do you think TOS should have been remastered?
- Thread starter Clym
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This +1.
Lucas's SW special editions cleaned up matte lines in the original SW trilogy. And the TMP-DE did that as well, notably with the Klingon sequence.
Kor
Yup, the only issue being the low render passes both used. Lucas kept the assets I think and could easily recreate them with Disney's mountain of gold. Paramount didn't and they're going to pay for that in reduced DE sales.
But the next time TOS is up for any new clean up, will be 2017 at the earliest, right into the 4K era with the 35mm prints freshly scanned in at that level. Nothing more than letting the newest computer resources clean the 1966-69 prints again will take off a lot of the edge of the grain.
But the next time TOS is up for any new clean up, will be 2017 at the earliest, right into the 4K era with the 35mm prints freshly scanned in at that level. Nothing more than letting the newest computer resources clean the 1966-69 prints again will take off a lot of the edge of the grain.
Like re-doing the entire effects restoration from scratch. Which going from 480p to 4Ki is going to cost someone a fair amount of money. Which they don't seem to want to spend, re-releasing 9 of the 10 originals as they are again this year.
Going by how long it is between major Trek boxsets, we can sit back and wait for another 3-4 years before they even start a 4K version of *any* of the others. Even Nemesis doesn't have that detail.
TOS is still the major cash draw of Paramount and they know it, they'll work on it before anything else. And they'll do the original transfers before any talk of a new round of CGI, if ever.
Going by how long it is between major Trek boxsets, we can sit back and wait for another 3-4 years before they even start a 4K version of *any* of the others. Even Nemesis doesn't have that detail.
TOS is still the major cash draw of Paramount and they know it, they'll work on it before anything else. And they'll do the original transfers before any talk of a new round of CGI, if ever.
So, now you're one of the "The U.S. never really landed men on the Moon..." conspiracy theorists??!!
[Psst...It's a joke...]
No, it has CG effects and is perfect! I took an informal poll on facebook that says so!
Neil
Is it possible that the original scene was one of those times where the live-action footage faded into the effects shot? In those cases, the folks doing TOS-R had no choice but to cut the scene a little bit sooner, in order to have a clean shot for the transition. And if Spock's dialogue went over the cut, they would have to get rid of it.
If you're referring to the long shots of the ceremonial grounds made to look like the end of The Search For Spock, I personally hated those. When you're cutting out actual live-action footage of Shatner, Nimoy, and Kelley in favor of new FX shots, you've gone too far. Even if all they're doing is walking a few feet in silence.
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It's not one of those, he's just mixed low on both the mono and the 7.1 track. I compared this with the mono LD track and his voice is more present there than on the either of the Blu-ray tracks.
Neil
So, now you're one of the "The U.S. never really landed men on the Moon..." conspiracy theorists??!!
[Psst...It's a joke...]
Eh...I still think it's a lot more funny that someone thought the real Earth photos should look more like TOS SFX from the 60s. We should have that framed..(I'm not talking about the eyeglass frames with the blurry unicorn apparition lenses in them mind you).
RAMA
Maybe I am misunderstanding you, but do you mean the orignal filmed elements of the model work? It was my understanding that they have been lost and that's why they went the CGI route for the TOS Blu-Rays.
They have the completed composited shots, the ones on the DVD and Bluray. Those effects are grainy and damaged yes, but it should still prove cheaper to clean them further than to spend millions doing much more detailed CGI than the current TOS-R.
They went with CGI because they thought not enough people would watch the series if they just released it in 1080 as it was, with the old effects just scanned in at higher resolution with minimal cleaning of the print.
And no, no one has access to the separate elements of the model filming anymore. But EdenFX managed to create digital versions of many of the shots of the Enterprise that looked near identical with far less noise. Something along those lines would cost less.
They went with CGI because they thought not enough people would watch the series if they just released it in 1080 as it was, with the old effects just scanned in at higher resolution with minimal cleaning of the print.
And no, no one has access to the separate elements of the model filming anymore. But EdenFX managed to create digital versions of many of the shots of the Enterprise that looked near identical with far less noise. Something along those lines would cost less.
Yes, I've seen that and would have much preferred they did something like that.
Not only does it look dated, but even worse, it also lacks the menacing aura of the original.
The same is true of the the phasers of the Enterprise, and the hand phasers of the crew. The original phaser blasts are menacing. In contrast, the CGI phaser blasts look piddley and ineffectual.
Every other "updated effect" looks more fake than the original, especially the CGI Enterprise.
Should TOS have been remastered? Not in the way they did it, no. The remastered version looks horrible.
However, if they instead had remastered TOS in a way that looks better than the original, then that's a different story. In that case, then yes, it should be remastered.
Nothing is illogical about stating that the original non-CGI effects looks way better, more realistic and sometimes more gritty (i.e. the phasers, the Doomsday Machine) than do the always uber-fake-looking and sometimes impotent-looking CGI remastered effects.
That is not to say that the original effects look good per se: they just don't look anywhere near as terrible as do the remastered effects.
The comparison images you posted are perfect examples which demonstrate everything I've said in this post.
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Some people prefer the old effects (like me); others prefer the new. Let's call the whole thing off.
I thought the CGI for Enterprise was very, very good. Especially for a weekly show starting in 2001. The TOS CGI? I'm not against the idea, but for the most part, was very miss. Obviously, it was a project without a lot of time or money put into it.
The CGI for Enterprise, even when I first saw them on a VHS recorded at SLP, looked like low resolution models that were intended for a rough cut of the episodes. (When Enterprise first aired none of the channels in my area aired it, so starting in Season 2 I had a family member who had satellite record them off the dish, and he would put 6 episodes on a T-120.). Aside from the CGI in the Voyager episode "Wink Of An Eye", the CGI in DS9 and Voyager, and even the early CGI in TNG for the Crystalline Entity looked 1,000,000 times better than what Enterprise had. Even the TMP
E did a lot better with CGI. In all those cases the shows/movie had to make sure that their CGI matched in terms of appearance and on-screen weight, with already shot physical models. Enterprise never had any weight to its models, and even when models were employed (such as in the "Minefield" episode) they never really matched the CGI. Plus that Enterprise-D model in TATV I wanted to vomit when I saw it, for it looked horrendous, and was in no way a match to the physical model from TNG or even the CGI model that appeared in "Generations" (it was not until the 2004 DVD that I realized that there was a CGI shot in the movie); not to mention the torn-up-plastic-bag-look-like-asteroids. And the TOS Enterprise looked like, in both its Enterprise appearances, a reuse of the CGI models that were made for the PS2/XBox game "Shattered Universe", just upscaled.But the TOS-R effects, even now, look like physical models and have the weight. And by weight, I'm reminded of a comment that Leonard Maltin made on commentary track of the Disney Treasure release of the 1932 cartoon "The Night Before Christmas", especially where in the opening shot you can see elves pitching hay, but you can see the "weight" of the hay on the fork as the elf throws it over his body. That's what I look for in good CGI. If it doesn't have the onscreen weight and appearance of a real thing, then forget it, the CGI is poor. And Eden FX's CGI was nowhere close to being good CGI; infact I would say that the "butchered" CGI from Babylon 5 is better.
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I rewatched The Incredibles the other night, and director Brad Bird said that he felt like the computers had their own agenda to make everything they animated smooth, flat, plastic-y, and weightless. They had to constantly fight against those qualities seeping in.
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