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Recreating the TOS look

lewisniven

Lieutenant Commander
Red Shirt
I've been doing some work recreating a convincing look for TOS footage, as if I had the ability to rescan in perfect quality, original film. I gave my Enterprise model a far more screen accurate repaint and here is the result. Rendered in Blender, post production in Davinci Resolve.

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Some effects tests I did too:
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Lewis.
 
Looks absolutely fantastic and very authentic, down to the last detail! Bravo! I guess the only way to make it look even more real would be to add those black matte lines around the model. But other than that it’s super convincing to me. Love the film quality to added to the footage. And the model and its paint job are superb.
 
Those effects tests are amazing. It's what you'd imagine the original effects shots might have looked like if they'd had access to flawless photographic compositing tools.
 
Thanks for the kind words everyone, I'm glad you all like it! I've expanded it a bit in to recreating part of the title card sequence for Return Of The Archons. I'm reasonably happy with the overall grade/look now.

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Gorgeous. Did you do the planet procedurally or did you paint it? I guess I have to be a special kind of nerd because that's my favorite part. 😁
 
Finished(!) Sequence...

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Amazing.

I would love to see that "before and after" wipe that is in the thumbnail.

This quality of work just makes me angrier with TOS Remastered.

Almost 20 years later and not on a production schedule or budget.
 
This quality of work just makes me angrier with TOS Remastered.
In defence of the Remaster, it was done 20 years ago. That said, it has not aged well I agree, there's a strong argument to be made that it didn't look great even at the time. If would be nice if paramount could do a proper resto/remaster job on it, but being far more faithful to the source material.
 
In defence of the Remaster, it was done 20 years ago. That said, it has not aged well I agree, there's a strong argument to be made that it didn't look great even at the time. If would be nice if paramount could do a proper resto/remaster job on it, but being far more faithful to the source material.
It might even be ripe for a fan-project. They didn't have any extra footage that wasn't in the final episodes (hence a lot of abrupt scene-transitions where they had to have new cross-fades end before the old ones started), so anyone with the blu-rays has the same foundation. And space-stuff is relatively straightforward, the TOS-R shots that required more custom work like the matte-paintings, scene extensions, and integrations like the new clock (I love that clock) tended to be much higher quality, so you can leave those in place.

Especially if one restrained themselves, doing no or minimal embellishment and not making up new shots, it seems very doable (only sixty-some shots of the Enterprise or sister-ships, plus a small number of ships-of-the-week). It's scope-creep, trying to make the shots more cinematic or bespoke, that makes it impractical as a hobby project.
 
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It might even be ripe for a fan-project. They didn't have any extra footage that wasn't in the final episodes (hence a lot of abrupt scene-transitions where they had to have new cross-fades end before the old ones started), so anyone with the blu-rays has the same foundation. And space-stuff is relatively straightforward, the TOS-R shots that required more custom work like the matte-paintings, scene extensions, and integrations like the new clock (I love that clock) tended to be much higher quality, so you can leave those in place.

Especially if one restrained themselves, doing no or minimal embellishment and not making up new shots, it seems very doable (only sixty-some shots of the Enterprise or sister-ships, plus a small number of ships-of-the-week). It's scope-creep, trying to make the shots more cinematic or bespoke, that makes it impractical as a hobby project.
One of the things that (in my opinion) doesnt really work with TOS-R is the fact that they re-invented/re-dreicted a lot of the shots. They took the same approach to the CG that was taken with Enterprise, ie a cinematic look and big bombastic camera moves etc. This meant a lot of camera moves and shots that simply wouldnt have been possible with a real camera and a model, and that 'disjoin', if you will, makes them feel very out of place against the 60's live action footage.

Were I to re-master the show, I'd try and recrate the shots as faithfully as possible. The only things I'd be tempted to fix I think would be things like the stars not matching the movement of the ships (with CG we can just use the same camera in a starfield, like my opening shot above) and obviously janky ship movement, where the enterprise kind of skates across the screen. I thinnk it'd be really important for the feel to restrict the camera only to movements that could be make in real life. Ie moving along a track and panning/tilting. Otherwise it immediately looks 'wrong'.
 
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