Reflection at Enterprise build site
- Thread starter Grup
- Start date
That's because your eye hasn't got a camera lens in it.
It does have a lens in it, though.
Visual "artifacts" of that sort have been present in all of the trailers so far, including the original teaser. Once you start looking for them, you'll see them everywhere.
I'd be willing to bet that they're all calculated to pass just through this part of the frame at just that instant. I think that each one is as much an intentional effect as any of the sounds or transporters or CG starship weaponry or Giant Space Drills.
Nardpuncher
Rear Admiral
Here's something odd and off topic...My skin crawls a bit when I see the enterprise being constructed.
Not because of canon or anything...but I mean my skin literally crawls a bit because of all the holes in the ship...it looks a little like it's decayed. Do you know what I mean?
Not because of canon or anything...but I mean my skin literally crawls a bit because of all the holes in the ship...it looks a little like it's decayed. Do you know what I mean?
ST-One
Vice Admiral
No, not really...
Maybe it's digital CGI stuff tossed in to make it appear as if the camera lens were refracting light from a more conventional, older-style movie set and surroundings? So the movie doesn't have too over-the-top and obnoxious a CGI feel?
ST-One
Vice Admiral
It's just lens flares supposed to be created by those big-ass lighting-rigs on the construction site.
It's not that hard to see.
That's one downside to modern CGI when you can throw anything and everything into a shot if you so desire. Too much extraneous fluff to confuse or distract the audience from the stuff they SHOULD be watching much more closely.
ST-One
Vice Admiral
Oh for god's sake!
We only noticed it because we watched the damn trailer hundreds of times and analyzed each and every frame to death.
If those lights in the background were real, the same or similar reflections would have been seen in that shot.
This is a case of adding realism and not 'extraneous fluff' via CGI.
I don't get a crawly feeling, but it does look off, in a way, because it's not finished -- it doesn't look like a whole starship. If it were clearly abandoned and decaying, rather than lit up and under construction, then yeah, that might create an eerie impression.
trevanian
Rear Admiral
Not everybody has blown the images up or studied them at length.
I make a point of scanning past that shot when I watch the trailers, not just because the concept of built-on-earth offends me, but because I think the execution is godawful, as in, looks like he is parked in front of a painted billboard. That was my first impression, and I doubt that scrutinizing the non-luminous lights or the black levels is going to alter my lack of appreciation.
I think the poster you were responding to was noting that the shot has problems ... I would liken it to the Starfleet/Federation HQ matte shot in TVH, which suffererred from (in the ILM guys' echo of AMADEUS), 'too many notes.'
It's an effect, an effect that is brilliant looking. 
It offends you? How, may I ask, does the image of a fictional starship being built in a place that did not dictate to the fanon offend you? You may disagree with it, but to say if offends you...
What is so wrong with the shot then? There must be things in it that you don't like that makes it seems so, flat, to you. Because I am looking at it right now, and I see nothing wrong.
Probably the blackpoint, which was also an issue in the pre-computer days of optical composting. But that effects houses can't get the blacks to match on a live action element and a digital element in this day and age of interactive editing is....not logical.
trevanian
Rear Admiral
The notion of building a starship on earth offends me. The notion that people will buy it without their eyes rolling up in their head makes me sick. If you want more on any of THAT issue, I imagine you can find 75,000 posts over the last year or so about that in this forum, some of them from me.
The shot looks bad because the live-action has a range that diminishes in the ship portion. Not just in an atmosphere-attenuated way, which would be not just excusable but actually commendable, but in a 'doesn't belong' way ... hence my painted billboard comment.
As terrific as most of BLADE RUNNER looks, there are a few matte paintings that go kind of blue in a wrong way. In part that is the limitation of the wrong color technique they used (you would have to do some research to get that reference, but in short, to keep from doing extra duplicating, the paintings are done for a film stock, not the eye, so you might paint lime green to get something that looks like orange juice on film.)
I honestly don't know if my being color-blind is what points this stuff up to me so strongly, but I've always been very sensitive to certain effects shots not passing muster.
My wife (being female) is not colorblind, and she has the same facility for picking out shots that don't maintain a natural-looking dynamic range (even though she is not a ST fan, she thought the shot sucked too.) Maybe that is because she was an art student?
Probably the blackpoint, which was also an issue in the pre-computer days of optical composting. But that effects houses can't get the blacks to match on a live action element and a digital element in this day and age of interactive editing is....not logical.
I can see what you mean, however, there seems to also be a lot of atmospheric haze around that ship, probably from all the welding and work going on, and that would lighten up the blacks a bit I figure.
I also figure that none of the effects shots we see are not the final ones. The film may be locked, but I'm sure more work was done on them then what is seen in the trailers.
