Film Sets, Star Trek, Star Wars and Reality

This is piece is not intended as either fiction or well researched fact. Instead, it is just musings and ramblings. I’m trying to maintain the habit of writing regularly. Don’t take it seriously!

I have read several SF stories recently which look at the contrasting ideas of “reality” and “virtual reality”. It’s a popular topic at the present because advances in computer technology are making the unreal more realistic! I don’t want to talk about people becoming lost in virtual reality or anything like that, instead I’m going to write about how what we mostly agree is “unreal” is actually impinging on reality. Yes, it really is…

Have you ever stood on a film set or a stage? In particular, have you ever had the opportunity of looking at it from the wrong angle, an angle which the director did not intend it to be viewed from? Many sets are intended to be seen from one particular angle, seen from any other they look distorted and distinctly unreal. They lose their magic and become definitely physical. They become masses of plaster, fibreglass and paint. Sometimes they look very odd indeed.

The physical life of sets can be a problem. They wear out! I read somewhere that on the original Star Trek sets, the doors on the elevators were actually operated by people behind the scenes pulling and pushing the doors manually. That’s about as low-tech as you can get. One of the reasons was the appearance of “Next Generation” changed so much was that the sets had to be re-made and the producers took the opportunity to spend a little (probably quite a lot) more money.

Spending more money can be a problem though. If you have seen the original Star Wars movie (the one now called “A New Hope”), then you may remember the ramp of the Millennium Falcon. The story goes that once again the ramp was “manumatic” that is to say, it was actually operated by some stage hand operating a winch to raise and lower it: simple, cheap, but a little crude. For “The Force Awakens” the crude manual arrangement was replaced by something more expensive. Unfortunately, the designers didn’t take the possibility of people doing unexpected things into account. This contributed to what might have been a very serious accident which injured Harrison Ford. (Daily Telegraph) That is an example of “more expensive” not necessarily being better and the “unreal” (the film set) having a very definite impact in the real world (the injury to Harrison Ford).

Let’s go back to Star Trek. I am aware that as the franchise has developed and more series and films have been created the production people have maintained records of what they have done and the details of what things are supposed to do. What do “di-lithium crystals” really do in Star Trek universe? When you think about it, this sort of record-keeping is essential if you are to avoid too many of the continuity errors and plot inconsistencies which those who study artistic creations, and especially series of artistic creations, love to spot and point out! The production people are creating historical records of events which never happened and detailed technical descriptions of imaginary technology.

If we flip back to Star Wars again, I heard an interview on the radio where someone described how for the more recent Star Wars movies, the sets and individual props were created in a 3D modelling tool. That makes excellent sense. Many of the larger props will never actually exist on the film set, they will be created as “Computer Generated Images” (CGI), so originating them inside a computer (Virtual Reality) makes complete sense. It even turns out that some of the digital models used actually started life (?) in video games.

This is where it all starts to get even stranger, because when I said that “the larger props will never exist on the film set” that is true, but it does not mean that those same props will not exist in the real world! A substantial part of the income from Star Wars and Star Trek comes from licensing toys and memorabilia. According to what I heard, the better quality (plastic) models and such-like are created from designs which are derived from the same 3D models which were used to create the graphics in the film (there’s an anachronistic use of language for you) and in the video games.

So there you have it: digital models of virtual objects, be it the USS Enterprise (whichever version you fancy) or a light sabre are used to create both images and tangible objects which you can pick up and which can do you real physical harm. It makes you think!

(29th December 2016 – 756 words)