New details on TNG Blu-ray project September 14, 2011
by Rosario T. Calabria , Filed under: DVD/Blu-ray,TNG,TNG Remastered , trackback 
In July a report surfaced that CBS had started to begin work on remastering Star Trek: The Next Generation in HD for a Blu-ray release in 2012. Now comes news that the 4-episode sampler disc may be released this December.
TNG-R sampler disc this December?
According to The Digital Bits on September 28 — which is the 24th anniversary of the show’s first broadcast in 1987 — CBS may officially announce the Star Trek: The Next Generation – Remastered Blu-ray sampler disc. Digital Bits further reports that the disc is likely to be available in the U.S. in early December, “on or around 12/6″.
As previously reported, CBS is expected to roll out TNG in Blu-ray during 2012–the 25th anniversary year. As Digital Bits reported earlier this month, the four rumored episodes are the two-part series premiere “Encounter at Farpoint”, the season three episode “Sins of the Father” and the season five episode “The Inner Light”.
LeVar Burton tweets about TNG-R
Last week TNG castmember LeVar Burton (Geordi LaForge) tweeted the following message attached with a picture of the gate to CBS Television City confrming that the project is well underway:
"Stopped by to see how the TNG conversion to HD for Blue Ray was coming along… #mindblown #bydhttmwfi "
Watch Star Trek episodes online
TNG is currently available streaming through Netflix, along with "Star Trek (2009)" and four other Star Trek series: "Star Trek"; "Star Trek: Voyager"; “Star Trek: Enterprise” and “Star Trek: The Animated Series”. “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine” will become available on the service October 1. Only ‘Enterprise’, “Star Trek” and “Star Trek: The Animated Series” are available in HD. Star Trek series and movies are also available through Amazon.com’s Amazon Instant service.
TrekMovie will continue to track this project as further news is announced.
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Comments
Just wondering- many series were actually filmed in 16×9 widescreen format and cropped for network TV. TJ Hooker went back to the negatives and created HD versions for HDNet- will TNG follow suit if the widescreens are available?
Yawn….1st
HdNet or wherever it was i saw the series,,,
2- At least have something to say when you post…
Can’t wait.
Love to see new effects for TNG! Not to mention hi-def.
Heard about this a few days ago.
What I’m hearing is you may not be seeing new effects so much as hi-def photography and wildly improved compositing.
I wonder what the cost would be to remaster every eppisode from all seasons.
The effects were done in standard def, so they have to be redone. No choice.
10 – Not quite, the effects were filmed, just like the live action. The COMPOSITING was done in standard def.
Some of the model space-shots I would think would still look good. Other effects never looked good…
But even HD with no replacement of effects will still be a heck of an improvement…
I agree Obsidian. I don’t expect or need a full cgi treatment like they did for TOS-R. All model photography was done on 35mm and should look great with HD compositing! gone will be the ‘jaggies’ around the Ent-D from Farpoint! Obviously any minor effects rendered back then on video will be replaced.
1. TNG was filmed on 1.37 35mm. Not widescreen. There are very lengthy discussions of the amount of film used for the final 1.33 presentation, but the show was not filmed in 1.78:1
Regardless, the composited shots and opticals were created for the locked 1.33 frame.
T.J. Hooker was not opened up, it was cropped for the HD broadcast. I have both.
Better late than never lol
There are conflicting sources about whether or not the FX elements are still available on film…some sources say if they even existed they are lost. From what I can tell, the most likely scenerio is that the film of STNG was never “mastered”, meaning only the live action footage exists, not the FX elements.
When they release sets first you release the conversion to blue ray. Next the blue ray with bonus features, after that we’ll see the enhanced sfx. Long ago when TNG came out I did not really like it. After a while it grew on me, Voyager was the one I had trouble getting into. Enterprise was alright, but I think they should have went out into the galaxy with good intentions, wreak some planets and interfere with everything and then come up with a Prime Directive. When the explorers set sail long ago, they went and wreaked most soceities they ran into. I think some where along the way humans would need to be humbled and realize everything does not need to be like human cultures.
RAMA that is interesting, but I would like to hear the final word on if the model footage exists. I find it hard to believe that they would have converted it to video and thrown out the footage and negatives. There was a lot of money invested in that work and from my years at Paramount I can tell you, not much was ever discarded. I am assuming that Paramount took posession of the 35mm film from the fx and post houses that worked on TNG and subsequent series.
So would the TNG BluRay be 4×3? or 16×9 with the black bars?
unless they crop the top and bottom, it would be traditional 4×3 pillar box
Craiger that would be black bars on the sides, for those using a modern widescreen tv.
So is TNG getting the TOS style makeover? Updated visual effects, etc etc?
I wish they would be able to do all TV shows, movies and even commercials in 1080p or at the very least 1080i 16×9 and no black bars.
It seems unlikely to me that effects are being updated… Okuda said he hadn’t been involved a few weeks or more ago … It sounds like recomposite or uprez… I hope for née effects or recomposite… We shall see.
They have a ton of work to do. The dvd’s look very, very bad.
Nice to wake up to trekmovie news in the morning!
Glad to hear this is really happening- the dvd video transfers are pretty bad- lets hope they can take some of the magenta out of seasons 1 & 2?
The original 6ft model they used for the first 2 seasons was beautiful, movie quality so much so they re-used it for “Generations” & that footage deserves remastering & recompositing but It would be great if they could substitute the Chunky pasty 3rd season 4 foot model they started using with a digital replication of the 1st season model.
“New” Not “née”
Then there is this…but does “all the footage” mean FX as well?? http://postfifthpictures.com/2010/02/the-editor-answers-daryl-baskin-star-trek-tng-editor/
What took you so long Trekmovie?
