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Commercially available chairs in Star Trek

ex-astris-scientia.org

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Re: Commercially available chairs in Star Trek

#71
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least the set designers had style! Some nice designs there, for sure! If only someine would have thought of, I don't know, seat belts...

In a world where "inertial dampeners" exist and making invisible forcefields is pedestrian, physical seatbelts aren't terribly important. If inertial dampeners outright fail in a spacecraft designed for them you can expect to be reduced to a souplike homogenate whether you're wearing a seatbelt or not.

People get tossed out of their seats every other episode in star trek. I'm sure I've seen multiple "medical team to the bridge"s due to someone getting knocked loose by the ship shaking and hitting their head on a console.

Re: Commercially available chairs in Star Trek

#73
post #21
post #4

This is the kind of niche old content the Internet was know for! Kudos.

This! This is what I want from the internet. Obsessively complete lists that seem unnecessary at a glance but will actually one day help you settle some weird argument or issue. I remember quite vividly a Geocities page that had wiring diagrams for a ton of Realistic brand CB radios my friend and I used to build an adapter for the DIN microphone.

Do you host any content like this?

Re: Commercially available chairs in Star Trek

#74

Someone in the props department had a massive furniture budget. I love it. It reminds me how the "chair" is one of those objects supposedly so hard to classify for things like machines, a little easier for humans. Although may of these designs cause even my brain to struggle with, "Is that a chair?" Some reminded me of the Wood Allen bit from Sleeper : https://youtu.be/H4ZBPz4DinU?si=OM5TOpkumyNwPOvG

One of the benefits of Hollywood is rental and studio stock. Many of these sets are one-off or occasional, and the furniture would return after the shoot.

I read that one of HBO MAX’s key advantages over Netflix is that WB has a century worth of costumes and props in the archive that are available and catalogued for any new production. Whereas Netflix shows pretty much throw away everything when a shoot is done.

Re: Commercially available chairs in Star Trek

#75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a world where "inertial dampeners" exist and making invisible forcefields is pedestrian, physical seatbelts aren't terribly important. If inertial dampeners outright fail in a spacecraft designed for them you can expect to be reduced to a souplike homogenate whether you're wearing a seatbelt or not.

People get tossed out of their seats every other episode in star trek. I'm sure I've seen multiple "medical team to the bridge"s due to someone getting knocked loose by the ship shaking and hitting their head on a console.

That and in the future we'll apparently forget everything we ever learned about electrical codes and the proper way to build things so they don't spark and catch fire at the slightest provocation.

Re: Commercially available chairs in Star Trek

#77

As I looked through the shots of the chairs in the episodes, I noticed that the old shows had some wild lighting: sometimes like a Halloween set, sometimes like a task light was just set up on a tripod next to the camera, and sometimes like a cube farm. The new shows all seem to go for web developer's / Twitch streamer's dungeon with no overhead lighting, wall-mounted spotlights, and RGB rim lights everywhere.

Arg! I can't find it now but a while back I read an amazing article discussing the set design on the original series; particularly for the alien planets. From what I recall, their overall assessment was that the set designers used strong color design and bold shapes to compensate for their lack of budget. In that respect, while later entries in the series had much "better" sets, TOS had the strongest aesthetic.

Re: Commercially available chairs in Star Trek

#78

Someone in the props department had a massive furniture budget. I love it. It reminds me how the "chair" is one of those objects supposedly so hard to classify for things like machines, a little easier for humans. Although may of these designs cause even my brain to struggle with, "Is that a chair?" Some reminded me of the Wood Allen bit from Sleeper : https://youtu.be/H4ZBPz4DinU?si=OM5TOpkumyNwPOvG

One of the benefits of Hollywood is rental and studio stock. Many of these sets are one-off or occasional, and the furniture would return after the shoot.

I was asked to build an electronic prop for a movie once and the strangest question to me was "how do we return it to you?"

Made no sense to me: you're paying me to build you a custom object, why would I want it back? Until I realized that so much stuff in movies is just rented: they wouldn't even have a place to store it after the production is over.

Re: Commercially available chairs in Star Trek

#79

Someone in the props department had a massive furniture budget. I love it. It reminds me how the "chair" is one of those objects supposedly so hard to classify for things like machines, a little easier for humans. Although may of these designs cause even my brain to struggle with, "Is that a chair?" Some reminded me of the Wood Allen bit from Sleeper : https://youtu.be/H4ZBPz4DinU?si=OM5TOpkumyNwPOvG

One of the benefits of Hollywood is rental and studio stock. Many of these sets are one-off or occasional, and the furniture would return after the shoot.

this is sort of dying. there are only one or two major prop houses still running. Sony just shut theirs down and they were one of the last studios to have their own prop warehouse. several specialty shops remain, but they seem much more limited in selection.

Re: Commercially available chairs in Star Trek

#80

As I looked through the shots of the chairs in the episodes, I noticed that the old shows had some wild lighting: sometimes like a Halloween set, sometimes like a task light was just set up on a tripod next to the camera, and sometimes like a cube farm. The new shows all seem to go for web developer's / Twitch streamer's dungeon with no overhead lighting, wall-mounted spotlights, and RGB rim lights everywhere.

Lighting in black and white movies was much more important where you didn't have the additional dimension of color. My understanding was the Star Trek lighting team came with black and white experience.

Not exactly the same, but I love the actor's "lighting" in old German expressionist silent films. Often, instead of using actual lighting, shadows and highlights were applied to actor's faces manually using makeup.

If anyone wants to take a look, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari has some great examples.

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