SF Lit Author John Scalzi Picks Best Trek Movie Directors

[JarodRussell]

NIMOY -- From all his films I've seen it's readily apparent that he's actor-focused and not camera-focused. As such, his films (even non-Trek) tend to be visually rather inert.

Though I regard Star Trek III and Star Trek IV as those movies with the greatest epic feeling. We see a great variety of places, ships, aliens and many characters. Although the 23rd century segments in ST4 are very brief, they seem to expand the universe more than any of the other Trek movies.

 

[Maurice]

NIMOY -- From all his films I've seen it's readily apparent that he's actor-focused and not camera-focused. As such, his films (even non-Trek) tend to be visually rather inert.

Tough I regard Star Trek III and Star Trek IV as those movies with the greatest epic feeling. We see a great variety of places, ships, aliens and many characters. Although the 23rd century segments in ST4 are very brief, they seem to expand the universe more than any of the other Trek movies.

You appear to be discussing content (what the camera is looking at) and I am talking cinematography (how it's filmed).

 

[Joker]

Star Trek III an "epic feeling"?

The whole film feels like it takes place on a sound stage with a few fake trees.

 

[JarodRussell]

You appear to be discussing content (what the camera is looking at) and I am talking cinematography (how it's filmed).

Yes, I know. Although I think those two movies also include some of the more impressive visuals in the movie series.

 

[JarodRussell]

Star Trek III an "epic feeling"?

The whole film feels like it takes place on a sound stage with a few fake trees.

Yeah, and Trek IV takes place in on Earth 1986, not too impressive either. But the movie in its entirety has a huge sense of scale.

 

[Joker]

In what way?

 

[Brutal Strudel]

In the SFX only, I'd say--they were workmanlike compared to TMP or even 2010 (not a typo, I mean the 1986 Peter Hyams movie) but all of the live action stuff--especially Vulcan and the Genesis Planet but also the bar set where Bones is arrested--looked like a cheap, 1980s B-movie because that''s essentially what TSFS was.

 

[JarodRussell]

The live action stuff in the new movie, as I mentioned before, looks also like a cheap 2000s B movie. The VFX and lens flares save it from looking too cheap.

 

[Brutal Strudel]

Shooting a brewery and calling it engineering surely did nothing to help.

 

[JarodRussell]

After having seen some of the behind the scenes stuff... Abrams is not a good director. He runs around the set like a hyperactive kid, jumping from the camera to the lights to the actors, changing his mind from one second to the next. In an interview he said that they had a hard time in the editing room to save scenes because he missed important stuff due to his directing "style". He cares more about what is "cool" rather than what is actually "good". He is one of those guys who don't know what they want. He only knows what he doesn't want, so they have to do things first, and only then he can say "I don't like that, let's try it again." Because of that they also had a hard time to get the soundtrack (the sound effects) right. He wasn't able to articulate what he wanted, he only knew that he didn't like what they had done. So they hired Ben Burtt, and he listened to the soundtrack and probably smacked them on the back of their heads, and threw half of it out and redid a lot of stuff. And all of that eats money like hell.

Nimoy, Meyer and Frakes really cared for the story, for the acting, for the actors, and where pretty efficient. Meyer was able to get the best out of Shatner for example in TWOK, he wore him down on set until he was tired enough to play a realistic, not overacting, Kirk. And with a budget that (adjusted for inflation) was only a fracture of the new movie's budget, he created a movie that is much better than this new movie. And Jonathan Frakes was so efficient in his direction that most of the scenes were "perfect" already after a few takes, which got him the nickname "Two Takes Frakes", and had an understanding for each of the characters and the story that the actors really missed his direction in Nemesis, for example.

 

[Bones2]

I suppose one way of thinking about it is imagining what a JJ movie would be like with a TFF budget.

 

[Maurice]

After having seen some of the behind the scenes stuff... Abrams is not a good director. He runs around the set like a hyperactive kid...

I'm not a big JJ fan, but the examples you cite don't necessarily mean he's a bad director. Some directors just stand there and shoot boring two shots, which is far worse than someone who's actively trying to find what works. Also many directors don't like to tell actors exactly what to do...because they're not actors. If they want the actors to give them something different, some trust the actors give them something interesting if they just ask them to try something else.

Because of that they also had a hard time to get the soundtrack (the sound effects) right.

That's not at all unusual. You sometimes don't know what you're looking for until someone offers you something that contains something that looks or sounds right. I never told the musicians I've worked with what to do. They write some samples and I can tell them what I respond to and what I find promising and what I dislike, and they go from there.

