New Redesigned Starship Enterprise Revealed ?

[trevanian]

Shaw said:
Remember that a lot of what I've said is in direct regards to the economic argument that you made earlier. And that I am absolutely not in the all-CG-all-the-time camp, I firmly believe that when artist have all of these tools at their disposal that excellent work can be done within reasonable time and budgetary constraints.

Further, I am a story first, effects second type of film goer. I saw Kong because I was curious, I bought Kong because the story was worth seeing more than once for me. What role did effects play in that? Well, for me this was the first time that the character of Kong was presented in a way that carried his part in the movie. And that was a direct result of the effects work. From a critical viewing of the film, yes, there were a number of scenes that seemed to be effects for effects sake and didn't add to the story... I would have cut nearly 10 minutes of effects laden shots if I were editing (and I generally fast forward through them now anyways).

trevanian said:
So I'm supposed to make my moviegoing choices based on animatics or temp shots? If the stuff they showed in tv ads for KONG wasn't actual final shots (and I cannot imagine why they would not be), what business do they have doing that kind of false advertising, especially given that you're not putting your best foot forward?

As for why they presented what they did in the trailer... quite simple, the trailer was made and released long before the movie was finished. They could have waited until the movie was done, but that would have meant that the trailer would have been out only a few weeks before the release of the film (I'm sure that you can understand why they didn't do that).

I am not arguing that you must see this movie, just pointing out why I happen to really like it.

I'm quite impressed by your accomplishments in so little time (kinda makes me wish I'd stayed partners with a guy who wanted to go in with me on buying an Amiga and the Toaster to do low-end stuff back in 93 or 94), but I assume this work was not done in the timecrunch turnaround of commercial production (which I HAVE to assume is part of the reason for low-end results from high-end companies.) I seem to remember that a lot of houses that were all digital (and this was between 95 and 2002 or so, so it is still a few years out of date) had daily requirements of at least 2 shots per animator, REGARDLESS of complexity, so that would mean seaQuest quality at best for a lot of the stuff out there.

The constraints I was under was that I was doing all this in my free time while working projects that I actually got paid for. Granted a majority of what I do for a living is consulting and any type of research that adds to my knowledge (and depth) for advising clients can always be considered a work related investment of my time... but I wasn't directly paid for that time and had to squeeze it in where I could.

But yeah, it does provide some flavor of what could have been done back in the early 90s... the software I used was from 1994, and a number of platforms (Apple, Amiga, NeXT and Be to name a few) were starting to make this type of stuff available to mere mortals. But back in 1994 I was far more interested in visualization of mathematics (and we used Apple, NeXT, SGI and Sun for our work) than photo-realistic effects. So other than seeing what was showing up in the movies, I wasn't paying that much attention to other applications of this type of stuff back then. And in all actuality I was in possession of software I used for a majority of what I did since 1998... but had never attempted to use it before last December.

From my perspective, seaQuest is an example of the same type of shortcomings that the early web faced... that is, the people who were technically able to do the work didn't necessarily have an eye for the work. It wasn't until people with an eye for detail started entering the field that CG effects started feeling photo-realistic. And even today I wouldn't go so far as to say that everyone who is technically able to do CG work has the artistic talent to produce quality CG work.

You're clearly well-informed and smart, so again I'd say look at my posts and the fact that I don't say only use one methodology over the other, just to use what works best for a particular shot. And my view is that a hero miniature, well-photographed, would be the best way to put over any new/old Enterprise in beauty views, though it is a foregone conclusion that they'd use CG for wide views and dynamic spin/flip stuff.

And as I pointed out earlier, I believe in keeping all options open. I have never believed in a one-size-fits-all approach to any solution, and love all aspects of the effects trade craft.

Then I don't think we've got a lot of unresolved issues here. Though I would like to know your opinion of the SOLARIS cg ship stuff by Cinesite (at 4K I think), which I thought was absolutely wonderful.

The one thing about KONG I still wonder about is the TV ads, which should have been done much later than the trailer. I mean, trek teaser ads have shots from other movies, but usually the stuff in ads when the movie is actually out is from the movie. Wouldn't it have to be to avoid lawsuits of misrepresentation?

 

[ST-One]

trevanian said:

ST-One said:

trevanian said:

ST-One said:

trevanian said:

ST-One said:
trevanian, watch 'The Return of the King' and then tell us again that a good CG-model cannot looks as convincing as a 'real' model.
I'm, of course talking, about the collapse of Barad-Dûr.

Take a look at the night explosion sequence in LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD first. And keep in mind that DIE HARD is supposed to be taking place in something approximating reality, whereas the two LOTR films I watched had very little that looks real to me even in the live-action scenes. More in the vein of WHAT DREAMS MAY COME, in fact.