Is the sample disk going to be free? Or are the going to sell it?
Trekboi – I’m sure they will do some color correcting and judging from Levar’s reaction we will all be blown away by the never-before-seen clarity of the original footage. I am really looking forward to that.
I’m sure it will reveal some production limitations like TOS-R did, showing Nimoy’s coffee stained shirt etc, but that is part of the fun!
I would love to be surprised with new enterprise fx here and there, but I’m not holding my breath for that.
Good link RAMA, I’ve been following your thread on TrekBBS, it’s really worth a look for everyone! I’m 22 Stars there, so I’m sure we will talk :)
25. Yes the ILm footage is good but limited…there’s a lot of Post Group and Image G footage that is not up to the standard or resolution of the other FX. Anything that ILM didnt shoot is probably not on film…meaning every other FX shot since the Pilot basically.
What about using the same CGI used in the Star Trek 2009 reboot movie for TNG Bluray? Imagine the 1701-D with that CGI.
17. I think my answer in 32. is probably the most likely answer.
I am eager to find out the lenghts CBS can go. Craiger, unfortunately a remaster to that extent would cost a lot of money, and take a lot of time.
Not sure if I’ll get the show on Blu-Ray until the price comes way down.
Anybody else notice they misspelled “Geordi”?
Sadly, this project is likely to disappoint. I predict it will again be carried out right at the corporate “sweet spot” of “How little money can we SPEND on it?” and “How much money can we CHARGE for it?”
CBS/Paramount, when it comes to Trek on homevid, have mastered finding the exact intersection of those two axes. And shame on us – myself included – for allowing them to do so, again and again.
The Original effects were simple but nice by todays standards & don’t need that much work but it would be nice if at least the Enterprise was Consistant.
They used 2 main filming models throughout the series that didn’t match.
They used a blue/grey 6ft model for season 1 & 2 then they started using a chunky, poorly detailed grey 4ft model that was easier to film but was given chunky surface detail to add “scale” by someone (obviously a fan of the Star Wars Star Destroyers) who didn’t realise it would actually do the opposit & show it was a plastic model.
I was hoping they would use a digital model, still hope they still use one to redo the shots with the chunky 3rd seson model with a digital replication of the model made in the first season
@4 I did, but the yawn covered it up…and some one beat me to 1st LOL
Any way, TNG isn’t worth the effort.
A rather detailed articcle on the actual FX editing:
http://reocities.com/Hollywood/Set/1116/sfxartcl.html
Looks like it was being done on digital video…at least after season 1-2.
To quote:
Star Trek: The Next Generation does all of its visual effects on video tape, unlike the original series which posted on film. The reasoning behind that decision is that “Peter Lauritson, Bob Justman, and Rick Berman thought that (video tape effects) would be faster,” states Robert Legato, Visual Effects Supervisor. “Bob Justman worked on the original show and they had a lot of problems with delivering on film.” Legato explains that, “You have a built-in turn-around with the lab. You would do one shot and then have to wait for the next day to see it. If it was wrong, then you would have to wait a whole day to see it again., They said, you have to come up with a faster system. Tape was available. They didn’t know much about it, but they knew THAT was the way to do it.” And, “the way” was to go with The Post Group.
39. STNG is the most watched (ad rated), most award winning and best ST series…of course its worth it.
cool news!!!!!
It was posted on video, and phasers and other elements added digitally, but the ship work was always filmed as far as I know, I could be wrong but don’t think I am.
All the behind the scenes footage of them shooting the models always shows a 35mm camera shooting them.
Star Trek: The Next Generation, like many shows of the 80’s and 90’s was shot on 35 mm film. 35mm film is a higher resolution than both standard and high definition. This means that the episodes can be transferred into standard or high definition without issue. Unfortunately for many shows with special effects, the editing process was done digitally with standard definition video. So the final copies of the episodes exist in standard definition video only. Many times shots with miniatures, green screen, matte shots and other effects were all transferred and edited in standard definition rather than edited more expensively with film.
http://kotwg.blogspot.com/2011/07/technology-time-star-trek-next.html
So as I said, looks like they were not mastered into final FX with film…most of those shots existed only with digital video editing.
And how much will each season cost? I have to buy the dvd’s for Star Trek at a pawn shop because I can’t afford $70 per season…There are a lot of seasons of Star trek…I love ST, but I can’t afford that…
So I hate to know how much they are going to charge..
And they better include more interviews and such…The ones you get on the dvd’s are too short…They provide very little information…
Great news… but are there any plans to eventually show these remastered episodes on television, as they did with TOS-R? A collection of remastered TNG episodes would make for a great holiday marathon on one of the cable networks.
[Hint, hint,] SyFy… that is, if you guys are still interested in Sci-Fi.
46. The first Blray sampler should be afforadable at least…somewhere in the range of $20-30 retail, probably less with discounts.
47. So far, no mention of over the air broadcasts, only news stories about them being shown on Netflix or Epix.
44. There is some question–I believe Mike Okuda raised the doubt-that the film negatives for FX still exist. The blogspot article does seem to suggest if they exist then much of the FX COULD be re-used…but if they do have them…they may want to re-do the FX anyway to make the ILM/post Group/Image G FX, and the 4-foot and 6-foot model work more consistent…also to reduce stock shot usage….which is what I prefer.
I’ll echo what has been said already about a lot of the VFX; they were done at places like The Post Group, digitally, and the final episodes were output on tape. The ship miniatures were shot on film and transferred to tape. Some of the VFX were light effects shot on film by folks like Dan Curry, and these too were transferred to tape and composited. Phaser beams, alien auras, nebulae, etc. were for the most part all digital, and I haven’t a clue how they’re going to deal with all of that. There were up-rez experiments done years ago and word was that they were promising, but that was, of course, years ago. I don’t recall exactly *how* up-rezzed they were playing with. It’ll be interesting to see if they’ve up-rezzed with some type of digital retouching.
