Babylon 5, did someone have a vendetta against the series?

[Candlelight]

The Borgified Corpse wrote:

---

With Doctor Who, even the episodes that do still exist, none of the original master tapes from the 1st 8 seasons exist anymore. All we have now are black & white film prints shot with a telecine machine, fan made off-air color video recordings, and some high quality American tapes that still need to be back-converted from NTSC back into PAL (which still yielded some pretty poor converted images until a few years ago when they were finally able to use computers to adjust the color and diminish the extra motion-blur).

Not quite true; The Ambassadors of Death 1, The Claws of Axos 1 4 and The Daemons 4 all exist on their original PAL 2" master tape. Plus Spearhead from Space 1 2 3 4 exists on it's original 16mm colour film.

In addition, NTSC 2" master tapes have been recovered for Inferno 1 2 3 4 5 6 7, Colony in Space 1 2 3 4 5 6 and The Claws of Axos 2 3, which have been reverse standards converted to PAL

[Candlelight]

Dream wrote:

---

Also if they are ever going to do a remaster like TNG-R, they will also need to redo all the space ship CGI in HD quality which would cost lots of money. This is the same problem that late DS9 and VOY will have if those shows are ever remastered.

I remember reading an interview with JMS in the 90s where he stated he believed CGI costs would be much lower in the future and they *could* redo the CGI for later releases if they wanted. Unfortunately it simply isn't the case.

I'm very surprised that Enterprise is due out next after TNG. Is DS9 and Voyager really an issue?

[Jan]

Dream wrote:

---

Weren't the original film masters partially eaten by rats or something?

We know that they ran into that issue specifically with the masters for "The Gathering" which they discovered when they went to do the re-edit for TNT.

Note that I said all the *available* footage. The folks at WB who held custody of the film (we don't keep that stuff, we're not allowed to by contract, they store film, negative, prints, all that stuff) put the negative canisters into storage...and at one point in the intervening 4 years, there had been water damage, and on another
occasion, apparently rats had gotten in there and chewed some of the original negatives (and in most cases there weren't positive struck of those takes).

Jan

[MacLeod]

Candlelight wrote:

---

I remember reading an interview with JMS in the 90s where he stated he believed CGI costs would be much lower in the future and they *could* redo the CGI for later releases if they wanted. Unfortunately it simply isn't the case.

I'm very surprised that Enterprise is due out next after TNG. Is DS9 and Voyager really an issue?

Isn't not so much DSN and VOY are an issue, it's more a case of ENT is HD ready.

[Harvey]

Candlelight wrote:

---

I'm very surprised that Enterprise is due out next after TNG. Is DS9 and Voyager really an issue?

They would require the same expensive restoration currently being done on Star Trek: The Next Generation. It probably will happen within the next ten years, but since Enterprise was mastered in high definition and is therefore ready for Blu-Ray, it is being released first.

[Triple-F]

Cutter John wrote:

---

One would have thought studios would have learned something from the Doctor Who disaster. I could understand if it were all stored on huge reels of film. But it still boggles my mind that not one production person who probably spent hours or days working on these designs thought to dump copies of a few files onto spare harddrives and carry them home.

The short sightedness of some of these companies is mind-boggling.

It's the stories which evolved round some of this which is mind-boggling. Of course they did. If you know the right people you can even see the proof of concept video put together for the meeting with Warner Bros. ; )

From Ron Thornton talking about the LoTR and TLT productions having difficulty finding the original 3D assets (though the same library that was found for LoTR was again found ‘found’ for TLT ; ).

Let’s put it this way, I can grab at least 4 or 5 people who have pretty much all the assets from Babylon 5. Even down to the original ships I did for the test, because it was all on the Foundation servers before we went bankrupt. . . . . . . . . . . If they had asked me I could have given them straight away. But realistically the original assets really aren’t up to anything like the modern standard. They are so simplistic. Plus the guys did such a good job on the station, Starfury and also the green ship for the Lost Tales.

And BTW, Doug Netter didn’t set anything up, as far as the CGI went – other than a company using some junior animators which FI temporarily brought onboard to work on Hypernauts. Foundation Imaging was then kicked off the show, and had to end up begging Dan Curry to throw them some Voyager work as a lifeline.

http://www.themadgoner.com/B5/B5Scro...m#Screen1_01_1

[JoeD80]

FYI, Shant Jordan and Patrick Perez who were the senior animators for Netter Digital were previously on the staff of Foundation.

[Triple-F]

For 10 minutes.

http://www.themadgoner.com/B5/B5Scro...m#Screen1_01_3

They were among the staff (junior animaters in this case) brought in to work on Hypernauts, when it got cancelled only a few (like Larry Bowman) were kept on to work on B5. Though they did play an important role in settng up Netter Digital, of course.

[Noname Given]

Cutter John wrote:

---

One would have thought studios would have learned something from the Doctor Who disaster. I could understand if it were all stored on huge reels of film. But it still boggles my mind that not one production person who probably spent hours or days working on these designs thought to dump copies of a few files onto spare harddrives and carry them home.

The short sightedness of some of these companies is mind-boggling.

IDK - that's like saying you can't believe they destroy built filming sets after they're done using/filming on them.

The CGI models made were used for what they were designed for. Also, given the rate at which CGI technology is progressing; saving old Lightwave models wouldn't really net you much. It would probably take more time and effort re-texturing and other elements; then it would to re-create a new model from scratch in whatever software they're using for a new production. T

hus why waste the time, money, and effort on archiving and storing something that you won't need again - and if you do, can probably be re-created at a lesser cost then archiving, restoring and updating the original models might?

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Harvey wrote:

---

They would require the same expensive restoration currently being done on Star Trek: The Next Generation. It probably will happen within the next ten years, but since Enterprise was mastered in high definition and is therefore ready for Blu-Ray, it is being released first.

I believe Enterprise is already available in 720p HD on iTunes. I'm not tempted for some reason...

[Dream]

If ENT fails to sell well, say goodbye to DS9 and VOY remasters.

[Noname Given]

Dream wrote:

---

If ENT fails to sell well, say goodbye to DS9 and VOY remasters.

Not really. 'Enterprise' requires NO 'HD rematering' as it was done in HD to begin with. At this point it's just press/burn to Blu-Ray and distribute. I don't hget why they hadn't released it to Blu-Ray sooner.

[Harvey]

Dream wrote:

---

If ENT fails to sell well, say goodbye to DS9 and VOY remasters.

Unlikely. Both series were more successful than Enterprise. A better indicator will be how well subsequent seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation sell.

[diankra]

Harvey wrote:

---

Unlikely. Both series were more successful than Enterprise. A better indicator will be how well subsequent seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation sell.

Yes, but no.
If Enterprise doesn't sell, then one argument is 'That's because it's the final, least popular, Trek series'. [FX: waits for the sound of a fatwa from those who do like Enterprise]. 'Let's spend a hefty amount of money on remastering DS9 and Voyager, as they'll do better.'
Option two is: 'Even the one that was HD ready didn't break even. No more. It's an old property, it's had its day*'.
The problem is the the person who goes for option two keeps their job. The person who goes for option one loses their job if they're wrong...

*10 no-points if you can name the person, company and decade, and series it refers to, that quote comes from...

[MacLeod]

^Or, this HD thing is around to stay, more and more HD channels are popping up, what properties do we have that these channels might be interested in buying over the next decade or two.

Remastering is in part protecting your property for long term profits. Besides it's likely these shows have already paid several times over for the cost of remastering them into HD.

Remember TNG HD has already been sold and is airing on the Syfy Channel (UK).