Final Frontier special effects

[KelisThePoet]

The old "show, don't tell" thing, like most truisms, is not always true. But it's not even applicable in the case of the shuttle landing, which is nothing like your example from Lost World. The movie doesn't (merely) tell us the shuttle landed. It shows things that imply the landing. Often it's much more artful and effective to show around something in a film, rather than outright show it. I'm not saying this case was particularly artful, but no less so than your run-of-the-mill shuttle landing scene, either.

And the old joke about Uhura doing nothing besides "answering the phone" does not stand up to a real examination of her role in the franchise. But Final Frontier was not one of the movies that gave her a great deal to do (unlike Voyage Home, for example), so I'll leave that soapbox for another day and thread.

 

[jaime]

The old "show, don't tell" thing, like most truisms, is not always true. But it's not even applicable in the case of the shuttle landing, which is nothing like your example from Lost World. The movie doesn't (merely) tell us the shuttle landed. It shows things that imply the landing. Often it's much more artful and effective to show around something in a film, rather than outright show it. I'm not saying this case was particularly artful, but no less so than your run-of-the-mill shuttle landing scene, either.

And the old joke about Uhura doing nothing besides "answering the phone" does not stand up to a real examination of her role in the franchise. But Final Frontier was not one of the movies that gave her a great deal to do (unlike Voyage Home, for example), so I'll leave that soapbox for another day and thread.

The interesting thing about Uhura in Voyge home is...yeah..um...singing and phone answering...also weather girl...but she must have been put on the ground assault team for reasons that don't involve her ankles in sand or how unflattering that jumper looked. So in an odd subtextual way, Shatner borderline made her an action hero...did we see her armed? I doubt it was intentional, but nimbus three didn't look like it needed her to man the phones. Just an observation your post made me think of.

 

[jaime]

Because TOS had great FX for it's time and medium and TFF had bad FX for it's time and medium.

I won't lie...aged nine in the cinema, the fx didn't look so bad. About on a par with the last crusade ironically. Not as good as ghostbusters 2. These days...they dated hard.

 

[jaime]

Fair enough. I came to TFF and TOS at about the same time so I've always associated dated/weak FX with classic Trek.

TMP has awesome fx. That opening pan twist and loop over the Klingon ship...done with a model and an early motion control rig. Every shot after it too. TMP has some of the best fx in scifi film history, but goes a bit unnoticed.

 

[jaime]

The effects were never that jarring to me, apart from the stop-motion BOP disruptors.

Of course ILM weren't that impressed when they got the Enterprise effects model back and found that parts of the mounting arm had been shorn off and the underside of the saucer sprayed plain white, requiring repairs and a major repaint.

To be fair they didn't make that model in the first place and also made it look worse when they got it. TMP is its finest hour.

 

[jaime]

It was the 80s. Some films had great effects, some less so. ST:V merged with the rest of them and I wasn't really aware of conspicuous problems until they were flagged to me much later. Except maybe the phaser fire in the lamentable landing party scene. That was notably weak.

Same here. The stop motion BoP gun is jerky, but about as jerky as the Terminator. It had ...average effects by the standards of the time. The blue screen work on Last Crusade is pretty shonky too, on a par with this. It's mainly the end with the God being that really falls down, and we know that was the bit most effed with by production issues. It's fairer to say that the previous Trek films had better than average effects for the time, which doesn't help V very much. TMP had such good work done they barely had to do anything for II (mild exaggeration for comic effect. But basically true.)

 

[jaime]

There are three instances of stock footage that I can think of in all of Generations: The brief shot of the Enterprise cruising as Picard begins his captain's log prior to Stellar Cartography (and that's a pretty hideous shot, since it was rather crudely upscaled), one brief bit during the saucer separation and, of course, the Bird of Prey explosion.

I always thought they totally reshot all the D footage for generations. Will have to take another look. Surprised it would look wonky even if reused...most of that was motion picture level work composites on film for farpoint anyway. And the BoP explosion reuse is such a thing I am surprised it hasn't found a way into JJ film yet. I demand to see corridor Klingon dude get blown sideways one last time damnit. (Only just saw beyond...so many little visual callbacks to earlier stuff in that film. Was surprised.)

 

[Timby]

I always thought they totally reshot all the D footage for generations. Will have to take another look. Surprised it would look wonky even if reused...most of that was motion picture level work composites on film for farpoint anyway.

The model may have been shot on film but the compositing against the starfield was done at NTSC resolution, and Generations was facing such a huge effects budget crunch (primarily due to the crash sequence, which as I recall took several weeks to film) that all they could pay ILM to do was a quick and dirty upscaling job.

Edit: For that one cruising shot of the D.

 

[KelisThePoet]

The interesting thing about Uhura in Voyge home is...yeah..um...singing and phone answering

Uhura doesn't sing in The Voyage Home.

