Dochterman on the ST:TMP DE

[Maurice]

A reconstruction is to rebuild something damaged or destroyed. A restoration is to return something to a previous state. The DE is neither.


Reconstruction is what Walter Murch did to Touch of Evil (re-editing the film based on Orson Welles' extensive notes from the time the film was in post).

Restoration is what the F.W. Murnau Foundation group has been doing to Metropolis (trying to put the film back together as it was at its premier, bit by bit as more and more pieces of it have been found).

Revision is what Sharpline did to TMP for the DE. In that sense it has more in common with the Star Wars Special Editions. None are really what was intended when the films were originally released, even if they were partially informed by those intentions.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Whoa! DS9Sega has uncloaked!

This isn't part of the DC comics reboot, is it?

 

[JimTheBuilder]

A reconstruction is to rebuild something damaged or destroyed. A restoration is to return something to a previous state. The DE is neither.​

Reconstruction is what Walter Murch did to Touch of Evil (re-editing the film based on Orson Welles' extensive notes from the time the film was in post).

Restoration is what the F.W. Murnau Foundation group has been doing to Metropolis (trying to put the film back together as it was at its premier, bit by bit as more and more pieces of it have been found).

Revision is what Sharpline did to TMP for the DE. In that sense it has more in common with the Star Wars Special Editions. None are really what was intended when the films were originally released, even if they were partially informed by those intentions.

Amen, Maurice, amen.

 

[Christopher]

A reconstruction is to rebuild something damaged or destroyed. A restoration is to return something to a previous state. The DE is neither.

No, obviously it is not. Don't take it so literally. My point is that the people who did it are trained as film restorers and they approached the project with that mentality, that training, in mind. They were not trying to pull a George Lucas and replace the 1979 look with a modern CGI look. They didn't put in a bunch of garish shots of the Enterprise swooping around like in a video game. They strove to replicate the look and feel of 1979 visual effects. They sampled actual film grain from the same film stock used to shoot TMP and layered it into their CG shots. They shot their computer animation in 2D and at 12 frames per second to replicate the look of the hand-drawn animation of the era. Yes, they were doing something new, but they strove to do it in a way that was faithful to the style of the original, that fit with it smoothly rather than clashing. And I think they did a damn good job of it (with the one exception of the shot of V'Ger's plasma bolts swooping around the curve of the Earth, which looks way too much like a video effect).

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

"Revision" is, indeed, the accurate term for what was done to ST:TMP.

 

[Doug Otte]

It is nicer to see it at closer range and closer to ground level, but the new paint job is distracting to me.

Betcha can't see this angle anymore!:


USS Enterprise at Smithsonian by Therin of Andor, on Flickr

Also have this shot handy:


USS Enterprise at Smithsonian by Therin of Andor, on Flickr

You're right, Therin. Thanks for posting those shots, and I miss those angles. Also, when the model was hanging like that in the doorway, you could get another nice angle by standing either on the landing of a stairway or on the floor above (can't remember which it was), and you'd be looking down at the approaching saucer, which was similar to one of the stock shots used in the series.

Doug

 

[Maurice]

Whoa! DS9Sega has uncloaked!

This isn't part of the DC comics reboot, is it?

Yeah. Hang onto my Post #1. It'll be a collector's item.

A reconstruction is to rebuild something damaged or destroyed. A restoration is to return something to a previous state. The DE is neither.

No, obviously it is not. Don't take it so literally. My point is that the people who did it are trained as film restorers and they approached the project with that mentality, that training, in mind.

Which of that group are trained film restorers? I'm genuinely curious.

I'm not disagreeing that they did some things correctly, and some of their efforts (such as matching the film grain, etc.) are fine, but in other cases they significantly deviated from the film as designed and intended to do what they wanted, which is revisionism plain and simple.

