enterprise reference footage for modellers
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 26 พ.ย. 2022
- Video I pieced together from vintage footage showing the Enterprise from the original series. The blue screen shots taken with studio lighting probably gives the best depiction of the actual colouring, allowing of course for the age of the film.
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A single track for the camera and a guy turning the model by hand. Stone knives and bear skins, indeed. It's fitting she now rests among the accomplishments she helped inspire.
A lot of young people today, accustomed to CG, are absolutely amazed when they see BTS footage of Star Wars, with John Dykstra's motion-controlled miniatures. Imagine their young minds being blown when they watch that random stagehand rotating that eleven foot long, six hundred pound Enterprise by hand...! 😁
And it worked brilliantly!
At least they changed it so he could spin the ship with a crank
@@starshipcaptain4753 Pretty sure the geared head always had the crank; it just turned the ship more slowly. Disengaging the gears so that the head rotated freely would have allowed the techie to perform a faster turn
God that model is beautiful. What an imaginative design by Matt Jeffries. Still looks futuristic 50 years later. Amazing.
The design was pure freakin' genius! Instead of the idea of a traditional rocket, he took the "flying saucer" idea and ran with it, to brilliant effect.
@@crazysnarfy861 agreed
@@crazysnarfy861 Except that aspect was a late arrival in his iterations. He departed from the traditional rocket early, but arrived at the saucer after many drafts.
USS Enterprise, NCC-1701 no bloody ABC or D.
@@leerilea1709 Calm down, Scotty 😋
They really knew their stuff back then , I prefer these kind of models vs the modern day soulless CGI stuff.
It's a real pity this blue screen photography couldn't have been used to remaster the effects for TOS-R. Imagine having the original camera footage re-composited digitally, and with the motion smoothed etc. Would be so much better than the really already-dated CGI space-ship shots.
I’m going to have a go with this footage to teach my students keying and cleanplate that should give them a challenging task
I hate the CGI. The planets look better but the ship looks like a reject from the animated series.
@@Mozart1220 I read one comment a few years ago ( I've forgotten where; otherwise I'd cite it) that said the CG Enterprise looked like something out of a video game.
Yes I would have preferred using CGI to improve the original base special effects. Especially in the case of the Doomsday Machine, whose original effects I thought were amazingly dramatic.
The CGI looked too cartoonish when it was 'remastered' but I have the Blue Ray DVD set which offers the original effects when watching and that is the ONLY way I will watch Star Trek original series, with the original effects.
The music from "The Doomsday Machine" is the best in the entire series. And the episode is one of the best in the entire franchise. And posthumous shoutout to William (Matt Decker) Windom (WWII Paratrooper veteran) and helluva actor and decent guy. In his old age he once drove a long way to appear in a fanfic Trek. For free as for as I know.
There’s a video essay dissection of the score here on TH-cam, gives you an even better appreciation of what a tour de force it is.
@@dogspunk I've seen it. Agreed.
The show had one of the best soundtracks. As a kid, it definitely had me mesmerized.
I was blessed to see the original model at the Smithsonian ... relining my childhood and to see this is amazing...
Were you able to see it after the last restoration?
@@dalebachman2892 I have. although not when it was lit. they only do that once a day for a short period..
its a transcendant moment. even in a building that has the moon lander and all the other great things... its the thing that stands out, that makes the hair on your neck stand up.
ahh the smithsonian istitute made giant skeletons dissapear from dig sites under orders from the vatican.....should be ashamed of themselves
I’m always amazed at how photogenic that model is, and also what they were able to accomplish with relatively primitive SFX camera equipment.
This was a VERY ambitious production, that managed to do quite a lot with a limited budget.
Adam Savage talked about viewing this model in the Smithsonian. It was made of wood, and Still Holds Up 60+ yrs later. Amazing! Thanks for sharing these great tests and passes.
Gorgeous ship. So amazing what they were able to do way back when -- not only before Star Wars but even before 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Wow! That really is THE Enterprise. What a huge, amazing model. It totally captured my imagination as a kid. I feel like a physical model is more realistic than a CGI version. Although...I almost hate to destroy the illusion by watching this!
Any really well done magic trick is still amazing even when you know how it's done.
A physical model is more realistic, because it's...........real. That's all I have, gotta go.
