CBS Digital Guys Use TrekMovie.com To Play Prank On Boss February 12, 2007
by Anthony Pascale , Filed under: Humor, TOS Remastered, TrekMovie.com , trackbackWe all know that "Doomsday" was the big one for CBS-Digital, and that Special Effects Supervisor Niel Wray went a bit grey getting it finished. Well the effects team thought they would play a little prank on Niel and try and convince him that eagle eyed TrekMovie.com readers spotted an error in the final product (in the trailer). To that end they recreated a fake version of TrekMovie.com with a faked trailer and some rewritten comments…
If you couldn’t see it in the video, they created a different version of the trailer that said ‘CONSOLATION" instead of ‘CONSTELLATION’ .
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First!
Ahem…
That’s hilarious. :)
Man, that was chill. And classic!
Glad they can have some fun with it.
That’s hilarious! What a fantastic prank. I’m glad the CBS Digital guys can approach our comments here with a sense of humor. :)
That was an all time classic prank! Good stuff guys!
Sleeper Agent…did you notice how it was one of your posts that they chose to alter?
cant watch it. im getting a message that says the video is no longer available…i bet it was funny though…
Video’s been pulled!
try later. it is just youtube issues.
A good natured prank .Well done.Very funny.Thanks for sharing
Nice video. Pretty funny. But the effort could have been used to fix things like say……the “R” on Kirk’s tombstone or the colored shapes on the hangar deck in JTB.
Thats pretty good, glad they can have some fun too after a great job on Doomsday. :)
That’s pretty cool and funny!! Great to see these guys reading our comments!! I think it’s great they consider this site one of the best for fan feedback.
BTW, great job on Doomsday CBS Digital!!!
#6 LOL!! I totally missed that, even though I read the posts! Thanks for pointing out that, Anthony!
re: 11. Sean4000
“Nice video. Pretty funny. But the effort could have been used to fix things like say……the “R” on Kirk’s tombstone or the colored shapes on the hangar deck in JTB.”
I knew that would come up.
Now I need to work out why Neil’s name is spelled wrong…
They’ve appropriated my identity!!!
How DARE they!!!
I have been … VIOLATED!!!
That was really funny. I’m glad they raped my identity instead of my childhood. Good guys doing good work over there. I’m delighted I was in on the prank in the most roundabout of ways.
hahah that was pretty darn funny
At least they didn’t dub it the U.S.S. MacinthePants
Now I just hope they make the Klingon Battlecruiser…..
PURPLE
GREY
GREEN
;)
Nice! Any bet the pranksters next assignment will be rotoscoping? :-D
Okay, CBS-D guys, FUN POLICE! Back to work! Time to lean, time to render. Get those digits doing digital! Chop-chop!
That is so great…. Somehow, now I wanna see a CBS-D blooper reel on the dvd.
It was funny and good to see, but it does beg the question about how simple and how little effort it would’ve been to have just fixed the “R”.
You know, I hope that these guys are using this project at the prototype for a new series set during that TREK time period. I would so watch that!!!
Also, they would let it cut loose with visual effects. The TOS era has for too long been left untouched. I don’t however, want to see new actors weekly playing Kirk, Spock and McCoy, but rather some parallel ship that might occasionally run into the Enterprise.
After all, the Enterprise was not the only SHIP in the FLEET.
Think about it…
This installment was funny. I think he SHAT his pants?
That was priceless – - I can imagine the fear!
25. “That was priceless – - I can imagine the fear! ”
Yes, it was the unmistakable sound of JOB SECURITY slowly slipping away!!!
That was hilarious!
But man if I were him I’d be crapping my pants if I thought that was real.
Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!! XD The poor guy!
But actually, in regards to the “why can’t they just fix the “R” if they can do this,” remember that in this case, they have complete control of the footage. They weren’t altering the original footage of the real-life model. They made their own CG model from scratch. They could have simply re-rendered the scene instead of painting out letters and replacing them with others, frame-by-frame.
re: #23
“It was funny and good to see, but it does beg the question about how simple and how little effort it would’ve been to have just fixed the “R”.”
To me, the “R” is no big deal….though I do respect your feelings that it bugs you.
