More than 550 items from the late Greg Jein are heading to auction, from Nichelle Nichols' iconic knee-high boots and red tunic as Lt. Uhura to a hairpiece for William Shatner's Captain Kirk.
in combining different shots, it stood in for several fighters, including Red Five, piloted by Mark Hamill's Luke Skywalker, according to the auction house.
It's one of only four"hero" filming miniatures — such models get the hero label if their level of detail is ready for a closeup shot — that were made. At 1:24 scale, a helmeted figure sits in the X-wing's cockpit, ahead of an R2 droid. Its engines and weapons have electric lights; its wings spread for battle via a servo mechanism. The special effects team at Industrial Light & Magic even used heat sinks and cooling ducts to keep the model from overheating.
Aside from the model's significance in film history, its high level of detail, such as the fuselage's weathering and blast marks, reflects the combination of imagination and meticulous construction that artisans like Jein used to bring audiences to new heights of suspended disbelief. Greg Jein's name appears on this ruined spacecraft from the First Bug War in the 1997 film "Starship Troopers." The model miniature is nearly three feet long, made to look as if an intense battle has left its hull shredded.In some cases, Jein was alone in recognizing the objects' inherent value, after filming was complete.
"None of the materials in The Greg Jein Auction have ever been available to the public," the auction house says."Most weren't even made to survive the passage of time, and some would not have lasted were it not for Jein, who friends and colleagues say rescued much of this material from history's dustbin and studio's dumpsters."The Dallas-based auction house is taking proxy bids ahead of a scheduled auction for Oct. 14 to 15.