MovieChat Forums > Project U.F.O. (1978) Discussion > Too much detail on UFO models!!!

Too much detail on UFO models!!!

posted 15 years ago by will7370
6 replies | jump to latest

All the photographs of supposedly real UFOs almost universally show them as being smooth surfaced and almost featureless. Yet the guys who created the UFO models for this show look like they went crazy with model kits and put an overwhelming amount of stuff hanging all over their ships. Should they not have tried to copy existing photographs?

Also, for the scenes that supposedly happen at night, most people and places were obviously filmed in broad daylight, but the UFO shots are all shown against a black sky. This switching back and forth between blue sky/daylight and black sky really ruined the continuity of the show for me.

[–] czero101 15 years ago

Gotta love 1970's low-budget tv special effects. Take a look at Battlestar Galactica (the original series). They only ever produced about 5 or 6 effects shots of the Vipers flying through space (made for the original movie), but continually reused them throughout the series. In one episode they were supposedly flying through a "void", but it was obvious that the effect people just darkened one of the effects shots of the Viper flying by to make the background stars dimmer, but still visible.

I'd imagine that the models were done the way they were done in order to make them more visually interesting for the viewers.

Cz

Evil PURE AND SIMPLE by way of the Eighth Dimension!

[–] lordhack_99 15 years ago

A friend of mine, the late Art Smith, father of the also-deceased Samantha of some renown, was talking with me about those first shots of a UFO, and the absurd level of detail, only to have the UFO explained as a muzzy, fuzzy light, and shown as such! By this point, Webb must have been a little fuzzy himself, given the booze.

[–] trancejeremy 14 years ago

I think part of it is simply to make it look like less of a model.

Models look like models. But the more detail you add, the less they look like models. That's why Star Wars (the original) worked so well, the detail on the models was insane.

You can also see this in giant monster movies. The higher budget ones have a lot more detail in their sets. They still don't look real, but they don't look like toy cars, while the low budget ones do.

[–] lordhack_99 14 years ago

Not quite the point. The show had witnesses who saw highly detailed craft,
but then on the 'explanation', what we and they saw turned into a 'fuzzy light'. Totally dishonest of the show.

[–] SilentJay32 10 years ago

Nah, that was a representation of what the witness thinks they saw, and what it was that they likely actually saw. Memory plays tricks on us, and we invent details to fill in gaps.

For example, I remembered what I thought was a specific episode of the show, but (now that I've watched them all on Youtube) it turns out that it was actually bits of three episodes, and one of the bits was actually somebody describing something, as opposed to actually showing it.

This isn't to say that every sighting is a misidentification, but that the majority of them were.

[–] lordhack_99 10 years ago

No, the show had US looking at a UFO with all the spars and lights. WE saw what the witnesses saw. The show's attitude was "You gonna believe us or your lyin' eyes." The was a GASLIGHT effect. with an idiotic explanation of what "really" happened. Show sucked, anyway.