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Arri 2C used for Enterprise SFX shots


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That particular picture is of a mitchell camera, which looks like a 3 strip body, but I can't quite tell.

 

Yea IMDB says "Arriflex" cameras, but they were probably used for some hand held application. Remember, at that point, sync sound/quite cameras were in huge boxes. So when you see those hand held shots, those are not the standard studio cameras shooting them. I believe in the 60's, there were only two 400ft 35mm hand held cameras available; the Eclair CM3 and Arri IIB/C.

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It is a Mitchel ... gah, when will I get it right. That big motor on the outside and way that magazine sat should have given it away. One of my bosses actually has that camera (he's retired, and sailing the Caribbean).

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Yes, typically a handheld shot in the 50's, 60's, and early 70's were shot MOS with an ARRI-2C. "Star Trek" had some wide-angle POV shots in a few episodes shot handheld (often for the distorted POV of a madman...)

Usually in episodes directed by Ralph Senensky, who did 7 or 8 and to me they were ALL winners. He doesn't get credited with THOLIAN WEB cuz he got fired partway through, but all the good stuff (the interesting shots and the effective drama) are his days on it. He used the fisheye in that and in IS THERE IN TRUTH NO BEAUTY when Spock sees the Medusan and goes mad, and he does some effective framing of the plant that makes everybody mutiny and desert in THIS SIDE OF PARADISE (the one where Spock nearly brains Kirk with a chair.)

 

This upcoming video release of outtakes and trims from TOS has got Senensky commentary, so I'm very jazzed about it. Richard Edlund talking about the VFX, too. I think it is from Roddernberry's kid.

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Is there a book on the shooting of the show? by that I don't mean the old Making Of book, but is there a technical journal that talks about the show? Something like American Cinematographer or Millimeter?

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There is a three-volume book on the production of the show based on daily production reports:

https://www.amazon.com/These-Are-Voyages-TOS-Season/dp/0989238121

 

It includes some discussion on the cinematography, though it does not include much technical detail -- though it does mention the use of wide-angle lenses on Senensky's episodes. It does a good job of talking about Finnerman's creative intent for the show and the problems he ran into, mostly due to time/budget.

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Wow, did you really buy those? I actively boycott that guy Cushman's stuff. He takes a lot of liberties with the actual content of the memos, and gets the context wrong on a ton of stuff too, often seemingly on purpose. He also reproduced images that weren't his to exploit (non profit folks restored old damaged behind the scenes pics, which he purloined while claiming it was somebody else's work - a guy who is equally suspect), and is also 'in' with the AXANAR fanfilm people who seem to think intellectual property theft can only happen if you take FROM them.

 

Dude ran a kickstarter campaign predicated on the notion that his publisher didn't want to put the third volume out of those books in time for xmas while he himself did want them out -- only he and the publisher are one & the same. You'd think this was Tyler Durden instead of TREK related, but there's SO much bad stuff in those books, and the guy got celebrities who should have known better to endorse them. The fact these books have been cited -- it wasn't a Hugo, but he won some kind of scifi award for them -- is a bigger disgrace than BABE beating APOLLO 13 for the VFX oscar, more like Milli Vanilli winning best live vocal.

 

He seems to have taken the MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALLANCE creed a bit further - instead of 'when legend outshines the truth, print the legend' this is more like, 'when we run out of legends and all the truths have been told, time to make up some new lies and burnish them by claiming the info came out of production reports only you have access to -- except those reports are available to anybody, and legit trek scholars (yes, there are such animals) have gone through the same production reports and come up with vastly different results (not just contextual errors, but dates, times, you name it.)

 

There a site called something like startrekfactcheck that makes mincemeat out of this guy's 'journalistic' integrity, and I recommend it to anyone who still is interested in getting something akin to the real story as opposed to a good yarn.

 

Let me also say I was eagerly awaiting these books ... but was totally turned off and reluctantly decided against buying the first when I found out about the image issues. And it was much later, by the time of the 2nd book I think, that I heard about how badly they are done. The guy isn't stopping with these three, he is already trying to crank out books for TREK in the 70s, 80s, 90s and currently has one of these things on LOST IN SPACE about ready to go. If he was able to crank out his porn films in the 90s -- including totally unauthorized trek parodies -- as fast as he does these books, he shouldn't have been hurting for dough.

 

If I sound pissed, I damned well am. SF fans seem to have a real issue with getting suckered, and then defending the party that suckered them rather than going in with teeth bared (all you have to do is look at AXANAR's defenders, who urged boycotting all CBS and Paramount Trek productions in retaliation for the long overdue lawsuit against that idiotic fanfilm that somehow raised over a million bucks.)

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I'm sure there are some inaccuracies, but the information like number of shooting days, etc. all come off of the daily production reports, and the quotes from interviews are whatever the person said. His conclusions about what soured Roddenberry's relations with the network and co-writers, etc. are well-reasoned but they are just his opinions, they aren't facts.

 

Anyway, I'm never comfortable when people attack books that they haven't bothered to read themselves.

