TOS has a wonderful look compared to the later series. The overuse of color, reflective of NBC’s desire to push color television, makes for very dramatic color photography with a style unequalled in any other TV show I can think of. The new prints really help bring out the gorgeous coloration in the lighting and background and sets – and I adore the super-dramatic lighting they’ll use on someone’s eyes in a shot.

I will add that the over-the-top (but sadly also overused) musical cues are also a treasured part of TOS. The music in the later series was so diminished and repressed – inoffensive, as Josh might say. I’ll happily listen to my musical soundtracks of old TOS episodes off my old Varese Sarabande LPs (delightful geekiness), but I can’t imagine plunking down a penny for music (other than Jerry Goldsmith’s recycled theme music) from TNG or later series.

So Josh has a strong argument here about the wonders of TOS due to its age and era, and how we need to keep that in mind as we consider the remastering. I also agree, upon deeper consideration, that the true Enterprise look is a gray – but it is indeed hard to ignore that the prettiest shots in the original series also have a great deal of blue scatter affecting them. So I naturally associate the blue look with the nicer shots – oh well!

And I certainly agree with Josh that they must keep the slow, ponderous grace of the old girl – don’t have her flitting about. I never really liked the opening series shots of the ship zipping by at incredible speed – they avoided that effect in the episodes themselves and I’m grateful for it.

As for how far to zap the episode content, I’m glad CBS has been conservative. They clearly don’t have time for things like redoing all the high screens on the bridge, and why bother anyway? Lots of active displays up there would just be a distraction from the drama. And thank heavens they didn’t do all of the things they might have to the Gorn given enough time. A few eyelid blinks were fine to liven him up – I do wish they’d had time to do more regarding closed eyelids when he’s hit by the rock and the cannon, but I imagine time wasn’t on their side.

I do think that the remasterers are the ones to make the call on using a less detailed model – I don’t see them as caving to pressure. I believe them when they say they need less detail so they can improve render times and thus improve the lighting. But I also hope they keep the very detailed model handy for the shots that get up close and personal to our favorite starship, when the rivets (of course, there aren’t any, are there?) would show.

Happy trekking everyone!

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/15/movies/15waxm.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print

Excerpt:

ltimately, though, Image Metrics could even go beyond the need for Tom Hanks — or any other actor — altogether.

“We can reanimate footage from the past,” said Mr. Wood, a stolid man with a salesman’s smile. He was hired to introduce Hollywood to the technology, which the computer scientists who founded the company sometimes have difficulty articulating.

“We could put Marilyn Monroe alongside Jack Nicholson, or Jack Black, or Jack White,” he continued, seated in the conference room where the emoting actress and her avatar shared the screen. “If we want John Wayne to act alongside Angelina Jolie, we can do that. We can directly mimic the performance of a human being on a model. We can create new scenes for old films, or old scenes for new films. We can have one human being drive another human character.”

To prove the point Mr. Wood brought up on-screen an animated character that he showed at the Directors Guild of America this past summer. The character, a simple figure comprising just a few lines drawn in the computer, made the “I coulda been a contender” speech from “On the Waterfront,” in Marlon Brando’s voice. (Because Brando didn’t gesture much, the stick figure’s movements were based on those of a hired actor.) Then he pulled up a video of the musician Peter Gabriel singing a scat beat alongside a half-dozen animated figures who, one by one, joined him in precise concert. Finally he brought up a scene from a Marilyn Monroe movie in which animators replaced the original Marilyn with a computer-drawn version of her. The image isn’t perfect — or rather, it’s a bit too perfect for credulity — but it clearly shows the path that lies ahead.

The breakneck pace of technology combined with the epic ambitions of directors has, up to now, taken movies to places undreamed of in the past: the resinking of the “Titanic”; war in space between armies of droids; a love story between a dinosaur-sized ape and a human-sized woman. (Whoops, we had that one before.)