Do you mean that shockingly cheap looking power plant explosion?
Then watch the destruction of Barad-Dûr!

No, the incredibly great-looking plant explosion.

Clearly your bias is showing; that model-shot was, sadly, so poorly executed that one could notice that is was just a badly filmed minature at the first frames.
Hell, that puppet at the end of 'Die Hard' was far more believable...

I believe you need to check some facts (look up the word facts first.) The falling puppet in a big 80s movie was ROBOCOP's Dick Jones, the falling guy at the end of DIE HARD was actor Alan Rickman, who actually did a fall against bluescreen, a real person, not a 'puppet.'

Clearly I wasn't talking about the close-up fall-shot (which looks incedibly good), but about the wide-shot from the police's perspective. And THAT was a puppet.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Shaw said:... use Forbidden Planet instead!

It had nearly all of the major elements of Trek and no one has attempted to revisit it in over 50 years. 10 years before the writers of Star Trek added the United Federation of Planets, the original opening of Forbidden Planet talked about a Federation and introduced us to a United Planets cruiser on it's way to investigate a missing survey expedition. The stories of both Forbidden Planet and The Cage have tons of parallels, and if anything (contrary to the wagontrain to the stars ideal) The Cage seemed like a proof of concept that a television series could bring Forbidden Planet quality stories to audiences.

There was a "Forbidden Planet" remake in development some years ago, but it never got into production. Syd Mead contributed designs, and the script was described as a "less psychologically naive" update. Now, that would be difficult - FP wasn't particularly naive, simply indirect and somewhat subtle.

It's the kind of proposal that these days sends Internet fanboys screaming as soon as it's announced, but it did sound intriguing. The names being bandied about for Morbius and Altaira were along the lines of Anthony Hopkins and Sharon Stone. The former would still be great, and the latter was pretty reasonable casting at the time.

 

[Kegek]

North Pole-aris said:
The names being bandied about for Morbius and Altaira were along the lines of Anthony Hopkins and Sharon Stone. The former would still be great, and the latter was pretty reasonable casting at the time.

We need someone a little more antebellum South for Altaira. ("Earth? I?") But Hopkins? Yeah, I can see him as Morbius. :thumbsup:

 

[trevanian]

ST-One said:

trevanian said:

ST-One said:

trevanian said:

ST-One said:

trevanian said:

ST-One said:
trevanian, watch 'The Return of the King' and then tell us again that a good CG-model cannot looks as convincing as a 'real' model.
I'm, of course talking, about the collapse of Barad-Dûr.

Take a look at the night explosion sequence in LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD first. And keep in mind that DIE HARD is supposed to be taking place in something approximating reality, whereas the two LOTR films I watched had very little that looks real to me even in the live-action scenes. More in the vein of WHAT DREAMS MAY COME, in fact.

Do you mean that shockingly cheap looking power plant explosion?
Then watch the destruction of Barad-Dûr!

No, the incredibly great-looking plant explosion.

Clearly your bias is showing; that model-shot was, sadly, so poorly executed that one could notice that is was just a badly filmed minature at the first frames.
Hell, that puppet at the end of 'Die Hard' was far more believable...

I believe you need to check some facts (look up the word facts first.) The falling puppet in a big 80s movie was ROBOCOP's Dick Jones, the falling guy at the end of DIE HARD was actor Alan Rickman, who actually did a fall against bluescreen, a real person, not a 'puppet.'

Clearly I wasn't talking about the close-up fall-shot (which looks incedibly good), but about the wide-shot from the police's perspective. And THAT was a puppet.

Usually when you see most of a fall except the impact, it is done with a stuntman, though for all I know they may have used a dummy. I remember the music cue for that wide shot better than the visual of the wide shot you're speaking of. Didn't have any credibility issue with it, that's for sure, and if you do, gee sorry, to me that's like bitching about the deck signs in st 5 instead of real problem issues.

 

[trevanian]

Kegek Kringle said:

North Pole-aris said:
The names being bandied about for Morbius and Altaira were along the lines of Anthony Hopkins and Sharon Stone. The former would still be great, and the latter was pretty reasonable casting at the time.

We need someone a little more antebellum South for Altaira. ("Earth? I?") But Hopkins? Yeah, I can see him as Morbius. :thumbsup:

I was backNforth on this one, as the updating would be what, making it a monster from the Jungian Archetype instead of from the Id?

But when I read Kershner was going to direct (I think from a Darabont script!!) I got intrigued, hoping it would be the EMPIRE Kersh who wanted to direct Ellison's version of I ROBOT, not the ROBOCOP2 Kersh. I didn't know about Mead, but since Cameron was going to xprod, that makes sense.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Kegek Kringle said:

North Pole-aris said:
The names being bandied about for Morbius and Altaira were along the lines of Anthony Hopkins and Sharon Stone. The former would still be great, and the latter was pretty reasonable casting at the time.

