V - TV Series (1984)

[winterg]

Those posters are great! I have to share them. I loved that show when I was a kid. Great, now I want to make a V costume. Damnit. LoL

 

[137th Gebirg]

Actually, I haven't seen them around.. Not accurate anyway.. There were fan designs etc around.. For instance:

There is this:

I was going to draw it but never got around to it..

Ah, yes! That's the one. That face poster was definitely in that scene and I really like the troop transport. Don't think I've ever seen that particular schematic before. The skull pic is really good, but I think they made it look like the Visitors had smaller cranial capacity than humans. Maybe it's a scale thing.

I should try to get some screen caps of those charts. Unfortunately, I only have DVD's and I don't think BluRay versions of the 80's minis were ever made, at least not yet and the quality will likely not be that good. I'll likely have to do some enhancement.

 

[Beechy McFly]

Some more images that might help:

 

[Beechy McFly]

 

[137th Gebirg]

^^^ Yes, some of those look like they're from the Visitor's Technical Manual from way back. I should do an Illustrator vector treatment on these - I think it's high-time these babies be brought up to the 21st century...

 

[MooCriket]

^^^ Yes, some of those look like they're from the Visitor's Technical Manual from way back. I should do an Illustrator vector treatment on these - I think it's high-time these babies be brought up to the 21st century...

Gebirg, I'd love to see that done, and Beechy...thanks, you've yet to dissapointthumbsup

 

[137th Gebirg]

I have to do some research on source material, but I think it's very do-able. I might even try to take a shot at the mother ship if I can find some close-ups of the original studio model. Problem with that one is that many of the mother ship shots were actually matte paintings that didn't always fit accurately with the proportions of the big model. The skyfighter variants will be the easiest, as they are thankfully quite modular in design (love that!)

I've also always wondered what the Particle Beam Triax looked like up close (from the series episode "Dreadnaught"), but that one seems to have hardly any information about it at all and has faded into complete obscurity. It almost looked as if they borrowed something from a sci-fi props warehouse from another series or movie, as it didn't look like anything that fits into the known Visitor aesthetic, and I can't imagine they had much of a budget to work with to build such a miniature from scratch for one episode.

Out of curiosity, are there any dedicated "V" forums out there that might be interested in such things? Might be a good place for source material research as well.

More to come...

Edit: I might also take a stab at a uniform designation chart. The Visitors had some pretty interesting costume variations. I think I'll try to codify what they all mean.

 

[Beechy McFly]

I've also always wondered what the Particle Beam Triax looked like up close (from the series episode "Dreadnaught"), but that one seems to have hardly any information about it at all and has faded into complete obscurity. It almost looked as if they borrowed something from a sci-fi props warehouse from another series or movie, as it didn't look like anything that fits into the known Visitor aesthetic, and I can't imagine they had much of a budget to work with to build such a miniature from scratch for one episode.

Out of curiosity, are there any dedicated "V" forums out there that might be interested in such things? Might be a good place for source material research as well.

More to come...

Edit: I might also take a stab at a uniform designation chart. The Visitors had some pretty interesting costume variations. I think I'll try to codify what they all mean.

I have a lot of pics you need and want.. :lol There was this great "V" Forum and Website called "The V Files" but I've closed in all down a few months ago.. :rolleyes

As for the Triax, you are correct, not much around on this.. Lucky I had contact with the prop people from the show years ago.. It was actually designed by Dale Fay of David Stipes Productions..

That I remember, interviewed him about the Triax, it was an original he built it for a student film he made while he attended the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena..

The production people at Warner Brothers went over to David Stipes and Dale Fay and asked, 'Do you know of any stock footage that exists of spaceships that look nine miles wide??' Their plan at that time was to try and find some stock footage at Universal of maybe the Galactica or something, and then try turning it upside down and backwards to use an an alien space station / headquarters.. David Stipes said, 'I'll tell you what - we know of a ship on hand..'