I agree with you. While CGI has added to effect shots the old model shooting miniature (Gads I have a hard time saying miniature talking about the 11 foot model. lol) and their limitations helped add to the realism. To many times for me a CGI spaceship while looking neato just feels wrong
It is the movement I notice with CGI effects some effects houses will have large vessels turn way to fast for there mass it looks so fake. With real models it seems it is easier to get the motion right.
I still have my 1975 Mego USS Enterprise playset along with all my figures when I first got them in Woolworths store in NYC in the mid 70s. God I love the Enterprise ship.
This is GOLD! Thanks! The frontal view from the bottom always reminded me of an old ship with sails. The 2 engines and supports were modern sails. Star Trek had the best special effects until 1977 when Star Wars came along.
In principle, it's the same effect for both.
A stationary model filmed a against a blue screen. The model remains stationary, while the camera on a guide track provides the motion.
And after the model element shot is comlpletes, it is optically composited into a seperate animated background, in this case, either a starfield, or a starfield with a either a model or glass painting of a planet.
It's fascinating to see the original blue screen background footage because it really gives a sense of how difficult it was to set up usable camera passes on account of that model being so large. The relatively small size of the stage didn't help. That huge, 11-foot "miniature" really needed a bigger set-up with a curved, cyclorama-style blue screen backdrop. I'm glad these shots of the iconic Enterprise have been preserved. Star Trek is a national, even global treasure indeed.
The digital CGI remaster was well-intentioned but has aged even worse than the original analog special effects, which by now have taken on a charm and aesthetic of their own that makes them compelling to see for an audience used to hyper-realistic CGI. The Enterprise takes on such a beautiful, otherworldly glow in the final composited shots and the graininess from the optical printer process actually adds a level of depth and detail quality all its own that is completely lost in those boring CGI renderings with their flat grey coloring and lifeless movements. The opening sequence suffers the worst for it. The original high speed passes used in the opening sequence of the 2nd and 3rd seasons still hold up very well and manage to covey a sense of speed and outer space depth of field that's completely lacking in the CGI remasters. I wonder if that raw footage still exists. I'm very curious how that was done. I would guess that was done with the "lost" 3-foot model fixed to some rolling dolly on a slanted track or rig almost like slot cars, gathering momentum as it was going down that track to rush by a stationary camera because there is so much blur and distortion in the individual frames. That tells me that it must have been filmed with actual fast movement. If anyone knows, please share!
CBS-Paramount should do the right thing and pull those awful digitally remastered episodes and release them with "cleaned up" versions of the original footage. It would be the appropriate "stewardship" for this legendary piece of pop culture.
The "Swish!" shots were indeed done with the 33-inch model. It would probably have been stationary in its rig, with the camera on rails, like the shots of the eleven-foot model. The blur and distortion were most likely the result of undercranking and a wide-angle lens.
@@willmfrank Possibly, there are a few ways this could have been achieved. The whole TOS opening sequence (2nd season) still intrigues me to this day. It's an artistic triumph, visually, musically and Shatner's iconic narration over it. It's obvious that extra care went into making it, particularly into the alignment between the traveling matte and the "starship fill", which was often pretty sloppy throughout the series, with portions of the Enterprise occasionally "blinking out" or a lot of dust and scratches visible from the optical printer pass.
I'm very miffed by the remastered shots of the ship in action. They appear very cartoonish.
Excellent reference material! I knew Richard Datin, who built the 3 footer and 11 footer, as well as the Galileo and K-7. I also produced the SFAM series for modelers.
Paul, I purchased the lighting kit and your SFAM guides as a Junior High Schooler back in 78 or so, still have the slightly unfinished Enterprise in a box somewhere (all electronics were working at the time)... I remember sanding off those deflector lines (seemingly took forever). I didn't have large enough diameter fiber optics, but I made do, and filed the rectangular windows to shape with epoxy filling them with the fibers illuminating them as an "upgrade". Maybe I need to revisit and finish... really great to have some personal contact with you, as a kid growing up on the empty prairies of Colorado you certainly made a difference in my life. I often think of that whole process, which helped instill me with skills that have lasted a lifetime. Thank you.
Very impressive!
Thanks for posting this. Some of those unused clips were really cool shots.
Most of those unused clips were rejected because the camera cast a huge shadow over the miniature as it approached...unfortunate, because otherwise they're great shots.
