G'day all! Been a minute!
Thought I'd start a little thread to document our work to redo the 60th Anniversary Pre-roll seen in front of each new episode of Academy.
We over at Star Trek Sh*tposting think there were some glaring omissions - primarily in the complete lack of Cerritos and Protostar assets.
And on a personal level, I'm feeling like the thing was maybe done on a shoestring budget. Especially when you consider that whichever studio did the original work, they used sans permission let alone a discussion Marc Bell's Connie asset.
So, here we go!
We've made a few design decisions off the bat.
Firstly, instead of airdate-order, we're going with in-universe timeline order.
So NX - DISCO - SNWPrise - Connie/JJPrise - The Fat One - DS9 - VOY - Cerritos - Protostar - La Sirena - DISCO-A - Athena
The second design decision was to try to strike a balance between the visual style of the warp tunnel in the 60th Pre-roll, and something that feels a little more me. Maybe a little more classic. Whilst also maintaining a nod to the primary colours seen in the 60th version. Pretty sure their version is meant to echo Starfleet division colours? Who knows.
Here's a comparison between the original and ours.
And ours, so far
The warp tunnel itself is based on an old Space VFX tutorial by Gleb and Aidy from Creative Shrimp - you can legit go out there and learn it yourself at this stage. Though I've obviously had to make some adjustments to it since then.
The other big design decision we made was to not just have that blend/beaming FX be the transition between each ship. It gets really boring really fast.
So we're doing a bit of a mix between beaming ships in and out as necessary, and using sneaky little camera motions and tricks to get ship assets into the warp tunnel as needed.
Finding and/or creating our own beam-out effects has been interesting. Most of the time, a sane person would do that kind of work in After Effects during post.
I'm a little insane however, so I prefer to get it done in-camera where I can.
Its a massive logistical pain in the arse, but I think it brings with it a sense of energy and motion that you really need for the next decisions...
Which is of course the music.
Initially we thought about just doing little snippets of each theme for each ship. And frankly that probably would've been fine - part of me thinks maybe it'd have been a mess in the end, but basically fine.
But then one of our group member's put their hand up to offer some professional assistance on the composing and orchestration front, and I had a whole new set of ideas - an idea I've long wanted to see made reality.
One of our original mods, Thobeka Lee, composed and performed a piece she titled Faith of the Hearty for her pup, Geordi. It stuck with me all these years because it so beautifully blended the Voyager theme and Where My Heart Will Take Me. (yes I have faith of the heart! Deal with it!)
And basically I've always wanted to see that track redone professionally. So basically we're gonna do that. It gon be awesome!
Now in terms of the assets we're using, its a huge mix.
Lots of Marc Bell, a couple of Chris Kuhn and Alexander Klemm's pieces and more recently some stuff I absolutely shouldn't have ahk ahk ahk.
Plus a couple of bits and bobs from STO.
The irony of using the same Connie asset as the real 60th Anniversary sequence is pretty funny.
So here's where we are currently. Almost locked on the DS9-Protostar shots as of course that's where I started. Why start at the beginning when you can start in the middle and kinda flail around wildly trying to make everything else make sense.
Future plans include: Making the SNWPrise morph into the OG Connie, which then has a mirror image of the JJPrise kinda emerge out of it and spin around a centre point in the warp tunnel. Oh and the Athena, whenever I get my mits on an asset for her, venting a whole mess of Cherry Blossom petals for the final warp tunnel shot.
Don't really know what to do with the D. Its such a... just a big sweeping shot maybe.
NX will absolutely be leaving Earth orbit and going to warp though in the style of Tommy Kraft's Horizon. That shot stuck with me too.
Also thinking, since its STSPs 10th Anniversary as well, that we'll probably focus on that for the final scene - and then just have someone walk over and hammer on a hasty 'oh yeah, its the 60th anniversary of star trek' piece of paper sign at the very end.
Thought I'd start a little thread to document our work to redo the 60th Anniversary Pre-roll seen in front of each new episode of Academy.
We over at Star Trek Sh*tposting think there were some glaring omissions - primarily in the complete lack of Cerritos and Protostar assets.
And on a personal level, I'm feeling like the thing was maybe done on a shoestring budget. Especially when you consider that whichever studio did the original work, they used sans permission let alone a discussion Marc Bell's Connie asset.
So, here we go!
We've made a few design decisions off the bat.
Firstly, instead of airdate-order, we're going with in-universe timeline order.
So NX - DISCO - SNWPrise - Connie/JJPrise - The Fat One - DS9 - VOY - Cerritos - Protostar - La Sirena - DISCO-A - Athena
The second design decision was to try to strike a balance between the visual style of the warp tunnel in the 60th Pre-roll, and something that feels a little more me. Maybe a little more classic. Whilst also maintaining a nod to the primary colours seen in the 60th version. Pretty sure their version is meant to echo Starfleet division colours? Who knows.
Here's a comparison between the original and ours.
And ours, so far
The warp tunnel itself is based on an old Space VFX tutorial by Gleb and Aidy from Creative Shrimp - you can legit go out there and learn it yourself at this stage. Though I've obviously had to make some adjustments to it since then.
The other big design decision we made was to not just have that blend/beaming FX be the transition between each ship. It gets really boring really fast.
So we're doing a bit of a mix between beaming ships in and out as necessary, and using sneaky little camera motions and tricks to get ship assets into the warp tunnel as needed.
Finding and/or creating our own beam-out effects has been interesting. Most of the time, a sane person would do that kind of work in After Effects during post.
I'm a little insane however, so I prefer to get it done in-camera where I can.
Its a massive logistical pain in the arse, but I think it brings with it a sense of energy and motion that you really need for the next decisions...
Which is of course the music.
Initially we thought about just doing little snippets of each theme for each ship. And frankly that probably would've been fine - part of me thinks maybe it'd have been a mess in the end, but basically fine.
But then one of our group member's put their hand up to offer some professional assistance on the composing and orchestration front, and I had a whole new set of ideas - an idea I've long wanted to see made reality.
One of our original mods, Thobeka Lee, composed and performed a piece she titled Faith of the Hearty for her pup, Geordi. It stuck with me all these years because it so beautifully blended the Voyager theme and Where My Heart Will Take Me. (yes I have faith of the heart! Deal with it!)
And basically I've always wanted to see that track redone professionally. So basically we're gonna do that. It gon be awesome!
Now in terms of the assets we're using, its a huge mix.
Lots of Marc Bell, a couple of Chris Kuhn and Alexander Klemm's pieces and more recently some stuff I absolutely shouldn't have ahk ahk ahk.
Plus a couple of bits and bobs from STO.
The irony of using the same Connie asset as the real 60th Anniversary sequence is pretty funny.
So here's where we are currently. Almost locked on the DS9-Protostar shots as of course that's where I started. Why start at the beginning when you can start in the middle and kinda flail around wildly trying to make everything else make sense.
Future plans include: Making the SNWPrise morph into the OG Connie, which then has a mirror image of the JJPrise kinda emerge out of it and spin around a centre point in the warp tunnel. Oh and the Athena, whenever I get my mits on an asset for her, venting a whole mess of Cherry Blossom petals for the final warp tunnel shot.
Don't really know what to do with the D. Its such a... just a big sweeping shot maybe.
NX will absolutely be leaving Earth orbit and going to warp though in the style of Tommy Kraft's Horizon. That shot stuck with me too.
Also thinking, since its STSPs 10th Anniversary as well, that we'll probably focus on that for the final scene - and then just have someone walk over and hammer on a hasty 'oh yeah, its the 60th anniversary of star trek' piece of paper sign at the very end.
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