LIVE LONG AND PROSPER!!!!

STIII had some fine model shots but the lighting was poor. They pumped up the fill light so much that the very first shot of the Enterprise is washed out. Early video versions with heightened contrast only made this worse.

To hide garbage mattes (the little grey boxes that appear around the ships) ILM experimented with a filter first used on Return of the Jedi. A side effect of the filter was that the starfields turned light blue. Look at Trek III on DVD to see what I mean. The pre-S.E. version of “Jedi” on the THX LaserDisc shows this too.

They largely remedied this by ST:IV and the model photography is terrific. ST:VI looks good but the video transfer is brightened wayyy to much making the starships look artificial. (BTW: Did you know the shots of the Excelsior encountering the Praxis shockwave were CG?) By Generations they had gone to digital compositing. A couple shots of the Enterprise-B and D were CG, as were the El-Aurian refugee ships.

“First Contact” (ST:8) had *plenty* of model photography. The Enterprise-E, the Borg cube and sphere, the Phoenix. The CG models were the “new” starfleet ships like the Akira, Steamrunner, Norway, and Saber…and a couple shots of the Enterprise-E. The Defiant was also CG and looked every bit as “real” as her model-based counterpart used at the time on DS9.

When ILM moved to San Francisco’s Presido complex, they left their model shop behind renamed Kerner Optical. They used them in the “Pirates” movies as well as the latest Indiana Jones.

I’d be unhappy if ILM was no longer able to work with models. When did this happen?

I would use models except that I’m a one-man animator, and relies on CG for almost all my effects in any short-films I create. But when I do CG, I work as hard as possible to make it look real.

As for the CG in Star Trek XI, I hope Abrams uses it well, and sparingly for Ship Shots. CG has several advantages, like allowing a ship to explode with real zero-g traveling of the remaining debris. (Even in early TNG, I could always notice everything passing to the side of the screen slowly)

CG is, as lots of others have said, and amazing tool. But CG has to be dealt with like a digital construction world. Use it like you would use something that’s real. I.E. When Pixar does their movies, they use camera angles so realistic that there are times you forget it’s CG. That’s what Abrams should do, and that’s what I hope he does.

I recall seeing a feminine “cat-person” in an episode of “Andromeda” which I happened to catch one evening—and immediately thought of M’Ress on TAS. And she looked AMAZINGLY real….

Again, if it adds to the story and gives more depth to “Star Trek history,” I wish them all the best, and hope they have the most fantastic ST film ever made. I hope they really do.

The “sparkle” is supposed to be the light-equivalent to the sonic boom that is heard when something exceeds the speed of sound. Instead of a boom, we get a burst.

LOTR has aged badly (and it’s been less than 6 years!).

Davey Jones is far more “real” than Gollum IMHO. If you didn’t know he was CG you’d all still think he was a guy in a suit.

I’ve been into VFX longer than a lot of you have been alive, CGI can be “better” than the real thing, so to speak. But it needs time & care, just as models and motion control photography do.

CGI is a good servant, but a bad master.