It'd be interesting to see what a TOS remastering Kickstarter could bring in.
How Far Should TOS-R Have Gone?
- Thread starter ZapBrannigan
- Start date
It'd be interesting to see what a TOS remastering Kickstarter could bring in.
That episode is a great example of what I said some posts back re CGI effects made by people who don't understand how light works on film. The Planet Killer's original beam flashes through a whole series of colors which gives it this hot, energetic pulse which is completely absent in the remastered version effects. Don't even get me started on the pathetic barfing up blueberry juice explosion at the end.
Also, the animators add pointless excess motion which negatively impacts the drama of certain scenes. The animation of the Constellation heading into the Planet Killer's maw is needlessly hyperactive. The ship slaloming around undermines the ticking clock. It's a death march, not a luge ride.
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Nah, the repetitive stock footage, very poor matting, loss of quality from analog triple head printing, bad lighting, terrible Machine model, improper scale and composition is actually a demo reel in one place for the poor FX of TOS. Even the worst TOS-R CGI would be superior in every way. They also took great care to map out the battle and choose the proper angles and relative positions of the ships in the remastered version. All come together to produce a stellar reworking in the form of a TOS era episode.
RAMA
To each his own but I do agree with Maurice. I was watching TOS-R "Where No Man Has Gone Before" yesterday and the stupid motions the ships makes going into the barrier just makes no sense at all. Would they not be on a straight course right into the thing? It is as if they tried to make the new effects "more exciting" by adding useless motions to the ships. The shuttlecraft leaving the hangar bay is another perfect example. In the original you have a conveyor that ferries the shuttlecraft to the end of the fantail and then she lifts off. In the TOS-R version the shuttlecraft jumps up from it's sitting location; totally unrealistic looking and for practical reasons ridiculous. Anyway, I always prefer the look of a model because it has dimension that in most cases (and in particular TOS-R) cannot replicate well enough to be convincing.
I wish they would have spent the remaster effects money on just cleaning-up the existing effects shots.
I wish they would have spent the remaster effects money on just cleaning-up the existing effects shots.
A real spacecraft couldn't do these extra motions and a straight course is still the "real thing". Of course the VFX of TOS were limited to straight courses but coincidentally that was the real thing before "Star Wars" came along (and even its big ships didn't zigzag around like airplanes).
Paul Verhoeven understood this as director for "Starship Troopers". He insisted the Rodger Young to be sluggish in helm response because he felt you could only convey a sense of size if a ship reacted in a way we would expect a "big" ship to.
Bob
Blame it on people brainwashed by ILM/Star Wars, instead of taking influence from the actual TOS FX/ship movements. The most logical way of "upgading" TOS FX would have been to think like FX artists of ther period if they had the larger budget--which would have been the ship work (lighting, detail, movement) seen in 2001, not the Lucas-ized, video-game crap of TOS-R.
Funny, I can imagine a kind of "Ship of Theseus" scenario happening, at least in an absurdist reality. Each decade or so, the owners of Trek (whether it be Paramount, CBs, Toho, whomever) decides to "spruce up" the material, trying to keep it a commercially viable property. This time around, it was cleaned up live action footage and digital space shots that would look good in HDTV. Ten or twenty years from now, when (or if) some definitive form of domestic 3D has become the standard and norm, the episodes are tweaked again, this time to give "depth" to the shots. There will be those fans who feel TOS should remain a 2D medium. And for those who are a bit more accepting of the update in general, will probably find fault with the "depth of field" selected by the enhnacement team.
But where does one go from there? Smell-O-Vision? "I don't like the choice of cologne the fragrance staff gave Kirk! The Salt Vampire should smell like a dry sea bed, not the dry lake beds of the SouthWest!" Maybe Feel-O-Vision (aka "Grope-O-Rama")? "Oh, come on! Uhura feels like she's got 'implants'! Being a self confident woman of the 23rd century, hers should be 'natural'!" Of course, you'd have those fans debating whether Spock's ear tips should feel like tissue or like the foam latex appliances they really were.
Yes, I am being a bit silly.
Sincerely,
Bill
But where does one go from there? Smell-O-Vision? "I don't like the choice of cologne the fragrance staff gave Kirk! The Salt Vampire should smell like a dry sea bed, not the dry lake beds of the SouthWest!" Maybe Feel-O-Vision (aka "Grope-O-Rama")? "Oh, come on! Uhura feels like she's got 'implants'! Being a self confident woman of the 23rd century, hers should be 'natural'!" Of course, you'd have those fans debating whether Spock's ear tips should feel like tissue or like the foam latex appliances they really were.
Yes, I am being a bit silly.
Sincerely,
Bill
I can't wait to watch a holodeck episode.... on the holodeck.
(not TOS, but still.)
(not TOS, but still.)
Actually, this is happening already. Unfortunately there are too many people (with the exception of Jim Cameron) that do not understand that the pair of human eyes can not see things in 3D beyond 200 yards.
So all these lenticular astronomic posters or postcards where you see Saturn and the like in 3D are crap.
Should they do this to Star Trek I'm most definitely among the first to complain.
Bob
I think Ridley Scott did an excellent job on the 3-D in "Prometheus." It was not a distraction but enhanced the movie without interfering with it. I thought it was some of the best 3-D that I have seen. Hopefully whatever they do with Trek will be along those lines.
