How long until TNG: Remastered?

[Mott the barber]

Whoever said it before was right...turn off the damn saucer impulse engines...grrrrr.

[Brian]

Scrooge4747 said:

Enterprise was already done in HD so it won't get "remastered" until some new TV-watching medium comes out that renders viewing it unpleseant in the new format without updating.

Isn't watching it in the original medium unpleasant enough?

J/K

Maybe.

[sgsmitty]

My only complaint about TNG on DVD that is currently out is that the transfer was not cleaned up or enhanced at all during the transfer. The colors are somewhat muted and washed out.

[WalkinMan]

Tosk said:
The scenery thread in GenTrek reminded me of one thing that bugged me every time it happened.

Any shot facing out towards an open shuttlebay...there is never any of the ship visible outside, and the shuttlebay opening is perfectly vertical, unlike the exterior doors. And before anyone chimes in with, "The doors can close at an angle without it being the same inside" there was never any extension to the floor either. It's a straight drop-off right outside the opening.

Anyway, just a model vs set inconsistancy that would be cool if fixed.

It'd be cool to have Ten Forward featured on the model right from the start, too.

That angle-issue reminds me also of the windows in VOY's mess hall, which seemed to have no hint of the surrounding ship's hull (yes it was angled, but not completely gone IMO).

[Maxwell Everett]

DizzyMan said:
I just want to know how wide the aspect was that they shot it on film? Was it 1.37:1? Or did they use an anamorphic lens to widen it (for some reason)?

It was probably the standard Panavision 35mm TV transmitted area... and it was also probably hard matted onto the 35mm film for the entire run of TNG -- that is, a black matte or mask in the familiar 4:3 (or 1.33:1) shape was placed into the film gate so only that area was exposed to light. The surrounding area should have no exposed picture. See below (From a Panavision brochure circa 1999):




Remember the First Contact teaser trailer? Remember the shot of Beverly from "The Best of Both Worlds"?




Here is how it originally appeared in the episode and where they cropped it (zoomed in slightly for tighter close-up it appears):




This demonstrates, I think, two things:

• The original 35mm negatives were telecined (transfered to video for editing) and stored for later use.
• There is no picture information on either side of the originally exposed frame due to hard matting in-camera.
  (which is why they had to crop the image for the trailer.)

***

If the above is true, it means the 35mm negatives do exist somewhere in storage at Paramount or CBS. These can be transfered to HD in exactly the same process that was done for TOS Remastered: That is, 4:3 pillarboxed within the 16:9 HD frame.

Also, I recall that Jonathan West (Director of Photography on later seasons of TNG and DS9) once explained to a poster on this very forum (through email) that they only started protecting for widescreen in seasons 6 & 7 of DS9 and that Marvin Rush was doing the same on Voyager.

Hope that helps.

[Maxwell Everett]

DizzyMan said:

Oddly though, when you look at these caps (originally posted by StewMC), it does look as though there was extra unused footage at the side:

From TNG "Menage a Trois":
http://www.evilpenguins.co.uk/rep1.jpg

From ENT "These are the Voyages":
http://www.evilpenguins.co.uk/rep2.jpg

It is interesting to note that the large area to the left and the small area to the right in the ENT image does conform somewhat to where extra image area would be if the 35mm film from "Ménage à Troi" wasn't hard matted in-camera.

Perhaps director Rob Legato (one of TNG's VFX Supervisors) decided that for his episode he wasn't going to hard-matte the image in-camera.

But if that is the case -- why did they also have to crop the top and bottom of the image for ENT?

Another possibility was that this practice of hard-matting in-camera was inconsistent during TNG's run and simply resulted in a stroke of good luck for this particular shot being used in ENT?

[Mott the barber]

Wow, good research. What's the deal with the color differences? The bottom looks like TNG as we saw it on tv...kinda bland and slightly washed out. The shot from, the trailer almost looks S1 and 2 style...more dirty and gritty.

[Maxwell Everett]

Mott the barber said:
Wow, good research. What's the deal with the color differences? The bottom looks like TNG as we saw it on tv...kinda bland and slightly washed out. The shot from, the trailer almost looks S1 and 2 style...more dirty and gritty.

Yeah... I noticed that too. I figure when they pulled the 35mm negative or inter-positive (or whatever they have in storage) from BOBW, they had it printed with different color timing -- higher saturation, deeper blacks, more contrast. There's a great deal of picture information and latitude on that original film, so they pretty much could have made it look however they wanted.

In this case they were going for more dramatic, to match the cinematography of a feature film... to what DP Matthew Leonetti was doing with First Contact. Transferring TNG to HD would be a whole new viewing experience, (much like TOS Remastered) as the telecines from the late eighties, early nineties were not that great, to say the least!

***

Hmm... that picture seems to have disapeared from Imageshack, so here's a link for those who didn't see it:

[DumbDumb2007]

I caught a few first season eps on dvd eariler this week. They beyond need remastering. the whole first season looks low budget and just above a Saturday morning live action show.

[Mott the barber]

DumbDumb2007 said:
I caught a few first season eps on dvd eariler this week. They beyond need remastering. the whole first season looks low budget and just above a Saturday morning live action show.

It's amazing if you compare the first two seasons with 3 and on. The production value is totally different, including the set lighting.