We need someone a little more antebellum South for Altaira. ("Earth? I?") But Hopkins? Yeah, I can see him as Morbius. :thumbsup:

Well, as of last week I'd nominate Amy Adams. Who, I wonder, would be J.J. Adams this time around? Nielsen was a likeable, competent but by no means riveting young actor in the original, so I guess you could pick just about any leading man.

Hell, get Matt Damon.

 

[RAMA]

WalkinMan said:

The Yellow Snow said:

WalkinMan said:
IMO, the best EFX on the TNG was ILM with First Contact...and the Enterprise (model) never looked better on that one. The versions in INS and NEM did not look as good.

You think so? Really? When the E-E did her first flyby in "Nemesis", I was blown away at how wonderfully detailed it was. A few weeks later, I went and watched "First Contact" and was blown away at how "under-detailed" it seemed. Not that one is necessary better than the other, but the difference was just jarring and I preferred the more-detailed NEM version.

To each their own.

That first flyby, particularly the rear 3/4 view, is IMO not the E-E's best angle. For some reason the shots just look overly colored and fake IMO. Later on, the shuttlebay area looked fake to me. But then again that was in a theatre long ago, it may also have been the poor quality of the film in general, and the silly plotting of the battle scenes that colored my impression.

However, I still think the angle shot for the reveal of the E-E at the beginning of FC had something special in it...perhaps it was the angle of the turn, the background colors, or the homage to TNG that made it special, majestic even.

IMO ILM is still the standard of EFX and they proved it at the time with FC with both CGI and models.

Details are good, and CGI can do it well enough--in fact more than--models, but there's more to it than just detailing. I think we saw it with the astounding detailing of human strands of hair in Final Fantasy: TSW, but the overall effect was still not realistic. I realize humans are a different category, but even with vessels, the detailing can be great but the artistic touch of creating natural lighting conditions can sometimes seem artificial. It's similar to the SW PT where there are highly detailed environments, done with ILM's computing power, yet even still seem rather fake, because they have gotten the mathematics down right but the 'spirit' or 'essence' is still lacking. There is a tendency to overdo it in recent CGI efforts, which makes for an artificial, overproduced quality. And sometimes it can also be very underwhelming, like the end shots of NEM.

Perhaps if INS and NEM had come up with more artistic situations to showcase their CGI shots it would have helped. The Briar Patch, the Scimitar, and the green background of NEM (plus the overall dark lighting employed) made it hard to showcase how nice the film's CGI could have been...

With the new ST film I hope they improve on the tradition set by the good TOS Trek films, which despite now being outdated with their older technology EFX, nonetheless include very artistically shot and well done EFX for the time. TMP is a bit sterile but impressive, TWoK is very servicable and believable, TSFS and TVH are ok, and UC is the zenith of the ILM/TOS era films as far as realism is concerned. Only exception is TFF which was a budget cut mistake (as well as bad film).

With the TNG films I think the EFX in GEN and FC were pretty good, great even, in INS and NEM they matched the standard for CGI at the time but were average artistically in service of average-below average story. I hope the next film will hew more closely towards the artistic traditions of the TOS films and the first 2 Trek films, while using the latest technology in a responsible manner.

ST:UC FX look by far the worst to me of the non-STV films. They're plain, badly lit and look like models in 60% of the shots. Nemesis and STTMP rank far above the other ST films in quantity and quality of FX shots in my opinion. Nemesis being the more spectacular because of the action quotient, but STTMP probably more subtle and awe inspiring.

RAMA

 

[starburst]

RAMA said:
ST:UC FX look by far the worst to me of the non-STV films. They're plain, badly lit and look like models in 60% of the shots.

Especially the one with the Enterprise flying past on the Klingon viewscreen

 

[Matt]

Eh...

#1. Star Trek II - The original nebula shots were incredibly well done, and gave you a sense of scale and danger.
#2. Star Trek TMP - Duh
#3. Star Trek First Contact - Well done summer blockbuster style effects.
#4. Star Trek 6 - The shots of the Enterprise are fantastic, EXCEPT like two shots that it totally looks like a model. One shot is when Chang is saying prick us do we not bleed, etc. and the other bad shot is when Excelsior arrives to the battle, the Enterprise on their screen looks bad. The rest is fantastic. That shot of spacedock when they're boarding the Enterprise? Wow.
#5. Star Trek Nemesis - Some shots of the Enterprise were nice, but the Scimitar looked like the project-of-the-week at some Trek 3D modeling BBS. That shot of the weapon deploying towards the end looks so polygonal and fake. Yuck. Plus the whole B-4 planetary sequence with the bleached film effects. YUCK!!! The bridge being ripped open is nice.