And she never answers the phone. She works with communications technology represented by the shows as being sophisticated and requiring technical expertise to use. I think the fact that we take so much of our communication technology for granted, that it's so user friendly in the early twenty-first century gives us this impression that there's nothing special about being a communications officer. But at the time the show was written and in the universe the show portrays, Uhura is represented as excelling in a professional, technical job, not to mention she's a bridge officer. Would that more women and minorities in today's ostensibly progressive fiction were represented as technical professionals in positions of authority.

Okay. I guess I couldn't resist the soapbox after all.

 

[Indysolo]

The model may have been shot on film but the compositing against the starfield was done at NTSC resolution, and Generations was facing such a huge effects budget crunch (primarily due to the crash sequence, which as I recall took several weeks to film) that all they could pay ILM to do was a quick and dirty upscaling job.

Edit: For that one cruising shot of the D.

Keep in mind also that television shot was used to cover a cut scene. An effects shot was probably not in the budget, but they needed to get the info about Data's neural net communicated to the audience.

Neil

 

[jaime]

Uhura doesn't sing in The Voyage Home.

And she never answers the phone. She works with communications technology represented by the shows as being sophisticated and requiring technical expertise to use. I think the fact that we take so much of our communication technology for granted, that it's so user friendly in the early twenty-first century gives us this impression that there's nothing special about being a communications officer. But at the time the show was written and in the universe the show portrays, Uhura is represented as excelling in a professional, technical job, not to mention she's a bridge officer. Would that more women and minorities in today's ostensibly progressive fiction were represented as technical professionals in positions of authority.

Okay. I guess I couldn't resist the soapbox after all.

Sorry. My mind made me carry on typing after I punched in the V. I meant V. And yeah, I am totally behind your description of Uhura, I was just sticking with the jokey shorthand already used. Kirks job is mainly drinking coffee and...uh..interspecies relations often with a fist or two involved. The fact is in V, she is shown to be logically piloting the shuttle early on, and was sent as part of a combat team. It's VI that turns her into a racist secretary to all intents. One of my bugbears with that film now I watch it as an adult,

 

[Hey Missy]

Why did Shatner go with an amateur effects house?

 

[FormerLurker]

Because he thought their first string effects team would be better than ILM's third string.

 

[Timby]

Why did Shatner go with an amateur effects house?

Because Harve Bennett and Ralph Winter screwed up, refused to play ball with ILM, and just didn't bother to look at other effects houses.

 

[Tosk]

The model may have been shot on film but the compositing against the starfield was done at NTSC resolution, and Generations was facing such a huge effects budget crunch (primarily due to the crash sequence, which as I recall took several weeks to film) that all they could pay ILM to do was a quick and dirty upscaling job.

The re-used shot of the Enterprise cruising away from camera came from a film source, not NTSC tape. (And it got a new starfield, if I recall correctly.) ...That's not to say it doesn't look quick 'n dirty compared to the new shots of the Enteprise.

 

[Smellmet]

The old "show, don't tell" thing, like most truisms, is not always true. But it's not even applicable in the case of the shuttle landing, which is nothing like your example from Lost World. The movie doesn't (merely) tell us the shuttle landed. It shows things that imply the landing. Often it's much more artful and effective to show around something in a film, rather than outright show it. I'm not saying this case was particularly artful, but no less so than your run-of-the-mill shuttle landing scene, either..

The shuttle landing never really bothered me to be honest. I can see what they were trying to do stylistically, and to reduce costs obviously.

At least we got some choice Bones 'get that damn light outta my face!' from the scene.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Since we see the shuttle land twice during the movie (in the shuttlebay and on ShaKaRee), and crash land once, not showing it in detail landing in the forest is 100% fine by me.

 

[Smellmet]

Since we see the shuttle land twice during the movie (in the shuttlebay and on ShaKaRee), and crash land once, not showing it in detail landing in the forest is 100% fine by me.

Me too. It's nowhere near the deal breaker that the other poor FX are.

 

[Galileo7]

Since we see the shuttle land twice during the movie (in the shuttlebay and on ShaKaRee), and crash land once, not showing it in detail landing in the forest is 100% fine by me.

Agree, these FX plus the sets offset any negatives. When I saw TFF in a theater in 1989, I immediately loved seeing the 1701-A hangar deck set with both shuttlecrafts props. We had not seen a 1701-Refit hangar deck since TMP scenes. TFF shuttlecrafts were a natural evolution from TOS shuttlecrafts.

 

[Smellmet]

Agree, these FX plus the sets offset any negatives. When I saw TFF in a theater in 1989, I immediately loved seeing the 1701-A hangar deck set with both shuttlecrafts props. We had not seen a 1701-Refit hangar deck since TMP scenes. TFF shuttlecrafts were a natural evolution from TOS shuttlecrafts.

I always thought the hangar looked loads smaller than what we saw in TMP too.