When they release it I will Buy it. I hope they also do the Best of both Worlds on the sampler. That would be a lot of fun to watch.
Forgive my ignorance if this is common knowledge, but are they redoing the FX for this like they did with the original series, or just converting the episodes to an HD format?
Nevermind, I should have read first! :)
I think it is a waste of money. They should invest the money in a new Star Trek series.
Rick great to see your expert knowledge here. Thanks for the confirmation. I just hope all the existing 35mm footage of the ship models was stored as well as the live action footage.
Oh and if it is some form of up-rezzing I think it will be a shame, and not a true remastering.
I wonder if that means they’ll do DS9 and voyager for their respective 25ths. I just hope they give us the option for 3:4 vs 16:9. I heard it was filmed in both which means that both versions would offer a unique perspective. I would personally prefer 16:9, but they need the 3:4 so that the crazy people who can’t tolerate 1 pixel out of place will survive.
We have to wait till the 12th of June for the sampler disc, what a jip.
59 – don’t know if you are joking but here in the US 12/6 is December 6th.
More childish “1st” posters. *sigh*
As for TNG Bluray, I hope the Sampler disc will be available outside the US.
@59. Count – In the US, horses ride the jockeys. ;)
51. Thanks Rick!
Very cool! Can’t wait for this!
#58.
Both “Deep Space Nine” and “Voyager” were filmed in the 4:3 format. Otherwise, we would have had widescreen dvds already.
Rosario Star Trek the animated series is in HD on netflix as well.
#64 – I vaguely recall being on stage (during Voyager?) when they brought in a camera to shoot some wider format footage, or at least do some reframing to be able to crop top and bottom. Don’t recall whatever happened to that experiment.
Also the episodes on the TNG Blu-Ray disc are
Encounter At Farpoint part 1 and 2
Sins of the Father
The Inner Light.
I bet Bob Orci is having a “nerdgasm” over this bit of news! ;-)
#64.
Interesting.
I do recall reading on this site a while ago, though, that a poster asked one of your co-workers (Mike Okuda?) who worked on “Voyager” if they had thought about filming the later seasons of “Voyager” in widescreen, and the guy had written that it would have been too expensive and time consuming to replace the standard cameras.
I can’t remember which article it was, unfortunately.
65, 67
Thanks. I missed that I my initial posting and I’ve edited it in now.
You’re doing a bang-up job, Rosario! Keep it up!
Not to nitpick, but a minor correction. “The Inner Light” was season five and not season seven :). Maybe the original report misprinted it, I’m not really sure.
I truly hope that any redone effects will be based on the original 6′ shooting model, and not the “more detailed, Ten-Forward window-correct” model.
The 6′ looks so much more majestic and scaled, with it’s slim saucer edge and proper proportions.
A question to Rick Sternbach concerning the aspect ratio.
The TNG footage used in the final Enterprise episode suggests excess footage exists left and right (and perhaps top and bottom) from the 4/3 crop that we know as the end result. At least we have seen extra footage left and right in the ENT episode. Is that something that you would think could be done for the entire series to create possible 16/9 versions of the show? Possibly by, if necessary, cropping a little bit off top and bottom while taking into account the image. (as was done in the ENT episode IIRC).
I’m very interested to know because I feel strongly that a 16/9 version of TNG would really give it a spectacular new dimension viewed on modern television sets.
73 OAR is just as important for TV shows as it is for movies, matting the image to a 16×9 aspect ratio for TNG should not be done nor even considered. Doing so would be the modern equivilent to cropping a scope or flat movie to fill the picture.
These shows were shot 4×3 they were aired 4×3 and they should stay 4×3
73 have you seen any of the “Widescreen”airings of shows that were shot 4×3 like married with children or sinefeld, they look horrible.
That was not at all what I was suggesting, just to clarify.
very excited about this!!!
i don’t think cropping the show will hurt- they were pretty safe with their framing so if they take time to crop each shot as they rescan/edit the original film masters it could actually make the shots & show more dynamic
as long as they dont cut the shine off on the top of picards head lol
53 –
“Forgive my ignorance if this is common knowledge, but are they redoing the FX for this like they did with the original series, or just converting the episodes to an HD format?”
Yes i too would like to know this – its pretty important and am suprised no one else seems to have asked it!
at a guess id say they must be doing some – otherwise whats the point in buying them again?
Whatever happened to Next Generation on Canadian Netflix? I thought we were supposed to be getting it in September?
I hope they’ll also offer a DVD version of the remastering.
While this is cool and all, I am really hoping for a DS9 series on Blu-Ray. I hope they can do widescreen for DS9, if possible.
As far as redoing the effects… I’m hoping they will call up Drex and use his stuff.
http://drexfiles.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/secret_of_farpoint_teska_r02.jpg
It’ll be disappointing if encounter at farpoint’s effects don’t look AT LEAST this good.
I highly doubt that CBS would pay for re-mastering each TNG episode.
Although it’d cinch it for me to purchase all season sets in Blu_Ray. BUT, the standard def DVDs are so murky, that, to me, they are almost unwatchable.
I am slowly losing my faith in getting 1080i TNG. I think a digital NCC-1701-D, and remastered matte, phasers, etc. shots are unrealistic. It would take a year per season to do a true re-master like on TOS. Right?
You’re delusional if you think it will look anything near that good.
can’t wiat for this remasted stuff to come out once TNG is done with all it’s remasted episodes let’s do deep space 9 next! hahhahaha :P
#73 – In 1987, when TNG started, I don’t believe that the idea of 16×9 had even been born yet. I’m also pretty sure that cropping the existing TNG eps to that ratio would take too much of the standard image away. I might throw a quick paper mask over my TV cut to the right proportions to see what would be lost, but I suspect it would be significant.
