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With this being the 50th Anniversary Year of Star Trek, there are a lot of documentaries and we're getting a lot of background of the early years of Trek. However, we're celebrating the actual first premiere of the show on TV (September 8, 1966, as we all know), and before that ever aired, there were two pilots shot, the first being The Cage.

One could make a case that the actual "birth" of Trek would be on the first day of filming, since that would be after all the characters were worked out, the plot was fleshed out, and most of the prep work was completed.

Is there any record of what the first scene ever filmed of Star Trek is and when it was shot? Or perhaps as much as a shooting schedule for that first day of shooting?

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    "since that would be after all the characters were worked out, the plot was fleshed out, and most of the prep work was completed." - not really, a LOT of changes can happen between the first moment a camera is switched on and the first public broadcast.
    – John McNamara
    Commented Aug 14, 2016 at 9:05

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According to this image from www.startrekhistory.com, the first item on the shooting schedule for "The Cage" was scene 15, the interior effects shot for the transporter sequence.

Please note that the working title for this pilot (as seen at the top of the call sheet) was "The Menagerie" and should not be confused with the episode that would eventually share the same title and recycle some of the footage used.

enter image description here
With apologies for the crudeness of my editing

enter image description here

Prior to that was a rehearsal for the dance sequence but it's unlikely that rehearsal footage would have made it into the episode.

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  • Not to add another "condition," but since you mention it was an fx shot, do you know if there was any shooting of fx or model shots before they started with the live action?
    – Tango
    Commented Aug 13, 2016 at 23:51
  • @tango - Unlikely. B-Roll, model and effects shots (without cast) are always filmed at the end, to save money
    – Valorum
    Commented Aug 14, 2016 at 8:22
  • I figured that, just thought I'd toss it out as a possibility.
    – Tango
    Commented Aug 14, 2016 at 18:53

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