A true classic of design never goes out of style.👏
9:09 This timestamp's when I paused the video to comment, just as the ED music swelled. Shared this with my grown kids to prove that 60s ST's modelwork really was ground-breaking... in outer space!
At 2:03, it's very interesting how the nacelle lighting effect changed, as seen in test footage, with a more heavily white frosted domes and a swirling effect rather than the later spinning 12 ribs lit from behind by a series of incandescent Christmas lights of different colors that we all know today. Clearly they were trying different things to see what looked better in terms of color. You can see later in the test footage them working with just the blinking colored lights, but no spinning ribs, etc. The shadow fill effects finally show us the amber tinted (inside) domes, with light white frosted outside painted domes, and the spinning ribs over blinking lights.
It's obvious they were iterating based on the test footage results.
Love this, Seeing actual filming of the Enterprise.
Well this is absolutely glorious! The Enterprise truly was the star of the show wasn't she? Thanks so much for this.
Now, if we only had some similar footage of the Klingon D-7 and the Romulan Bird of Prey!
I loved the original soundtrack and the photos of the Enterprise at the Smithsonian look beautiful!
So cool. Love the 60's technicians around the model.
2:00 love the look of the nacelle domes
I wanted to see a whole lot more of that on the Roddenberry Vault discs. (What a disappointment that was.) Thanks for posting!
I'm still looking for that really long pull they did for the opening flyby.. they went through several studios and I think ended up outside before they stopped.
I noticed the CGI exchange for the mirror pass. Too bad they didn't use the footage they filmed.. it looked good on bluescreen.
Wow, this is great. I didn't know it's so huge.
11 feet.😉
What an incredible behind the scenes look that I thought I would never see. Thank you
Original Trekkie here. GREAT COMPILATION! My fav visual of the ship exterior was the hanger deck.
I think I hear the background music for the Doom's Day Machine. Thanks to who ever posted this. I create animations with green screen. The blue screen was the 1960's thing. Great video.
It’s amazing what they could do with the models and film back then. The show always looks so realistic to me.
Beautiful and elegant ! A complete departure from the standard phallic shape that was the common for the day
The ships always were and always will be the real MVP's of Star Trek.
This ship has always been a peek at what Humanity could one day achieve. Too bad we probably will never make it to that level of decency as a species.
This video made me happy. Thanks for putting it together and sharing it publicly. While it is a valuable resource for modelers, it will be a joy for many, many more people over the years.
This is cool stuff. I've read about the making of the series and the challenges of filming the "miniature" but it is cool to see some of this surviving behind the scenes stuff.
It's amazing that the enterprise model could be balanced on one mount from underneath. It doesn't appear to have any wires or supports from above keeping the engines from sagging.
The engines are hollow, made of thin rolled sheet metal over plywood frames, and the struts are incredibly sturdy, solid hardwood (oak, if I'm not mistaken.)
Also, there is at least one photograph of Linwood Dunne filming the Enterprise with a Panavision camera, where one can see what appears to be a a brace running from the geared head to the underside of the hangar deck; I've never seen such a brace in any other photograph.
Awesome thanks for sharing always like the TOS Enterprise no other ship can top her appearance.
Fantastic! Such a gorgeously designed ship - great behind the scenes footage of the raw film before effects. Thank you for posting!
So much fun. thank you. The music was such an important part of the show.
At 1:20 you can see they had a larger deflector dish on the early ship that they made smaller on the final version of the classic Enterprise. Definitely glad they did because that huge dish looks silly. Dunno if it’s because I’m used to the smaller version or not tbh but I do like the smaller version… especially on the Stange New Worlds version.
Had not noticed that myself in my 57 years of life! Thanks for stating that! Note too the early warp nacelle Bussard Collectors weren't lit. Just Mahogany domes. So glad they changed that.
@@rgsrails I don’t know much about how much it is we are just used to the Classic Trek Enterprise but I hated the sight of the Kelvin Enterprise. I was beginning to think they couldn’t improve on the Classic Trek when I saw the Strange New Worlds Enterprise… and my jaw literally hit the floor.
I play a lot of Star Trek Online(STO) and when I got the SNW Enterprise I was really happy to say the least. It’s just perfection.
Wow. I never realized just how small Capt. Kirk and the crew were. Seeing these guys laying under the ship really puts it into perspective. 😁
Damn!... this is good stuff! Thank you.
