Is this what JJ envisions for TREK XI sfx (BSG style)?

[Stag]

Hey all, found this on YouTube.

Appears to me to be a take on the TOS using the BSG style flybys. This is a sharp contrast to the TOS beauty shots we are all used to.

So since Trek XI is a new look/reimagining of TOS, what are your thoughts on this style of sfx? Is this what the future holds for us?

Don't know where I stand on it, but it sure is a different take on TREK SFX style. I appreciate the effort of the person who put it together though. God knows I couldn't do it half as well. :thumbsup:

YouTube link

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[GodThingFormerly]

I put "no". Paul Verhoeven pioneered the "hand-held camera" technique to create memorable spacecraft visual effects footage for Starship Troopers. He has a lot to answer for.

TGT

 

[Chaos Descending]

Paul Verhoeven pioneered the "hand-held camera" technique to create memorable spacecraft visual effects footage for Starship Troopers. He has a lot to be thanked for.

 

[Vektor]

The whole cinema verite, shaky-cam style of the special effects on BSG works for that show because so much of the live action is filmed the same way and it contributes to the “gritty realism” they are generally aiming for. Abrams appears to be using a similar style for Cloverfield with all of its hand-held camera work, and I believe he is on record as saying he wants to bring a much stronger element of realism and solidity to Star Trek via more extensive use of location work and so forth, but unless he is planning to shoot the whole film in the style of documentary, I seriously doubt we will see anything like the YouTube clip posted above.

 

[The Doctor]

I don't think it will be in the 'cinema verite' style, at least not nearly as overt as that 'test shot.'

 

[Capt.April]

I put no.
Not that it doesn't look good, it would be good if the Movie moved into a new TV series but believe it or not I've always seen the Trek universe ships as the old Navy WW2 style sfx shots (from the original series). Believe it or not I think the best style of sfx that depicted what Trek ships and battles should look like was the "Wing Commander" movie. It had a very 18th century battling galleons look that I thought was really fitting. "The Wrath of Kahn" would probably be the only time they actually got it right in my books which is one of the reasons why that movie probably stands out..

What's everybody else think?

 

[shapeshifter]

I wouldn't mind it but I voted No because the last thing Star Trek needs is more reason for the fans to become divided.

 

[Borgminister]

Please, please no "shaky cam". Special effects are supposed to catch the eye, not slap it around...

 

[Kegek]

Why do people associate shakycam with realism?

Yes, that's what documentary footage might look like. But we don't live within shakycameras. The camera is essentially an artifice, as cameras aren't 'really' there (in the context of the story), calling attention to its existence is actually surreal. Or cheesy. Take your pick.

If I was to name a film at random I want this film to emulate in visual style - a film released recently, naturally - I'd have to go with 2046. The sci-fi bits anyway. Stylish, sophisticated, but unashamedly pulp.

 

[archeryguy1701]

No. I like it on BSG, but there's only so much shaky cam that I can stand. Besides, looking at that clip, it may look fairly good, but Trek ships, or at least TOS ships, don't seem to work well for that kind of shot

 

[Ryan Thomas Riddle]

The God Thing said:
I put "no". Paul Verhoeven pioneered the "hand-held camera" technique to create memorable spacecraft visual effects footage for Starship Troopers. He has a lot to answer for.

TGT

Of all the things Paul Verhoeven should be put over the barrel and beaten to within an inch of his life, the hand-held effects is the least of them. Now the remainder of the movie, the casting of a horrible Caucasian actor instead of a Filipino actor (Johnny Rico in the book is a Filipino, and Verhoeven is on record as saying that he didn't want an unknown Filipino actor so he did the logical thing and casted an unknown Caucasian actor -- made sense really, really it did... NOT.), putting large reject, video game steering wheels as starship helm controls, and basically rapping Heinlein's dead body. Now all that he has to answer for. The starships I can live with.

 

[Brian]

Kegek said:
Why do people associate shakycam with realism?

