One of the most exciting aspects of any Star Trek film are the wonderfully complex creations of the ILM model shop. While Star Trek IV has its share of elaborate miniatures, the most difficult one of all was a 16 foot long section of the Golden Gate Bridge!

The Golden Gate Bridge miniature was complicated not only because of its immense size but due to the fact that it was designed with a forced perspective. We only built half of the bridge so it had only one tower. Because the perspective on it was forced, the foreground roadway measured about 16 inches wide, while at the very end, on the other side of the tower, it was 2 inches wide. We had to scale all the gutters and everything else to taper.  We wanted the storm in the film to be just wild, so after we completed construction of the bridge, we built an enclosure for it that was about 20 feet high and about 100 feet square in one of our parking lots. Within that enclosure, we built a tank that was about 18 inches deep, and then we tried everything to create rain wind and clouds using smoke and wind machines and water sprayers. For a sequence near the end of the film where Kirk's Bird of Prey crash lands under the Golden Gate Bridge, we actually built a wire rig so the Klingon ship could be flown live in the enclosure.

A lot of the model work consisted of refurbishing old models from earlier trek films. In Star Trek III, the Enterprise was destroyed. Then in Star Trek IV, a new Enterprise was needed so the actual model had to be repaired and repainted.