Odd Choices in TOS-R cgi fx

[Maurice]

It was possible to move around on a matte shot prior to things like ACES by doing an optical blow-up when printing the matte shot to film and doing a simple move across the image, much like how images were slid around in pan and scan.

I have a lot of respect for Mike Okuda, but I think he was out of his element being put in charge of the CBS Digital VFX. Given the scope of the project, it really required someone with a background that included a firm understanding of the five C's of Cinematography (Camera Angles, Continuity, Cutting, Close-ups, and Composition), an eye on how to make the new shots feel like they belong in the show (in terms of color, shadows and so forth) and VFX. A John Dykstra clone, for example.

If I was given that job my first priority would be to duplicate all of the most common stock shots of the Enterprise so that you'd have the bulk of the series VFX work done right at the top, so if it happened that time and budget didn't allow a new shot to be created you'd always have the equivalent of the original as a fallback.

 

[Kinggodzillak]

In terms of general nit-picks about TOS-R, my biggie is where we occasionally got a cross-fade that altered the original live-action material.

In the case of "Spock's Brain," the shifted dissolve was because the original episode also dissolved into a VFX shot. If the new dissolve hadn't been shifted, the original dissolve would have been visible even as the new dissolve occurred, creating an overlap of three shots. If the raw footage still existed, the TOS-R crew might have kept the dissolve in the exact same place. Ergo, the raw footage must be unavailable (or tracking it down was too much effort for the TOS-R project).

This is one of my problems with the CGI too, those earlier fades, largely because they then mess up the music cues. If you fade from a planet scene to the CGI Enterprise the 'look it's the Enterprise!' music you'd usually hear will always sound late.

Watched a few TOS episodes on blu-ray recently and I've gone back to the original effects. The CGI was nice at first, but it's not aging well and unfortunately many episodes that really need it don't look all that good at all.

 

[Indysolo]

If I was given that job my first priority would be to duplicate all of the most common stock shots of the Enterprise so that you'd have the bulk of the series VFX work done right at the top, so if it happened that time and budget didn't allow a new shot to be created you'd always have the equivalent of the original as a fallback.

That's all that needed to be done. I don't understand why the library shots were not precisely duplicated for TOS-R.

Compare what they did here to the slavish attitude they had on TNG-R.

Neil

 

[Mark 2000]

Okuda really did bring in the B team with the ship shots. The ship is too dark and has really cheap looking plating textures on it. All the color has been drained out of it. It's like they couldn't go and look at the actual color of the model. Same with the Klingon ship which is teal and purple, not the same dull, dark gray. The Tholians, as well, are scrubbed of the colors used on the models that reflected the colors of the interior sets.

The star fields were reduced to the kind of tiny dots you see in TNG instead of the multicolor globes from TOS. The camera movements are really terrible. In many cases the camera and ship and both moving in ways that are confusing or cancel eachother out, like when the ship stops in Tomorrow is Yesterday. The planets are turned into boring earth type worlds. Composition is thrown out the window. Ragging on Troyius somemore, what the hell is going on with this shot. Why is half the ship off the screen and the bottom half of the shot empty? Who approved this?

I agree they should have just worked hard on getting the original shots right and not screwed with the rest. The original model used in Balance of Terror, in retrospect, is one of the better looking episodes because they mostly did that. If they had really cared they would have done it with models on a motion rig. How much more could that possibly have cost than all hundreds of new FX shots they made?

 

[Melakon]

I bought used dvds of the first and second season with the "improved" effects, but my third season is the originals. I couldn't imagine how they could have improved on the Tholians' web, and wasn't impressed with the version of it in "In a Mirror, Darkly" anyway.

And after goofing around with computer animation myself for the last 15-20 years, even though my one man efforts are crude by comparison, I'm not always impressed by cgi. I know enough about how some effects can be achieved by compositing elements in an image, rather than rendering everything at once.

 

[drt]

Watched a few TOS episodes on blu-ray recently and I've gone back to the original effects. The CGI was nice at first, but it's not aging well and unfortunately many episodes that really need it don't look all that good at all.

I concur, I think they were designed for broadcast on the average TV in 2006, and are a bit cartoony on a modern big-screen HDTV.

Fortunately, the cleaned up/remastered original effects look pretty good on the blurays. I found the matte painting of Rigel in "The Cage" to be incredible.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

I found a lot of the choices questionable. But the overriding issue I have is that the new sequences look so contemporary and unlike anything that could have been done back in the day even under the best of conditions.