I’m guessing this will be a 2-disc release and have a MSRP of $39.95, which means you should be able to find it online (or elsewhere) for about $30. The question is, will it sale? Die-hard Trekkers probably want to hold out for complete seasons, while casual fans are probably happy with their DVDs (or streaming from Netflix and Amazon).
87. Rick Sternbach – September 15, 2011
But were they filmed in that size ratio? If so, would it be possible to go back to the original film stock to complete the image on the sides? Or would there to much “noise” like camera equipment, etc., that might show up?
OR, would the external shots of the Enterprise, etc., be able to be done widescreen at least?
51:
Mr. Sternbach. Thanks for coming on with your insights from back in the day. The concept of ‘up-rezing:” Isn’t that just like turning the “Contrast” on your TV up? That leads to a loss of detail, and an increase in distortion, with, for some, an illusion of increased sharpness, where the distortion is perceived as ‘detail.’ Bent lines in the calibration pattern.
Like many, I turn that knob down to almost zero, and shut off all ‘enhanced’ controls on the set.
Or, do these more ‘successful’ attempts at up-rezing do something different? I’d like the ‘sampler’ disc to be especially good as to green-light the entire project. It it’s all just turned up to 11, it won’t fly.
What are you working on these days Rick? It’s neat you come here and post, it’s neat readind your posts.
72. I think a good cgi model will use the 6′ model as the base, and a some of the detail of the 4 ft model…Tobias Richter’s new CGI E-D model is currently my frontrunner on how the E-D should look:
http://www.scifi-meshes.com/forums/showthread.php?77687-NCC-1701-D-USS-Enterprise/page24
As a casual fan that purchased TNG, DS9, Voyager, and Enterprise on DVD as soon as each season was released, (at $100 each) I cannot see purchasing these again on Blue Ray any time soon. Even if I didn’t have all the season already, at this point the Digital Download has surpassed buying disks. People have their video entertainment just like their music, on a hard drive. I fear they waited too late to make this work. In a few years, a younger gen of fans might download the new HI DEF versions of the episodes, or old casual fans like me might invest in downloadable remastered content.
Luckily they’ll be on Netflix for you at some point if you dont want to buy them…the difference between the DVD and Bluray will be HUGE and much more than enough to be worth buying anew.
So the sample disc maybe available in the US by December. Is there any news on a UK release for this ?
Man, yeah, I’d love to see updated VFX. I really think TNG lends itself to FX sequences even more so than did TOS. I would LOVE it if for BOBW they created an extended Wolf 359 sequence. But I’m just a geeky fanboy like that.
It’s the 10th Anniversary of ENTERPRISE. Wish I could own that series on Blu ray right now.
96. Brandon: I think most of us on here are geeky fanboys! Viva le geek!
And, yes, and extensive battle sequence at Wolf 359 would be the awesome…
Fantastic news really, TNG will look amazing remastered on Blu-Ray – are they updating the effects as well?
I have an old copy of cinefex where they go in depth into which STTNG effect were created on film vs. video.
Some major effects (phasers, ship’s shields and some others) existed only in the digital realm. So if they’re going back to the filmed model shots to re-composite , there will still be a lot of stuff that needs flat out recreation, ala the remastered TOS.
#90 – I don’t know the exact technique or equipment they would be using, but I’m assuming it’s akin to kicking up the image size in Photoshop for each digital frame. You increase the number of pixels, but you sure don’t add detail. There are all kinds of algorithms for fixing sharpness and color, but I would think that yeah, they’ll run into the problems you mention. With TOS, they had the original prints or negs, and could rescan each film frame for HD.
Over my desk in the TNG art department, I once had an ad from Kodak clipped from a trade magazine. It said in part “Definition: High Resolution (noun) See Film.” Back when a 35mm frame was sort of accepted to be about 12MB of data before you got down into the grain. I assume they were touting the idea that film was still the king over the “crazy” amounts of memory it would take to record 12MB into the computer. How times have changed. Now, where did I leave my RED camera? :)
#91 – Just recently finished up a year on the canceled subscription project of print booklets and a 1/900 scale model of the Galaxy class Enterprise. Updated a lot of TNG-era hardware like sensor data preprocessors, lifeboats, captain’s yacht docking bay, accurized blueprints of the ship, all new updated deck plans, etc. Scouting for a new gig; the usual routine.
Anything that get’s some TNG love is OK by me. I have long heard tht unfortunately there was nothing to be done about the FX model shots as originally presented. It would take a good deal of money and time to do the whole “TOS Remastered” effort of new CG shots and that’s just not in the cards. Would be swell, though.
Of course I’m no expert. I just read things.
re 16 C Mosenko,
What a great point!! The crew of the Enterprise could have been responsible for wiping out a civilization with disease or something equally horrific. The ramifications of which would eventually lead to the prime directive. Big missed opportunity there.
Why doesnt CBS make a new tv series? I believe they could make so much money doing one for national TV!
If you are interested in this topic, can you at least bother to read the previous posts?
In summary, TNG live action and ship model scenes were shot on 4×3 35mm film. No widesreen is forthcoming unless they crop the top and bottoms of the frames, or you do so by zooming your picture on your TV.
All the film elements were combined and the entire show was edited on video. The final “tape” of the show was on standard 4×3 video. The final product never existed on film. No one seems to be sure whether, or how carefully, the original film elements were preserved.
It is HIGHLY unlikey that anyone is going back to original film elements and trying to reconstruct and re-edit episodes from the bits and pieces.
