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Odd Choices in TOS-R cgi fx

It wasn't just the budget limitations they were under, but the time constraints, too. They had to remaster every episode from practically the day they announced it in 2007 until "The Cage" aired in early 2009 because every episode was being aired in syndication. TNG-R went straight to home video and furthermore had the advantage of having the original film stock of all the space FX to work with, making their task slightly easier. TOS-R made the most of what they had to work with pretty much like their forebearers.
 
The simplest way to imply mass is simply not to make the ships make sudden or fast turns. The was no reason to make the Klingon ship do that stupid pivot.
 
spockboy said:
I can't tell you how happy I am to find I am not the only one who found CBS Digital's effects were below par,
No its all artifical garbage!!!

Anything they can do to remove the beautiful purity from it and make it CRAP like everything else today they do.....


NO ONE SHOULD WATCH THIS GARBAGE!! (Especially real star trek lovers)
 
I mentioned it elsewhere , but I think the best use of the new FX is the landscape images on Vulcan in Amok Time. That landscape was amazing and bought it in line with the original concept or at least what we got in TAS.
 
The Doomsday Machine. If ever a story could benefit from updated effects. And yet we replace the original colorful, crystalline-looking DM with a flatly lit, utterly neutral gray, almost untextured looking toy. How about some colored light from different directions to liven things up a bit? No. it's just boring old 128-128-128 Gray. It doesn't even look finished.

Well said!
I saw an interview with the head of CBS Digital saying that the texture they used for the Doomsday Machine was the same sun texture they used in Tomorrow is Yesterday! (another painful effort)
actualsun-CBS-2.jpg


I also agree about the lighting (as I mentioned earlier)

This picture below of Eden FX (whom as I said were turned down for the job to save money) vs CBS,
the lighting, wrong font, and overall flatness issues are abundantly clear.
Look at the nacelles! (LOL)

compareSMALL.jpg




Imagine what the Big E would look like with today's cameras and compositing.
At 3 feet longer than the TMP Enterprise it would look absolutely huge and more importantly, real. :cool:
 
I mentioned it elsewhere , but I think the best use of the new FX is the landscape images on Vulcan in Amok Time. That landscape was amazing and bought it in line with the original concept or at least what we got in TAS.

Considering that "Amok Time" was the very first time we saw the planet Vulcan anywhere, I'm curious how you feel it wasn't in line with the original concept.
 
I think the best use of the new FX is the landscape images on Vulcan in Amok Time.


Other "best of" moments include Stratos ("The Cloud Minders"), the city on Scalos ("Wink of an Eye"), and the Sarpeidon supernova ("All Our Yesterdays"). That's where TOS-R really shines.
 
In some fairness to the artists they only had so much time to get things done, but still...

Michael Okuda did say (in an interview) that it was a recurring "discussion" about how far to push the new f/X. Some wanted to go further while others (presumably including Okuda) wanted to rein it in. You can imagine you can't win every argument.

I don't know how they went about this, but one individual with an overriding vision overseeing for the whole project could have helped. But then that might have required more time as well for him/her yo oversee everything.

I believe I recall this same quote. In it, okuda claimed the intent was for the fx to look like something done in the 1960s . Perhaps that's why the cgi models were done in this manner?
 
In some fairness to the artists they only had so much time to get things done, but still...

Michael Okuda did say (in an interview) that it was a recurring "discussion" about how far to push the new f/X. Some wanted to go further while others (presumably including Okuda) wanted to rein it in. You can imagine you can't win every argument.

I don't know how they went about this, but one individual with an overriding vision overseeing for the whole project could have helped. But then that might have required more time as well for him/her yo oversee everything.

I believe I recall this same quote. In it, okuda claimed the intent was for the fx to look like something done in the 1960s . Perhaps that's why the cgi models were done in this manner?

If their intent was for the VFX "to look like something done in the 1960s," then they failed miserably at that.
 
okuda claimed the intent was for the fx to look like something done in the 1960s . Perhaps that's why the cgi models were done in this manner?
If their intent was for the VFX "to look like something done in the 1960s," then they failed miserably at that.
Nor is (or should there have been) there a reasonable expectation of that. Digital recording is never going to sound like 1960s analog tape and CGI is never going to look like 1960s VFX, at least not completely.
 
That the CGI effects completely missed the photographic style of the show is the most damning thing about it. The use of light and shadow in the new FX is inconsistent and incompatible with the photography of the bulk of each episode. Further, the colored lighting on the Yonada asteroid or on the Tholian ships in the originals was keeping with the use of colored lighting on the sets. Redoing them without that was to ensure the new VFX didn't feel like they were part of the show. It never made sense to me to attempt to vaguely modernize a few seconds of each show when 97% of what's around it remains firmly planted in the 1960s.
 
(3) At 25:35 we see Kirk's POV on the Constellation auxiliary room's viewer of the Enterprise firing phasers at the planet killer. But right after that we cut to a bridge shot as Matt Decker yells out ''Fire''. Weren't they just doing that in the previous shot? The new FX made the Decker shot redundant. What they should have done was simply a shot as the Enterprise too dangerously approaches the machine, then cut to Decker.

They also keep the screen malfunctioning too long. In the TOS-R print he says "what the devil's going on?" and we go back to the POV shot and the screen is still fritzing a bit more than then finally activates. In the original, he says the line and when we see the screen, it's fully activated. He actually saw the Enterprise approaching the PK, which was not yet firing phasers, so he really didn't know yet what was going on.

Stuff like this reminds me of how on the original series Doctor Who DVDs, they offer optional modern CGI effects on some stories, but on one of them they misunderstood the on-screen action effects and mistakenly added some CGI laser bolts coming from the sky to "explain" why there were explosions going off on the surface of a planet... despite the fact that the dialogue actually tells us that the explosions are because of underground mining. :facepalm:

One would think the minimum requirement for the people doing these kinds of things would be to have watched the episodes in question thoroughly before making such bizarre errors of judgement. But nope, apparently not.

That's The Destiny of The Daleks DVD right? I've heard about that one although I haven't seen it! The Dalek firing shots are supposed to be more on target though aren't they?
JB
 
In some fairness to the artists they only had so much time to get things done, but still...

Michael Okuda did say (in an interview) that it was a recurring "discussion" about how far to push the new f/X. Some wanted to go further while others (presumably including Okuda) wanted to rein it in. You can imagine you can't win every argument.

I don't know how they went about this, but one individual with an overriding vision overseeing for the whole project could have helped. But then that might have required more time as well for him/her yo oversee everything.

I believe I recall this same quote. In it, okuda claimed the intent was for the fx to look like something done in the 1960s . Perhaps that's why the cgi models were done in this manner?

If their intent was for the VFX "to look like something done in the 1960s," then they failed miserably at that.
Definitely. TOS-R got a lot of attention when it came out and some who weren't enamored with it could be tagged as narrow minded. And yet there have been fan efforts that have managed to do what CBS failed at.
 
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