I still wish they would remix the theme to bring the instruments more to the front and not have the singer be so prevalent.
Nice. ( As long as Neil survived the heart attack.) ;-)
Hey Neil, I hope you enjoyed that even half as much as we did!
Awesome work. And TrekMovie.com is like TrekCNN in the halls of CBS-D! Congrats, Anthony, I know you’ve got to be feeling pretty good about this project of yours and how well it has taken off.
Well, this never ending talk of the “R” certainly is enforcing the Trekkie stereotype that many people make fun of…
Why not just erase the “R,” so it will read “JAMES KIRK?”
Problem solved…never happened?
You all need to let the R on the tombstone rest in piece.
Buahahaha. That’s funny.
As someone who runs an official site for a few things (3D Realms & Black Sabbath), I can definitely see the humor in that. :)
Joe
Amen.
OMG, One of the funniest pranks i’ve seen!!! Hope you guys got a big laugh out of it, you deserve some free time. Great job on trek remastered and especially “Doomsday machine”. AWESOME!!!!
Great prank by “The Morgue” crew! Glad they can have some fun at work. ;)
That’s some great stuff.
Okay… so the CBS Digital guys are the ones who are positive about Star Trek: Remastered. Doomsday Machine was a disaster… I believe the project should be abandoned….
Being in the graphics field, I know the horror…and the fun!!!
…nothing funnier than to see the shock register on the faces…Too Funny!!!
I always thought the Consolation was destroyed by the Doomsday Machine too… you mean it wasn’t? LOL
AWESOME! And my hat’s off to the guys who were punk’d for letting us geeks share in the fun (at their expense, no less!). Very classy, and very funny!
#40 Sorry, I failed to find a point (or a complete sentence for that matter) in your post. Would you care to elaborate?
HAHA! That was classic!
It’s funny to see the fear of God (Mike Okuda) put into them. LOL
I am waiting to see if the USS Consolation ends up with a page at Memory Alpha
…along with the USS Lollypop….which, if I remember correctly…is a good ship
That should have read: USS CONSTIPATION
I think someone needs to register ww.FIXtheR.com and sell t-shirts and bumper stickers.
That was cruel but funny. Nice to see the pros appreciating trekmovie.com.
To be honest I am indifferent to ST:XI now that we have TOS-R. If it happens it happens but I’d rather see new stuff (even if it is short fx bits) firmly grounded in the TOS universe. Lord knows what XI will look like.
HILARIOUS! Oh, man, that was just plain funny! Anthony, it must be quite an honor that they used this site for the prank. It proves that they are indeed paying attention.
Sean4000 and canonista: Guys, the method used to achieve the Consolation prank is entirely different from any they might use to fix something within the live action scenes. All that was required was a new material map on the Constellation mesh for one short 5 second sequence CBS Digital was creating from scratch. Fixing the “R” on the headstone would have required a great deal more work within a previously created scene. You’re comparing apples and oranges. I can understand that you might not know all the technicalities that go into this kind of FX work, but your remarks make it sound like the people at CBS Digital would rather goof off than do their jobs, which is most certainly not the case. They’re working under an immense amount of pressure. Let them have their fun.
Great, I feel like I’m inside a Star Trek episode…now I don’t know if I’m reading a web site, or a simulation of a web site, or the same web site in a parallel universe…
The real USS Consolation:
http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/sh-usn/usnsh-c/ah15.htm
…..I thought it was a prank replacing the opening title music with an opera singer. ….oh, wait, that was a dream I had. The opera person is just part of the title music, not the lead singer….
So why is he called Niel then and not Neil?
Oh God, not the damned “R” thing again.
THERE ARE NINE, NINE, NINE, NINE SCENES WITH THE TOMBSTONE THAT THEY HAD TO CHANGE. THEY DIDN’T HAVE TIME TO CHANGE THOSE NINE, NINE, NINE SCENES.
DO YOU UNDERSTAND NOW? IT WASN’T A SIMPLE PHOTOSHOP!! THERE WERE NINE, NINE, NINE SHOTS, MOST OF WHICH NEEDED ROTOSCOPING!!
Poor guy. That was hilarious! XD
A total classic, good to see them having fun.