 

[Harvey]

Abrams might have said "I want this movie to be bright, almost blinding you, because it's a bright future", and his DoP could have said "We could use lens flares to get that effect", to which Abrams responded: "Yeah, let's do that."

Abrams is on record taking credit for the lense flares, because he wanted to visually convey the brighter future of Star Trek. Since he's publicly taken credit, it's his responsibility. Personally, I didn't have a problem with the lense flares at either viewing, but that's just me.

When it comes to the visual look of the film, the director in the very least is the one who decides where to place the camera and how it will move. A more experiened director can also dictate camera lenses and even lighting, although those will most likely be chosen by the Director of Photography (with the director's final approval). However, you are obviously going to have a much better looking film when John A. Alonzo is your Director of Photography (Star Trek: Generations; his experience includes the Oscar nominated photography of Chinatown) than Matthew F. Leonetti (Star Trek: First Contact). While Leonetti, I think, rose to the challenge photographing the two Trek films he was involved with, his training was in television. Finally, to correct an error in this thread, Alonzo was not involved with the photography of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier.

It would be like blaming the director for the soundtrack. Of course he has influence on the music, but he usually doesn't do it. Oh, I already said that before.

Some of the blame concerning the film's score has to fall with the director. He or she likely hired the composer, or in the very least had a significant say in the decision. The director is also responsible for sitting with the composer during spotting sessions in which it is decided which scenes will be scored and which won't. A director may also indicate specifics, depending on how involved she or he would like to be. Consider Nicholas Meyer, for example. He was bound by financial constraints when he chose a composer (which left Goldsmith, who worked on the previous film, out of play), but it was his decision (based on Battle Beyond the Stars) to pick James Horner to score the film.

I should also confess that, although I hold a bachelor's degree in cinema and photography, my primary area of expertise is in sound recording and sound design. Though I wish to go into film studies at the graduate level, that hasn't happened yet, and I only have the experience of three classes at the undergraduate level. In short, I know quite a bit, but I'm no expert.

 

[Cryogenic]

Wise -- Actually the easiest director to discuss because his body of film (not TV) directorial work is as big as all the other Trek directors combined (over 40 features), and you can see past the quirks of an individual film or two and get a sense of what he brought to the table. He's very focused on composition and mood, which isn't surprising. Wise started as an editor and was very aware of coverage and angles. There are a lot of very interesting camera angles in TMP, but most people don't notice them because they're not flashy. There are angled up and down shots, etc., which is stuff you practically don't see in the other films, where the camera tends to always be at the height of the actor's eyelines. Interesting, odd, not flashy. Maybe subtle is the word. On the downside, Wise's films in general tend to have a moderate pace...often slow. Couple this with a story low on action...

Wise's compositions and edits are both stately and subtle, and his grasp of film language and the mechanics of cinema, to say nothing about his cultivation of themes and his allegorical ambitions, are utterly without peer in the Star Trek film canon. By far, and then some, Wise made the only film in the series that can be considered "cinematic", and his effort outsizes and outstrips the rest like a nuclear bomb to a firecracker. That Scalzi doesn't understand, much less appreciate, this not insignificant fact, makes him look like the desperate-conformist-masquerading-as-an-iconoclast that he quite evidently is.

 

[CoveTom]

The list in question is not actually discussing the quality of the directors but the quality of the films. And those are two very different things.

 

[nx1701g]

I have to admit that I agree with this list.

 

[Cryogenic]

The list in question is not actually discussing the quality of the directors but the quality of the films. And those are two very different things.

Sophistry. The two are synonymous, which any right-minded person should intuitively grasp.

 

[Maurice]

A good director can make a bad film now and then, so the overall quality of a director and a specific film are not synonymous, except that maybe s/he was the wrong director for that film. Good directors occasionally make bad films, and, less often, bad directors can make an ok or even good film.

 

[Brutal Strudel]

Thing is, the sample here is so small--one or two movies within the very limited milieu of Star Trek--that the two are synonymous here. I doubt Scalzi would claim that Frakes is better career director than Wise, just that he preferred FC and maybe even INS to TMP (itself a regrettable breach of taste imao but that's beside the point).

 

[CoveTom]

^ But that's kind of my point. Does anyone actually think that Jonathan Frakes or even J.J. Abrams are better directors than Robert Wise? I'm not saying they're bad directors. In fact, I think Frakes in particular is much better than he gets credit for. But Robert Wise is a directing legend. Yet he's lower on the list than both of those.

Again, that's because what's being judged here is not really the director but the quality of a couple of specific films. Nothing wrong with that, but I think the packaging of it as a comparison of directing skill is incorrect.

That's all I'm saying.