[AviTrek]

Maxwell Everett said:

It is interesting to note that the large area to the left and the small area to the right in the ENT image does conform somewhat to where extra image area would be if the 35mm film from "Ménage à Troi" wasn't hard matted in-camera.

Perhaps director Rob Legato (one of TNG's VFX Supervisors) decided that for his episode he wasn't going to hard-matte the image in-camera.

But if that is the case -- why did they also have to crop the top and bottom of the image for ENT?

Another possibility was that this practice of hard-matting in-camera was inconsistent during TNG's run and simply resulted in a stroke of good luck for this particular shot being used in ENT?

Because even with the extra material on the side 35mm still is not 16x9 widescreen. The only way to have TNG in 16x9 is to crop the top and bottom. Using the extra material on the side just means you don't have to crop off as much. Although that extra material might not always be useable. There could be mikes, exposed frames, or any number of other problems with the extra information which was ignored since they weren't using it for the 4x3 TV screen.

Of course, realistically if TNG ever gets remastered it will be 4x3 just like TOS-R is 4x3. The real challenge with TNG is having to redo every edit and FX shot since it was all done on video and not film.

[trevanian]

Mott the barber said:

It's amazing if you compare the first two seasons with 3 and on. The production value is totally different, including the set lighting.

As someone who is not a TNG fan, I'm always amazed by how the softer fuzzier look of TNG in later years is looked upon as an improvement by most folks. I do agree that there is a certain rough aspect to the first couple years, but that gave it a bit of bite. Once they started diffusing stuff when they switched cameramen, it started looking like a lot of typical TV where it is all about making the actors and actresses resistant to aging, a kind of subtle version of Finnerman's fog up the actress look on seasons1/2 of TOS.

There is a comfortable slickness to this gauzy stuff, but it is just so safe looking, kind of like TMP but w/o the lit from the floor awfulness.

The visual effects do look better, probably because the motion control folks got a lot better with practice.

The amount of work involved in digging out all the original film elements and rescanning them would be something that kept a lot of people employed, so I guess remastering these could be a good thing from that perspective, but the cost would be staggering.

To the best of my knowledge, there are very few elements in ANY of TNG that originated on video.

There is a shot (a bad one as I recall) of people getting zapped in season 2 in the deaf mediator episode that utilized shot-on-video elements of a visible-human model or something like that, which has been mentioned in interviews here or there, but nealry everything else was shot on film. I think shooting physical elements on 35mm continued even into 1st season ENTERPRISE, at least for dirt and rocks, even if they went full cg for the ships.

[TenLubak]

romulus said:



TNG is still remembered by most of my Gen, it’s what most of my generation watched even if they did not become big enough fans to pay attention to the sequel shows.

I'm starting to think that most people of my gen who watched TNG, later moved on to other sci-fi and don't really care about Trek anymore. Most of the Trek fans left are old timers so I don't know if there are enough people left who care about TNG to want it "remasterd."

Just personally this didnt apply to me.

I'm 25 so as for me in this gen


As far as sequels, I watched Ds9 and liked it, I never finished voy. Left like 2nd season.

I never liked Sci Fi I liked Star Trek, and therefore never ever moved on to any other sci fi. So not everyone is all im saying.

It would be nice to see my fav st look nice. Maybe i will buy it one day,

[trevanian]

Maxwell Everett said:

It is interesting to note that the large area to the left and the small area to the right in the ENT image does conform somewhat to where extra image area would be if the 35mm film from "Ménage à Troi" wasn't hard matted in-camera.

Perhaps director Rob Legato (one of TNG's VFX Supervisors) decided that for his episode he wasn't going to hard-matte the image in-camera.

But if that is the case -- why did they also have to crop the top and bottom of the image for ENT?

Another possibility was that this practice of hard-matting in-camera was inconsistent during TNG's run and simply resulted in a stroke of good luck for this particular shot being used in ENT?

It was an occasional practice to shoot shots requiring later optical work in VistaVision on TNG, that way there'd be extra image on 'either side' so that an electronic pan&scan type move could be introduced into an otherwise static shot. Rob Legato started doing this on LAST OUTPOST (panning off Riker to show some dry ice and model mountains, I think), and used it plenty of other times as well.

It is cheaper than motion control, and this technique has even been used on feature films such as THE SIXTH DAY, as a way to get movement into a static camera setup requiring visual trickery.

[Jonesy]

Maxwell Everett said:
This demonstrates, I think, two things:

• The original 35mm negatives were telecined (transfered to video for editing) and stored for later use.
• There is no picture information on either side of the originally exposed frame due to hard matting in-camera.
  (which is why they had to crop the image for the trailer.)

***

If the above is true, it means the 35mm negatives do exist somewhere in storage at Paramount or CBS. These can be transfered to HD in exactly the same process that was done for TOS Remastered: That is, 4:3 pillarboxed within the 16:9 HD frame.

I would think that Paramount without any doubt has the original negatives from TNG somewhere. And I am also excited, because there's without any question a huge opportunity for Paramount to go back and give us the quality from the original 35mm negs. I almost don't really even care about the FX, really. (Although I think the quality between a fresh scan from a 35mm neg and the look from the video-transferred space shots would be significant.) Just by your sample alone, I think that the difference seen on virtually any kind of screen (high def is the preferred choice for sure) would be startling.