For instance, Dochtrman said, "I realized what the problem [the the air tram station] was. They had to have a wall on the set because they didn't have enough time to build an expansive tram station set. So you have the tram coming up against basically a flat wall." Which is utterly untrue. Since so much of the shot was a matte painting they could easily have opened up that wall in 1979. They didn't because the shot was designed that way. Dochterman changed it because he wanted to. That's not restoration.

Likewise, the chiron (superimposed lower-third text) with the stardate, that's pure fanwank. It's unnecessary and stand out like a sore thumb because it's the only chiron in the film and does not conform to the style of the picture.

In the same shot, they totally redesigned San Francisco, ignoring the intended design, and Mojo Lebowitz said of it "we sort of futurized it to what San Francisco is supposed to look like in the years of Star Trek"...as if it hadn't been redesigned and futurised already.

Yeah, SF, hasn't changed one bit...
​

They shot their computer animation in 2D and at 12 frames per second to replicate the look of the hand-drawn animation of the era.

As has been pointed out before, effects animation isn't and wasn't shot on twos. That's a blatant mistake on the DE team's part and should should not be cited as something they got right.

 

[Christopher]

^Forget it. I like the DE, you don't, let's leave it at that. I am so sick of getting drawn into the exact same arguments over and over again on this BBS.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Well, it's difficult to make much headway with an argument when one takes the position that one's opinion is based on facts rather than just likes and dislikes, and then the facts don't support it.

 

[RyanKCR]

Count me in the minority for liking the new Red Alert Klaxon in the Director's Edition. The original certainly had a big punch to it, but it was so loud and back to back with itself that it drowned the audio around it.

One of the advantages with the new Klaxon is that it's sequence is much more spread apart, so you can afford to have it playing over the dialogue without it being too distracting.

That's actually one of the cooler things I like about the new Klaxon. The sound designers were able to add it in more scenes that the original sound designers couldn't with the original Klaxon. Like during the wormhole sequence. You hear the original klaxon when they first enter the wormhole, but after we go from the exterior shot of the Enterprise back to the bridge, the klaxon is completely gone. With the new Klaxon, not only is it there during the entire wormhole sequence, but it also slows down to match the characters' voices slowing down. Great continuity there.

As for the computer's voice?

INTRUDER ALERT! INTRUDER ALERT! INTRUDER ALERT! INTRUDER ALERT! INTRUDER ALERT! INTRUDER ALERT! INTRUDER ALERT! INTRUDER ALERT! INTRUDER ALERT! INTRUDER ALERT! INTRUDER ALERT!

SHUT UP!

... God, that's awful. After listening to the commentary track that was downloadable from startrek.com a few years ago, I like what the team behind the Director's Edition had to say about the exclusion of the computer's voice. It made the ship more crew dependable instead of sounding like everything was automated. I like hearing what's going on from the characters rather than hearing it twice.

"Theatrical Version"
Computer: Emergency Alert! Negative control at helm! Emergency Alert! Negative control at helm! Emergency Alert! Negative control at helm! Emergency Alert! Negative control at helm!
Kirk: Force fields. Full remaining strength. Total reserves.
Deckar: The ship is under attack. Man all defensive stations.
Spock: Captain, we've been seized by a tractor beam.

"Director's Edition"
*Red Aler Klaxon sounds*
Spock: Captain, we've been seized by a tractor beam.

MUCH better.

And if I may take another stab at the computer? The Enterprise's computer voice should ALWAYS BE FEMALE!

^I agree with just about all of that. I hated the theatrical edition's klaxon and computer voice.

I personally prefer the original klaxon and the computer voice. The DE sounds to campy to me and not as serious and real life like it originally was. I cringe when I hear the new klaxon and all the bells and whistles that are added. I cring the same way I cringe when watching a very bad b-rated sci-fi movie. But that's my take on it.

 

[RAMA]

A reconstruction is to rebuild something damaged or destroyed. A restoration is to return something to a previous state. The DE is neither.
​

Reconstruction is what Walter Murch did to Touch of Evil (re-editing the film based on Orson Welles' extensive notes from the time the film was in post).

