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

[Sci]

Jackson_Roykirk said:
I said "No".

As others have stated, there is nothing wrong with the "shaky-cam" -- it certainly has it's place. I think it works very well for nuBSG because it adds to the gritty realism that the show's creative team is going for.

nuBSG is good, but Star Trek is not BSG, nor should it ever be like BSG...they are two totally different things. Star Trek has a certain 'tone' and feel to which I think Abrams must be sensitive. That "Star Trek Feel" is just as important as the characters and canon. That feel shouldn't be messed with by use of a "shaky-cam". That would make it less "Star Trek-like".

I completely disagree. In fact, I want Abrams to film this new Trek with a different tone. I want to get rid of the stuff, lifeless tone -- the static cinematography, the uninspired lighting styles -- that have characterized Trek since TNG.

The TOS films weren't afraid to break with the TOS tone -- which itself was radically different from the TNG/DS9/VOY/ENT tone -- by going with both extreme futurism and strong militarism. I would presonally prefer that this new Trek have a retro-futurist tone to it -- but, in any event, it needs to break with the "Trek tone" that you describe above.

 

[aridas sofia]

I would presonally prefer that this new Trek have a retro-futurist tone to it...

Yep.

 

[ITL]

As regards the use of ShakyCam, it's all down to how much you shake it, IMO. Firefly had many shots that could be called dynamic rather than shaky. Some good, dynamic camerawork with the cameraman not overly concerned with perfectly steady shots can bring things to life if done well.

But there's too much ExtremeShakyCam around these days (The Bourne movies, for example) - and that does annoy me.

 

[xanderwess]

Hey, you all remember that Voyager episode where they go back to get that time ship away from Ed Begley Jr? Well, if you've ever seen the footage of Voyager flying over LA on that news report, its pretty much the BSG looking SPX we just saw in the youtube vid. Looked cool as hell to, so don't be too quick to dismiss. Voyager and Enterprise 1701 are about the same size......and it looked like it was hauling ass over the city.

 

[JuanBolio]

Could be cool, if this is for real. These kind of shots capture the real speed of these ships way better than slow-mo flybys. "Shaky-cam" footage has never bothered me one bit.

xanderwess said:
Hey, you all remember that Voyager episode where they go back to get that time ship away from Ed Begley Jr? Well, if you've ever seen the footage of Voyager flying over LA on that news report, its pretty much the BSG looking SPX we just saw in the youtube vid. Looked cool as hell to, so don't be too quick to dismiss. Voyager and Enterprise 1701 are about the same size......and it looked like it was hauling ass over the city.

...and not a single sonic boom or earth-shattering shockwave. Radioactive death on a massive scale from the impulse drive? Dream on...

 

[Michael Chris]

Is the impulse drive even supposed to emit radiation?

 

[David cgc]

Professor Moriarty said:
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?

That's not precisely how it works. The idea isn't so much that the special effects are what was filmed when some guy in the S.S. Expendable happened to be looking out the window with his video camera when the action was going on. It's more like, if they could actually orchestrate a real space battle, and sent the same camera crew they have on the sets out to film it. There are enough shots that clearly don't come from any actual in-story ship to put down the other interpretation.

 

[Kegek]

David cgc said:
It's more like, if they could actually orchestrate a real space battle, and sent the same camera crew they have on the sets out to film it. There are enough shots that clearly don't come from any actual in-story ship to put down the other interpretation.

That's basically my problem with it. Faux documentary style without narrative justification because people have associated documentary style with realism. I don't, I associate it with documentaries.

 

[Rosie]

I am actually really excited about the new film and the recasting, i think will be a success.

Karl Urban is a top notch actor! He's great and i think with the right direction he'll do a good Bones.

One thing for sure is that Simon Pegg is himself a big sci fi fan, i think he'll make every effort to play Scotty as faithfully as possible.

The only one i'm wary of until i see him in action is the guy playing Spock, he looks the part and e's good in heros _but_ recasting someone based strongly on their looks is potentially a bad idea - look at the recent superman film, he looked great but wasnt necessarily the best for the character.

