Looked pretty raw to me, but I'm not an expert...for all I know it was far worse and it WAS restored.
News Star Trek: The Original Series: The Roddenberry Vault Review
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Looked pretty raw to me, but I'm not an expert...for all I know it was far worse and it WAS restored.
None of the new material was HD....nor DVD and also interlaced.
Just over an hour (65 min)** of raw material if you cut commentaries and re-releases of episodes.
** Amazon reviewer source
Just over an hour (65 min)** of raw material if you cut commentaries and re-releases of episodes.
** Amazon reviewer source
True, but I think they went a little too far this time. A price of $19.95 with the new stuff on a single DVD would have been a far better choice, IMHO. When I bought the BD TOS release, it was still $10 less than this set.
Yup! How long will it be before we see Vol II come to the market? No disrespect meant to Harvey, but I don't buy the "it's not in there because it doesn't exist" explanation. Not after the product itself included the information on the large amount of film in existence.
I agree that the set is filled with filler but honestly, I was happy to see the footage even though it was sparse. There was an auction not too long ago that was only the raw special effects footage of the K-7 miniature which eventually sold for well over $1000 dollars. Here we have simply STUNNING footage of the miniatures in HD for what; $40 dollars not to mention other footage never seen. Deal of the century for me, really. If you consider paying the Okuda's for 10 years to go through over a hundred of hours of footage, identifying what each was and classifying if it was important, then the cost of interviewing the people (Shatner did NOT do this for free, you can bet on it), making the documentaries and then packaging the set; I can see why the price point is where it is. A bunch of the reels it turns out were just work prints with most of the footage being that which was used in the episodes. As for the rest of the footage from TOS; it was nearly all carved up and sold through Lincoln years ago so it's gone forever. I would certainly pay 10X $40 bucks or more for disc of raw footage just for historical purposes but I know such a thing would not commercially viable unfortunately. I HOPE there will be another volume but I seriously doubt there will be.
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They did go too far. Plus, it was all ass backwards where the real, true content was the special features. So, we're buying a whole set not to watch the main content but only the special features? For a moment, I was wondering if I was missing something about the set. It couldn't have been the episodes, as seen before, plus the relatively little new content, right?
BTW, that hour figure for new raw content is a bit inflated. Many of those minutes are those very brief snippets of alternate angles, most of which are not exciting even to a hard core TOS fans like myself. YMMV. The real gems of entire cut scenes with dialog were much shorter than that.
While I agree that ultimately businesses try to make money and the customers decided if the product/service is worthwhile, this just wasn't a good release. I agree with a single disc for $19.99. They should also consider either cutting down on the interviews or having the option of playing the new content without the interviews. The problem is, if I want to back and to watch say the extended scene from City or the raw Enterprise shots, I'd have to do a lot of fast forwarding just to get to it. I'm not going to want to watch the same interviews over and over.
And, while the raw daily footage isn't of the same quality as the regular episodes, that doesn't mean that they couldn't have an option to insert the found footage into these episodes. Yeah, the quality wouldn't match and SFx and sound effects may not be present, but so what? We're not expecting the new material to be the same quality but it would be cool to see it in the proper context.
Mr Awe
It was bonus material for the 50th set that they decided to turn into a money grab.....
Sync problems
Needless talking heads cluttering up and taking away from the raw footage
"original" episode versions that accidently contain the re-mastered revisions
"isolated scores" that accidentally contain sound effects
.....that's evidence of a rush job,
What a truly awesome, welcome bonus this would have been for fans who spent $125+ for the 50th set -- (deleted scenes from TOS!!)
It truly would have been a comprehensive set. (despite no re-masters for the other movies)
Sync problems
Needless talking heads cluttering up and taking away from the raw footage
"original" episode versions that accidently contain the re-mastered revisions
"isolated scores" that accidentally contain sound effects
.....that's evidence of a rush job,
What a truly awesome, welcome bonus this would have been for fans who spent $125+ for the 50th set -- (deleted scenes from TOS!!)
It truly would have been a comprehensive set. (despite no re-masters for the other movies)
And if you want to see all the cut footage from "City..." -- you have to swap out discs!! -- becaue it's on both discs 1 and 3.
Are they f***ing crazy?
Much as I love TOS and the Okudas, this particular item doesn't really strike me. I just don't feel any urgency about it. And $45 is a hefty price-tag for this kind of content. I'll probably grab it on eBay at some point.
The Okuda's and Lay proved they knew exactly how to present deleted footage in the Next Gen sets.
With framing material and text to give the audience specific context.......
Not partially TALKED OVER, not partially visually covered with EPISODE NAME, not material from particular episodes split among DIFFERENT discs, not throw in on a feature that has people talking about THEIR experiences growing up with Trek.
Even if they wanted to force us to rebuy episodes we already own -- they still could have had the deleted material be episode specific. A bonus section for each featured episode. On "City.." a section with every deleted scene, every alternate angle, every clapboard snippet, every raw FX shot.
For episodes not included -- simply put a card saying "Cage raw beam-in footage" "WNMHGB without view-screen insert added", "Mudd's Women clapboard clips", "Conscience ..deleted dialogue from scene XYZ with framing footage for context", etc., etc.,
It's not rocket science. They came up with the most inefficient and time consuming method for the fans to view the material. Only the "cutting room floor" section was halfway well done and even that should have included framing material -- such as the context of the Spock/Uhura scene from Elaan (them trying to use music to calm the Dolman and showing how the music of his harp was to be piped into her cabin.)