The consensus seems to be that they are “up-rezzing” the live shots, and POSSIBLY adding CGI elements to enhance the effects shots.
Up-rezzing basically means scanning a lo-def picture at high resolution and then using computers to fake additional detail. Kind of like anti-aliasing works in computer graphics.
Fixed the incorrect season for The Inner Light.
#73. What was done on the ENT episode “These Are the Voyages …” was to extract a Super-35 image from a show that was shot for standard sound 4×3, and then stretch it slightly horizontally.
http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/inconsistencies/ent_vs_tng.htm
If you look at the screencap comparisons, almost all of the additional image comes from the left. That’s where the soundtrack would ordinarily go on a film print. (It’s exposed on the negative, and gets obscured when a print is made. The telecine would’ve been configured to extract the smaller sound frame.)
Doing this will cause every shot to be slightly off-center. Since this area lies outside the etched frame marks on the camera viewfinder, there may be occasional lights or microphones or other intrusions into the frame. A decision would have to be made on a shot-by-shot basis.
And of course, the actors will not appreciate looking 6% fatter.
Re 102 – Rick – a 1/900 scale model? Nice, for filming or to sell? I like buying the ships. The Art Asylum ships are great. Would you ever build a USS Titan? With the new alternate universe it would be fun to come up with an alternate TNG comic mini series. The opportunity for a clean slate with some of the shows would be interesting.
Re 104 – DLope – Thanks for the response, so many times in history good intentions with poor follow through have come back to bite us in the butt. We all have our oppinions.
76,78, 82
I will repeat myself, keeping the Original Aspect Ratio is just as important for T.V. shows as it is for movies.
ST:TNG was framed and shot with the intention of being presented in 4×3
it was never intended to be seen 16×9, and I imagine that the ppl working on the HD versions are not converting them to 16×9 either.
Again i will point out the HD matted wide screen versions Married with children and Seinfeld that are aired on TBS (I believe) as great examples of what happens when you change the aspect ratio of a 4×3 show to 16×9
They look like crap.
76 it sure did sound that you were suggesting that based on your comment
” I feel strongly that a 16/9 version of TNG would really give it a spectacular new dimension viewed on modern television sets”
Again i will repeat ST:TNG was intended to be viewed 4×3 matting and stretching it to 16×9 would not only look horrible, but would infact take a way a good deal of the on screen image.
108. I’ve posted that before…I think it looks more than respectable…as it did in TATV.
110. You do gain some horizontal image when including the overscan. I find that the wider horizontally cropped image seems more cinematic…but i won’t be annoyed if they did show it in 4:3 only.
Sorry, but if this is just an ‘uprez’ than I have no interest. Talk about half-assing it.
#109 – Not to hijack the thread, but I was referring to a project with K.K. DeAgostini Japan and Midsummer Books in the UK that would have involved a large-scale model built with parts you would get every week or two, along with large standalone blueprints and feature articles in a looseleaf format. The subscription would have spanned 100 issues or so for about $1500.00. Pricey, perhaps, but a lot of new material was planned, and the model was very big, with all of the internal decks. DeAgostini did something similar with big models of the WWII battleship Yamato and the British Spitfire aircraft.
Sounds like a great idea. I’m sure many people like hearing about your projects. You have brought us many years of Star Trek. Thanks for all you have brought us.
I’ll buy the sample disc but if they haven’t redone the vfx then I doubt that I’d throw down serious cash for a season. TNG deserves just as much love as TOS got.
This is gonna look great, I cannot wait to start buying them! :D
Hmmm… I wonder if we did get HD what things like the sets and props would look like. In 1986, when these things were built, television resolution was considerably lower. Televisions were much smaller. Most people were watching at home on a screen no bigger than 25 inches. No thought was given to the show ever being seen in higher definition.
Now today, many homes commonly have sets twice that size with of course, considerably more resolution. Even watching the show on DVD, you glimpse occassional screws in the sets and brush strokes in the paint. That’s with the poor, fuzzy resolution of the DVDs (it’s funny how TNG is the one that suffers this badly, while DS9 and VOY actually look pretty good upconverted).
If we had true HD scanned from the film elements (which I don’t believe they’re doing in a million years… it’ll be an upconvert of some kind), these things would become much more obvious.
106,
Although MOST live-action and miniatures were shot 4:3, some were shot using VistaVision, which gives you a wider aspect ratio (also let you dupe an image w/o the usual old loss in quality.)
I’m guessing the ILM stuff was Vista, since a couple of their shots were used in GENERATIONS. But it was a huge hassle even back then to get the old film elements to work, there was a lot of ‘weave’ in the ship element, which had been reused a ton of times … in fact, it was such a hassle the composite work was done by Jeff Matakovitch (sp), not by ILM, and I believe it was done as an OPTICAL comp, not a digital one.
Also, select live-action scenes that would need VFX were shot vistavision, so that a faux camera move could be added in post (essentially, pan&scan, going from one side of the larger vistavision image to the other.)
It might be likely that miniature elements shot on film later in the run got less worn out than the ILM ones, and maybe those are going to become the replacement elements … look at all the Enterprises they had to shoot for the Worf alternate realities show, I think it was PARALLELS — those were all miniature elements, with passes for running lights as well as exposing the ship itself.
I talked a couple weeks ago with Erik Nash, who shot about a zillion ship elements for TNG and DS9 between 87 and 95, and he mentioned that they got faster and more daring with dramatic looks as they gained experience and went along, which explains why so many of the later shows have slicker looking effects, even using the 4 footer (and I don’t think everybody hates the 4 footer either. To me, the extra detail, even it bulged too much, read very well on the tube, plus you didn’ t have the issue of the drawn-on or stencilled-in detail crumbling off all the time like was the case w/ the 6 footer.)
