20 Things You Didn't Know About Star Trek III: The Search For Spock (1984)
14. It's Not The Size, It's How You Use It
Model maker William George submitted his version of a new Federation star ship for Star Trek III. He based his designs on his idea of what the Enterprise would look like - had the Japanese designed it. The result was something both sleeker, yet angular. Leonard Nimoy approved this design.
Filming the model was a small challenge for ILM, who needed to shoot the ship at different levels, with different lighting exposures. This meant that, while they could stitch several passes together, it would have been too big of a nightmare to align the lighting. Therefore, eight 'beauty' shots were required. Star Trek fans will know that half of the fun in revealing a new ship is the long, slow pans over the exterior - this was, in fact, a deliberate tactic to make filming the model easier.
The Excelsior was always described as being larger than the Enterprise, but in actuality, the filming model was 12 inches shorter. As the ship was not going to be in as much of the film as the Enterprise, the crew didn't have any reason to create a model as large and complex as the Enterprise.