Star Trek TNG Remastered?

[Tomalak]

trevanian wrote:

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I'm talking about the Enterprise torpedoes detonating, not anything Q is doing.

Oh, I beg your pardon. I should have read that more carefully.

[Hober Mallow]

Falcor5 wrote:

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I wonder if it would be easier for Paramount to justify the costs to convert TNG to HD if they got a channel like the Sci-Fi network or Spike to agree to air the episodes in HD as they were made.

Sure, but would it be worth the cost to effectively put the series back into post-production? Originally, new episodes of the show would average a 10.0 to 12.0 rating. This time, they'd get no more than a 1.0 rating, and that's being on the optimistic side.

jefferiestubes8 wrote:

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The edit decisions have already been made starting in 1987. Whether they can access the edit decisions that correspond to the actual film negative is another matter (film keycode#s to pull negative to re-telecine original camera negative 'select takes' in to use for HD editing). Without an EDL [Edit Decision List] and film keycode every cut would have to be matched by eye which is a lot of work and NOT conventional.

That's what I'm saying. They'd have to do the editing all over again. And you're right, trying to not only simply edit the show but make it exactly match the original edits is an added burden, and there's certainly nothing conventional about doing that. It makes it even harder.

LitmusDragon wrote:

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I think for any kind of hi-def treatment they are going to need to source from the original film negatives. It doesn't seem like editing the original film elements back together should be all that difficult. It's the fact that they'd have to replace every single transporter and phaser effect that would make this really time consuming. TOS at least could use the existing transporter and phaser effects and save their budget for the background and space exteriors. All this stuff on TNG was done on video tape.

I think it's the reverse, actually. Adding new CGI effects wouldn't be such a time-consuming challenge as trying to make brand new edits match the originals. I'm no videophile or anything, but it seems to me this is this biggest challenge.

[Falcor5]

Hober Mallow wrote:

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Sure, but would it be worth the cost to effectively put the series back into post-production? Originally, new episodes of the show would average a 10.0 to 12.0 rating. This time, they'd get no more than a 1.0 rating, and that's being on the optimistic side.

Oh I would hope they dont expect it to get a rating as good as the first time it aired (or anywhere close to it) but for a channel like Sci-fi it could still be a draw. Or maybe they can just do it in syndication like the TOS HD episodes are aired.

[Jefferies]

Could anyone here give an educated estimate on how much re-editing a TNG episode from scratch with the addition of new FX would actually cost, given current standards in technology? Does anyone know how much the TOS-R eps cost? Maybe we could use that as a baseline and double or tripple it to get an approximate price tag for an episode of TNG-R. Based on that we could see how feasible such a project would be today or how long we need to wait until it becomes cheap enough for it to be profitable.

[Hober Mallow]

Jefferies wrote:

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Could anyone here give an educated estimate on how much re-editing a TNG episode from scratch with the addition of new FX would actually cost, given current standards in technology? Does anyone know how much the TOS-R eps cost? Maybe we could use that as a baseline and double or tripple it to get an approximate price tag for an episode of TNG-R. Based on that we could see how feasible such a project would be today or how long we need to wait until it becomes cheap enough for it to be profitable.

You can't really compare it to TOS:R because with TOS they had completed, edited episodes already finished, already on film. TNG is going to be an entirely different beast altogether.

[Jefferies]

Hober Mallow wrote:

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You can't really compare it to TOS:R because with TOS they had completed, edited episodes already finished, already on film. TNG is going to be an entirely different beast altogether.

I realise that, but I just have no clue what the cost would be. As the price of remastering TNG is the issue here, it would be nice to have some sort of estimate. We know its going to be substantially more expensive then TOS-R. So knowing what the costs of that was would at least tell us what kind of range is considered feasible.

[Hober Mallow]

Jefferies wrote:

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I realise that, but I just have no clue what the cost would be. As the price of remastering TNG is the issue here, it would be nice to have some sort of estimate. We know its going to be substantially more expensive then TOS-R. So knowing what the costs of that was would at least tell us what kind of range is considered feasible.

I really have no idea what the cost would be. To come up with an estimate, I would imagine you'd take the cost for a weekly SF series already in production (TNG's original cost 20 years ago was between 1.2 and 1.5 million dollars an episode), take away the production costs leaving only the pre-production and post-production costs. Then add money for extra costs like finding and cleaning up all the film.

[jefferiestubes8]

Jefferies wrote:

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it would be nice to have some sort of estimate.