I’m not in any hurry to see TNG again, in regular or HD (I think I’ve seen two eps in the last 7 years), but when I do, I’d be happy to see the more dramatic lighting that seemed more prevalent later on, where you’d have a stronger key light (esp on DS9.) But what I think may surprise people is that the 3rd season onward live-action might look kinda mushy in HD … I mean, look at the first couple years, and even if some of the shoots are clumsy, they are at least SHARP. But when Berman brought his choice in to shoot the show, the series started getting a little softer and going glamour/fuzzy, like DYNASTY in space, and I can’t see how that will translate well to a HIGHER resolution medium. By way of comparison, I’d say watch a 60s era Bond movie, then watch NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN, which has so much diffusion you’d think Cybil Shepherd was playing Bond (that’s a MOONLIGHTING joke for those old enuf to appreciate it.)
Keep in mind that when they remade TOS, a widescreen version was made — for Japan and Asia. Making a widescreen version is pretty essential for ensuring sales of the series to networks around the world. Space:1999 also was remade in widescreen versions for syndication (they had plenty of extra room on the left and right to make a perfectly good widescreen image), but sold on home video in square-o-vision.
Both of those shows had celluloid film masters though.
All bets are off for what Paramount is going to do with STTNG.
If they have the millions of dollars needed to go back to the original celluloid film, I would LOVE a widescreen version on BluRay. Indeed, no reason to buy the series again on BluRay if it is the same as the DVDs. But we have no idea if they are going back to the original film or not. But if any series can afford to spend a couple million bucks on it, it would be STTNG. Of course they’ll have to price each season at $100+, but, they would have done that anyway since they always gouge Trek fans.
I think at least one of the reasons they’re doing this is to have streaming versions available that will look decent in HD. And again, my understanding is that they ARE going back to the original film elements, including the effects elements–but that animation effects, phasers and torpedoes, would have to be redone. Other than that there will be NO CG ships done, but from what I’ve heard the detail on the original film elements (pre-video compositing) look great and show a lot of detail never before visible.
That said, I highly doubt the entire run of this series will get this treatment. There are simply too many episodes and it would be too expensive. Particularly when you have people saying they have no interest in buying another run of DVDs.
121: “Keep in mind that when they remade TOS, a widescreen version was made — for Japan and Asia. Making a widescreen version is pretty essential for ensuring sales of the series to networks around the world.”
I wouldn’t call that widescreen, though, I’d say it was cropped to fit a wide screen, and that’s not the same since had TOS been shot in a true widescreen aspect ratio then the compositions would have been made to fit the aspect ratio they were using and would thus look different than they do in 1.33:1. Cutting down the 1.33:1 to 1.77:1, or worse, really hacks the intentional composition into something less than what was intended with a corresponding loss of intended information on the screen, so you really cannot duplicate an intentional 1.77:1 by hacking an intentional 1.33:1 into it. It’s just not going to look as natural as the native aspect ratio anymore than widescreen movies looked natural cropped to fit the 1.33:1 TV screen.
Of course, if you never saw the originals and didn’t have anything to compare your widescreen versions to, you might just think those wacky Americans need a lot of help composing their shots.
Well if Geordi is behind it, so am I!
BBCA does a pretty good job of zoom and crop for TNG. i’d be okay with that style of 16×9.
there is another option, more radical, that could render TNG in widescreen.
it’s called “Improved Seam Carving for Video Re-targetting”, and you can see an explanation and demo of it here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJtE8afwJEg
now i doubt this alone would be useable on all footage without some serious distortions in each shot, but there are way tho could be addressed.
first off, replace all model shots with CGI. doable, easily, so you do it and get yourself the proper dimensions for widescreen HD.
second, you use the full, overscanned film negative, to eke out whatever additional width you can.
third, you scan that neg at over 1080p to give the seam carving algorithm plenty of data to extrapolate from.
fourth, you crop a little off the bottom of each shot. you do this manually, where it works, and you do it conservatively.
finally, you run the mega high resolution negative scan through the seam carving algorithm to interpolate the additional width, and then you *downsample* to 1080p to minimize any resulting artifacts.
and if you get a shot that just won’t seamlessly seam carve, maybe you stretch, or maybe you crop. whatever works better.
i honestly don’t know if that would produce decent results in producing a widescreen TNG or not, but i would love to see it tried.
Not getting why people want to see any art form (however commercial) in a different frame than it was intended.
Now if the show was shot with the eventual 16:9 in mind, which is I think how they did QUANTUM LEAP for most if not all of its run, that is one thing, but fitting/squishing a 4:3 into 16:9 is just as offensive and just as much a desecration as the way we used to have to try to see widescreen epics on 4:3 tubes (which is why I wouldn’t watch them at all till laserdisc started letting people see stuff in the OAR.)
Why get bent out of shape over some black bars on the side of the screen?
kmart, I agree there are shows that should stay in 4:3. Like Charmed. Just wouldn’t be the same if the frame stopped at the necklines.
Does noone else get physically ill when they see some 4×3 show STRETCHED disproportionately to fill a widescreen TV?
To me there is nothing so revealing of either technical incompetance of the TV owner, or their complete inability to see reality in correct proportions.
Either watch it AS INTENDED in 4×3, or ZOOM to crop the top and bottom if you’re dying to see widescreen. For God’s sake NEVER STRETCH an image! It’s better to lose 10% of the image and have 90% be right, than to have 100% of the image look like it’s in a funhouse mirror!
Odkin, no one is talking about stretching. The talk is about going to the original film which has more on the sides than what was transferred to video originally.
And about “zoom” — why do you assume that the direct center of the image has all the important info? Needs to be selected shot by shot. If Paramount does not do this, you can bet that a network will indeed just press a “zoom” button when they air the show. And that would be a disaster.