Yes, that's what documentary footage might look like. But we don't live within shakycameras. The camera is essentially an artifice, as cameras aren't 'really' there (in the context of the story), calling attention to its existence is actually surreal. Or cheesy. Take your pick.

I'm with you on this. I don't watch a film and think there is a camera there in the fiction, unless it's portraying a live news feed or something of the sort.

I don't worry that Captain Kirk is going to run into the camera, for example, because the camera is not there in his reality. The exteriors should be no different. Why should there be a documentary camera floating around in every space battle? It does not add realism. It takes it away, IMO.

BTW, why do these fancy cams shake from fly-by's in the vacuum of space, where there is no medium to propagate a wake?

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

I wouldn't mind something more like BSG than like the traditional Trek style - not nearly as extreme, though.

The premise that outer space visuals are being recorded by cameras on other spacecraft certainly is more "realistic" than an arbitrary observer's POV is (nor is the shaking supposed to be from a "wake" but is a result of the fact that the camera and the object being photographed aren't absolutely steady relative to one another). However, the arbitrary POV is so familiar and so deeply established in the vocabulary of commercial film making that many people are distracted by anything different.

 

[Kegek]

Starship Polaris said:
The premise that outer space visuals are being recorded by cameras on other spacecraft certainly is more "realistic" than an arbitrary observer's POV is

It is if one is supposed to believe this is actually taking place. Like in the Babylon 5 documentary episodes. Otherwise, it is adding an additional fiction - the fiction of this documentary camera - that is distinct from and has no relevance to the drama.

It's funny - when Leni Reifenstahl made The Triumph of the Will, there are some shots of Hitler's airplane which are clearly made from another airplane... but the camera is so measured and precise that one may not notice it without thinking about it. And that's using 1930s technology.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Kegek said:
It is if one is supposed to believe this is actually taking place.

It is more "realistic" by definition - in reality, there is no omniscient observer's POV on events. In commercial film, there almost always is. People are simply so used to that convention that we don't question it.

It's funny - when Leni Reifenstahl made The Triumph of the Will, there are some shots of Hitler's airplane which are clearly made from another airplane... but the camera is so measured and precise that one may not notice it without thinking about it.

The circumstances, of course, were carefully planned and quite different from those under which the vehicles in BSG are generally supposed to be shot. How much air combat was going on around them?

 

[Kegek]

Starship Polaris said:
The circumstances, of course, were carefully planned and quite different from those under which the vehicles in BSG are generally supposed to be shot. How much air combat was going on around them?

But the BSG vehicles aren't being recorded by cameras, in the story. The only context in which the camera-work is taking place is with the effects people, who do not need to worry about strafing bullets and whose choice to make the camera shake is as artificial as keeping it steady.

If the camera-work was being done by people within the story, then I could buy this artifice. I enjoyed the use of faux documentary in Infamous, for example, though that was far more narrative than camera-work. But lacking a narrative reason, it's artifice evoking documentaries for no real purpose other than that 'it looks cool', and people associate it with realism.

Sure, the static camera is just as artifical. But it moves with the same dramatic omniscience of most film's narratives, blending itself into the background by not calling attention to its artifice. It focuses on giving us a good image, not a shaky one.

 

[Professor Moriarty]

No, and for a very simple reason: If the whole idea behind the cinéma vérité-style F/X in BSG is that the images are being taken from another spaceship, what starships are going to be flying around with the Enterprise? Unlike the U.S. Navy (which Trek always seemed to emulate) in which ships often travel in groups, the Enterprise always flew solo (at least, she always did in TOS).

 

[Brian]

^ Unless the reimagined Enterprise has satellite drones, a la SeaQuest's WSKRS.

God, I hope not.

 

[Stag]

^But a porpoise swimming around inside and outside the ship with a space helmet on would be awesome!!!

 

[Barbados Slim]

I'm all for JJ doing whatever it takes to modernize Trek and handheld SFX shots like from BSG and Firefly are where it's at. I hope he uses some handheld stuff for the actors too.

Trek got stale not just in the scripts, but the production design and the filming style. I don't want to see simple "two-shot", "MCU", "Wide shot." stuff.