Continuing my Irwin Allen theme... I decided to recreate the final suspenseful moments before the Jupiter II crashes upon an alien world. In the unaired version of the pilot "No Place to Hide" the Robinsons called this world "Priplanus". The real life counterpart for Priplanus is Red Rock Canyon and the Trona Pinnacles, just a short distance from each other, both located in Death Valley, California. It was here the production filmed those epic sequences. Unlike my example, the crew didn't have access to digital technology. It wouldn't exist for years. Instead, they shot a miniature of the Jupiter on location guiding it along a pair of wires, a method perfected by the Liedecker Brothers. This method has an innate advantage. Unlike compositing, the miniature experiences the same lighting as its environment, no worries whether or not the shadows will match. That original sequence holds up extremely well, even when compared with today's digital effects, and I dare anyone to locate the wires suspending the model. For this humble recreation, I simply imported a shot of the Trona Pinnacles as a background plate with a modified version of James Murphy's Jupiter mesh (with landing gear removed and wells "plugged") as the single wireframe element. Photographer Barry Peters kindly granted me permission (via e-mail) to let me use one of his photographs of the famous Trona Pinnacles. His work, as well others can be viewed at: http://promisedplanet.com/Jupiter2000/TronaGallery.htm After I rendered, I imported the raw render into PaintShop Pro where I added "noise", "grayscale" and a slight motion blur. My attempt was to give it the illusion of being a single frame of motion film shot during the early 60s. I'll leave it to you whether or not I succeeded. *** *** *** Credits Jupiter II (freebie) (modified): James "Tobor" Murphy Original photo is the property of Barry Peters