The Lost Art of Star Trek Studio Scale Models

hey everybody it's Norm from testing I'm here at Comic-Con San Diego 2023 I'm here with Barry I know doctor entertainment Barry I'm so glad to see these here so you guys at factory entertainment create prop replicas yeah um we have some at the cave Adam's love um every time we see them we're like yes and a great license of course Star Trek's one of the big licenses you have and this year you guys are diving into miniature Studio skill Miniatures yeah yeah tell me about the Fe maxworks line so basically what we want to do here is we want to give people the ability to to get the model essentially if you were Paramount and you were commissioning a filming miniature this is what you would have gotten back in the day and it's a lost art sadly I mean we've moved over to I think almost 100 Digital model making and that didn't always used to be the case there were and it's laughable to call this a miniature when you see this thing because it's it's you know 50 gallon fish tank sized but that's what we want to do and and you know it's happened before people have done this it's been a while it's been gone for a long time and we need to bring them back and hence here we are with Fe Masterworks to bring back Studio scale Miniatures to to a very small audience of people because it's these are Hardware but you know that I mean there's about 400 hours worth of Manpower and labor in one of these and they're not something for everybody but they are for the Discerning Niche collector and just to have them here at Comic Con and show them off to people watching little kids come up and just you know the look of Joy on their face when they see these things and that gets you right here when you because they've never seen anything like this some of these people well I think it's not only is there an appetite for having physical models and seeing it in the convention or having it maybe in your part of your collection but there's also a hunger and appetite for the people building the model the xilm model makers yeah that you guys are working with to make these all that's that itch never goes away no and we want to celebrate that Talent it is a lost art and and sadly you know some of these model makers they're not growing any younger and once they're gone who will carry on that Legacy and so if we can Inspire somebody you know you can buy this from us if you haven't got the skills but wouldn't it be great if you know there was if somebody got inspired to start building models from this that would be awesome well so tell me the brief you know when you're working with a model maker to design a prototype request you guys are launching a couple ships three of them Star Trek ships Enterprise a clearly here there's it's a wide range like yeah you can start with size level detail how much interior exterior detail like tell me about the level that you guys want to go to we want to go to the max I mean we want to replicate the filming miniature as best we can if it was on the miniature we want to replicate it obviously some of it like some of the lighting the miniature may or may not have had because it would be easier to add the lighting during different effects but yes as Max detail Max quality the just the Aztec alone on the hull the work and it depends on the model as well the hardest bit actually in the project is picking the ships oh really which which do you pick because they're all great yeah we get to be the I don't know The Gatekeepers and say well we pick these three because we love them but potentially the sky or the universe is the limit and even if it modeled one of the interesting things that's been fun is we've actually started discussing and looking and and we will have some announcements on the soon ships that have never had physical miniature models they were all 100 digital right um it's going to be great to to realize them in the physical space and be the first people to make them as a tangible physical object do you know have a sense of the type of research and the level of access model makers are getting to make sure this is as accurate as possible they're obviously building with modern materials modern Technologies but like what's that level depth well there most of them were involved in or with or tangently in the original project so that's number one you know you they were there on the ground boots on the ground doing it so they know what was done and how it was done and then they have a wealth I mean they're not just model makers these guys have a wealth of just personal experience but also resource you know photographs behind the scenes and Paramount gives us phenomenal resource they have a fantastic archive the guys that run the archive there are the unsung heroes of Star Trek they they maintain this this I mean to see it honestly you stand there with your mouth open and you just think like you know it's it's Nirvana for Trek fans but they do that for people like us as licensees when we come to them and say hey we need X Y and Z and then they provide it for us in triplicate you know and it's like wow that's an amazing level of detail but that personal involvement from from the model makers themselves you know those those Polaroids that were taken and not necessarily for any other reason then maybe you know nobody thought they were ever going to be you know I need a model commission for a movie and I needed yesterday they never thought that they've been making it again and again and again 20 30 40 years later um but yeah that's that's you know straight from the horse's mouth that's the provenance that you get and then you have to look at some things that were maybe adapted or adjusted you know there were no LEDs on most of these so how does the light look when it was a halogen bulb or how does the light look little little artistic choices and things and and the main thing is make it look good as a display piece when it sits here and it and it sort of smacks you in the face with its detail it's got to jump and punch out at you well I think that's one of the differences uh between Star Trek and maybe some of the other science fiction franchises they have beautiful ships that Star Trek especially in such a motion picture are you talking about the