Dale had brought in this ship one day just to show what he was up to and David had remembered him.. David told Warner Brothers that there was this ship out there that pretty much met their description, and that he was sure that Dale would be willing to modify it and rent it to them.. They called Dale up and he brought it in.. They walked in and said, 'Yup, that's it..'

So he modified it, put in light panels and things.. They setted it up on their motion control stage and did the shot for them, and they were just as happy as could be.. The only problem with the shot was that they only wanted one shot, but they wanted to use it for all sorts of different cuts.. They had a really challenging task of trying to do one long, continuous shot that would be able to cut as several different shots in different scenes, so it really was a lot of effort.. Here's some pics that may help:

That second shot is the "Triax" with white paper and paint to be used to generate a high contrast hold - out matte (in CGI: "alpha matte") to keep stars from double exposing onto the ship..

And that ends today's lesson about the Triax.. :lol

 

[Borjis]

http://www.ilanasvsite.com/kenjohnson.htm a picture to put a sense of size on that billboard is there.

scroll down to the "The "V" Graveyard" (sky fighter junkyard)

oh that makes me weep!

 

[Beechy McFly]

scroll down to the "The "V" Graveyard" (sky fighter junkyard)

oh that makes me weep!

What makes your weeping become crying a river is the fact that they are all destroyed that I am aware of.. Tried talking to Kenny Johnson years ago about getting one, but he said that he knew of WB had destroyed them all..

 

[137th Gebirg]

Wow! Thanks for the info Beechy - you definitely seem to be the one to talk to about this stuff. Those two are nice pics of the Triad, but I would need something of considerably higher resolution and multiple views to get the kind of detailed information to make something useable. The biggest problem with images like this is the relative position of the camera to the object being filmed, causing perspective distortion - otherwise known as "foreshortening" in the art world. It would be next to impossible to do a proper architectural-quality orthographic multi-view without additional source material.

For example, I used a ton of close-up pics from Jim Creveling's Battlestar Galactica, as well as some private sources of original studio miniature pics (before they were made public on this particular site) to make something that looks like this. I've also done lesser-known fan favorites like the 6th Millennium Fighter (which I call the Scorpion), the Colonial Shuttle (Mk I), Eastern Alliance Destroyer and Cylon A/B Raider from Galactica 1980, only made possible through the existence of good photographic source material, mostly from the owners of the original filming miniatures. Couldn't really have done it any other way.

I would love to do a treatment like this on all the V ships (although, I don't think the skyfighters would be that terribly complex and I'll be tackling them first as they have the most information available for them) but what I need are some super-close-up shots. I suspect I'll have problems getting source material on the motherships since, reading that section of Ken Johnson's interview, it looks like there were some VAST differences of opinion on what they looked like, down to where the landing bays were supposed to be. Not surprising, really. Only Star Trek and, to some degree, Star Wars had production teams that were willing to preserve their creations and document their existence at a higher level of quality and detail than probably any other science fiction production, before or since.

Thanks for any info, all the same! Much appreciated...

 

[Beechy McFly]

Track down David Fay, he could still have the Triax, as I was trying to buy it but couldn't afford it..

 

[137th Gebirg]

Is he here on RPF?

 

[Beechy McFly]

Not sure.. Lost contact ages ago..

 

[MooCriket]

Do you still hear from Sarge Beechy? Lost contact with him, hope he is doing all right.

 

[Beechy McFly]

Do you still hear from Sarge Beechy? Lost contact with him, hope he is doing all right.

Not for a long time.. Haven' heard from many of old guys since the 3 main forums / websites closed..

 

[ShockTrooper]

Hi guys.Anyone have pics of the mothership studio model?.

I would love to see it.I asked David Stipes but he hasn´t any pic of the original model.This is the only one I have found.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Beechy McFly]

Yeah, very rare to see shots of the Motherships.. Only other ones I can offer, though small, are:

 

[Beechy McFly]

Thats a promotional poster used as a billboard not used on screen in the show. Its neat though.
I was wondering if you have seen better pictures of this poster used in the series.

Can only remember this as Promo shot Poster:

And there was this one too:

 

[ShockTrooper]

Thanks Beechy.