Well, some people mentioned including that as part of the solution, but I meant it more as a general statement. I see people perfectly satisfied with stretched disproportionate pictures everywhere, on almost every publicly displayed TV. It’s like they think they’re getting cheated by the sidebars so they have to “fix” it.
In reference to stretching a picture, I remember on my old PowerDVD 5 player, there was such as thing as “smart stretch” that did a pretty good job of filling the widescreen without it looking too distorted. Of course that was an application for computers and not televisions. But you would think that TV manufacturers would come up with a similar feature for their product.
In regards to the TNG blu-rays, I just hope they do it right and don’t try any shenanigans like stretching or up-rezzing.
Nuff said.
125. striatic
Your checklist, THAT’s what I would love to see happening, at least, I would love that this would be doable so that it would provide some sort of wider image throughout the series.
The choice of eps is curious: “Farpoint” makes some sense, as we have a good mix of space and stage shots. I’d love to see the scene where 1701-D bathes the Farpoint Jellyfish thing in a glowing light beam, and it rises to go off with it’s mate in quality HD. It’s a bit slow-moving, but it’s still the pilot.
“Sins of the Father,” if I recall, has some random ship action in space. Some scenes on Kronos. No biggie.
But, “Inner Light?” Superb episode, but it is all mostly real humans doing real location shots. No HD potential “Holy Crap” moments.
I think we’d much rather see “BOBW” or “Yesterday’s Enterprise” get the treatment. “All Good Things” also falls into the group. I guess, as Trekkers, we take what we get these days.
134 – But, “Inner Light?” Superb episode, but it is all mostly real humans doing real location shots. No HD potential “Holy Crap” moments.
I think you’re missing the point of transferring the show to HD. It’s not about creating Holy Crap CGI moments, it’s about transferring the original film and making the actual filmed episode look as great as it possibly can. CGI effects are a bonus…’if they’re done well’….although if the original model work still exists on film, I would much rather see it scanned and given the HD treatment as well.
135- I agree and anyone who has seen the dvd transfer of this great episode knows how much it will benefit from an HD transfer.
134. Inner Light was a Hugo award winner. It also featured STNG’s first partial digital matte. Sins of the Father started off the Klingon civil war saga and also won an Emmy for production design. Like TOS, STNG had very short FX cuts, it was not FX “heavy” so the real value of these new blurays is in seeing the clarity and detail.
132 l think they do have this on TVs, they call it ‘Just’. I prefer things in the correct AR myself and don’t understand why the rest of my family prefer to either lose some of the picture or watch short/fat people, just so they can fill the screen.
As for TNG on BR, I would imagine that if they are putting any level of proffessional effort into this at all, it has to be an improvement over the DVDs. I haven’t bought the DVDs, (although I had them all on VHS back in the day), so I would probably buy the Blu Rays. 2 or 3 seasons per year, Christmas, birthday, fathers day ;-)
Awesome! How about plain DVD HD? Or are we DVD watchers getting boned by Blu-Ray again. Now, when I say this I don’t just mean Trek, Star Wars is screwing regular DVD watchers over too by releasing remastered and re-edited content of Episodes I-VI on a Blu-Ray only set. Kinda pissed me off, because if they had done one for just DVD too I would have gotten it. I do not own a blu-ray player, nor do I have the intention of ever getting one. Al it really is, is bigger storage space on discs, and a little bit better quality. Doesn’t matter to me. So yeah, if they aren’t doing TNG for regular DVD players too, then I’ll just be even more pissed, and since I’m already still pissed at Lucasfilm now, I don’t think we really want to get me pissed at Paramount/CBS too.
When I say “Holy Crap” moments, I mean scenes that will sell product. Do the estimable “Measure of a Man” in HD, and all of us here will snap it up, but it won’t justify upgrading all seven seasons because it’s a ‘bottle’ show lacking proper ‘splosions, and will only sell to those who seek it out. This sampler needs to have some pull with the casuals.
If the goal is to do a soft launch to fans for honest feedback, then it’s a great idea. We here will be honest, but biased, critics, and Bill Hunt at “The Digital Bits” will personally review it pixel by pixel.
It’d be great, as we had with TOS-R, to get some of the talented folks who are on the project to show up here and specify the parameters of the work in progress. Is it “up-rezing” with newly rendered digital FX? What is the intended goal for the finished product?
It’s clear some are still expecting fully re-shot FX sequences in CGI, while others are waiting for natural-looking 16×9 widescreen re-interpretations, neither of which seems to be happening. I’ve read here many things from experienced people about “compositing,” and I frankly don’t know what that means.
The original camera negatives were shot in animorphic Panavision cameras and were cropped down to 4×3 for television. They are for sure going back to to the camera negatives. IF they do decide to release in widescreen it will NOT be a stretched 4×3 image nor any kind of rendering to fill in that space. It will simply be what was left out of the broadcast version shot on the camera negatives.
As far as the effects go, they were all composited at SD broadcast video resolution (720 x 486) and except for some reused elements from the motion pictures, there does NOT exist any HD or film resolution footage from of the final versions of the effect shots. All the effects need to be redone. Weither or not they are being recreated from scratch via CGI or re-composited from any film resolution negatives of the shooting models remain to be seen. It’s depending on if (and how many) fx camera negatives exist and/or the decisions of the project’s producers.
141,
Where do you get the idea that the live-action was shot anamorphic? I’m not aware of ANY series that was shot in that format (hell, by the early 90s a significant percentage of FEATURE films — product INTENDED for widescreen — weren’t even shooting in that format anymore, instead going the S35 route), and I do know a lil bit about this stuff.
