RIP Ron Thornton, CGI pioneer and fan media's hero too

I didn't know Ron Thornton that well, although he was certainly kind and generous and supportive of me in my writing and projects. I may not even have any pics with him, back from the time of no cameras-on-pagers known as The Nineties.

Following his passing Monday afternoon after a long illness, you can read much more by his Trekside colleagues Mike Okuda and Daren Dochterman here at the excellent remembrance startrek.com ran today... where I pilfered the above photo. There are many more reflections on Ron scattered around Facebook by both peers and proteges.

But with his far-too-soon passing on Monday, it brings to mind how much our world has changed, how much storytelling capability on television has changed.. and so much of it due to Ron. For all you kids raised on cheap n' easy CGI* you do on your own laptop... Ron was literally the one who brought the magic of new digital effects to weekly TV.

Ron was a hands-on visual effects guy, and has plenty of credits to prove it. But by the time he'd co-started Foundation Imaging and it bled over into Trek work where we needed to interact,  I saw him as head of his companies, mostly. But in that regard Ron was not only always glad to see and help me, but he made it possible for the CGI Trek journalism revolution as well. Beginning with the original UK Fact Files—and then our official Communicator mag and then the US Trek mag that Fact Files content became in the US—those digital ship shots were no longer a high-dollar wish-list item: Ron made it possible to supply us with the angles and 3/4 views of elusive CGI ships that Trek techheads were so hungry for, after mourning the phase-out of those beautiful, actual miniature ship models.

True, in the early years we used to talk about how all the Foundation effects on Babylon 5 were "so CG-ey"—that is, overly aliased, and obviously below the quality of shooting actual models. But the  evolution was speedy, for the important thing was that his breakthrough render farm concept allowed common PCs of that time to handle the high-data demands of CGI processing quickly as a networked unit. So speedy, in fact, that even the supervisors on state-of-the-art Star Trek, one by one--even, by DS9's last season, skeptic Gary Hutzel too—became convinced that CGI would be not just doable but respectable on TV limits... both in money AND time. Even for Star Trek.

It's ironic to me how today there's as much CGI digital work on TV now that has nothing to do with space battles—invasive viruses and infections illustrated with graphic motion on every procedural show, massive Earthly landscapes on global adventure shows, Earth-bound superheroics on all the superhero fad series... and it all kicked off with Ron finding a way to make it work on the small screen in the early 90s.

Excuse me. I know I must have a great shot with Ron here somewhere. I'm long overdue to dig it out.


*Just in case you need it: CGI is actually the acronym for "computer-generated imagery."

Wow: The real-life birthplace of the Enterprise—TODAY

Buddy Dayton Ward's reposting of this iconic 1964 photo with a reminder of the 49th birthday of the "real" NCC-1701 earlier this week was a great kick in the butt to get something done I'd meant to do for years.

Meant to, in fact, ever since we had first published that photo and many more 13 years ago in a great piece by model historian William McCullars in the old Communicator (#132). It was piece that made me realize once again that, duh, we do live in SoCal here—and that once again the future "San Francisco" had again been faked for Star Trek. About a mile from me.

For just as, say, the Bird-of-Prey "Bounty" had really set down on Will Rogers' polo field in ST IV, not Golden Gate Park... so too were the Starfleet "San Fransisco Navy Yards" actually located at ... 104 E. Providencia in Burbank. That, you see, was the 1964 location of Volmer Jensen's Production Models Shop ... and the location of that iconic photo above, snapped on the occasion as primary model contractor Richard C. Datin (at left in photo) took delivery of the 11-footer for Howard A. Anderson Effects and Desilu.

I had been meaning for years to go over, scout the area, and try to recreate the angles in that now-famous photo—and another couple more we had from William but didn't publish. It was Dec. 30, only a day later and about the same long-shadowed time of late afternoon.

What I found... was astounding. Click and compare for yourself—12/29/64 vs. 12/30/13:

The distant church, the midground building on left, and especially the motel and the brick-topped short stucco sidewalk wall at right are all intact and obviously visible. Even the sidewalk and many phone/power poles appear to be the same. Changes in trim, doors and windows plugged since 1964—all can be picked out.