refit yeah like you're really Gaze on this they hang those shots yeah on the ship and that's experience yeah as a fan watching the movie that I want to have at home we're like I'm gonna be staring at this for hours yeah I was gonna be on I gotta I want every time when I look at this to notice a new detail yeah right and to that point and that does happen I've done that myself I mean I feel like intimately aware of this ship and I vividly remember being maybe like I don't know eight years old watching the motion picture and seeing that that 20 minute sequence of yeah and I was like it's real yes but it wasn't real but in my head it was real and I was like Wow and then suddenly you know there's some dumb depth to this thing that's not just a ship but I have been sitting looking at this thing for months and months and months and I do regularly find my myself going ah and then you know pull out old reference photos and we were just talking the other day about how you know these little little gray squares cells how they don't appear to be visible on screen but you take a real nice 4K screenshot you look and they are there and then what are they not even a millimeter in in diameter and they're all individually painted too I mean in terms of model making uh that level detail and all the things like the Interiors yeah helps communicate skills yes yes right I think you know we Star Trek fans we have a technical manual yep you know the Enterprise is the size of the Paramount parking lot right yeah like you know what is the Enterprise name what is that supposed to be but if once you see that interior of the shuttle and where we can yeah like in the Arboretum where you've got little people the people suddenly give you that wow it's a it's a thing and if you've ever been up close to a to a big vehicle like a a Boeing 747 or or a military ship or a vessel you stand there and you get the the breadth of its its enormity and then you sort of can in your head imagine oh well I can see how this would sit next to an aircraft carrier or uh you know a Boeing 747 you could probably land a Boeing 747 on the ditch it's gorgeous but that's just one of the yeah absolutely we have many more let's walk over here this is massive I I gotta imagine very when you guys chose to do the Excelsior it was because of the the sheer size of it size and it's never been done yeah you know we we've there've been other people who've done Studio Scale Models before and and nobody you know Excelsior had kind of gotten I don't know not not forgotten or ignored it just got lost in the shuffle I don't know but it's a beautiful ship it's big and you know we talk about scale like they're not scaled with each other they are in two different scales because if this was in scale with that it would be like eight seven and a half eight feet long and and there's that famous line now she's a big ship you know that that kind of thing and just look at it I mean it for me it has it's really nautical it looks like a cruise ship that you could almost see somebody it has a very Naval it's but the other beautiful thing about Trek is that these were made you know the designs how many years apart and yet you can show these to anyone and they immediately know this is Star Trek it's just one of those things oh yep Star Trek I might not know the ship but I know it's a Star Trek ship well from the surface as it can detail to just the the shape of the saucerer yeah the angles it reflects that Arrow too this is the motion picture error yes of Star Trek you know one to six that's what they they yeah mid 80s you can see if you look at car design of the time or in industrial design the flat with the smooth it definitely has a a retro Vibe but it's still weirdly here in in 2023 looks futuristic I don't know how what is that retro futurism is kind of weird in terms of structural stability you know talking to modelers internal structure yes we've seen trooping on chips how are you going to ensure that these stay stable they have a full aluminum structure these are the prototypes these three here are all prototypes so you'll see we have a rear stand on here just because it's out it's on all the time it's going to get handled but the desire for production is to move to more fiberglass and with the internal aluminum structure on this one to to make them a legacy piece that will last a lifetime so yeah there should be absolutely no droopers to be no deformation um no I wouldn't want to say they were tough because I don't want people to throw them around but yes they should be they should be durable and fiberglass you can achieve I mean structurally that that you can build furniture out of it so you know it should be good and then with that metal frame inside it's it's unusual when you see the proportions because there's a as a proportional ship this one and if physics terms makes no sense at all then they sells are way too thin and the main structure so we do have to kind of counterbalance that with real world physics which is fun you don't have to deal with gravity gravity sucks right yeah and I am not a rocket scientist so you know we we rely on smarter people than us to work this out um all right from the Excelsior I want to go with One Last Ship we're going to move into the Next Generation and there she is there it is this is the one I grew up with we meet and personal favorite of mine and this is the one that doesn't get so much love which is I don't get it because just look at it I mean it's it's they're all Epic but this one I don't know we we feel at home on it is that the right turn of phrase you know you've spent so much time in the seasons and that was the thing we don't get nowadays that was that once a week thing you'd watch the show once a week and each week you'd get a little bit more Glimpse inside the ship and you'd learn that they had this and they had that and there was a you know obviously it was all filmed in the same sets but to me it felt real again it felt like a ship that I could go and visit one day and sadly I can't but I can do this this is as close as I'm ever gonna get what strikes me so much is the the depth just on the surface just on the patterning on on those windows there is so much depth that you see it's not a smooth no no it is smooth