When I had a problem with what TOS-R, this was usually at the root of it. I hate the attitude of "Oh, we know better than the folks who originally did the show" that some of the new FX revealed.

This thread has reminded me of another problem that I had with the remastered versions -- all the planets looked WAY too Earthlike in the cloud covering and coloring. Give me the bright colors of the original series any day.

Although I admit I kinda wish they'd fixed the Constellation's registry number but that's just a minor thing, really.

The Constellation still had the exact same registry number that it had in the original series, NCC-1017. Changing that registry number wouldn't be "fixing" it, it would be throwing out what TOS did in favor of a different fan theory.

Again, the people who did the show originally knew what they were doing. They got things right a LOT more often than they didn't.

 

[The Old Mixer]

In "The Paradise Syndrome", they made the deflector beam from the obelisk orange, even though it's described as "blue flame" in the dialogue, which matched the original effect.

 

[Rat Boy]

In "The Paradise Syndrome", they made the deflector beam from the obelisk orange, even though it's described as "blue flame" in the dialogue, which matched the original effect.

That got changed to blue in the home video release.

 

[Ryan Thomas Riddle]

It was possible to move around on a matte shot prior to things like ACES by doing an optical blow-up when printing the matte shot to film and doing a simple move across the image, much like how images were slid around in pan and scan.

I have a lot of respect for Mike Okuda, but I think he was out of his element being put in charge of the CBS Digital VFX. Given the scope of the project, it really required someone with a background that included a firm understanding of the five C's of Cinematography (Camera Angles, Continuity, Cutting, Close-ups, and Composition), an eye on how to make the new shots feel like they belong in the show (in terms of color, shadows and so forth) and VFX. A John Dykstra clone, for example.

If I was given that job my first priority would be to duplicate all of the most common stock shots of the Enterprise so that you'd have the bulk of the series VFX work done right at the top, so if it happened that time and budget didn't allow a new shot to be created you'd always have the equivalent of the original as a fallback.

Okuda really did bring in the B team with the ship shots. The ship is too dark and has really cheap looking plating textures on it. All the color has been drained out of it. It's like they couldn't go and look at the actual color of the model. Same with the Klingon ship which is teal and purple, not the same dull, dark gray. The Tholians, as well, are scrubbed of the colors used on the models that reflected the colors of the interior sets.

The star fields were reduced to the kind of tiny dots you see in TNG instead of the multicolor globes from TOS. The camera movements are really terrible. In many cases the camera and ship and both moving in ways that are confusing or cancel eachother out, like when the ship stops in Tomorrow is Yesterday. The planets are turned into boring earth type worlds. Composition is thrown out the window. Ragging on Troyius somemore, what the hell is going on with this shot. Why is half the ship off the screen and the bottom half of the shot empty? Who approved this?

I agree they should have just worked hard on getting the original shots right and not screwed with the rest. The original model used in Balance of Terror, in retrospect, is one of the better looking episodes because they mostly did that. If they had really cared they would have done it with models on a motion rig. How much more could that possibly have cost than all hundreds of new FX shots they made?

Yes the shots are too dark! My main problem is that the new FX didn't match the colorful live-action shots. It doesn't feel like it belongs to the same show.

 

[urbandefault]

I tend to avoid the TOS-R episodes.

The matte shots are much better, but I can't get on board with the CGI ship. It looks cartoony to me. I don't know what could have been done differently, but as far as I'm concerned the CGI Enterprise just can't hold a candle to the original studio model.

 

[The Old Mixer]

In "The Paradise Syndrome", they made the deflector beam from the obelisk orange, even though it's described as "blue flame" in the dialogue, which matched the original effect.

That got changed to blue in the home video release.

In that case: Yay!

(I'm happy with my old-school DVDs.)

 

[JonnyQuest037]

I can't get on board with the CGI ship. It looks cartoony to me. I don't know what could have been done differently, but as far as I'm concerned the CGI Enterprise just can't hold a candle to the original studio model.

Yeah. Models have weight to them and move accordingly. Too often CGI ships just zip around without any heft to them.

 

[Rat Boy]

As an aside, I don't notice much difference between standard def and high def TOS-R. TNG-R, though; the difference is very jarring. I can't even watch the old versions BBC America broadcasts because of how much better TNG-R looks.

 

[Metryq]

The new effects are absolutely spot-on.

Spot of dirt on the lens, more likely.

Given the scope of the project, it really required someone with a background that included a firm understanding of the five C's of Cinematography (Camera Angles, Continuity, Cutting, Close-ups, and Composition), an eye on how to make the new shots feel like they belong in the show (in terms of color, shadows and so forth) and VFX. A John Dykstra clone, for example.