 

[ST-One]

trevanian said:
Usually when you see most of a fall except the impact, it is done with a stuntman, though for all I know they may have used a dummy. I remember the music cue for that wide shot better than the visual of the wide shot you're speaking of. Didn't have any credibility issue with it, that's for sure, and if you do, gee sorry, to me that's like bitching about the deck signs in st 5 instead of real problem issues.

The point was: The power-plant explosion (model-shot) in LFoDH looked cheap compared to the Barad-Dûr collapse (CG-sequence) in Return of the King.

 

[trevanian]

point NOT taken. Anything else?

 

[ST-One]

trevanian said:
point NOT taken. Anything else?

You didn't even watch the 3rd Lord of the Rings-movie (as you said or implied earlier) but act still act as if everything you say is just so.

How about you go and just watch the 'Lord of the Ring'-trilogy, the 'King Kong'-remake and/or 'Master and Commander'? All these films make great use of miniature-shots and/or CG-sequences and combinations of both methods.

But no, you just sit in front of you computer and ramble on and on about how bad CGI is compared to miniature-photography without even being willing to watch these modern/recents (award-winning) efforts in the area of VFX.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

ST-One said:

trevanian said:
point NOT taken. Anything else?

You didn't even watch the 3rd Lord of the Rings-movie (as you said or implied earlier) but act still act as if everything you say is just so.

That's the best you're going to get. It's been established now that trevanian doesn't keep up with or investigate what's going on with effects technology in current commercial films, doesn't even see the films in question, but insists that his opinions be treated as informed simply because they were a decade or two ago. This won't fly.

 

[trevanian]

ST-One said:

trevanian said:
point NOT taken. Anything else?

You didn't even watch the 3rd Lord of the Rings-movie (as you said or implied earlier) but act still act as if everything you say is just so.

How about you go and just watch the 'Lord of the Ring'-trilogy, the 'King Kong'-remake and/or 'Master and Commander'? All these films make great use of miniature-shots and/or CG-sequences and combinations of both methods.

But no, you just sit in front of you computer and ramble on and on about how bad CGI is compared to miniature-photography without even being willing to watch these modern/recents (award-winning) efforts in the area of VFX.

I just wrote a huge response that didn't post, so let me try to sum it up again quickly. There is plenty of stuff that mixes tech that works fine; PIRATES does it with the model ships and painting out outofscale droplets digitally, and with great cg character work. M&C, as you point out, is a great example.

The MATRIX sequels are proof of the reverse; having a photo based tech that works, and then throwing it out in favor of a digital look (for bullet time) that seems pathetic compared to the earlier film.

I didn't see KONG cuz I'm not into the story, the look on the ads just cemented my non-interest that much more concretely. I saw two LOTR flicks and just don't want to watch another one. If you'd said you didn't want to look at my example because you didn't want to see DIE HARD 4, I'd've tried to come up with another example, not try to get you to watch a movie you don't want to see.

But based on your response to that DIE HARD shot, I'm figuring we have less in common than the ship captains on TNG did at the beginning of DARMOK. It's like we aren't even speaking the same language.

 

[Dac]

Darmok, and Jalad... at Tanagra!

 

[Jon1701]

starburst said:

RAMA said:
ST:UC FX look by far the worst to me of the non-STV films. They're plain, badly lit and look like models in 60% of the shots.

Especially the one with the Enterprise flying past on the Klingon viewscreen

Funny, I've always thought that was a great shot.

 

[Akiraprise]

The shot always looked different to me, but I like it. The ship looked good. Almost like they hit the sharpen button.

 

[starburst]

The shot is nice and dramatic, its just always looked fake too me, dont know how to describe it

 

[trevanian]

It is frontlit, with a strong key light, which runs counter to the way ILM usually shoots the ship. Everybody always loves the shot at the end of TVH when the ship warps away, and that is a classic ILM gauzy shot -- there are a couple strong backlights all the way along, and the fill light is on the front. Most of the shots of the ship in dock in III are all gauzed up too, and people seem to love that vague look, even though it probably wouldn't be that fuzzy in a vaccuum.

I love the TUC shot being discussed and despised here, because the light really points up the damage, and is one of the few times that the key is harsh enough to suggest this is a ship that is probably only a hundred million miles out from the primary. My complaint is that the shot ran a lot longer and was cut way down in editorial (you can see a bit more of it in one trailer), from a shot that actually did a 180 around the ship, which was a bitch to do bluescreen cuz they had to swing that around while shooting the model.

They did shoot the keylight passes separate, against black (something they developed on BACK TO THE FUTURE II, though other folks had done it before), in order to get more of the shiny effect to register, and maybe that shininess is what makes it seem modelly to so many people. Either that or just seeing the ship boldly frontlit.