I also remember reading Meyer saying TUC was around $50m after cutting it from $55m but I don't have that book anymore.
TFF vs. TUC Enterprise Shots
- Thread starter CoveTom
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No, none of the TOS films had budgets that high. Even TMP, with its runaway costs, capped out at $47 million. Meyer's book quotes TUC's budget at $30 million. And he says they tried to cut him down to $25 million but he fought it.
TFF's warp effect looks flat, like someone just cut out an image of the Enterprise and moved it across a picture of a starfield. Although that might actually look better than what we wound up getting since videoing an image of the Enterprise moving across a picture of stars would give the image a sense of motion. You know? The faster something moves the blurrier it gets depending on the frame rates? This is why Generations thought they could get away with re-using the Excelsior at warp for the Enterprise B since the model was blurred to an extent.
Final note. The Enterprise is way overlit in TFF.
Final note. The Enterprise is way overlit in TFF.
Damn, why did I never notice that? That is really blatant now that I know to look for it.
Additional: (Not for you, for anyone who hasn't read the book.)
Meyer explained to them why the movie couldn't be made for $25m. David Kirkpatrick agreed to push it to 27. Meyer argued that 30 was the minimum. ("You are under a misapprehension. I am not negotiating. I am giving you reality.") He later presented all the same facts and figures to Frank Mancuso. ...Who then cancelled the movie.
Stanley Jaffe took over at Paramount, and gave Meyer the thirty he said he needed.
The film started shooting one month after Mancuso left.
I actually like the shot of the Enterprise closing on Khitomer at warp. There's really only one shot I think looks odd in VI. It's the overview of the ship from the Klingon bridge as Chang says "Tickle us, do we not laugh...". It just really looks like a model to me and it always has. The lighting is weird.
I would argue that the Enterprise model was only properly lit in TMP. The rest of the films never got it quite right, although some did better than others. TWOK probably looks the best, but then again many of its shots are reused from TMP. I think the Enterprise looks horribly overlit in some shots in TSFS as well, such as in spacedock.
Oh, it is definitely overlit in TSFS. The first time we see her on screen after the opening credits you can practically see the Enterprise casting a shadow on itself with a light source that is unseen but flying parallel over the ship. It's one of the more obvious shots where you can tell it's just the camera moving past the Enterprise rather than the model moving.
That scene was supposedly CGI, which is why it looks a little funky compared to the other shots of it.
That opening flyby in TSFS is one of the worst-looking shots of the Enterprise in the whole franchise. Very disappointing.
According to who?
I know they used some CGI in TUC, particularly for the floating blood and the morphing effects. But I'm pretty sure that there were no CGI ships used at all. I believe that was entirely practical model work, as would have been typical at the time. Doing CGI ships in 1990/1991 would not have been common, especially on a film as modestly budgeted as TUC was. At that time, practical effects were still significantly cheaper.
I’m sorry, I don’t remember the source, but I know I’ve read at least one “making of” bookmthat indicated that ILM used that particular shot of the Enterprise on Chang’s view screen as a chance to “experiment” with a CGI model of the ship.
If you look at a high rez image of the ship that scene, you can tell it’s not the physical model. Look specifically at the “self illumination,” the windows for the arboretum, the battle damage on the saucer’s underside and the appearance of the deflector dish. If you look carefully you’ll also notice that the underside of the saucer has almost no details. The external hatches on the physical are non existent.
Maybe I’m wrong, but I’m pretty damn sure I read that from multiple sources.
If you look at a high rez image of the ship that scene, you can tell it’s not the physical model. Look specifically at the “self illumination,” the windows for the arboretum, the battle damage on the saucer’s underside and the appearance of the deflector dish. If you look carefully you’ll also notice that the underside of the saucer has almost no details. The external hatches on the physical are non existent.
Maybe I’m wrong, but I’m pretty damn sure I read that from multiple sources.
I forget where I got all this data. I'd have to dig. The break-even point is on the low end. The prints and marketing budget affect how high this number actually goes.
As to a CGI Enterprise: nope. The movie was on a shoestring and ILM wouldn't have wasted resources to build a high-detail CGI ship for a single shot. The lighting is shit probably because they couldn't take the time to light it dramatically for such a long circle move, so they flat-lit it. I can see the same cutout silhouettes in some of the portholes, and there is the aztec-ing on the underside of the saucer, though it's faint as lit. I mean, maybe the ships seen on the Klingon tactical could have been CGI, but I was told the Excelsior there was a small model made by Ed Mireki and Tom Hudson (the latter sent me the plans and I made a CGI model of it and you can briefly glimpse it in a 1992 animation here).
Bill George told me they'd already had to rewire the Enterprise because the umbilical had gotten chopped off, and the Klingon battlecruiser had to be fixed as it had gotten warped due to being improperly crated.
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Look at all those imperfections and faint paint details and contrasts. There's no way that's a 1991 CG ship.
That's why it matters what the sources are. There's all sorts of misinformation parroted endlessly across the internet.
OK, so this is something I know a fair bit about.
In that particular shot it is a model for sure. No doubts. What is interesting is that it is a commercially available kit, which is why it doesn't look quite right. In fact, it is the 1/537 kit - yes! that horrible one where the nacelles droop over time.
The only other instance I can think of is in TMP, where they used a really small model for those distance shots.
I think people confuse this as a CGI shot due to the camera move. I guess that they used this smaller model because filming the old girl was getting harder and harder due to the age of the model. Some fellow modellers have used this to argue that the 1/537 kit is the most screen accurate - because it was actually used.
LOL, now I have to go find a source for this!
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That is absolutely not the AMT model. Every distinguishing detail matches the hero model; the size of the airlocks and bridge, the windows on the rear-quarter of the saucer that are filled in on the AMT kit, the self-lighting (the real self-lighting that's actually part of the model, like the spotlights shining up from the base of the neck on to the impulse drive), the overall level of detail. It's just bad lighting in the shot, coming directly from the camera and making the model look small and flat.
An AMT model was used by ILM for distance shots, reputedly the same one in TWOK, TSFS, TFF, and TUC (another small model was used in TMP, but that one obviously wasn't a commercial kit, though it was used as a template for the South Bend toy Enterprise). It looks like the little one was done up for TUC, the only tell-tale I can see in that shot that makes me sure it's not the eight-footer is the position of the registry decal at the back of the nacelle is too high. But, then, it's also a quicker shot with softer detail than that TSFS shot, in particular, which really lets you see the model in detail.
From the Cinefex article:
Also, not every transfer of the film has her looking so starkly white in that shot.
Looking at the Klingon foreground and the level of blackness in space, perhaps the most recent remaster has this shot with a little less contrast than it should really have.
Also, not every transfer of the film has her looking so starkly white in that shot.
Looking at the Klingon foreground and the level of blackness in space, perhaps the most recent remaster has this shot with a little less contrast than it should really have.
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