This second UNPUBLSHED photo (aside from William's now-gone website), which has a bit of Jensen's shop sign, gets an updated angle too. The dang modern green-screened gate is in the way, but try to look past it and see the short stucco "fence" turn back anyway. I was staring into a late afternoon sun-blanked MacBook monitor for reference, so my angle is not as true as I'd like; I should have been further left into the street, but hey:

 

There is no photo (to my knowledge) of Jensen's shop head-on, but here's the angle of what's there today (right): a tile and flooring shop, where I met the owner's brother Tony—who was well aware of the historic nature of his brother's little enterprise. They had not received many pilgrims like me, but the notoriety of the place had been handed down from neighbors and prior owners.


All these pics are another good reminder why both Tonight Show's Johnny Carson and Laugh-In writers thought the irony of a 1960s global media capital with a "Mayberry" downtown was too much to pass up—and so "Beautiful Downtown Burbank" was as much a local joke as a worldwide catchphrase.

I got by just in time, as Tony reminded me: the downtown modernizing of Burbank since the 1990s now means that a new IKEA and parking lot are going in this year just behind the shop, and a new downtown Hilton is going in across the street —taking out all the surrounding block of old 50s-60s low-story, freeway-adjacent industrial buildings. The building across the street at left and all the low-key use will be gone in a year—as will the flooring shop's neighbors.

Somehow, THIS shop escaped the new IKEA plan buyout... so, like Independence Hall amidst tall downtown Philly, this little Burbank division of Starfleet appears to live on—for now.

(What—you think the comparison in history is too much? Get out of here, Herbert.)

STV: Dan Curry on TNG's Season 2 Blu-ray—and the baby poop planet

As promised, here's the next segment of our recent extended chat with Star Trek's longtime master of visual effects, Dan Curry—this one targeted at his consulting work on the new remastered TNG Season 2 Blu-ray set.

As with Season 1, this CBS Home Entertainment set got a big nationwide boost from the Fathom Events screenings nationwide, including documentaries about how the remastering work was located, assembled and just done. Not to mention the big roundtable cast reunion. In all, it's 120 minutes  of NEW bonus footage—including Robert Burnett and Roger Lay's ongoing massive new TNG doc, an ALL NEW BLOOPER REEL of newly assembled outtakes put together fresh from the re-opened "dailies" of raw footage ... plus all the prior DVD-era  docs carried over as well.

This new 5-disc set (left) includes an incredible and rare longer version of the Data-Picard classic "The Measure of a Man" with footage filmed but originally cut for timing—preserved by then-writer Melinda Snodgrass, off the courtesy rough-edit VHS given her as a private gift!

But back to Dan—and yes, I finally do get the "baby poop planet" story on the record.   But that's not all—we'll have even more Trek tales with Dan in Part 3. And after that, Dan's very own "Trek2Chuck", whatever that might be. I never thought we'd have another installment in our Chuck series ... but you just never know, do you? Just like "remastering" TNG—who'da thunk it?  

TECH-ing the (TECH): 1998 Hutzel VFX ship scales

By request from Boris at Memory Alpha:

I'm opening up the vaults a little early—before we formally launch the larrynemecek.com site and its archives section—to share the actual shorthand note from onetime TNG & DS9 visual effects supervisor Gary Hutzel, now famously the VFX producer on revamped Battlestar Galactica and soon Caprica.

It was May 5, 1998: We had just done our annual end-of-season wrap-up interview for his shows from DS9-6, and Gary provided his note sheet for my Fact Files research (and the legacy of all future techheads). The bottom four entries are my writing, added from Gary's verbal addenda that day— fresh from the "Operation: Return" episodes and the season finale's First Battle of Chintoka. Here you see the intended ship length, the models' actual length (or foam-core CGI stand-in), and the resulting scale and ratios needed. The list itself goes back to the end of Season 4, obviously—note the little tug and the Curry (stay tuned!).

Part of the duty of latter-day ship ner-- er, archivists -- is to contrast and compare the varied VFX chiefs' scale with the final onscreen effort to try to make sense of it all. Ha!

In the future, I'll just blog about these photos and notes here as "TECH-ing the (TECH)" —all you script and technobabble fans should get that one!—or TTT, and link you to the archive page.

But for now ... Enjoy! And comment away!

LN Photo (above): Gary Hutzel, Judy Elkins: Cooper Building, Trek post-production offices, 5/5/98.