But if Image Metrics can do what it claims, the door may open wider still, to vast, uncharted territories. To some who make the movies, the possibilities may seem disturbing; to others, exciting: Why not bring back Sean Connery, circa 1971, as James Bond? Or let George Clooney star in a movie with his aunt, Rosemary; say, a repurposed “White Christmas” of 1954? Maybe we can have the actual Truman Capote on-screen, performed by an unseen actor, in the next movie version of his life.

Projects are already circulating around Hollywood that seek to revive dead actors, including one that envisions Bruce Lee starring in a new Bruce Lee picture.

(I don’t know if the blockquote commands work; wait, maybe it will, I see WordPress. If it does work, the key to italics in Wordpress or blockquote or any other command is the shift key and the comma and period keys — next to “m” pressed together — and the / in bracket to end the command.)

My own idea of a great Star Trek film would be a CGI one — once the above technology and variants are created — with the original actors, perhaps Nimoy and Shatner voicing their parts. And the late, great Dee Kelley recreated. Again, one needs a good script.

Anyway, I shall give Abrams et al. a chance.

Rendering related to CGI defined well here:

http://www.answers.com/topic/computer-graphics

Here are still of the model used in the original series:

http://www.cloudster.com/sets&vehicles/STEnterprise/EnterpriseTop.htm

I agree with Daren’s comments here:

http://betafive.com/wordpress/?p=18#more-18

What’s been wrong (and still is wrong) with the ship shots:

1. The color. They’ve made it a neutral gray which they’ve often lit with “warm” lights… making it look a pale tan. This got better over the last couple episodes… but it’s still way too dark. The Enterprise should be a cool gray. Much more blue than we’re getting. I realize that a lot of the blue in the original show came from the ship being surrounded by blue light from the bluescreen photography, but this is one of the qualities of the shots in the original show… and it should be duplicated.

2. The Engine Nacelles. They just look wrong. Still. The “blades” of the fan in front they’ve made too wide. They are missing the fact that this widening of the blades is in fact made from the motion blur of the shutter on the camera. The real blades were much thinner, as you can see from the close up shots of the nacelle dome effects in Doomsday Machine. (the shot “over the shoulder” of the Enterprise where it is towing the Constellation)… The domes should not be orange. They should be frosted white… and LIT from inside by the orange lights. The domes they have now are very uniformly luminant… this is just plain wrong. Real world objects do not behave like this… and it’s an immediate clue to “CG-ocity”… there are a few ways to do this effect correctly… apparently they have just given up and are satisfied with this cartoon look… or perhaps they are just content with this because it reminds them of the much more boring TNG nacelle cap effects. Whatever it is, I cringe when I see it… cause I know it can be done better…

4. Lighting. Lighting. Lighting. The lighting on the original show’s effects was NOT flat. It can sometimes be mistaken for that since in most shots the Key light (or brightest light in the shot) came from the same general direction as the camera. This is different than TNG and later lighting where the brightest lights were placed TOWARD the camera, behind the objects. Frankly, I can’t tell what the lighting scheme is for the new shots, cause it is wildly inconsistent and almost always “wrong” looking to me. There seems to be no thinking about duplicating the lighting from the original shots… and the lighting they’re using certainly doesn’t make their model look good. (and it doesn’t seem to be emulating the lighting on the planets either) It just seems haphazard… and it doesn’t make the Enterprise look like a model… or real… (I’d be satisfied if it looked like an 11 foot model…) It just looks flat, flat, flat.

There’s no right or wrong way to do this but everyone insists there is because its what THEY want to see. Sure voice your opinion but saying they bowed to fans or the way they see things is wrong is…well…wrong lol!

I want to see a white Enterprise, red phasers and some cool shuttle craft shots. But if the ship isn’t white, etc. I’m not gonna say it ruins the show for me. IDIC!

Can someone explain what rendering is?

Live long and prosper

I will bet anyone in here MONEY, had Roddenberry been approached with the idea of killing off Kirk he would have thrown whoever suggested it out of the room.

HELL no.