Restoration is what the F.W. Murnau Foundation group has been doing to Metropolis (trying to put the film back together as it was at its premier, bit by bit as more and more pieces of it have been found).

Revision is what Sharpline did to TMP for the DE. In that sense it has more in common with the Star Wars Special Editions. None are really what was intended when the films were originally released, even if they were partially informed by those intentions.

So what? It wasn't a wholesale revision and they were guided by one of the original creators, as well as artwork that existed from the period. Some things were totally changed, others were much closer to what was originally intended. The improved a movie that wasn't finished when it was released, and this is by all accounts.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture: The Director's Revision

RAMA

 

[Psion]

....
Likewise, the chiron (superimposed lower-third text) with the stardate, that's pure fanwank. It's unnecessary and stand out like a sore thumb because it's the only chiron in the film and does not conform to the style of the picture.
....

Not to be a pedant, but when I tried to research this (because I don't recall having heard it before), I found that the proper form and spelling is "Chyron" after the company that introduced such "lower third" technologies. Of course, such a "fact" isn't quite so settled as the software itself was originally "Chiron" as you spelled it, but trademark issues in California forced the company to change the 'i' to a 'y' in the 1970s. Wikipedia itself is actually inconsistent about capitalization.

So the effects are called (along with "captions" and "lower thirds") "Chyrons" except they were originally "Chirons" and capitalization is inconsistent. So you were wrong. Except you were right. And sometimes I hate Wikipedia for providing snippets of the truth.

 

[Warped9]

This is an old argument I just don't get into anymore because you end up basically talking to yourself and persuading no one of anything.

Nothing is ever perfect, but I do know what I experienced when I saw TMP in 1979, the later TV cut and then the DE. It wasn't until the DE that I felt the film finally worked as a whole. It certainly wasn't perfect, but what still needed to be addressed had nothing to do with editing and f/x shots. What the film is still lacking and has always lacked is more character and story, more character drama. I still really like the film, but that one flaw has always been there and still remains.

To me this argument mirrors the one regarding TOS' original f/x and TOS-R. On that issue I'm on the other side of the debate because I'm bothered by a lot of what was done in TOS-R. But like the TMP DE debate I just can't into it anymore.

To each his own.

 

[Ryan Thomas Riddle]

^Forget it. I like the DE, you don't, let's leave it at that. I am so sick of getting drawn into the exact same arguments over and over again on this BBS.

Ah, the BBS, where one can make erroneous statements and assert them as fact. But when presented with facts backed up by evidence, a person can simply snatch his trucks from the sandbox and go home because the other kids won't play along.

 

[Maurice]

My bad on the spelling of "chyron". I've seen it spelled any number of ways, as Psion points out.

It might surprise some of you to know that if I had to choose between watching the Theatrical Cut or the DE, I'd go for the DE. With a few minor quibbles, the DE is a superior cut of the film (even if it doesn't go far enough). I also happen to like some of the new VFX where they got those new shots right and matched what was designed.

Likewise, I have no problem with calling the film what it actually is.

What I object to is giving this version credit for being something it isn't: "what was intended in 1979" when it's factually demonstrably not.

When I'm incorrect about something and it can be factually demonstrated I'm the first to say "oops". This may be a minority opinion, but personally I am far more interested in being factually correct rather than proving myself right. For instance, Rama and I disagree on how much of an "improvement" the TOS-R effects are, but that's a subjective matter (does it look better), not a factual one (is this what was planned by the original makers). I think that's an important distinction. YMMV.

Now, back to the original subject of the Lounge Scene: THAT was something that the effects team WANTED to do in 1979 (Andy told me they proposed it but it was shot down for cost reasons), but couldn't, and ergo was "original intent". It's too bad the DE budget didn't allow us to get it.