Best and Worst Cinematography

For Best Cinematography, I'd nominate three Jerry Finnerman shows and one Al Francis:

"Mudd's Women"
Great looking guest stars are given an ethereal quality with diffusion filter (commonly known as "soft focus") and, in some shots, backlighting for halo effect in their hair. Nice!

"The Enemy Within"
Evil Kirk is given stark shadows that augment different makeup.

"This Side of Paradise"
Jill Ireland is given the beauty treatment, to good effect.

"The Lights of Zetar"
My favorite of the Al Francis episodes. It's so vibrant, just a perfect look in my estimation.


I have an easier time picking a single least favorite:

"Let That Be Your Last Battlefield"
Maybe the director is to blame for the jarring lens pulls on the red alert light and the extreme close-ups during the self-destruct sequence, which I don't like, but beyond that the whole episode looks flat to me. Nothing much cooking.

 

Have to include Mirror, Mirror onto the best list. The atmosphere that both Finnerman and Daniels created for the ISS Enterprise is perfect - the relative darkness, and camera angles that are sometimes a little off from the normal.

 

^ The thing that gave me the most creeps about Mirror Mirror was the very first shot of our crew beaming onto the ISS Enterprise transporter pad. Something about the abrupt cut to the alternate Imperial transporter room, plus the different transporter effect...that scene alone was one of the best in the ep.

And that's before we see mirror Spock.

 

Any of Senensky's episodes.

 

The first handful of episodes look exceptional. You can tell that great care went into the lighting, color schemes, camera angles and movements. Even the often-mocked backlighting and soft focus on the ladies were done with great attention to detail. It's a shame this was lost as the series went on, but I can think of a couple of exceptions where the cinematography really stood out, in my possibly unpopular opinion.

"Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" - just for the fact that they tried to do so many new and different things with the camera movements and framing. Not all of it worked, but at least it was unique and memorable. By this point in the series, there simply wasn't enough time to put the kind of care into the cinematography like they used to. Many third season episodes have a flat look to them. 'Light it and shoot it.' So any effort to deviate from the norm so late in the game is appreciated.

"Is There In Truth No Beauty?" - because the use of varied lenses and unusual angles, combined with the frantic editing and score, give the episode a trippy, disjointed feeling like no other.

The only examples of poor cinematography I could think of off-hand would be "The Savage Curtain" (nothing of interest in that one at all) and some of the studio backlot shows like "A Piece of the Action", "Patterns of Force" or "Bread and Circuses" which were kind of visually dull to me.

 

I know they had a budget cut at the start of the second season, and another budget cut for the third season. And at one point, I think it was when Paramount bought Desilu, the show's shooting schedule per episode was shortened.

I'm just glad Star Trek's situation never got as bad as the third season of Batman. On Batman, it got to where they had no set at all. They'd shoot a courtroom scene with a few chairs and tables on a bare soundstage. Literally. They just didn't build the set.

 

I love Enemy Within, but the cinematography (lighting idKirk from underneath with mascara and flipping the film) is over the top and takes me out of the story.

 

Last time I saw "Wink of an Eye," the camera work impressed me, particularly on the bridge with Deela when Kirk first accelerates.

 

You mean the Transporter Room scene when Evil Kirk first appears? The music also makes a strong statement, so much so that it was played in a Family Guy episode when a similar transporter accident happens to Stewie.

It's something you would never, ever see in a serious one-hour drama today. But you could say that about all of TOS. The lighting, music, and even the make-up have changed completely in television.

 

I actually really like the cinematography of the destruct sequence in LTBYLB, it is probably one of the best things they did in the third year. There are some very questionable choices in other parts of the episode, I'll grant.

 

"Balance of Terror" and "Spectre of the Gun." Director Vincent McEveety took extra care in lighting the bridge. And both episodes have some wonderful camera angles.

 

McEveety was a gem of a director. Shooting the prostrate McCoy from floor level in "Miri" was clever and enhanced the sense of peril.

Even though McEveety's set ups could be complicated and were always artistic, he must have been well prepared and efficient. Other innovative directors --Harvey Hart, Larry Dobkin, and Leo Penn--were not invited back because of their shots resulted in overtime.

 

Indeed, Harvey Hart did some beautiful deep-focus shots for "Mudd's Women" -- but I understand he was never asked to direct another Trek episode because his elaborate camera set-ups made the shoot run a day behind schedule.

 

I always thought the slight tilt to represent offset time was a nice touch.

 

Yeah. It's not unlike Batman, where the camera tilt was usually (always?) used in the criminal lair, but still artfully done, I thought.

 

I wouldn't say the worst, but The Empath is just odd. It definitely had a minimalist sort of theatrical stage production vibe to it with the set pieces. Gems performance reminded me of a sort of modern dance or pantomime theater performance. This was the first, first run episode I saw as a kid and I thought it was totally bizarre. It's grown on me over the years, though.

 

The direction/cinematagrophy is weird in that one too. They do a good job of capturing the surreallity of the episode. The zoom to "Scotty" on the surface and the direction in the research station stand out as very unique to the series.

 

I absolutely concur. While the episode overall is a monumental bore to me, I always really enjoy rewatching this part of it, precisely because it is so unique.

 

I always kind of liked the mouth close-up scenes. It almost seems as though it were meant to make the viewer feel small, dwarfed by the tense battle of wills between Bele and Kirk.

 

Speaking of cinematography, the second season show By Any Other Name looks and feels like a 3rd season show. Anyone else get this?