Sad quality of images from the studio today

[TrickyDickie]

This is from the studio in December of 2024:

This is from December of 1979:

As stills go, it was not the best to begin with because it's an awkward angle that makes the neck and the port support pylon appear to be merged.

But....why does the studio now offer an even lower quality version of an awkward image?

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

I kind of like the top one for some reason. It's like Christmas lights at night.

 

[TrickyDickie]

I kind of like the top one for some reason. It's like Christmas lights at night.

I'll take this instead:

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

There's something nostalgic about the soft glow of the other. Maybe it's just me.

 

[David cgc]

That's actually a pretty good question. I've actually seen a very nice digitization of that image, and the others from the same set. That particular one is flipped horizontally, but it's big claim to fame is probably that it was the reference photo used for the Enterprise on the TMP and TWOK posters.



My best guess for "why" is that a studio is a massive instituiton, that's gone through many technical and ownership changes, and with thousands of movies with dozens or hundreds of associated publicity stills, duplicates are inevitable, and no one's cared to reconcile them all. It might not even be practical, if there are ten different scans/prints of that photo in various archives and services, they all might've been licensed separately under different terms depending on when they were made, and it might not be easy to remove old ones from circulation or swap in top-grade scans, especially if you consider that they might have different creative choices or might be optimized for different uses. Like, that photo is available in versions with or without stars, or flipped or the right way around, or the extreme contrast might've been optimized for low-quality newspaper photos, and the people using it might not have the ability or inclination to make even those simple alterations by themselves.

 

[TrickyDickie]

It seems to be all wrapped up in the time-is-money situation, as so much is.

Hire more people to achieve better stewardship of material.

But that means more money.

But there is outcry about joblessness.

But....

And so it goes.

 

[Maurice]

Is that the studio or just some contractor they hired?

 

[Firebird]

This is from the studio in December of 2024:

This is from December of 1979:

As stills go, it was not the best to begin with because it's an awkward angle that makes the neck and the port support pylon appear to be merged.

But....why does the studio now offer an even lower quality version of an awkward image?

When you say "this is from the studio," what do you mean? From an official piece of promotional material? An article on the official Star Trek website? Where?

Hard to gauge anything without some sources to point to.

 

[TrickyDickie]

When you say "this is from the studio," what do you mean? From an official piece of promotional material? An article on the official Star Trek website? Where?

Hard to gauge anything without some sources to point to.

It's one of the images that the studio makes available today for promotional purposes.

Things are devolving into more and more chaos. Check this out:

Star Trek: The Motion Picture movie review (1979) | Roger Ebert

Epic science-fiction stories, with their cosmic themes and fast truths about the nature of mankind, somehow work best when the actors are unknown to us. The

www.rogerebert.com

The text is from a review of TMP that Roger Ebert did in 1979....but the accompanying image did not exist at that time and is completely inaccurate.

 

[Firebird]

It's one of the images that the studio makes available today for promotional purposes.

Things are devolving into more and more chaos. Check this out:

Star Trek: The Motion Picture movie review (1979) | Roger Ebert

Epic science-fiction stories, with their cosmic themes and fast truths about the nature of mankind, somehow work best when the actors are unknown to us. The

www.rogerebert.com

The text is from a review of TMP that Roger Ebert did in 1979....but the accompanying image did not exist at that time and is completely inaccurate.

Roger Ebert's website likely did not care where they pulled the image from. Notice that there is no attribution information, so they grabbed whatever free picture they could find without needing to license.

That's not on Paramount, that's on Roger Ebert.com.

 

[TrickyDickie]

Roger Ebert's website likely did not care where they pulled the image from. Notice that there is no attribution information, so they grabbed whatever free picture they could find without needing to license.

That's not on Paramount, that's on Roger Ebert.com.

I didn't say that was on Paramount. It was a bit of an expansion of the thread. elaborating on the idea that not only are the quality of images not what they should be today, but additionally that people are doing just that....grabbing any old images without the slightest bit of research. It makes for a lot of chaos.

Heck, all through my school and college days they always stressed the importance of accuracy. I guess that's not quite as much of a thing today.

 

[Danja]

This is from the studio in December of 2024:

J.J. Prise!

 

[TrickyDickie]

Maybe the sloppy stuff has been rampant forever. When I woke up this morning, I happened to remember this prototype laser-etched granite plaque that I owned over 20 years ago until I sold it. This is the best image that I still have. What a mess it was. It was done in Next Generation font, the image of Kirk with the phaser rifle was reversed so that the insignia on the shirt was on the wrong side and backwards, they had Nimoy's birthdate instead of Shatner's, and instead of Deneva (referencing Kirk's brother Sam) they had Deneb. Now, that is monumentally sloppy!