Fun fact about the Botany Bay (seen at 6:42)
Notice that honkin' great huge fan-shaped chunk in the middle; those are five wedge-shaped cargo paniers. A page of drawings, reproduced in "Star Trek Sketchbook The Original Series" and labelled "Antique space freighter" shows that the ship was designed to carry sixteen of them, that could be added or removed as required. Three more would be mounted atop the present five, forming a full octagon, with a matching eight attached to the octagonal section behind. What is never mentioned in the episode is what happened to those missing eleven paniers.
cool! i always wondered about that. its a brilliant detail that they came up with.
@@jv-lk7bc I'm hoping that a fan film, or maybe even SNW, will show a DY freighter being loaded, and we'll get to see those cargo pods being slotted into place.
This is brilliant! Love it!!
The original effects were state of the art for the time. No other TV show spent that kind of money on optical printing. Compare it to say _Lost in Space_ which just used a fiberglass flying saucer hung from piano wire in front of a black curtain with white Christmas tree lights in the background..
FANTASTIC!!!!! THANKS!
Well done and good choice in series music. My first time seeing this footage. Love the transition shots from studio footage to background.
the music sucked
Great work for the time that still stands out as every original. It's a shame Paramount is trying now to erase it by replacing it with CGI.
Music from the dooms day machine episode.
Show was definitely ahead of its time.
HalleluYaH HalleluYaH HalleluYaH HalleluYaH HalleluYaH EXCELLENT Job Team of Behind The Scenes, Your Are The Back Bone of the Show as far as i am Concerned. Shalom, Chayim, Blessings
I saw this model when it was on display in the gift shop of the Smithsonian. Even though it had the much derided overdone restoration at the time, it is truly an incredible piece of work. I too wish they had used the original blue screen footage of this miniature for the "upgraded" TOS. I think about all of the hard work that went into the design, assembly and filming of this great piece of art only to have the footage unceremoniously replaced by some truly third rate CGI.
If you buy the Bluray set, you have the option to watch episodes with the original effects, which is the only way to do it.
@@Durwood71 It's truly unfortunate that the team didn't restore the original effects along with the live action. It's a bit jarring to see the live action looking good as new juxtaposed with grimy and degraded effects footage.
What a great video - many thanks for taking the time to do this!
This is so awesome. Thanks for sharing. God bless you and keep you.
The Romulan Command thanks you for being a traitor to the Federation for revealing this important information. Your reward is waiting for you on Romulus..... a cold, bitter reward.
Great video !!!. I loved seeing this.
wish i had this 20 years ago...
That is some slick stuff there. I've seen stills from these clips but never have I seen the actual clips. Thanks for posting!
Open the pod bay doors, HAL.
Outstanding! Thank you.
Thank you for sharing this. I've been waiting find blue screen shots of the Enterprise like this. I saw some on Roddenberry Vault but I 'think' you have more blue screen shots than what was on Roddenberry Vault.
I just nerded in my pants. Love this history.
5:50 The best tension building music ever! I always called the fight theme because it always reminds me of the fight between Spock and Kirk on Vulcan.
The piece is called "Ancient Battle" and was composed specifically for that very scene.
@@willmfrank Fantastic! Thanks for that!
@@InformationIsTheEdge Odd thing is, the piece was composed to be contextual to the other Vulcan themes throughout the scene; it's intended to be Vulcan music, i.e. Spock's theme...but it ended up being used whenever Kirk got himself into a shirt-ripping fistfight. 😁🖖
@@willmfrank HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! Shirt ripping fistfight! Best laugh I've had all week! Thank you!
@@InformationIsTheEdge My go-to joke about Gary Mitchell's "James R. Kirk" gravestone is that Mitchell knows about Kirk's habit of getting his shirt torn in every fight scene (including the one he has with Gary a few minutes later!) The "R." stands for "Rip." 😁
Super interesting!
thanks for this, it really is an excellent model
Fantastic!
Awesome. Thanks for sharing.
"Sin lugar a dudas; Es la Nave Estelar más Hermosa que he visto en mi vida" ¡Que se Joda el Halcón Milenario!
This raw footage is so cool! I wish the video included the raw footage of the Klingon Battle Cruiser and the Romulan Bird of Prey.