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The Doomsday Machine was a great episode when I first saw it as a tyke. It was an amazing episode when I watched it as a pimply teen. It was a stupendous episode when I watched it as a young adult. And it remains my all time favorite episode as I watch it now at 45 years old. The original effects take nothing away from the show, they never did. Bad or old effects don't impact negatively on my viewing experience because a) they do the job and b) I watch every TV show and movie well aware of the limitations of the time and fully appreciate they did the very best they could with the time and money they had. I never needed new effects in Star Trek. Ever. It's great as is. I'm also more forgiving of "bad" effect made 50 years ago than I am over bad effects made in 2006. At least 50 years ago they had an excuse.
Hell, I don't even watch the HD prints most of the time. It's lower res laserdisc for me.
Hell, I don't even watch the HD prints most of the time. It's lower res laserdisc for me.
Funny, I can imagine a kind of "Ship of Theseus" scenario happening, at least in an absurdist reality. Each decade or so, the owners of Trek (whether it be Paramount, CBs, Toho, whomever) decides to "spruce up" the material, trying to keep it a commercially viable property. This time around, it was cleaned up live action footage and digital space shots that would look good in HDTV. Ten or twenty years from now, when (or if) some definitive form of domestic 3D has become the standard and norm, the episodes are tweaked again, this time to give "depth" to the shots. There will be those fans who feel TOS should remain a 2D medium. And for those who are a bit more accepting of the update in general, will probably find fault with the "depth of field" selected by the enhnacement team.
But where does one go from there? Smell-O-Vision? "I don't like the choice of cologne the fragrance staff gave Kirk! The Salt Vampire should smell like a dry sea bed, not the dry lake beds of the SouthWest!" Maybe Feel-O-Vision (aka "Grope-O-Rama")? "Oh, come on! Uhura feels like she's got 'implants'! Being a self confident woman of the 23rd century, hers should be 'natural'!" Of course, you'd have those fans debating whether Spock's ear tips should feel like tissue or like the foam latex appliances they really were.
Yes, I am being a bit silly.
Sincerely,
Bill
Great post!
Right, it's TAS.
I think if the remastered effects would have been done better there may not be such an outcry against them. In truth they did some things that I liked. The entrance of the Horta for example was good. Some of the city matte shoots were good. If they would not have tried to reinvent the effects it would have gone a long way with the fans. Stuff like redesigning the Tholian ship (to look like those in "Enterprise" no less) just drives me crazy; why do that? There are countless other examples but regardless; the overall look of the exterior spaceship shots all look like cartoons. In my book if you can't do something right; don't do it!
On a side note I do realize that no matter how great the effects would have looked; I still would have preferred the originals. That doesn't however change the fact that the new effects for the most part look bad.
On a side note I do realize that no matter how great the effects would have looked; I still would have preferred the originals. That doesn't however change the fact that the new effects for the most part look bad.
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As others have pointed out, the Blu-ray discs include the cleaned up original versions, which is great. That does not mean fans cannot debate the quality of the new effects. In general, I like the new "matte" shots, but dislike the CGI ships.
However one feels about the alterations, revising an old work in any way is a marketing gimmick. For example, many people dislike colorization (I'm one of them). This has nothing to do with "protecting" the original. Shooting an image for B&W is very different from working in color. I've seen some very fine colorization work, but nothing can change the contrasts of the image so that it looks right in color.
I've done a lot of experimentation with various 3D technologies—another gimmick. And while circular polarization (like RealD) is less stressful than older systems, any parallax-based "3D" system will create eye strain. We have two eyes, and feeding a separate image to each eye should be enough, but it is not. Our eyes also "track" closer together for nearer objects and farther apart for more distant objects. The parallax images of a "3D" movie are coming from the same distance. So when different parallax is thrown at us, our eyes try to track, getting caught between focus distance and parallax. One day a truly "holographic" presentation system will be marketed, but upgrading all the old favorites to the new system may fizzle, like colorization.
Many people have opined that 4K video obviates the need for "3D" because the images look very real just from the increased resolution. I've been told that HDR (high dynamic range) video monitors are like walking by an open window. But will HDR be a welcomed upgrade for casual viewing? Will viewers have to put on sunglasses for some scenes, and take them off for others? Will some "remastering" artist decide to make the hallways of the Enterprise as bright as desert sun "just because he can," while the bridge will have muted lighting for all the video displays?
How about making all the old TOS episodes interactive? Yeah! No, not a good idea. Those episodes were shot in a linear fashion to tell a fixed story in a set way. Likewise, adding parallax, depth-of-field, color, smell, etc. may change the framing intended by the director who worked in 2D.
How would one convert a "trombone" shot to 3D?
"Cleaning up" old favorites so that they present well on the latest displays is welcome, but changing old favorites should be done with discretion.
I'm still pissed they added a beam to the scene where Scotty is cutting through the Engine Room wall in The Naked Time. They took something that seemed cool and futuristic and made it mundane.
Yes. There a various examples in TOS where they use invisible energy beams to have an impact on something. One of my favorites is the trident engineering tool.
In "The Doomsday-Machine" Scotty uses it to remote fix something in the engine room's cathedral (obviously it wasn't a musical instrument and he wasn't singing a song to the dilithium crystals...
).Bob
I'd have liked to see what EdenFX could have done remastering the series instead of CBS Digital. these shots were done "just for fun" but I love seeing the original Enterprise against a realistically proportioned planet.