And the cut footage scenes have subtitles EXCEPT when they have plastered the name of the episode over the picture. So if you are actually deaf you don't get to know the full deleted dialogue -- which could have been easily solved by putting the episode Title ahead of the clip.
With framing material and text to give the audience specific context.......
Not partially TALKED OVER, not partially visually covered with EPISODE NAME, not material from particular episodes split among DIFFERENT discs, not throw in on a feature that has people talking about THEIR experiences growing up with Trek.
Even if they wanted to force us to rebuy episodes we already own -- they still could have had the deleted material be episode specific. A bonus section for each featured episode. On "City.." a section with every deleted scene, every alternate angle, every clapboard snippet, every raw FX shot.
For episodes not included -- simply put a card saying "Cage raw beam-in footage" "WNMHGB without view-screen insert added", "Mudd's Women clapboard clips", "Conscience ..deleted dialogue from scene XYZ with framing footage for context", etc., etc.,
It's not rocket science. They came up with the most inefficient and time consuming method for the fans to view the material. Only the "cutting room floor" section was halfway well done and even that should have included framing material -- such as the context of the Spock/Uhura scene from Elaan (them trying to use music to calm the Dolman and showing how the music of his harp was to be piped into her cabin.)
And the cut footage scenes have subtitles EXCEPT when they have plastered the name of the episode over the picture. So if you are actually deaf you don't get to know the full deleted dialogue -- which could have been easily solved by putting the episode Title ahead of the clip.
Being a sound effects fan, I noticed this as well when I was reviewing the isolated scores. I only first noticed it in the "Arena" soundtrack, but haven't yet listened to the others.... do sound effects appear on other isolated music tracks as well?
I know you're quoting someone, and it's not written at all clearly. I think they're stating that the deleted scenes and/or interviews are not HD. I haven't seen the set, but that doesn't seem right. Is it presented in 480p, as this person suggests?
The segments themselves are in 1080p, but there is a clear, huge drop in quality when they fade into and out of the clips.... the clips themselves, even though part of the 1080p format of the video segment, are definitely NOT 1080 or even 720p. I can't say for sure exactly what quality below HD, but *probably* more like 480p in quality. Also, the interlacing shows up in most of the clips as well but not the dialogue, intro, etc. BTW, I think the reviewer was talking about only the clips themselves and not the entire segments, you're right.
I know it took like "10 years" to narrow down and categorize the clips for the release, but also within that ten years, there are video programs, like Adobe After Effects or Premiere, that have *greatly* improved their upsampling algorithms. Even if they had taken another year and upsampled the clips to minimal HD (720p) format and ridded the interlacing, it would have greatly improved the release and I imagine many would have felt more comfortable with the sale price. Just a guess of course, but definitely something I would have done since I'm very familiar with the algorithms.
I know it took like "10 years" to narrow down and categorize the clips for the release, but also within that ten years, there are video programs, like Adobe After Effects or Premiere, that have *greatly* improved their upsampling algorithms. Even if they had taken another year and upsampled the clips to minimal HD (720p) format and ridded the interlacing, it would have greatly improved the release and I imagine many would have felt more comfortable with the sale price. Just a guess of course, but definitely something I would have done since I'm very familiar with the algorithms.
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You are welcome to your opinion, of course, but if you are expecting a second volume with more deleted material in it, I hope you're prepared for a long wait.
I don't really think there will be a second volume. Neither do I think they showed us every bit of unseen footage. I think they decided what they thought would most "interest" fans or what would "be enough" to give out.
With all those cans (and yes I know that many only maybe had a tiny bit of content) I can't believe they only found 6 or so alternate takes and that really was every instance of those 2 second "clapboard" shots. If all those cans only had a very limited content -- why did it take 9 years to go through?
I honestly think they figured -- how many alternate line readings would be sensible to include? How many tiny clips of a couple of deleted lines? How many clapboards?
Maybe they were right. I know most everyone here would want to see every tiny bit of footage, but I'm not sure what percentage of fans of the original series would. There are still millions of TOS fans out there -- how many join this forum?
I think that for the vast majority of TOS fans -- they see this release and maybe buy it and then they watch it and go "cool, that was interesting."-- but don't necessarily say -- "I wish they gave another half hour of that cut footage."
Just a thought. We'll never know for 100% sure.
With all those cans (and yes I know that many only maybe had a tiny bit of content) I can't believe they only found 6 or so alternate takes and that really was every instance of those 2 second "clapboard" shots. If all those cans only had a very limited content -- why did it take 9 years to go through?
I honestly think they figured -- how many alternate line readings would be sensible to include? How many tiny clips of a couple of deleted lines? How many clapboards?
Maybe they were right. I know most everyone here would want to see every tiny bit of footage, but I'm not sure what percentage of fans of the original series would. There are still millions of TOS fans out there -- how many join this forum?
I think that for the vast majority of TOS fans -- they see this release and maybe buy it and then they watch it and go "cool, that was interesting."-- but don't necessarily say -- "I wish they gave another half hour of that cut footage."
Just a thought. We'll never know for 100% sure.
My hope is that at some point, the excess footage will be donated to the Television Academy, the UCLA Film & Television Archive, or a similar archive. I'd like to see it all, of course -- every bit of it has value for historians who want to know how Star Trek was made -- but I have to imagine that for most viewers, this stuff would get pretty tedious.
I'll be happy to buy you a cheap hamburger if Vol II doesn't hit the streets by the end of 2018.
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