The OFFICIAL STNG-R general discussion thread!

[RAMA]

Re: The OFFICIAL STNG-R discussion thread!

Sooooooo cool. I never bought TNG on DVD, but I just might end up getting the Blu-rays when they begin releasing them. This is going to be awesome!

Same here, never bought the STNG DVD discs because I knew what was on the horizon...but I WAS tempted.

1) Be sure to crank the resolution to 720.

2) Note that they corrected the Enterprise on the package.

That particular vid doesn't have that option.

RAMA

 

[RAMA]

Re: The OFFICIAL STNG-R discussion thread!

Looks like they have done a great job with the live action footage as well as the 35mm model shots. I knew they would hold up well, since they were done with feature film equipment and professionals, especially the ILM stuff for the pilot. Can't wait for more!

Still, I am nervous about the non ILM footage...

 

[Timelord79 (he/him)]

Re: The OFFICIAL STNG-R discussion thread!

I will buy this most definitely.
I am also happy to own the DVDs for the nostalgic factor now.
They look crappy yes, but nobody can say the original experience isn't preserved now.

 

[Jefferies]

Re: The OFFICIAL STNG-R discussion thread!

I'm glad they have found a way to salvage the original FX footage. The cheap CGI from TOS Remastered was such a disappointment would have been a shame to see TNG go the same way. Does this mean we are stuck with the bitmap planets though? I suppose I can't have my cake and eat it too. At any rate this is the most exciting development for Star Trek in a good 10 years! And yes I'm buying these on blu ray, regardless of what they might cost. Thank you CBS

Edit: Having watched the teaser a few more times and reading a few of the other comments, am I under the right impression that they are combining filmed elements with CGI? For example in the teaser the ship is the original filmed model whereas the star field is CGI (at least as far as I can tell). If that is true we might get THE BEST OF BOTH WORLDS, where they composite together new and old for what ever looks best. Seems too good to be true!

 

[Ghostface1701]

Re: The OFFICIAL STNG-R discussion thread!

I'm not so sure that's a new starfield. It's hard to tell, but the way the stars fade in/out and seem to be on a loop...I think we're looking at the original starfield, but with a new level of detail from the re-compositing.

There are parts in the series though where I wonder if they'll have to use new CG, but there's another thread for that kind of talk...

 

[Captrek]

Re: The OFFICIAL STNG-R discussion thread!

Yeah, TOS looks fine in 4:3 and if you have a black TV and watch in a darkened room you don't really notice the black bars.

That depends on the TV. LED sets can turn off the backlight behind the black bars, but on other sets those bars are quite visible in a dark room.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Re: The OFFICIAL STNG-R discussion thread!

How is it possible to use the original FX? Since those were all done on videotape, wouldn't they have to be done over from scratch?

Similar to the reason why the TMP DE was not released on BluRay: its new effects were not done in HD resolution. They would have to do new effects for a Blu release. How is TNG-R any different?

 

[Tomalak]

Re: The OFFICIAL STNG-R discussion thread!

They were filmed on 35mm film, the same as the rest of the series. They were edited on VT, and effects such as phaser beams were then overlaid. They will need to be remade from the original elements. Even the transporter effect is based on a 35mm recording of Dan Curry waving some glittery pom poms.

TMP was simply lack of funds - the cgi could have been rendered in HD, but it was a cash-strapped DVD project a decade ago.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Re: The OFFICIAL STNG-R discussion thread!

They were filmed on 35mm film, the same as the rest of the series. They were edited on VT, and effects such as phaser beams were then overlaid. They will need to be remade.

So if the TNG effects *will* have to be remade, why is everyone here saying that they won't be?

 

[Tomalak]

Re: The OFFICIAL STNG-R discussion thread!

Sorry, I'm not being clear. The ship shots etc were all filmed on 35mm, and can be reused, but the individual elements - ships, planets, nebulas etc - will have to be recompositioned. And new video effects, such as the phaser beams, will need to be remade in CGI.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Re: The OFFICIAL STNG-R discussion thread!

I guess I'm not understanding the meaning of "recompositioned". What exactly does that mean?

 

[Tomalak]

Re: The OFFICIAL STNG-R discussion thread!

Ok, when they make these scenes they film the Enterprise, the Romulan ship, and the planet (for example) separately. When it comes to the edit, these are overlaid on each other to create the scene, and then video effects are added to finish off the effect.

Now all that needs to be done for the HD version is to scan the film elements in HD, and put them all together again. Then add some new CGI effects to replace the lost video ones.

The alternative is completely new CGI scenes, like TOS-R.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Re: The OFFICIAL STNG-R discussion thread!

^ And that is somehow easier to do than simply doing everything over in CGI?

Oh well. So if I understand this right, we will get new effects for things like phaser shots, ship-based phasers and photon torpedoes, etc. Amirite?

If that's true, I don't suppose we could hope for phaser effects that actually look like light based beams are supposed to?

Meaning: In TNG, when a phaser is fired, the beam takes a noticeable amount of time to reach its target. This should not happen - the beam should be instantaneous, because it's light. (This is what happens with the 29th century phaser in "Future's End" on Voyager)

If nothing else, one would think that obvious mistakes (such as phaser shots coming from the torpedo launcher in "Darmok") could be corrected...

