Recreating the TOS look

[Artoo Atari]

Absolutely gorgeous. Well done indeed.

 

[Professor Moriarty]

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.

OK, fess up. You just used AI to clean up some of the original footage, right? RIGHT??!!

I hereby declare this to be the most accurate reproduction of the warp nacelle lighting effect that I have ever seen. Outstanding!

 

[Professor Moriarty]

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.

Scope creep, you say? I’m now on (checks calendar) year 24 of trying to do ONE episode. I’d definitely say that scope creep is something to be wary of!!

 

[David cgc]

Scope creep, you say? I’m now on (checks calendar) year 24 of trying to do ONE episode. I’d definitely say that scope creep is something to be wary of!!

Well, I wasn't only thinking of you...

 

[Kaelef]

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'.

That's the thing, though: your "reasonable fixes" are another fan's holy and sacrosanct aspects that should not be touched.

Overall, I think TOS-R did a good job of staying faithful to the original intent. There are places where they went too far, places where they didn't go far enough, and places where they just didn't do a great job. Everyone you ask is going to have different opinions about which particular scene falls in which category.

Keep in mind that the only notable recreation of visual effects prior to this was Lucas' *significant* tinkering with the original Star Wars trilogy. The CBS team said, "we're not going to do that - we're going to stay faithful to the original effects", and that was a huge sigh of relief at the time.

All that said, even at the time of release, I felt the effort wasn't as good as it should've/could've been. The quality varied significantly from one episode to the next, and there were questionable choices made here and there.

Still, it was a massive undertaking at the time, and I'm grateful the effort was made.

 

[publiusr]

Overall, I think TOS-R did a good job of staying faithful to the original intent.

All that said, even at the time of release, I felt the effort wasn't as good as it should've/could've been.

The X-Wing CGI of the Episode IV was worse. Fine for REBELS, but I’d like a re-re-master of that too.

I am a big believer in happy accidents. I often find the supports of 3D prints more visually interesting than what is printed.

One ship that I thought was computer-generated wasn’t—Auriga from ALIEN: RESURRECTION.

There, light was reflected off black plastic bags and onto the model—something that could have happened in the 1960’s had it occurred to anyone.

The Doomsday Machine could have looked murky that way—the best CGI of that concept came from someone trying to do a wormhole/Tipler Cylinder deal

Wormhole Manipulation by Johnnyred777 on DeviantArt

www.deviantart.com

…happy accidents

 

[The Lensman]

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.

I didn't mind the new shots of the Enterprise because even as a kid I was annoyed by the limited amount of shots of the ship. My biggest issues were aesthetics, lighting, ship movement, etc. Darren Dochterman tried to get the gig for remastering and his work was far superior to CBS's in-house CGI folks. He did the work on the directors cut of TMP and he made sure everything down lighting and film grain matched what was done in '79 and it's pretty seamless.

If the effects were done as wonderfully as they are here, I'd be up for a re-remastering keeping most of the scene changes. I would keep the orbit shots the same as they were originally because in the remaster they merged the two classic orbit shots (Enterprise approaching camera and going away from camera) and to make it work the Enterprise is off center in the transitional shot.

Amazing work lewisniven! Thanks for sharing!