 

[Stardate]

Kegek Kringle said:

Vektor said:
I do believe Abrams' Star Trek needs to break the cinematographic mold that both big and small screen Trek has been stuck in since the late 80s. If you;re going to spend $150 million to put something on a 40' screen then it damn well needs to look like it wasn't made for television. Say what you will about the Star Wars prequels in terms of poor storytelling and bad acting but they looked spectacular, expansive and larger-than-life. That's something that Star Trek has never really attempted to do and it's high-time.

Well, I'd argue it did do that with TMP... but that was 1979. Nothing since then. I certainly do hope that this film has a striking cinematic style, because this will be the first Star Trek movie with no direct link to one of the TV shows, plus it has a big budget.

I agree 99%. :thumbsup:

 

[Maestro]

middyseafort said:

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.

But, but, but, it was because of Starship Troopers that we got to see the lovely breasts of the actress who would play Commander Donatra in Star Trek: Nemesis!

 

[Stardate]

to add to my post i have finally been promoted to Captain :thumbsup: .

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

"Starship Troopers" was a lot of fun. The satire was a little heavy-handed, but its heart was in the right place.

 

[ancient]

ShakeyCam does not really add any realism, if anything it glaringly reminds me that I'm watching filmed footage rather than allowing me to be in the action when it's used heavily.

Like anything else, it has it's place. A scene or two can be enhanced by it. But using it in every single scene is annoyingly one-note. A good director can handle more than one 'device'. For example, a Smash-Zoom can enhance a scene, but it shouldn't go in every scene or it'll get really annoying. As a viewer you'll start to fixate on the style and wonder wtf was wrong with the editor.

I think Abrams knows what he's doing and won't beat us with a shakeycam in every scene.

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

snowman1701 said:
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

Yeah, filming it that way really seems to diminish the size, scale, & weight of the Enterprise.

 

[Gepard]

Starship Polaris said:
"Starship Troopers" was a lot of fun. The satire was a little heavy-handed, but its heart was in the right place.

You're dead to me.

Oh, and BSG shakycam FTW. (But not in Trek XI. )

 

[3D Master]

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.

He created the hand-held camera technique to create a hand-held camera feel as it was supposed to be filmed by a camera man news maker as well mimic the feel of looking from the surface of the planet to a ship. ST showed totally traditional space shots for the actual space shots. The idiot who first used this technique to show a ship in space from the surface of a planet as a way to looking at a ship in space from space, has a lot to answer for.


"No."

 

[DumbDumb2007]

Star trek 11 will be filmed and be like the epic Pearl Harbor which came out in 2002. It will also have most likely the hand held jerky camera angles of the new BSG series which is going into it's last year. That show started out ok but got too depressing.
If that show only has a little over half the next season filmed then they should just push the remainder of eps into a whole different season like the way the Sopranos ended. Just that BSG should go out with a Bang and not a whimper.

 

[JuanBolio]

Michael Chris said:
Is the impulse drive even supposed to emit radiation?

If it didn't, it would probably melt. Then again, Trek has never been big on scientific realism.

 

[Patrickivan]

I never understood the shakey cam thing- it worked for Saving Private Ryan because it reflected the technology of the time of a person holding a camera...

That being said- it doesn't reflect the reality of humans or todays camera technology. Our eyes and brains have a built in steady cam. If my world of vision bounced around in real life like on BSG, I'd be puking all the time. And our modern cameras were built with the intention of mimicking our vision.

It turns me off to watch a converation between two people on BSG and watching the camera slowly bob a little up and down- left and right. Yes, I know they're trying to go for the 1st person point of view thinkg were we don't look directly at one specific point, but they go over board. For any faster scenes, they seem to go nuts with the shaking. Again, our brains don't show the world like that. A little appropriate shake is okay, but they go over board.

I'd dump the whole antiquated shaking camera in everything unless there was context, like in Saving Private Ryan.

For the love of everything Treky, don't use it in any movie!!!