TMP-DE fully restored in 4K…it’s about time!

[Jules / OTOY]

Thank you for that. I don't know if you're allowed to answer this, but is there an edict to show as little unaltered Spock as possible? Even that shot is only a quarter of his face and quite low quality. (Again, not speaking in a negative way, and certainly not demanding anything...just honestly curious.)

Here are two other raw BTS photos of the prosthetics work (at about 90% done) on Lawrence’s face in the make up chair - this is before final physical makeup has been applied and also without any of the live digital shaders captured and applied in real time during filming. Also, added a note to your ping about the inner mouth, where we modeled both TOS and TMP teeth as options to allow us to account for non-trivial changes between TOS and TMP (not sure what in universe explanation is, but IRL it’s due to LN having major dental work done right before filming).

https://twitter.com/julesurbach/status/1569702143858458626

 

[Tosk]

Thanks, looks pretty great. Shout out to the hair people too, I neglected to mention their excellent work before.

 

[Jules / OTOY]

Thanks, looks pretty great. Shout out to the hair people too, I neglected to mention their excellent work before.

Thanks! I will pass it on - and for those that may not know, it is his real hair, the hair stylist got it looking just right, and no wig was needed in the end.

 

[The Rock]

One of the things I'm glad they fixed in the director's cut is the shot below. I wonder, why did the matte painting in the original version look like that? The middle part of the saucer is way higher than it should be. How did this matte painting ever get approved for use in the final movie?

 

[David cgc]

I think it was just a problem with trying to draw the perspective of a curved shape, and also having to match the hull-plate set piece at an angle that could never exist. Like, we see the shot they were going for at the end of the movie when the ship emerges from V'Ger's transformation, but the front of the saucer where the live-action segment is is at a different angle that would be pretty much impossible to shoot on a stage, unless they went on location or rented out a stadium or something and were actually able to set up the camera hundreds of feet away from the actors.

And if they matched the live-angle footage they did have perfectly, the ship would look almost unrecognizably distorted, since it's already a wide-angle shot, then zoomed out further, so the actual field of view would give a "fisheye" effect times ten.

 

[Kor]

There was some discussion about this earlier this year... in fact, page 8 of this very thread.

Therin offered the following:

Mike Matessino of the TMP-DE Team, currently recreating the DE in 4K for "Paramount+", recently told TMP Appreciation Society FB page:

"The problem is the angle of the shadows on the principals forced the bridge dome into one specific spot that made it impossible to do a painting that matched the small section of full-size hull that they were walking on -- as it was filmed -- without the entire orientation of the saucer looking off."

and...

"You want to know what Bob Wise disliked more than the misalignment of the painting and the lighting? It was the fact that it was shot from the starboard side. He literally said, 'I don't know what we were thinking' when we first looked at it and pointed out that it's a 'right-to-left' movie from the time the Enterprise is introduced. And if you look at the whole movie, he was absolutely correct. So this one crossing of the 180-degree line really bothered him and the change was as much motivated by that as anything else."

Kor

 

[Maurice]

So this one crossing of the 180-degree line really bothered him

Hilarious given they crossed the centerline in the CGI asteroid explosion. <forehead slap> Also V'ger changes direction because it's facing right to left when the Enterprise comes over it's nose, then comes into Earth orbit from left to right.

 

[David cgc]

The V'Ger one makes sense because V'Ger and the Enterprise were pointing in opposite directions, though they don't reset the line when the Enterprise hooks around to pace V'Ger when traveling through the cloud, nor do they re-reset it after the new shot explicitly showing the Enterprise turning around to be nose-to-nose with V'Ger right before the lightning probe sequence, so I guess the only part where the geography is wrong is the flyover (and the asteroid explosion). I'll add flopping those shots and explicating the first U-turn to the list for my fan-edit.

And now I'm giving myself a headache because I'm thinking about a layout like this a realizing that two ships passing each other in opposite directions can both be facing right-to-left, like in the first battle in TWOK.

 

[PhotoBoy]

Apologies if this has been asked and answered before, but what was the reason for making it a right-to-left movie? Was it something as simple just as wanting to give fans a look at the side of the Enterprise that was never visible on the show?

