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" started in the early 1990s and was a main attraction in a small stadium at the Los Angeles theme park, which taught audiences a bit about how filmmaking worked in Hollywood. It replaced a similar attraction that was based on the silent era and Vaudeville (with camera tricks, a somersaulting airplane cockpit, silly pratfalls and a custard pie fight), which I had seen in 1984.
In January 1992, I travelled to the USA again and saw "A Star Trek Adventure". The action was filmed on videotape, not necessarily in order, and automatically cut together on computer with existing stock footage from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, to create a mini-movie with lots of silly moments, water stunts, and a running gag with the Klingon dialogue (one line from the Captain was translated to mean several different things). The finished video was 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 very early to stand on line: the alien Preceptors, the Enterprise bridge extras, Starfleet engineers, landing party and the Klingon "puppy lizard" were all regular park visitors selected on the day. A few parts were for young children, including aome of the engineers and one to play the Klingon Captain's canine/reptilian pet (credited as the "puppy lizard"). I found out too late about the auditions, but four main Klingons were selected each session from the "studio audience".
I was excited to be one of the four men chosen. A Klingon growl-off decided who would be the Captain by measuring the applause from the audience. To my amazement, I actually won! A friend was videotaping me getting filmed so, I have the footage of me competing in the growl-off, plus the actual episode that was created.
Pretty cool, eh? It's fun to watch Kirk's distinctive ST III shirt switch back and forth with his ST II uniform. I really must learn how to upload to Youtube...
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4 comments:
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?
:-)
You betcha.
All the better to read the cue cards, you see.
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.
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! ;)
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