OK, I mentioned in the "Unseen Frontier" thread about the flood lights on the Defiant, and that there was indeed flood-lighting although they only showed it lit like that in "The Search Part 1" the Defiant's first appearance, and from then on they didn't film the model like that, because it required extra passes on the motion control rig, more time, more money etc. Mojo, mentioned that well CGI can overcome that easily, and that ships should have this. I agree that the Connie in TMP looks beautifully lit with the flood-lights.
ANNNyyyyway... what I was thinking was, that what, for Mojo's reference are all the ships that we've seen with the flood lights!?!
Constitution refit - Star Trek: The Motion Picture etc. Miranda - Wrath of Kahn Excelsior - The Search For Spock ??Oberth?? - The Search For Spock - I don't think it was lit with flood lights... not in the pictures I've got. And I noticed that the Three ships from the end of Generations, a Nebula, a Miranda and an Oberth - none were lit - not even the Miranda.
Constellation - I have a memory of there being a 'powering up' scene in "Peak Performance" Season 2 - where it shows the flood lights coming on... Galaxy - No - Generations MAY have, I'd have to check some promotional pics...
Nebula - no. Actually - later CGI versions (Mojo's??) have the nacelle pylons lit.
was there really anything else shown in much detail? - i.e. not background
Danubes didn't...
The Equinox seems to have one little one on the top of the saucer The Voyager does, again lighting up the top of the saucer - The Caretaker showed that promenantly...
The K'Ting'as in TMP - seem to have them across the 'wings'!
Olympic didn't seem to. Prometheus did. Sovereign did. They didn't do it on the Soyuz Syndey wasn't.
Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
The Defiant's flood lighting never made snese to me. The lamp was recessed, and yet it lit a surface above it. Th' heck?
Ah well, it's not like aliens can read English anyway...
Yeah, I'm sure they could translate with their computer, but would it really help them knowing the ship is called Enterprise? Maybe they could translate the term, but what about Honshu, Thomas Paine, Danube, etc. where the name doesn't have a universal meaning?
Posted by Harry (Member # 265) on :
Somehow I doubt they read names off the hull Posted by Ace (Member # 389) on :
So then what's the point of lighting the name?
[ January 18, 2002: Message edited by: Ace ]
Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
It looks cool..?
Mark
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
I would think that it should be the registry number that gets lit. So ships can be visually identified, if all else fails. Of course, the Honshu doesn't do this very well...
Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :
Depends on which registry is lit on the Honshu ;o)
Posted by Mojo (Member # 536) on :
This reminds me of a funny story Matt Jefferies himself told me a few years ago...
I was speaking with this great god about designing the Enterprise, and I asked him if he and Gene had disagreed about anything. He said the one main argument they had was about the size of the lettering on the hull - Gene wanted really big letters, which Matt thought made no sense. He said, "The ship is flying in SPACE - who's going to read them?!"
Gene won, of course.
The answer will always be IT LOOKS COOL - and it adds a lot of scale.
Actually, one of my little personal rules about spaceship models is that they should have enough strategically placed self-lights so that, even if there is NO sunlight in the scene, you can still make out what ship you're looking at.
I lit all the ships on B5 that way. It was fun.
Mojo
Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :
I know B5 had lights... but I never noticed any of the other ships with floodlights! Did we ever see any other ships in shadow (pardon the pun)... except for B5 on the darkside of Epsilon 3. (yes yes B5 isn't a ship)
Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
Well, I did notice the Omega-class destroyers had come really nifty lighting for their (overly apparent) name text and huge letters on the lower superstructure...
Mark
Posted by mrneutron (Member # 524) on :
quote:Originally posted by Mojo: This reminds me of a funny story Matt Jefferies himself told me a few years ago...Gene wanted really big letters, which Matt thought made no sense. He said, "The ship is flying in SPACE - who's going to read them?!"
Mojo
Well, the obvious advantage to NOT having big letters on the models is that you can flop the shots left and right without it being so obvious. If they're done that on the original 1701 they could have shown both the let and right sides of the 11' model instead of always showing us the right.
Posted by Mojo (Member # 536) on :
For "Severed Dreams," I added lots of running lights to the Earthforce destroyers - they previously had none.
I also added the glows to the inside wing of the Whitestar so they would illuminate the surface of the ship while it was in shadow...
And I think it was the 3rd season where I added the 'night time' lighting to the station. There was one GREAT, very dramatic shot where we got to see all the lights switched on.
There had previously been what I called the 'pearl necklace' collar of lights all around the station, but I never liked those and changed it to something more subtle...
![[Wink]](wink.gif)
![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)