 

I've read most literature available on "Star Trek" and Cushman's books don't particularly contradict things found in other books like all the actor's autobiographies, the Justman / Solow book, the Mark Altman books (I just finished that new one of his), the various Roddenberry books, the magazine articles I've read over the years, etc. -- what you get in Cushman's books, besides the emphasis on daily production problems, is just the latest spin that you can add to all the other spins placed on the same material. It's getting to be a bit like Rashomon.

 

My question to you is where are you getting all of your information then on the history of the original TV show production if not from everything already published to date? I think I've literally read everything on "Star Trek" over the decades, so if you have some new sources that I haven't run across yet, I'd like to read those too!

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I'm looking at the startrekfactcheck site, it has a lot of great info on it, but I also think that we're getting pretty hairsplitting on some of these facts, like when Cushman says Nimoy's salary was $1125 per episode when it probably was $1250 per episode, basically because the author decides one source must be more likely than another source. He's probably right... but he's basically making judgement calls as to which sources to believe.

 

Anyway, there is a lot of good info in the Cushman books, which are a good companion piece to the Justman/Solow book.

 

I'd be happy to read one more book on the topic however.

 

Having just finished the latest Altman / Gross book, like I said, it's all starting to become like Rashomon and even people like Nicolas Meyer admit it. He even contradicts himself -- in this book, he says that when he did the Valeris confessional scene in "Star Trek VI", Nimoy complained that Meyer was dressed up like Sherlock Holmes, which Nimoy found distracting and disrespectful for an emotionally difficult scene, and Meyer said he has never dressed up like Sherlock Holmes in his life, but he was dressed up in a suit and tie to go out to see an opera that night... but on the commentary track for "Star Trek II" DVD/blu-ray, Meyers tells this same story but that it happened during the Spock death scene. So even Meyer can't tell the same story twice without changing it.

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I'm really concerned by the 'making stuff up' aspect. Apparently Cushman suggests Gene Coon is responsible for Decker's death in DOOMSDAY MACHINE, when it is in every Spinrad draft, and even his outline from a month earlier (this is all going by the factcheck folk, who have me on an email correspondence list.) As far as I know, the only place Decker ever survived was in the James Blish episode novelization. Now a lot of the discrepancies in those books are due to the author being provided with early script drafts (which is why Sulu is in his TROUBLE WITH TRIBBLES, I believe), but it seems like Cushman just leapt to that conclusion without looking carefully at the existing paper trail.

 

Those are the kinds of errors that call the whole thing into doubt, along with trying to invent new controversy by interpreting the ratings reports (basically looking at coastal tv ratings and disregarding the heartland) in order to support his 'NBC killed trek because they didn't like Roddenberry' notion, which is nonsensical in the extreme, given they could have just ordered his removal if he was that big of a thorn in their side.

 

And during his image-grabbing, he actually snagged a deliberately faked photo of a nonexistent full-length novelization of ARENA ... and then when he was called on it, just modified the text in the updated kindle version to say something like 'do you think this is real or fake' rather than owning up to his goof. That's about the equivalent to if the guy doing Taschen's big book on 007 included Orson Welles' unreleased film of MOONRAKER with Dirk Bogarde as a genuinely produced 'lost' Bond feature and not just a supremely witty put-on.

 

Meyer even covered his ass in his book, calling it a memoir because he admitted to not remembering things clearly.

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  • 5 months later...

Usually in episodes directed by Ralph Senensky, who did 7 or 8 and to me they were ALL winners. He doesn't get credited with THOLIAN WEB cuz he got fired partway through, but all the good stuff (the interesting shots and the effective drama) are his days on it. He used the fisheye in that and in IS THERE IN TRUTH NO BEAUTY when Spock sees the Medusan and goes mad, and he does some effective framing of the plant that makes everybody mutiny and desert in THIS SIDE OF PARADISE (the one where Spock nearly brains Kirk with a chair.)

 

This upcoming video release of outtakes and trims from TOS has got Senensky commentary, so I'm very jazzed about it. Richard Edlund talking about the VFX, too. I think it is from Roddernberry's kid.

I just watch the Tholian Web last night and was wondering if the FX shots of the Tholians themselves, the only time they spoke to the Enterprise crew, were a redo along with all the other fantastic CGI? The colors were very vivid (firey red face). The integration of the new CGI into the original material was great! They really did a wonderful job updating TOS. The use of the wide angle lenses in this episode was really neat to see.

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I think that a lot of people invent or at least greatly embellish stuff for interviews. Anyone who's a real otaku of something like a TV series will have noticed promotional and behind-the-scenes material with essentially the same incidents being referred to repeatedly but with minor variations. It's presumably been going on for decades and it's only with YouTube, where dozens of junket interviews with a single actor are easily accessible, that the lie can be put to some of what's said.

 

It's understandable, given the grim prospect faced by these creatives as they prepare to spend half a day answering trite and repetitive questions about a production, and in the grand scheme of things it's hardly important, although I don't think people should do it.

 

P

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