Bingo.

A perfect example is the perihelion passage in "Tomorrow Is Yesterday," which looked flat and lifeless, like a pre-viz animatic. I've seen better graphics in videogames.

Compare the TOS-R effect to the sun-dive sequence in the feature LOST IN SPACE. That sun boils and growls. The audience can feel the waves of searing plasma as it ablates the hull of the Jupiter 2.

The Enterprise? Eh, not so much. I assume the TOS-R team was trying too hard not to overdo it, and came off as plastic and cartoony instead.

 

[Metryq]

Yeah. Models have weight to them and move accordingly. Too often CGI ships just zip around without any heft to them.

Don't blame the technology, blame the artists. I've seen miniature shots done poorly and CGI shots done well, and vice versa. (And sometimes one can blame the director who told the artists to produce the unsatisfactory shot.)

 

[Warped9]

In some fairness to the artists they only had so much time to get things done, but still...

Michael Okuda did say (in an interview) that it was a recurring "discussion" about how far to push the new f/X. Some wanted to go further while others (presumably including Okuda) wanted to rein it in. You can imagine you can't win every argument.

I don't know how they went about this, but one individual with an overriding vision overseeing for the whole project could have helped. But then that might have required more time as well for him/her yo oversee everything.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

In some fairness to the artists they only had so much time to get things done, but still...

Michael Okuda did say (in an interview) that it was a recurring "discussion" about how far to push the new f/X. Some wanted to go further while others (presumably including Okuda) wanted to rein it in. You can imagine you can't win every argument.

I don't know how they went about this, but one individual with an overriding vision overseeing for the whole project could have helped. But then that might have required more time as well for him/her yo oversee everything.

Maurice addressed the time limitation already, in the suggestion to begin by redoing the vintage stock footage. Simply starting by doing a beat-for-beat recreation of the original shots would have covered every episode with maximum efficiency.

Based on what you're relating from the interview, it sounds like it could have been a case of, "too many cooks spoil the broth."

 

[Ssosmcin]

For instance, DOOMSDAY MACHINE is my favorite of all TOS épisodes so any senseless alterations are going to jump out at me:

Yep, me too and I pretty much agree on all of your points.

(1) I may be wrong but I'm pretty sure Star Trek as a show never used any cross-dissolves in its editing, for the most part hard cuts. But here at 1:07 the remastering uses a cross-dissolve to go from a bridge shot to a space shot for no reason (don't they know a cross-dissolve is to be used to indicate a passage of time?)

That dissolve was always there, but a second or two later. The button "boop" is missing in the new sound mix, but it's on the (cough - not really - cough) original mono broadcast mix.

(3) At 25:35 we see Kirk's POV on the Constellation auxiliary room's viewer of the Enterprise firing phasers at the planet killer. But right after that we cut to a bridge shot as Matt Decker yells out ''Fire''. Weren't they just doing that in the previous shot? The new FX made the Decker shot redundant. What they should have done was simply a shot as the Enterprise too dangerously approaches the machine, then cut to Decker.

They also keep the screen malfunctioning too long. In the TOS-R print he says "what the devil's going on?" and we go back to the POV shot and the screen is still fritzing a bit more than then finally activates. In the original, he says the line and when we see the screen, it's fully activated. He actually saw the Enterprise approaching the PK, which was not yet firing phasers, so he really didn't know yet what was going on.

Also, I'm not fond of the fact that the Enterprise was already towing the Constellation when it was attacked at the start of act 2. When Decker and McCoy left for the Enterprise, Kirk was just preparing to have the Constellation taken in tow. He never had time to give the order. Spock went to Red Alert as soon as McCoy and Decker beamed up. And considering on Star Trek, people on the ship feel when there's a sudden lurch, nobody on the Connie reacted to being snapped away from the Enterprise when the tractor beam broke in TOS-R. Granted, in the original, it looks like Spock took off away from the Connie and deserted the boarding party, but he could have been moving away to draw the PK off. Either way, it seemed pretty clear that Spock moved the Enterprise away from the Constellation and there was no order to tractor it away with them.

 

[Indysolo]

That dissolve was always there, but a second or two later. The button "boop" is missing in the new sound mix, but it's on the (cough - not really - cough) original mono broadcast mix.

What makes you think it's not the original mono broadcast? The 5.1 mix on this episode uses the GNP album for the music, and that led to a wrong take creeping into the mix, but the mono track didn't use that take.

Neil