saucer but it appeared on screen I guess with the resolution being being much much lower you know there was no 4K it did appear to be smooth but all of that detail adds as you said that that three-dimensionality and it does look like individual little Hull well blinds and seam lines just like again a naval Battleship if you've you know seen one up close there there are a whole bunch of little pieces they're not one big cast piece but yeah she is a beautiful Chef um they've been joking about her on on Picard in mean ways and I don't agree that was a setup of course for for the finale right yes exactly it wasn't that great when she just came out like didn't you get the Goosebumps thing with the yeah and this model was disappeared not this specific one but the model maker who built this built the one in Picard season one that we see in Picard's um uh um archive it's sitting on a table in a back shop and it is this model at this scale oh um and it was actually modified ever so slightly from the TNG model for that show but we're doing the TNG version and there were some slight revisions and I think they were just a time thing but yes they still produced a physical model and it was filmed on screen so theoretically a miniature so something like this prototype kind of like a a screen use uh yeah I guess yes we use Heritage behind it yeah yeah definitely the DNA is there yeah sure wow and the idea is for this line if it's successful more ships yeah I want to do all the ships all the time all the day that's you know we can't really do individually commission ships because practically it doesn't make sense but you know the fine folks at Paramount have given us a huge amount of leeway to basically say yeah pretty much any ship as long as it existed and as long as the reference is there and as long as it can be provenanced because you know some of the models may not be the best thing to replicate because they were done for 30 seconds of footage and they're very primitive and basic and when you make a giant version of them and look at them and go why is that right for filling um but maybe we can do some I don't know what you want to call it I don't want to say we're modifying the model maybe if there's a few things we can add maybe if it was only ever shot from one side maybe we'll fill in the other side maybe we'll add the lights that you don't see you're talking like a prop replicator it's a sickness and I got it it was announcing here yeah Walk This Way all right all right Barry so Factory entertainment you guys have been around for a while making replicas yeah and you obviously have some the Star Trek license but tell me what the ethos of the company like what where are you guys from and what do you guys do so our DNA is is prop replicas we were all former employees of Master replicas which is a company that and many people fondly remember um our owner and president was one of the original Founders um and it never goes away from you you know when you when you got to make some of those amazing things I mean they were groundbreaking we were one of the first people to do it in the way that it was done and it was really sad when that kind of went you know went away and we've we've wanted to maintain that ever since and from almost day one we've been around now since what 2011-12 we've been doing a steady stream of prop replicas from all sorts of licenses and when we managed to finally obtain the Star Trek license back again it was it was like coming home it was nice to get back and finish the last project I worked on at Master replicas was the tricorder so which was a sort of a semi-aborted project and it was released but we never released that many and it was a shame that we never got to do it properly because you know the company was was in you know winding down mode at that point and and always wanted to go back and have another chance you know they say you never get do-overs but luckily I gotta do over well you guys are announcing here Comic-Con not only a laser rifle yeah from first Contact but also a tri-core girl yes TNG yes can we take a look here we go you want to do the honors uh I'd love to so yeah prototype okay and when you say do it right that's why I want to pick your background what do you what do you mean by doing a proper rate not only for fans but also as a product we want to try and get and here's you know you know the the the the real let's let's give away a secret to prop replicas here um there's never one prop yes and they they're different and they change and they get used over the course of a production and you know demands of a production can be such that you know the producer might call for this and it has to be done quickly or modified so what we're trying to do with our Trek line is to do replicas that replicate the props as as a homogenized hole it's an ideal yeah it doesn't replicate the precise prop because as we both know and beautiful as many of the props for track were yeah um many of them why not no no I've seen some golf Russia and they didn't function and you've got little stuck on labels and if you're going to buy something like this it's an investment piece it's something you're buying for forever it's a legacy piece and you want something that you're going to own and keep and and hopefully pass down to your you know whoever um and you don't want something that's going to start looking broken and old and worn so where it might be a sticker we'll replace it with than LED where it's it's battery powered and again this is only a prototype the final piece will be full metal now none of the props yeah metal yep but I don't know about you and this is where it gets down to personal choice and I I get to be the guy who makes these decisions and I appreciate the the weight of that Legacy but I always assumed and thought that these should be some sort of metallic futuristic material well you can see that's what the replicas are going to be on what Beverly like it reads uh aluminum yeah even or you know some type of metal even though yes it will be heavy it'll have presents and white the hinges the hinges on the props they're they're very basic and you actually can see it when you watch the show sometimes they're sort of miming the hinges because they're either broken