 

[Tomalak]

Re: The OFFICIAL STNG-R discussion thread!

Well I can only speculate, but I suspect it's cheaper than hiring a load of artists to build CGI models of everything needed for each episode, and then designing and rendering the scenes. It's a hell of a lot of effects shots to produce.

With TOS-R they had a simpler restoration process because the episodes already existed as 35mm masters. All that was needed was to scan in HD resolution and clean them up. TNG will be more costly because each episode needs to be totally rebuilt. Adding CGI on top might be excessive.

Also artistically, the only reason officially given for TOS-R's CGI was that the original effects were of poor quality when boosted to HD. TNG's will be crystal clear and look fabulous in HD.

 

[Sho]

Re: The OFFICIAL STNG-R discussion thread!

I guess I'm not understanding the meaning of "recompositioned". What exactly does that mean?

"Compositing" is the act of combining multiple film sequences into a single film sequence.

Basically, if you look at, say, a space battle, you are seeing a "composite" of various elements that were filmed or generated separately: The ships, explosions, phaser blasts, etc.

In the case of TNG, the ships were shot on 35mm film, which has a very high resolution. Since those film negatives still exist, they can rescan them.

However, once they shot the ships on film, they transferred them to D1 video tapes, which are not HD resolution. Things like phaser blasts were generated using video equipment like the Quantel Harry, also not at HD resolution.

So what CBS Digital, working on TNG-R, has to do is to scan the negatives to acquire digital HD versions of the elements that negatives exist for, and then combine (= composite) them again into a single video. Some of the elements - like phaser blasts, which were video effects so no negatives exist - will have to be remade entirely, which is what Tomalak meant.

 

[Ghostface1701]

Re: The OFFICIAL STNG-R discussion thread!

It's even more detailed than that. I remember seeing a video years ago showing what was required to just film one ship. There was a "pass" for the matte (to create a cut-out in the frame, can't explain it better than that), another pass for exterior lighting, one for the interior lights (room lights), one for the warp glow, and I think one or two more. They're all composited into one frame, which required every shot to match exactly (which wasn't possible until motion-controlled cameras were invented).

I wish I could find that video now...

 

[Tomalak]

Re: The OFFICIAL STNG-R discussion thread!

^ And that is somehow easier to do than simply doing everything over in CGI?

Oh well. So if I understand this right, we will get new effects for things like phaser shots, ship-based phasers and photon torpedoes, etc. Amirite?

Yes, and they may choose to enhance certain things with CGI, you never know. There were a few things in TNG that used early CGI which will need to be remade from scratch.

If that's true, I don't suppose we could hope for phaser effects that actually look like light based beams are supposed to?

Meaning: In TNG, when a phaser is fired, the beam takes a noticeable amount of time to reach its target. This should not happen - the beam should be instantaneous, because it's light. (This is what happens with the 29th century phaser in "Future's End" on Voyager)

If nothing else, one would think that obvious mistakes (such as phaser shots coming from the torpedo launcher in "Darmok") could be corrected...

They'll probably be standardised to look like they do it pretty much every other recent Trek series.

 

[Tomalak]

Re: The OFFICIAL STNG-R discussion thread!

It's even more detailed than that. I remember seeing a video years ago showing what was required to just film one ship. There was a "pass" for the matte (to create a cut-out in the frame, can't explain it better than that), another pass for exterior lighting, one for the interior lights (room lights), one for the warp glow, and I think one or two more. They're all composited into one frame, which required every shot to match exactly (which wasn't possible until motion-controlled cameras were invented).

I wish I could find that video now...

Yeah! I wasn't going to go into that. IIRC there's an ILM featurette on the first TWOK DE DVD that explains the whole motion control process. Or maybe it's on the TMP DE.

 

[Sho]

Re: The OFFICIAL STNG-R discussion thread!

It's even more detailed than that. I remember seeing a video years ago showing what was required to just film one ship. There was a "pass" for the matte (to create a cut-out in the frame, can't explain it better than that), another pass for exterior lighting, one for the interior lights (room lights), one for the warp glow, and I think one or two more. They're all composited into one frame, which required every shot to match exactly (which wasn't possible until motion-controlled cameras were invented).

I wish I could find that video now...

Yes, there's the matte pass and multiple exposure passes for different elements of the lighting rig, etc. - the Reeves-Stevens' "The Making of Deep Space Nine" book contains an excellent explanation of this using a DS9 shot as an example. It also goes over the use of the Harry for generating video effect elements. It's a wonderful book in general if you want to learn about how the 24th Century Trek production machine worked.

However, multiple exposures of the same negative don't require compositing since it's just one negative in the end.

 

[Ghostface1701]

Re: The OFFICIAL STNG-R discussion thread!

The video I remember was a fly-by of the Enterprise-D, so would be really relevant to this thread if I could find it (it was on a TV show, maybe one of those "how-do-they-do-that" types, that's all I can remember). It's been about 15-20 years since I saw it, but I still think of it whenever someone talks about compositing