It's official: Thank God for Remastered!

[darkwing_duck1]

Trekcore has some screencaps up from the BD release of TOS-R and they have examples of BOTH the original and Remastered FX shots.

The original FX look like utter CRAP compared to the stage footage. The decision to "reshoot" the FX was the right one.

 

[NickintheATL]

Shall I be the first to disagree?

I disagree.

 

[darkwing_duck1]

This:

http://tos.trekcore.com/hd/albums/3x02hd/theenterpriseincidenthd0010.jpg

vs this:

http://tos.trekcore.com/hd/albums/3x02hd/theenterpriseincidenthd0011d.jpg

The difference is obvious. The first is a washed out, oddly exposed grainy PoS image with lots of artifacts from the upconversion and the later is smooth and polished and fits in much better with the image quality of the soundstage footage.

Game, set, and match...TOS-R is the superior version!

 

[Lord Garth]

Shall I be the first to disagree?

I disagree.

I wanted to say I disagreed with him about something but I had to bite my tongue too much. And I'm not talking about TOS-R.

But that's a whole other topic. Getting back to TOS-R, I won't deny that a lot of the shots look great but sometimes the Enterprise can look too much like a cartoon and how well does 2006 footage always fit with 1966 footage? Subtly at times, jarring at others. They cancel each other out, IMO.

 

[scotpens]

Shall I be the first to disagree?

I disagree.

Seconded!

The difference is obvious. The first is a washed out, oddly exposed grainy PoS image with lots of artifacts from the upconversion and the later is smooth and polished and fits in much better with the image quality of the soundstage footage.

Sure, a lot of the stock Enterprise flyby shots became increasingly grainy and desaturated from being copied multiple generations. But when we viewed them on 21-inch TVs, nobody really noticed.

The computer-generated Enterprise looks computer-generated. It's TOO smooth, TOO polished. The CGI ship just doesn't have the feeling of mass and size that you get from filming a physical model. And the digital artists never could get those spinning lights in the nacelle domes to look right. They always looked cartoonish.

Mainly, it's not the show as it was originally produced and broadcast. It's like colorizing old black-and-white movies, or dubbing foreign-language films into English. IT AIN'T THE REAL THING.

And anyone who thinks the original FX look like crap probably thinks the effects in ANY filmed sci-fi before Star Wars look like crap.

 

[NickintheATL]

This:
Game, set, and match...TOS-R is the superior version!

That is just a matter of opinion. There are those of us who just plain don't like those new effects.

Disclaimer (since I've never aired my opinion until now): I'm not objecting to the effort... it just could have been done better.

 

[darkwing_duck1]

Shall I be the first to disagree?

I disagree.

Seconded!

Some of the remastered effects are interesting. Some are quite impressive. The Enterprise itself is the one thing the digital artists never could get quite right, although its appearance improved a bit in the later remastered episodes. The spinning light effect in the nacelle domes looks cartoony, and the whole ship just doesn't have the feeling of mass and size that you get from filming a physical model.

I've never understood this arguement about "mass". They aren't sending the ships zipping around like B5 Starfuries or anythiing.

BUT . . . It's not the show as originally produced and broadcast. It's like colorizing old black-and-white movies, or dubbing foreign-language films into English. IT AIN'T THE REAL THING.

The "real thing" in this case looks like CRAP!. LOOK at that first image I linked. Weird artifacts on the lights, hull textures, overexposed, and grainy. It looks terrible, original footage or not.

Anyone who thinks the original FX look like "crap" probably thinks the effects in ANY filmed sci-fi before Star Wars look like crap.

Not really. I can name a number of pre-Wars films that have excellent FX (2001 springs to mind). Of course these are FILMS, not TV shows with shoestring FX budgets.

The best TV FX were done by shows that did as much as possible "in camera", such as "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea" and "Space:1999", and those FX hold up the best to upconversion because they have fewer "generations" of image printings to degrade the image quality.

 

[Captain Rob]

If enough time, money and attention to detail is spent on the project then the result is indistinguishable from a practical model. Compare the Enterprise-E from NEM to INS and FC. FC was the real model. NEM was digital. And INS was a mix of digital and real model.
However, since the TOS Enterprise is still around and restored. It would have been neat to have reshot it with digital cameras. They'd have to fix the nacelle caps though.

 

[Amaris]

Well, for me, the best thing about the remastering is the gorgeously clear images we now get while watching. Regardless of the FX shots, the film itself needed cleaning, and we got it in spades, and it looks beautiful in HD.

