It’s a bit hard for me to accept I’ve been back in my original department now for a little over ten years; in a few weeks, I’ll be celebrating the start of my twenty-fifth year on campus. Back in the pre-pandemic years, the University used to celebrate such milestones at an annual lunch catered by the Student Union; my twentieth came up smack dab in the middle of the work-from-home period, so I didn’t get the lunch part of the deal, but did wind up with some very nice wineglasses bearing our official seal. That last lunch was also a bit melancholy, for my boss at the time had just decided to retire — a decision that set into motion a series of changes that I’ve talked about a few times; now that I appear to be nearly the last person standing from the original crew, I find myself beginning to take stock of all that has changed since I arrived in Arizona all those years ago.
One memory that pops up has its genesis from my first few months back at the business college. My Star Trek buddy and I had been following a master modeler on YouTube who had a multipart series on building the movie-era USS Enterprise; somewhat impulsively, I decided I wanted to do the same thing, and wound up ordering the model kit plus a lighting pack to make it come alive. My efforts came out fairly good, considering I was no where near as accomplished as the icon I was trying to emulate, but was also a pleasant reminder of how things used to be done when it came to special effects in some of my favorite science fiction television shows and movies. The movie-era Enterprise holds a special place for me for a number of reasons, not the least of which was how real it seemed to be when it debuted in Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Fully lit and detailed to such an extent that it seemed like it had actual metal panels in the hull, it helped to sell the notion that it was carrying real people out into the vast unknown of the galaxy — and doing it with panache.
Having been a theater nerd in high school, the backstage aspects of filmmaking have always fascinated me; shooting miniatures, especially in a realistic way, is an art form that I’ve come to appreciate after years of reading up on the subject and obsessively watching “making of” documentaries that gave tiny glimpses into what takes place at MagiCam or Industrial Light & Magic. It feels a bit sacrilegious as a tech head to say that while computer generated effects have come a long way in recent years, nothing can truly replace the depth that comes from filming an actual model.
Then again, the newly crafted effects shots that were added to the most recent Director’s Edition of TMP are actually rather stunning; it’s widely known that the movie was more or less unfinished when it was released in 1979, so seeing the scenes that were always planned but could never be filmed is an extraordinary — and pleasant — surprise. Articles that accompanied the disc noted that the artists working on that release worked extremely hard to make sure the CGI model of the Enterprise looked as though it had been shot on film; the way the light plays off of it convincingly mimics the actual in-studio shots done back in the day. Honestly, if I’d not known what to look for, I’d have been hard pressed to tell someone what shots were the original model, and what had been added.
I guess it’s one more sign that everything does, ultimately, come full circle.
If you’d like to go down a small rabbit hole on building the Enterprise movie model, might I suggest the following sites? (I won’t tell anyone if you do sneak off to visit them.)
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