May 22, 2008

Star Trek Special Edition


Star Trek: The Motion Picture (Pon Farr Edition) from Darth Mojo on Vimeo.

The special edition DVD of Star Trek: The Motion Picture has finally finished the movie. Director Robert Wise was so rushed to get the thing out the door he never felt like the movie was done, so finally, almost 25 years later, Paramount invited him to come back, pick up the pieces and make them all fit right. One “special feature” that was never going to make it on the DVD is presented here for the first time.

(ah, probably not safe for your workplace there, Sparky)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

More on the making of this clip after you get done choking on your coffee.

So one day, we were all standing around the Digital Beta machine, fast forwarding through Star Trek: The Motion Picture, looking for effects shots to take notes. When we got to the V’ger sequence, it was especially noticeable on fast-search just how many shots there were of people looking shocked and amazed. “It looks like they’re watching a porno movie,” I blurted out. Everyone laughed, then looked upwards as if in thought for a moment, then back to me. “You know, you’re going to have to do it,” said Daren.

I knew exactly what he meant.

The clip was actually much more involved than it looks. First, because I wanted to keep it “clean,” I needed audio of a porn movie that didn’t use any foul language. Good luck with that one! To make the order even taller, I had to also have a scene with no music in the background (music would make heavy audio editing impossible - you’d hear every cut).

I’ll have you know, dear reader, in the effort of public entertainment I spent many, many laborious hours “researching” dozens of porn DVDs, trying to find a scene that had no cussing, no music and lots of interesting audio cues.

Call me a dedicated artist.

Editing was basically all about timing expressions to the heavy breathing. After that was finished, I laid in some appropriately cheesy porn music and added a layer of “bridge” sound effects to keep the feeling alive that we were on the bridge and this was really happening.

So there you have it, the making of a classic.

And yes, Robert Wise loved it.

Anonymous said...

Oh My!