Anyone else prefering the lighting and cinematography of the sets in Season 2 to the later seasons? Especially Ten Forward looks way better and feels like a more interesting place during this season imo.
Absolutely. Shadow detail is definitely nice to have as it is so much more atmospheric...at least on a visceral/visual level, which television is at its core but I'm straying already... (...there's a shock! ) At the same time, seasons 1 and 2 weren't all bright sides in that area, pun sadly intended. The black cardboard on Bridge station panels used to deflect stage lights aimed at the actors can be seen prominently in some episodes. Season 3 onward did fix this issue via flatter lighting from up top downward, at the expense of the occasional atmospheric shadowing... It's also why "Generations" nailed its feel, even if they were lighting it to subdue the problems with 7 year-old sets that had been nicked and knackered (of which some, albeit fewer, issues can be seen as far back as season 1...) Either way, the shadow detail really is nicer. Flat lighting is cheaper to deal with for a number of reasons, especially if retakes are needed (due to line fluffs or discontinuity between lighting at different angles), especially as they weren't videotaping the show where videotape historically had problems with recording light sources directly (whereas filming then editing on VT did not show such problems... and as it's the one editing machine instead of 4 or more VT cameras, you more often have color consistency next to any multi-camera show that will remind how "NTSC" stands for "never the same color"...)
Yep, the brighter lighting and warmer colors had a big part on the blandness of the later seasons imho. As well as the wallpaper music, since Ron Jones was fired by Berman.
My initial thought at the time with season 2's blu-ray restoration was that they screwed up the color tones as the red shirts looked purplish-red. Using GIMP, adjusting the hue 20 to the right seemed to have fixed that but in turn made skintones a little too buttermilk in tone. When reducing that number, there was no real midpoint that kept all hues as one would expect from other seasons. Either which way, compared to the supersaturated hues of the original (SD, videotape) look, they're by far superior. And assuming they did use cooler temperature lamps (5000k vs 2700k) for lighting, that's explain the cooler palette too. It really is amazing how the overall use of color can affect one's mood; the warmer tones became almost irritating with their faux sense of coziness. "Captain, the Borg are attacking." "Not now Number Two, I'm feeling warm and cozy with the lighting and the joint I just rolled and maybe the Borg will mellow out too once they assimilate it." ...or maybe not... Wallpaper music in TNG stunk. Modern youtube videos that feel a need to inject it, often with little or no mixing control since the wallpaper is apparently more important than the narrator doing the actual talking, end up being no better... back to TNG, while it could be argued Ron Jones made the show too exciting and they wanted to done it down, they went too far in the opposite direction. The few times post-1991 Trek had a score that really fit the scene, not be overblown, etc, were few. The same composers did work across all the seasons and all had come up with spectacular tracks, of which "Tin Man" is underrated IMHO, but season 3 was such a long time ago...
Given that you could theoretically kill them with a M.C. Escher print, maybe a little weed and ambience would render them dormant. Something like "dude, you'll be assimilated and all, but first we're just gonna chill in this groovy pad and watch the stars for awhile..."
I'd like to give a shout out to the sun-drenched beauty of Ten Forward when the Enterprise was holding station at Amargosa during 'Generations'. Just leave me there with a bottle or two of Chateau Picard and I'll be quite happy watching Amargosa collapse and Level 12 shockwave me to pieces.
Interesting. Am I the only one that did not notice these differences in the lighting of Ten Forward in season 2?
Here are pics from Ten Forward in Season 2 and 3 Season 2: https://www.cygnus-x1.net/links/lcars/epics/TNG-S2/S2E16/JPEG/TNG-S2E16-61.jpg Season 3: https://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/articles/galaxy/tenforward-allegiance.jpg You can see the different lighting on this set.