If what you say was true, they wouldn’t have needed to shoot vistavision for the fx shots I mentioned in an earlier post, the ones where an electronic P&S style post camera move was created … they could have just panned&scanned across from one side of the anamorphic panavision you mention.
142. Definitely NOT anamorphic. Standard 35mm, 1:37:1 aspect ratio.
139. DVD is never natively HD…the old HD DVD is defunct, and bluray uprezzes 480i-480p DVDs to 1080i. Bluray is 1080p.
RAMA
140. Farpoint has plenty of FX, but obviously they value quality stories over simple FX demos. Inner Light is often considered the “City on the Edge of Forever” of STNG..and I can’t imagine anyone complaining about THAT on a sampler disc…it didn’t have much in the way of FX either.
143. kmart – September 16, 2011
S35 4 perf is 1.33:1. Why can’t you shoot anamorphic on S35 — will the lenses vignette?
The whole idea of s35 — or the main idea with it, anyway — is so you can use spherical lenses, which gives you more creative options and better depth of field than is readily obtainable shooting anamorphic.
Then you extract your 2.4 or 1.85 from it by matting out the parts you don’t want. There’s a whole step where you lose a generation and grainy the whole thing up when you go out to anamorphic for your theatrical release prints, but that has been minimized with doing the squeeze during the DI. Again, that is all for theatrical films,there wasn’t anything to be gained by it for 4:3 TV.
If you wanted weird-looking people and landscapes and wanted to get them through in-camera effects, I guess you could put an anamorphic lens on and get a distorted image that would then be matted in the conventional way described above … but that’s more of a film school appraoch.
147. kmart – September 16, 2011
I was just thinking that 35 and S35 are almost the same aspect ratio so shooting anamorphic on S35, if the lenses cover it, would reduce grain and increase sharpness by blowing it up less than Academy Aperture anamorphic, no?
144:
I haven’t given “Inner Light” a go for probably 10 years or so, though I remember the story vividly. It certainly gave Patrick Stewart a chance to stretch, and paints a vivid and ultimately tragic picture of mortality (and the richness of life) for both individuals, and, ultimately, civilizations.
I’m not sure it quite hits the heights of “City on the Edge,” which is, in its filmed form, ultimately one of the great ensemble stories for Kirk & Spock, and briefly, McCoy, but it’s ‘top ten’ material in the whole pantheon for sure.
So does anyone know if Next Generation is supposed to be on Netflix Canada this month? I thought that was part of the deal they had made with CBS. I’ve been watching for it but it still hasn’t appeared yet. Was it all a misunderstanding and the Trek shows won’t be on Canadian Netflix at all?
I want it to buy it
http://twitter.com/#!/BurnettRM/status/115579150005317632
149…the current Netflix deal and any HD release will be different.
Wow, that tweet by Robert Meyer Burnett is giving me new hope for TNG in 16/9, they must at least be evaluating the possibility :D
love the RMB tweet! I hope for both versions… I would love to see 16:9 AND 4:3
Burnett has tweeted several more times about STNG-R including this:
“CBS should put their excellent TNG 1:33 vs 16:9 demo online and let the fanbase vote. (16:9 would win by a landslide…).”
Dear CBS,
Here is my two cents about the matter:
16 x 9 is the new standard. As long as it’s not pan-&-scanned, or cropped from 4×3. 4×3 is yesterday’s format.
That being said, let us see some HD!
Thank you.
156
TNG was never intended to be 4×3 it was shot and composed with the intention of being seen 4×3
that is its original aspect ratio, just as ST TOS was 4×3
original aspect ratio is just as important for tv shows as it is for movies.
changing the picture from 4×3 to 16×9 is going to involve cropping the image no matter what.
this site really needs an edit button
156
TNG was never intended to be 16×9 it was shot and composed with the intention of being seen 4×3
that is its original aspect ratio, just as ST TOS was 4×3
original aspect ratio is just as important for tv shows as it is for movies.
changing the picture from 4×3 to 16×9 is going to involve cropping the image no matter what
TNG was never intended to be seen in HD either, but it’s just /better/. I’m sorry but I simply cannot hide my enthusiasm about the prospect of TNG in glorious 16:9 HD! :D
158. Who cares what was intended? It looks fine in 16:9, and THAT works better with the new HD format. You lose some vertical picture but I think there is more valuable info on the horizontal, and you actually gain a small amount if you use the 1:37 aspect ratio, and you gain SIZE. There is a very small stretch that is hardly noticeable.
I think a skillfully done 16×9 cropping would be fine, but I am not in favor of stretching the image in the slightest. Sometimes favoring the top of the image, somtimes the lower portion depending on original composition.
The only issue might be first season, where so many choker close-ups were employed, these would seem even tighter with the cropping, but I think 16×9 TNG would be embraced by fans, if not purists.
149…the current Netflix deal and any HD release will be different.
Yes, I realize that. That wasn’t what I was asking. I was asking about the current deal because there is still no sign of Next Generation on Netflix in Canada and from what I understood, it was supposed to debut this month. I was asking if anyone knew if September was still a go for Next Gen on Netflix.
It sounds like these four episodes are something of a test to determine how they will be doing the whole series as well as the cost associated with each episode to determine budget, etc. that CBS will either approve or deny based on the end result.
Let’s hope it works, it gets done right, and we all get blown away by the end result.
=A=
I’m loving that “The Inner Light” is being recut/remastered for Blu-Ray. This is the one fan favorite that the writers said “We lost some of the light” when edited down for time for airing… hope they put everything back in!
I’m looking forward to “Shades of Gray” remastered!
Seriously though, there are some real clunkers in TNG that no amount of new footage can make better.
Still not sure if this series even warrants being remastered. The only thing that I think needs to be redone is to replace the obvious model re-use that littered the show.
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