Lucas didn’t have Luke Skywalker go through all the **** he did only to get killed in the last film.
Doyle found out rather quickly you don’t kill off Sherlock Holmes, it doesn’t fly.
if people REALLY pay close attention, Star Trek has been on a slow, methodical decline since whatever Jackass decided to nix Kirk, effectively negating the primary edict of ANY dramatic narrative, you don’t KILL your heroes! You don’t off the characters the audience identifies with and forks out 10 bucks to go watch. That was assinine, and people wonder why only 1 million people tune into Star Trek the last 10 years and prefer Buffy the Vampire slayer, Harry Potter, and Battlestar Galactica?

Lucas plainly compromised his artistic intentions with the whole Jar Jar debacle, bowing to fan pressure to appease a very vocal minority.
I mean come on, Jar Jar was there for the kids, he didn’t break my heart or wound me.
Including a Boba Fett Carbon copy in the form of Jango Fett was fan appeasement, for whatever reason fans love Boba Fett’s ass so, naturally we have to appease THAT demographic.
Remember the talk of Aurra SIng’s enhanced role for part II? Nope, Jango Fett.
As good as I felt Revenge of the SIth was, was I the only one that clearly felt the last half hour was a fanboys dream wishlist made manifest?
It was literally almost a laundry list. of things “the fans would want to see.”
The last minute inclusion of the Death Star in Attack of the Clones- “well, the fans said the first film didn’t feel like a Star Wars movie so, maybe we better insert some more familiar things.”
I could go on, the point is, when you begin valuing the law of supply of demand over artistic merit and catering to a lobbying crowd, your work is sold out and you are whoring your vision out to a vocal minority.
Not everyone is going to like everything in life, but maintaining your vision and style gives integrity and makes the work more valued.
I don’t want a Star Trek done by fan commitee, with too many chefs and too many broths. We learned that lesson with “Generations”, where everyone and their mother had a damn opinion and look at the resulting film. It’s a narrative mess and feels like everyone had to sign off on every last minute detail.
Malleability doesn’t win popularity contests. You either like something as is or you don’t.
Why does everyone think Star Trek is in the current state it is in?
There’s too many chiefs and not enough Indians.
Bob likes Voyager. Fred likes DS9. Rick likes TNG. John likes TOS.
What moron decided to McDonaldize McStar Trek into franchise Happy meals? There’s no cohesion.
Star Trek should have always remained STAR TREK.
We didn’t NEED DS9. we didn’t NEED Voyager or Enterprise.
TNG was what it was, I enjoyed it when I was younger but, it doesn’t stand up for me like classic Trek does. It isn’t a bright future but rather a dull one.
If Shatner and Nimoy wanted a house and 10 million each the tight asses should have paid them to keep them going in the films. Berman’s entirely dismissive attitude towards REAL Star Trek was abominable. And this tyrant was running the show??
The Undiscovered Country was released in 91, Kelley died in what, 98?
That’s almost 3 more original series films they could have pumped out but we got turds like Generations, Insurrection, Nemesis, and the barely passable First Contact, and that’s progress?? It’s a crime what was done to Trek, only NOW does it seem like some TLC is being applied.
Berman didn’t love Star Trek. Sherry Lansing didn’t love Star Trek. They loved paychecks.
Gene Roddenberry loved Star Trek. Michael Okuda loves Star Trek. J.J. Abrams allegedly loves Star Trek. Daren Dochterman loves Star Trek. Nicholas Meyer though unfamiliar at first, grew to love Star Trek and has said so, and let’s be honest here, Nimoy and Shatner do too, and it clearly shows in the work.
Contrast “The Search for Spock” with “Insurrection?”
Holy **** is that even the same universe?
Labeling something “Star Trek” does not a Trek it make.

1) Do you feel that the look/fee/visual style of the first six movies is appropriate for the new TOS shots?

2) Think you’ve answered this… you feel that TNG and onwards were too neutral and inoffensive

3) How is it that you think that George Lucas bowed to fandom (see the original question for a less superficial version of the question)

Thanks!