do you think TOS should have been remastered?
- Thread starter Clym
- Start date
Of all the videos you could have linked... you link that?
Well then, here's one with more clarity:
These are fair comparisons. Early television sets had very low resolution (lower than in the '60s), affecting how the broadcast would look to the viewer.
And in terms of production, the earliest dramatic shows were basically broadcasts of live stage plays, without the benefit of editing, post-production, special effects, and whatnot. No shows in the 1930s looked anywhere near as good as Star Trek. By the 1960s, making a TV show was much more like making a feature film.
Kor
These are fair comparisons. Early television sets had very low resolution (lower than in the '60s), affecting how the broadcast would look to the viewer.
And in terms of production, the earliest dramatic shows were basically broadcasts of live stage plays, without the benefit of editing, post-production, special effects, and whatnot. No shows in the 1930s looked anywhere near as good as Star Trek. By the 1960s, making a TV show was much more like making a feature film.
Kor
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I would be in the camp that says our culture has changed more since Star Trek than it did between the 1930s and Star Trek. And that's not even counting the changes in filmmaking and visual narrative that today's kids are accustomed to.
HA! I wouldn't have guessed that from your posts.I don't understand the mindset that automatically rejects anything old, as I tend more toward the opposite. My collection of movies, TV shows, music, novels, etc. is replete with stuff from the sixties and before. TOS is the only version of Star Trek that fits that milieu.
And I'm a millennial.
Gen Xer here. I grew up on TOS when it was in syndication in the 70s and 80s.
Max Steiner scored King Kong and it is one of the greatest, most influential film scores ever written.
The Flash Gordon serials had access to the Universal music library and frequently used Franz Waxman's music from The Bride of Frankenstein, again, one of the greatest scores ever written. The third serial used Franz Liszt's "Les Preludes" extensively. Again, a great piece of music. I can tell you, I grew up in the 80s watching Flash Gordon and I was exposed to this great music there first.
Neil
Yet again, I have to point out the the film elements to restore any effects do not exist so there goes your point right off the bat. Now if they could have tried the second best technique to preserve the original effects it would have resulted reproducing very poor images from analog composites, with out of date filming techniques that are grainy. So that wouldn't work. Therefore the best method was to use all-new FX with CGI...and we are left where we started.
RAMA
That's one aspect yes, but even moreso is the huge format change. You could watch a show from the 30s up till the 90s because it was played on a TV that hadn't changed much in decades..fast forward as information tech spurred accelerated change ignites a huge shift in TV technology, and the government dictates a format change. Now shows from the 90s don't even look very good without special attention.
As others have mentioned above, the issue with the remasters isn't so much the CGI, but that it's cheap, crappy CGI.
As such, on my big ass TV, I'd rather just watch the original effects, warts and all, because they don't take me out of the story the way cartoony bad CGI does. To be fair to CBS Digital, when the project was conceived and first aired, most folks weren't yet rocking 40"+ HD flatscreens with true 1080p, so it probably looks OK on the average SD CRT TV of the time.
As such, on my big ass TV, I'd rather just watch the original effects, warts and all, because they don't take me out of the story the way cartoony bad CGI does. To be fair to CBS Digital, when the project was conceived and first aired, most folks weren't yet rocking 40"+ HD flatscreens with true 1080p, so it probably looks OK on the average SD CRT TV of the time.
The effects of Star Trek Continues are near-perfect updates of the original shots. I just saw the latest episode, and I swear seeing the photons firing in HD, just as in the original FX, got me a little bit emotional.
The separate elements don't exist, so you're correct, you can't re-composite the shots. The final effects shots do exist, on film, which is higher resolution than 1080p. And they're on the Blu-ray in HD and look better than ever.
Neil
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This. The final effects shots were finished on actual film, unlike the effects on the later shows that were shot on film then composited on video tape.
The quality of the work is better, but some of the shots in that are just as much of a departure from the original as anything created by CBS Digital -- sometimes, more so.
I bring this up every single time this subject comes up, and no one EVER answers it: why should modernizing the effects shots make a show with—to modern eyes—crappy production values, and out of vogue cinematographic and acting styles, suddenly and magically more accessible to a younger audience? Is 3 seconds of a grainy matte-lined Enterprise really more offputting than the show's crappy horizonless planet set? Than the dated costumes and hairdos? Than what modern eyes would be hammy acting? Than rudimentary sets with "futuristic" equipment which clatters like an adding machine on meth? Really?
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That's Doohan's son!
Well yes, but there's no original shots to be mimicking in this case.
I was pointing more to the very opening shot, which is a faithful recreation of an original establishing shot.
That opening shot is great! A shame CBS Digital couldn't do equivalent work, but the "new" effects were done ten years ago, no doubt on a tight budget and schedule. I mainly watch the original effects now.
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