A camera test model, also known as a pre-visualization model, is a model usually made out of cheap material like paper, cardboard, foam-core or wood, modeled after existing studio models. Detailing varied from very crude to moderate, since they were never intended to appear on-screen. They were typically used by camera teams as visual aids to set up camera shots in pre-production planning before final shooting. Advantages using test models were that the production staff did not have to handle the usually heavier filming models, or as Doug Drexler once jokingly put it, ”You only pulled out the big models once you pretty much knew what you needed”, and that wear and tear to those models was reduced. Most of the Star Trek filming models had one or more test model counterparts. Licensed, commercially available models and model kits were known to have fulfilled this role, as well.