 

[ST-One]

If enough time, money and attention to detail is spent on the project then the result is indistinguishable from a practical model. Compare the Enterprise-E from NEM to INS and FC. FC was the real model. NEM was digital. And INS was a mix of digital and real model.

Not quite right...

FC - CG and miniature (the Enterprise's warp-jump at the beginning and the long-distance shots near the end - during Cochrane's warp-flight - were CG; also most of the Starfleet ships in the battle-sequence) - the miniature of the Enterprise-E was originally only intended as a reference object for the CG-model
INS - CG (parts of the Collector ship were built as a miniature)
NEM - CG (parts of the Enterprise's saucer and of the Scimitar were built as miniatures for the collision scene)

 

[ST-One]

And anyone who thinks the original FX look like crap probably thinks the effects in ANY filmed sci-fi before Star Wars look like crap.

You'd be wrong.
Have you seen Forbidden Planet or 2001?

The sad truth is that the original VFX of TOS really do look bad since they were never intended to be shown in such high-resolution, despite being filmed on film.

 

[Admiral James Kirk]

George Pal's War of the Worlds also looked quite bitchin'. And how about that tornado in Wizard of Oz? Hard to believe that sucker is a puppet.

 

[Warped9]

Some new shots are okay, but too often the differences between the new and old footage is too noticeable. And often the E looks like a cgi cartoon.

 

[Ssosmcin]

I enjoy much of the TOS-R effects, but I agree the differences can be overly noticeable. Cartoony or not, it's obvious these are new effects, just going by the quality of the images of film vs digital video. The effects are to crisp and clear, with no film grain or anything to make it feel like they were done around the same time. This is kind of important to me. I like the effects to look like they are organic to the rest of the episode. Even though the original shots mostly look less than good in HD, they still feel like they belong there. The new shots were pretty obviously inserted 40 years later.

But I do really like a number of them and a couple of episodes have really been improved by them.

 

[Kelso]

While I still tend to think of the classic effects as the "real" version, TOSR is a lot of fun. I particularly love the places where they were able to replace reused mattes, planets or stock shots with something more distinctive and complementary to the episode.

 

[Nardpuncher]

Some new shots are okay, but too often the differences between the new and old footage is too noticeable. And often the E looks like a cgi cartoon.

I'm going to play devil's advocate a bit and say that I'd heard they deliberately made the remastered E still look sort of 'fake' as they were trying to make it look like the model they used in the original show. In that they didn't really intend to make the ship look real...just clearer and sharper.

 

[I-Am-Zim]

Trekcore has some screencaps up from the BD release of TOS-R and they have examples of BOTH the original and Remastered FX shots.

The original FX look like utter CRAP compared to the stage footage. The decision to "reshoot" the FX was the right one.

I agree wholeheartedly! I do, however, feel that the big "E" looks too CGI in some shots. But I still love it. I have all 3 seasons of TOS-R on DVD. I don't have a Blu-Ray player yet, and probably won't get one until the price becomes reasonable in a couple of years. As for the "remastering" effects, I actually wish they had gone further with it. In my opinion, they sort of did a half-a$$ed job. They re-did all the outer space shots with modern CGI and they look great. Yet they left the black matte lines around the characters during beaming scenes. Go figure. They also left in the obviously pencil-and-paper drawings of star charts and tactical displays when they could have easily made them look more modern with CGI effects. My point is that if they were going to attempt to modernize TOS, they should have gone all the way.

BTW, love your avatar dude!

 

[I-Am-Zim]

And anyone who thinks the original FX look like crap probably thinks the effects in ANY filmed sci-fi before Star Wars look like crap.

Nope. Check out Forbidden Planet sometime. Best...movie...ever...made!!!!!

 

[Doug Otte]

The difference is obvious. The first is a washed out, oddly exposed grainy PoS image with lots of artifacts from the upconversion and the later is smooth and polished and fits in much better with the image quality of the soundstage footage.

Game, set, and match...TOS-R is the superior version!

What "upconversion" are you talking about? The 35mm films were actually downconverted to a 1080p transfer.

Beyond mentioning that factual error, I agree w/ others here that the new effects, while interesting and fun to watch, often look too cartoonish and don't fit in w/ the on-set footage.

There are downsides to both versions: the original effects do indeed suffer from artifacts due to multiple exposures, matting, and duplication. However, the real physical model nearly always looks better than a CGI model.

Doug

 

[Ssosmcin]

Watch Where No Man Has Gone Before with the original footage on the Blu-Ray set. Aside from the clips reused from The Cage, the effects really hold up well. There are very few examples of transparency or bleeding mattes. Obviously, these effects were created fresh for the episode, well before constant reuse and multiple exposures, but it's a good example of how great they look even back then.