LLAP
Too funny… Niel Wray’s reaction was hysterical! :)
You know what they say… Tragedy is when something bad happens to you, Comedy is when it happens to someone else.
wowo TREKMOVIE.COM you have arrived….
That’s got to be one of the funniest things I’ve seen regarding Trek in years! The poor guy had panic written all over his face.
Now, that’s funny.
After the FANTASTIC “Doomsday Machine’ these guys need some chill time.
Wow… they got PUNKED!!!
“Smile, Niel. You’re on Candid [web]Camera!”
/A. Funt
The look of total panic… the hands over the mouth…and the exclamation… priceless!
Not to mention the WTH!!? expression when the mock comments were shown (in an inset in the video).
#48 – jr Haaaa!
THAT would have been even MORE of a classic!
BAHAHA…his expression of complete shock is priceless.
Absolutely hilarious!! Bravo!
I love the schtikola Ha Ha ha
That’s good schtikola
[...] They recreated a page from the forum of the TrekMovie.com website (apparently checked pretty frequently at CBSD) in which they rewrote some comments indicating they had misspelled the name of the USS Constellation as the USS Consolation. They even changed the actual trailer and showed that and the fake forum comments to him. [...]
Niiiiiice.
#47… see this: http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/USS_Consolation
oh my. I feel so powerful…i suggest it and voila
so if I suggest they make a page about me will there be one…if so I want it full of rumors about my mysterious backstory…something involving the CIA, Jessica Simpson, and how I used to be a woman perhaps
btw…i am dissapointed there is no image…they can use this one:
http://trekmovie.com/wp-content/uploads/ussconsolation.JPG
73… http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Anthony_Pascale
i was kidding you know
jessica and i feel strongly that the integrity of Memory Alpha should not be abused.
CBS-Digital did a great job on Doomsday! They deserve to have some fun! Godspeed, U.S.S. Consolation!
To those who obsess about the R….Ger A Life!
It’s just an RV show!
R for Remastered!
HOLY SHIR!
Seriously, I know the R is an problem for some people, but there have been worse errors in continuity that Star Trek fans have had to deal with. Voyager and Enterprise, for example. Too bad CBS Digital can’t erase those. >;>>}
Star Trek Lives, thanks to CBS Digital!
Great stitch-up, enjoyed the video guys.
Now to somewhat emulate the wishful thinking of #20 Josh T.’’s post, I hope they can…
Do SOMETHING to these episode’s more bare “cycloramas” (clouds, flying critters, ANYTHING!
Add SOME kind of visual zing to the handphaser effects that seem “cartoon” animated (add an lighter “core” to them perhaps if they can’t TOTALLY be redone.
While it seems that the cgi Enterprise is not being lit with “the colours of the cosmos” ala the original miniature photography as I would have preferred …a WRONG “creative decision” by the team I believe as the visual asthetic of the new space shots seem mostly out of place compared to the colourful kaliedescope of lighting that the show was filmed in… I HOPE they can at least revisit their earlier poorer efforts for DVD.
This is _________ crazy! Wish there was a WMV of this!
[...] CBS Digital Guys Use TrekMovie.com To Play Prank On Boss | TrekMovie.com We all know that “Doomsday” was the big one for CBS-Digital, and that Special Effects Supervisor Niel Wray went a bit grey getting it finished. Well the effects team thought they would play a little prank on Niel and try and convince him that eagle eyed T (tags: humor startrek prank scifi funny geek) [...]
#78. > Wish there was a WMV of this!
The guy who posted the video on Youtube
has a MOV (Quicktime) version here:
(16 MB, not worthwhile for dialup users)
http://homepage.mac.com/daquake/Niel_fooled_v3c.mov
My “Review” of the Quicktime version:
Tthe office video appears sharper, but retains the
badly posterized (blotchy / jaggy) colors from the original
camera and low-light office environment.
The embedded screenshots and titles are appreciably
sharper and cleaner (than the Youtube version).
[...] CBS Digital Guys Use TrekMovie.com To Play Prank On Boss | TrekMovie I think someone needs to register ww.FIXtheR.com and sell t-shirts and bumper stickers. Funt. The look of total panic the hands over the mouth and the exclamation priceless! [...]