hunky_artist said:
basically the model was designed and built, but once it became apparant that they needed to have the characters walking around the dish, and therefore would need a full size set, they realised that the curved version would be too expensive to build full size.... and take too long. So they changed the model.
The dish went from blue to yellow to accomodate the blue screen work that would have been going on around the set as well.
..... that's what i think anyway, and i think im probably right
I don't remember if they shot bluescreen or greenscreen, but either way it wouldn't matter much now that comps are handled digitally, so the color change wouldn't be linked to that.
As for the history you outline ... the sequence was scripted and boarded (and reboarded) LONG before the E-E exterior was finalized, even finalized on paper, let alone the model being built.
AMERICAN CINEMATOGRAPHER's article on the film has an odd and interesting but confusing quote about shooting on the fullsize dish. It is attributed to an associate visual effects supervisor Moore, but there was no such person at ILM or Paramount on that picture (Ronald Moore was Par's guy on GEN.) They make it sound like using PowerBook was how they figured out the action while shooting. As to WHY they couldn't build the deflector area properly -- as in, as planned -- it may relate to expense of fullsize compound curve stuff, or it could be incompetence. Both of these have certainly reared their head often enough on Trekfilms. Stage space could have been an issue as well, but since forced perspective was supposedly used, it shouldn't have mattered.
With the number of revisions Paramount was asking for on ILM's shots in FC, it doesn't surprise me that ILM didn't do the later films; I have a feeling nobody at ILM would have wanted to do them if ILM had lowered their bids and won either show. Kinda seemed weird that they wanted so many iterations, given that ILM's stuff in FC -- like the PHOENIX shots and the E miniature -- is largely excellent, except for the shots that got dumped on them late in the game, like the coolant, which was supposed to be done more as a physical effect on set till they decided to CG it up, and then kept asking ILM to do 'jello fire' as if it were something you could just type into a computer and hit ENTER. When I talked to John Knoll before, about GENERATIONS, and years later about M2M and TPM, the guy was very happy, but on FC, he was really out of sorts, and barely discussed Paramount's input.