Kelvington email, and again "You Guys" really rule.

 

[BrianM]

I'm sorry but I have to disagree with the Rick Kelvington email on almost every point.

1. The original model
I think, we have to make the original model look as close as possible to how it looked when it was first filmed.
WHAT? You would have them tear off the bridge, the domes at the back of the nacelles, and replace them with reproductions? You would ask that the only original paint be sanded off the dish so it can be painted battleship grey and the font only seen in the pilot be reapplied. The nicely made repo bussard collectors tossed out and replaced with orange wood balls? In my opinion this would be worse than what EM did.


2. Displaying the Enterprise
With advancements in laser-scanning, 3D printing and what not, we should be able to replica the original model so closely, and then make it better, so after you walk through the first half of the exhibit with the original filming model, near the end you get to see her imagined version, completed port side, perfect paint job, LED lights, and have her move, it wouldn't have to move much, but move enough in front of a star field (even a projected one) to give you a sense of what she is, and how she would look in space. Have her go up and down or encircle the room, so you can see this perfect one, with all it's amazing angels and mass. This is the Enterprise you see in your mind, this is the Enterprise you dream about. She deserves that much.
No, she doesn't. Maybe if this were a Star Trek Museum., but it's the National Air And Space milestones of flight hall. 1701 will be between The Bell X-1 and friggen Apollo 11. These ships carried death defying heroes to the edge and back for science. I love the Big E as much as the next FanBoy, but it was a TV show. We should hit our knee's and thank the Great Bird of the Galaxy, it's not falling apart in the gift shop.

3. Star Trek TOS/Remastered
Every known and unknown copy of the remastered episodes should be rounded up, like the Star Wars Holiday Special and destroyed, all those who were involved with the project, particularly the CGI team, should be put into an agony booth and left there for a period of time lasting no more than 80 hours but no fewer than 79. After that point a new team should be put together to find as much of the original footage that possibly exists and have it scanned, cleaned, and readied for assembly. TOS should be given the whole TNG treatment. But in place of CGI, get the updated model and shoot all the same shots as the original, not one frame more, or less. Recreate models from the series, in their original scales, and re-shoot them, using the multi-pass techniques that were developed on TNG and DS9. Create a perfect replica, shot for shot of the original series, but with cleaned up model/blue screen shots. These redone episodes will become the NEW master episodes, maintaining the look and feel of the originals, but merely cleaned up. No extra bull****, nothing that didn't exist before 1970. The golden masters as it were.
Again I have to disagree. The TOS BluRay's were handled perfectly. If George had done the same thing with Star Wars 4-6 his hate level would be 50% what it is now. (he did give us 1-3 so it can't be zero) The TOS 35mm films were scanned and presented in HD in the original aspect ratio on the BR. THEN they added the new Special effects and commentary. Keep in mind that most of the executives making the decisions are not old enough to remember even the 70's much less Trek's first run. Most younger viewers wont watch a B&W show, or even one that is not in widescreen. A disk set like you describe would have never made it past the pitch meeting. Lost in Space just went though this. Sheila Allen had to put up all the money to get a remastered LIS in the original format. In fact there would not even be a "Next Gen treatment" had it not been for the success of the remastered new effected TOS set. Having said that, if they could go back to all the original negatives and recomposite all the pieces (if they still exist), I'd buy one. Me and about 100 other people over 40, which is why they will never do it.

4. Future remastering
Once the techniques exist to roto people EASILY out of shots, and every scene is roto from every episode, you can update the interior look of the Enterprise "a bit" you can use computers to extend the shots into 16x9, and ILM who will be virtually put out of business by the lack of Star Wars like movies to create, will spend ten million man hours to create prefect CGI replicas of the ships and planets of the original series. Then and only then, can you monkey around with the original series. Only so long as the versions created in part 3 still exist and are easily available on everyone's phone, or TV, or eye implant, what ever is around at the time. CBS-D got it totally wrong, they took something that didn't need fixing, and fixed it. TOS only needed cleaning and a bit of patching to be great... because it was ALREADY great, it filled the imaginations and minds of children and adults from day one. I didn't need fancy effects only cleaned up ones. It didn't need new phaser shots, or better transporter effects, or anything. It needed touched up, not felt up. It was a classic before, only the cob webs needed removed to make it a classic again.
The Enterprise I saw all those years ago, with its red nacelles, and it's unfinished side, made my heart skip a beat, it wasn't because it was made of plastic and wood, and some lights, it was because, something that lived in my mind as vividly as any memory, was within my grasp. And every person I saw who looked up at her, felt exactly the same way.
Now you're being silly. Us folks who remember the original show are not the target audience. Again CBS did this just right. If you want the original show in NTSC? The DVD's are out there to watch. That's what I watch. But the only way to get new scanned prints was to update as well for the over 25 - 40 folks. Star Trek is still a business to the guys who run Paramount and CBS and no amount of wishing from us is going to change that. If re-rendering the entire show for a 15 year old's eye implant will help the show live on, go for it. It. I still have my Low Res DVD's.

BrianM

 

[Tallguy]

I'm sorry but I have to disagree with the Rick Kelvington email on almost every point.

Hear hear!

I will also point out that although I’m personally not a fan of the Remastered space ship shots I consider a lot of what they did with the live action backgrounds to be a wonder. (Mendez’s office in The Menagerie is terrific.) And I can say that because if I didn’t like them I can watch my originals in HD! (AND the original cut of Where No Man Has Gone Before!)

 

[greatwazoo42]

Last I heard all the remastered shots came from the original shooting scripts and merely completed the s f/x shots that were originally intended.