"They further revealed that tests had been done for a possible future Star Trek: The Next Generation - Remastered effort."

from this post about it in 2006. [nothing new at the link]
Paramount Home Entertainment have done their 'tests' which probably included uprezzing the standard definition D2 masters as well as re-telecining a few rolls of original camera negative to see the quality in HD [as 4:3 framing with pillarbox]. That was in 2006.
The quality hasn't changed a whole lot since but they know the costs and the amount of work it would require including the # of effects shots per episode they would have to have Eden FX do in CGI and the costs involved.
Once Paramount/CBS sees how the sales of TOS-R on Blu-ray go it may help them make a decision as well as the new ratings for broadcast syndication in Autumn of TNG.

[Jefferies]

Hober Mallow wrote:

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I really have no idea what the cost would be. To come up with an estimate, I would imagine you'd take the cost for a weekly SF series already in production (TNG's original cost 20 years ago was between 1.2 and 1.5 million dollars an episode), take away the production costs leaving only the pre-production and post-production costs. Then add money for extra costs like finding and cleaning up all the film.

This makes it sound very expensive indeed, somewhere in the order of several 100,000 dollars per episode. Which means a whole season could cost up to 10 million. Somehow I really don't see them making that sort of money from DVD sales and syndication deals. Even at half the price say in 10 years time it sounds unrealistic.

[Tomalak]

It's also not going to be that expensive, given that it's already been edited, music has been composed, sound effects have been done, visual effects probably now work out cheaper with CGI. The big difference from the TOS remaster is that someone is going to have to look through the vault and reassemble the episodes from the film stock before it can be remastered and new effects applied. The truth is that we don't really know how much it will cost, so it's over to CBS to make it happen. Or not. As long as they don't throw anything away in the future, there's a good chance it will happen eventually.

[Falcor5]

Jefferies wrote:

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This makes it sound very expensive indeed, somewhere in the order of several 100,000 dollars per episode. Which means a whole season could cost up to 10 million. Somehow I really don't see them making that sort of money from DVD sales and syndication deals. Even at half the price say in 10 years time it sounds unrealistic.

I dont know 10 million sounds like alot of money do you really think it will cost that much each season??

[Jefferies]

Falcor5 wrote:

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I dont know 10 million sounds like alot of money do you really think it will cost that much each season??

Well one of the previous posters was pointing out how much TNG cost to make 20 years ago. For the remastering one can substract the costs of production. So I just took a third as the remaining amount. with episodes at 1.2 to 1.5 million that leaves about 300,000 dollars and possibly more per episode times 26 and you are in the region of 8 million. However, others have already pointed out that post production especially with todays technology would cost much less. So that might mean 100,000 per episode? So a season would then maybe cost between 2 and 3 million. Which still sounds like far too much for them to consider it, at least at the moment.

[LitmusDragon]

Hober Mallow wrote:

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I think it's the reverse, actually. Adding new CGI effects wouldn't be such a time-consuming challenge as trying to make brand new edits match the originals. I'm no videophile or anything, but it seems to me this is this biggest challenge.

My assumption is that the footage could be scanned into a computer digitally, and then the original time indexes of the cuts could be referenced (surely this was documented?), and all you'd have to do is set the start-end sliders for each roll of film. They'd have to digitize the footage to put it onto Blu-Ray anyway.

I don't mean to imply this would be a cakewalk, but my guess would be about %30 time to digitize and edit the footage back together, versus perhaps %70 time to redo every special effect in CGI.

[MPH]

I don't know how much this would cost but it has to be done. I own S1 TOS on BR and comparing this to a TNG DVD its ridiculous how much better it is.
Its only going to look worse in the coming years when televisions get even higher resolution.

[Mr. B]

LitmusDragon wrote:

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I don't mean to imply this would be a cakewalk, but my guess would be about %30 time to digitize and edit the footage back together, versus perhaps %70 time to redo every special effect in CGI.

I was just thinking about this and was curious how much it would cost just to create digital intermediates of the dailies. I know all the editing and SFX do-overs would be quite costly but just getting the scanning done in the near future might be prudent as film doesn't last forever. If I were heading a project like this I would get a jump on future technology and do everything in 4K. The scanning process would be more time consuming and storage intensive but a larger, downsampled source would look better on blu-ray and you would have the source material on hand for future re-release down the road when 4K cinema resolution is common in the home.