or the door would fall all the way open and then not stay shut I've seen several where the door doesn't stay shut magnetically um we've had to modify them ever so slightly so are they 100 screen accurate No but do they function and will they function for years and years and will they allow you to open and close the thing and repeatedly use it I only use the word play because I'll get shouted at but let's say let's play hey uh we're gonna be watching reruns exactly I mean it's what Adam says it's about the experience yeah is a veracity of experience yeah and so that's what you're trying to learn yeah my thing is you know so this is how I've designed the hinges to to give it you know mechanical engineering or product engineering and and guys if you hate me for that yeah I'm not right because I'm not copying anything and it's not meant to be a copy but I'm trying to make you something that will work and you know yes you may disagree with my choice and I totally accept that because it's my choice and I'm just doing this as I say it's a huge honor to do but it's because I did it for a reason and and that's why you know I will never do anything just arbitrarily and so that that right is that term another one is charging you know this you're gonna have to play with this again you want it to light up but we need to light it up under modern technology we can't have some magical power source so you know you can charge it up with a USBC charger and it's been made to look fully finished fully engineered yeah yeah I see and it will have a removable LiPo battery pack so that when the battery runs down to the end of its life you will be able to replace the battery but again it looks somewhat engineered again it's not Star Trek would have had beautiful micro circuitry and things which do somewhat exist nowadays but it's still out of the Realms of me Immortals like us we can't work in that we're not Apple um material will be metal this will be machined aluminum and it does work and it fits in with the same mechanical way that the prop did it's a ball catch but it works and we will have the sound alive features in there and we'll have the chasing sequence um again this scanner will with this tricorder there were episodes where they used different ones but as a homogenized hole it represents in my opinion the tricorder what about the tell me about the display and the animations yeah so that was fun and that's another addition that that really has been made up because none of the original props had a display so luckily now we have technology that gives us micro displays and we have the ability to change them using the buttons and they do roughly can and I always found it sounded weird that the medical TriCore would have Geo matte and bio meaning Geographic and so what we've tried to do is using some of the our cars Graphics that were so beautifully I mean that's one of the amazing things you can't read them read them but if you look carefully you can read them and they do respond to pieces that were used on the screen the cudas came up with this beautiful work and this is a homage to them and there's the eagle-eyed among people when they buy these May notice a few sort of personal hidden homages to them in there that I've hidden away no Tom Servo robot in this one um but and audio too I mean yes this is this is the clicky yeah that's and you've got to get that right I gotta get that right man did we spend weeks and weeks trying to get that right the sound of a tricord or so important I love it I tell you whoever designed that property is frustratingly hard to replicate that in real life something you think would be so simple and I'm like yeah easy uh three weeks later four weeks later I'm pulling my hair out like yeah I hate this sound are those projects that you get particularly invested in uh working on a line of replicas like you guys have a ton of different things from all different things again it's it's the hardest part is picking them and you know we can do a whole wealth and I guess my favorite ones at the moment are the ones that are sort of in real time we're working on the strange new worlds phaser and that is amazing to get to talk to the production and and I can you know we had sound effects done by the sound designer that didn't exist on screen yet but as we know what aphasia does and we know what federation policies are who want to call them that we know that it may need those sound effects so they fantastically created them for us so we've been able to create Canon I mean it's a male you sit there in the 10 year old Jimmy is going wait I'm doing canonical Star Trek stuff like wow like I mean that really is exciting what moves out of the realm of archeology yeah so much and it's a collaboration yeah and the dream scenario is for us to to be able to do that and then have things that we've already put into a replica that no one's seen yet maybe they'll appear in a future season and you know here's hoping very cool or Barry thank you so much thank you for showing me all these beautiful ships and beautiful Star Trek props thank you Star Trek Is My Jam I can't wait to see these out in the world it's great to see you thank you sir hey guys Adam Savage from tested here if you've ever seen the six-inch ruler in inches and centimeters on my forearm and wanted one of your own but you didn't want it to be permanent well today's your lucky day you can now buy temporary tattoos of my measuring stick my measuring forearm uh at tested dashstore.com comes like this goes on in about 30 seconds with a little water the instructions are on the back it comes off with rubbing alcohol and hopefully it warms you up to the idea of permanently attaching a measuring device to your body because I use mine every single day

Channel: Adam Savage’s Tested

Views: 76,934

Keywords: tested, star trek, special effects, star trek tng, studio scale, adam savage, studio model, next generation, star trek the next generation, san diego comic-con, starship enterprise, uss enterprise, star trek filming model, star trek shooting model, model making, factory entertainment, tricorder, science fiction, booth tour, visual effects

Id: U-LT1w9v9Gs

Length: 22min 2sec (1322 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 24 2023