The struggles of the special effects staff who created the movie “Star Trek: The Motion Picture” and what they left behind, Part 2

Trumbull's team on the move

Trumbull then began full-scale visual effects work on Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Work was carried out in the same studios that had been used for Close Encounters of the Third Kind of the Third Kind (1977), as well as in surrounding studios and buildings, and Bo Gehring, who had worked on the 3D CG for The Demon Seed (1977), built four additional motion-controlled cameras.

“Demon Seed” preview

Trumbull reassembled the staff that had worked on Close Encounters of the Third Kind of the Third Kind, and also rehired staff members who had been employed by RA&A and its subsidiary Astra Images, including Robert Swarth, Scott Farrar, Mark Stetson, and Andrew Probert, at Entertainment Effects Group (EEG), a subsidiary of FGC.

However, with only seven months left until the film's release, completing 500 visual effects shots seemed impossible. So he asked his former assistant, Dijkstra, to do about 30% of the work. His company, Apogee, had once declined the project after running into difficulties with the Arthur Penn adaptation of Altered States(*1), but now had the free time. In this way, a total of about 300 staff members were assembled.

*1 The project was later completed by the 27th candidate for director, Ken Russell, as Altered States (1979). Dykstra was not involved in this Russell version.

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