Thanks for posting.
2:50 - That's quite cinematic lighting there. Wonder why they didn't go with that...
Where did you get all this video footage from? It's AWESOME!!!
Very interesting! Great BTS stuff!
Awesome!!
The shot seen at 5.59 looks quite like some shots seen later in Star Trek The Motion Picture, and would look fantastic with a large planet in space composited behind it.
Great job. Gt.👍💯
Fantastic Presentation My Brother 💯
Thanks!!!
🖖🖖🖖🖖🖖🖖🖖🖖🖖🖖
Wonderful stuff 👍
Great clips. And the Star Trek TOS music was very, very unique and special. So it was a great joy to listen to as well!!
music was horrible
@@shadowsilverlight1651 well as they say my friend to each his own!
Love this..They had the motion, just not the control..this must have inspired Dykstra (among other things) to a degree..
Muito obrigado! Incrível essa postagens dos bastidores VFX! "Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise (...)"
Fantastic
OMG that music gave me shivers! It was the secret sauce!
thanks for uploading it, what an eye opener, into the making of TOS, was this footage not available when the TOS was remaster, into the HD version, looks sharp enough to me, in it pre-polished state, from some part with the actoring parts, this looks like new stock film? no scratches, muck blobs, etc,?
Thank you Nik
Way cool man ! THANKS !
775
This is fantastic stuff! Why oh why didn't Desilu use these shots instead of rehashing the same ones over and over?!? And after all these decades I just now see that the middle "window" of the three on the front of the saucer was originally a nav light. Wow!
The most likely reason shots were recycled is because of how expensive that type of work was in the early 1960s, and the show simply didn't have the budget to do more than the absolute minimum in special effects, especially the second and third seasons which had smaller budgets.
Yeah, same re: middle window/nav light
great fx
do modelers paint the 1701 white? A long time ago i got a plastic model of one and the instructions said to paint it white and that always bothered me
GENE RODDENBERRY was A GENIUS! 👏🏽👏🏽
Apparently when they filmed shots of the Enterprise no one had heard of the green-screen yet!
Before green there were blue screens. I believe well up into the late 1970's. Crazy, I know.
@@drlong08 whats crazy about that. look up making of footage of the SW prequel trilogy. there is a lot of blue screen used at least in TPM which was still shot on film. AFAIK blue screen isn't as feasible with digital cinematography but was used almost exklusively in th film era.
Green screen had been around for decades preceding the 1960s Star Trek, as had sodium backing screen, red infra screen, black screen, rear projection, front projection, bipack and other processes. Blue screen was comparatively economical and easier to comply with the optical printer passes needed to complete the effect. Blue worked well for compositing and was more economical and accessible for the photochemical duping processes needed to combine the elements. Computer digital processing made green screen popular but most manner of travelling mattes can b economically done, or simulated, in the digital realm.
There's a technical reason blue screen was used for film, but I can't remember what that reason is at the moment.
@@Durwood71 Bluescreen was better for the color filmstock separations that they had to run through the optical printer to create the travelling matte passes and final superimposition shots. There was generally less blue in the foreground elements especially when involving people or animals or other sources of heat such as light and radiant and ambient reflections, such as with studio lighting, and blue could be filtered out of the bluescreen shots with less bleedthrough than with green and other color separation backing travelling matte shots. Computers using digital travelling matte compositions however can filter green very quickly and effectively and could be adjusted for both hot and cold lighting environments.
OMG This is AMAZING!!! I just started work on one of the 1/350 Enterprises. This Grade-A starship porn is gonna be invaluable.
Magical
That 180 turn…
I think I remember there being bubble gum cards with Star Trek scenes. I'm very surprised they could find a way to make an absolute fortune from that original series.
Love it. I wonder how long it took the model designers to build that very expensive model.
Really cool video. I liked the original nacelles better than the ones on the "new Enterprise" from the movies, where they placed them a lot closer together. For some reason, it looks really goofy to me.
PURE GENIUS - needs created by Nik Barnes ijs
Where did you find this footage? This footage didn't seem to show up anywhere for so long! Great job!
This is how you create magic.
The music wasn't funny until about 4 minutes in and I realized how dramatic they were trying to be over a slow motion reveal . Sounds like the planet eater music.
Best trek ever.
Agreed! And it isn't even close.