Thursday, October 09, 2008

A Star Trek Adventure

Digging through some frame grabs to illustrate the last blog post, I realised I never did anything with this set after taking them off a TV screen with a borrowed video camera.

Universal Studios' "A Star Trek Adventure" (1992) was a main attraction at the Los Angeles theme park, and was used to demonstrate how movies are made in Hollywood. It replaced a previous, similar attraction based on Vaudeville type comedy. The action was filmed on videotape, not necessarily in order, and automatically cut together with existing stock footage from Star Treks II and III, to create a mini-movie - available to buy on VHS after the show.

Traditionally, the cast for each session of "A Star Trek Adventure" was selected from attendees to the Studios' tour, who rolled up early to stand on line, but four Klingons were selected each session from the "studio audience". A Klingon growl-off decided who would be Captain, ie. on the day I went, I won!

Auditioning KlingonswhiteRehearsing "No way, dude!"
The director rehearses the Klingons.

Opening titlewhiteTitle screen
Opening titles

Klingons rockwhite"No way, dude!"
Klingons rock! and Me to Kirk: "You have robbed us of our honour!
I demand that you execute us IMMEDIATELY!"


Them to me: "No way, dude!"

"Our honor etc..."whiteKirk onscreen
Me: No plie nie blimbo jah! (A running gag; it means whatever it needs to mean.)
Christopher Lloyd (far right) was my stand-in for the Klingon Captain's
scene opposite William Shatner as James T Kirk!


Ready for my close-upwhite"Until we meet again..."

Me: No plie nie blimbo jah! And again: No plie nie blimbo jah!

Closing credits

Pretty cool, eh? I really must learn how to upload to Youtube...

4 comments:

De said...

Though I never went, I do remember the Star Trek Adventure very well from videos friends brought back from vacation.

I guess there are some Klingons allergic to Retinax 5 as well, eh?

:-)

Therin of Andor said...

You betcha.

All the better to read the cue cards, you see.

Thomas Suters said...

I looked through quite a few "A Star Trek Adventure" episodes on YouTube. But these series just changed the Enterprise captain and token Vulcan. The Klingons were all professional actors. But that's not to say the episodes where the Klingon crew was changed to budding actors. It was clever how they merged the superimposed actors against Sulu, Chekov, Dr. McCoy and Scotty seemlessly.

Therin of Andor said...

The ones you mention are from a much later Star Trek attraction, for Universal at Florida, IIRC. It was made with new footage, filmed on a bridge that had the appearance of the Enterprise-A from the end of ST IV. Kelley, Nicholls, Takei, Doohan and Koenig filmed new footage, and Kirk was said to be off at a conference (San Francisco stock footage from TMP).

An example of the one I was in is here. I assure you, the only professional actors are in the stock footage. It uses ST II and ST III only, and it's fun to watch Kirk's distinctive ST III shirt switch back and forth. The alien Preceptors, all the Klingons, the Enterprise bridge extras, engineers, landing party and the Klingon "puppy lizard" were regular park visitors selected on the day.

I will try to upload mine one day when I find all the right leads and connections! ;)