 

[Doug Otte]

Did they fix the compositing issues in the officers' lounge scene?

 

[Firebird]

Did they fix the compositing issues in the officers' lounge scene?

From what I can tell, none of the VFX issues from the initial streaming release have been retouched. So, we still have the wonky officer's lounge, and the TOS shuttle that stops moving before the matte shot cuts to the closer shot in the San Francisco tram station.

 

[Tosk]

...and the wedge of frozen motion on the left hand side of the screen during the wide shot of the air tram bay arrival.

 

[Maurice]

Apologies if this has been asked and answered before, but what was the reason for making it a right-to-left movie? Was it something as simple just as wanting to give fans a look at the side of the Enterprise that was never visible on the show?

It's what's called "directional continuity" and means that a person or object maintains a consistent screen direction while traveling from A to B, so the audience subconsciously can register if it's still traveling in the same direction.

So when you establish the Enterprise leaving drydock and Earth orbit pointed towards screen left as it heads out to intercept the intruder in all subsequent shots of that trip it is always aimed screen left (or towards the direct center of the screen, which is "camera neutral"). If you have multiple shots of the ship pointing left and then have a shot where it's pointing right the ship suddenly appears to be going in a different direction.

In Star Trek III Earth/Spacedock is towards screen left, Genesis is towards screen right.

In the original Star Wars the end of the trench is always screen left when we see the fighters in profile.

In movies it's a bit of convention that screen left is west and screen right east, as on a map.

 

[Maurice]

One of the things I'm glad they fixed in the director's cut is the shot below. I wonder, why did the matte painting in the original version look like that? The middle part of the saucer is way higher than it should be. How did this matte painting ever get approved for use in the final movie?

Directional continuity aside the problem is they shot that inside a stage which limited both how high they could put the camera and how far back. They really ought to have shot that outdoors at night with the camera much further back and with a longer lens that would have allowed for the correct perspective.

 

[JamesRye]

TMP selling well it seems:
https://www.mediaplaynews.com/research/top-20-sellers-for-week-ended-9-10-22/

 

[Haggis and tatties]

One of the things I'm glad they fixed in the director's cut is the shot below. I wonder, why did the matte painting in the original version look like that? The middle part of the saucer is way higher than it should be. How did this matte painting ever get approved for use in the final movie?

You may just have stumbled onto a future starship design feature, that in the event of say a battle or major ship impact, the ships saucer inceases in volume and thinkness as a extra layer of physical hull protection kicks in autonomously.

 

[Warped9]

Just received my disc copy. I’m looking forward to seeing it, particularly since I haven’t watched the film in quite some time.

 

[Kaelef]

From what I can tell, none of the VFX issues from the initial streaming release have been retouched. So, we still have the wonky officer's lounge, and the TOS shuttle that stops moving before the matte shot cuts to the closer shot in the San Francisco tram station.

I just watched the disc. I'm sure it's my imagination, but the lounge scene seems slightly less awful than I remember when I streamed it. It's still very much Not Good, though.

 

[David cgc]

...and the wedge of frozen motion on the left hand side of the screen during the wide shot of the air tram bay arrival.

...And the frozen film grain during the shot of the Orbital Office looking down the tanks from above. Though that might have some interesting implications for reverse-engineering the VFX...

It's what's called "directional continuity" and means that a person or object maintains a consistent screen direction while traveling from A to B, so the audience subconsciously can register if it's still traveling in the same direction.

I believe PhotoBoy was wondering why TMP was right-to-left specifically, as opposed to left-to-right, as TOS (almost) always was.

 

[Warped9]

Okay, finally watched this.

I’ll get the negatives out first. And those negatives are essentially nitpicks—things I criticized about the film from the beginning.
- Those single piece jumpsuits are absurdly awful and never should have happened. Yeah, I’d have preferred more colour to the uniforms, but except for the jumpsuit I can live with the rest.
- I have always disliked the refit transporter room (feels way too mechanical and less magical) and the film’s materializing effect. I still think the TOS version was much better and cooler. There are other set design elements I’m still not crazy about.
- I’m still not fond of the smaller corridors as they feel very claustrophobic.
- I miss the command chair being raised and more prominant.

Now the positive.

As others have said the improved sound mixing makes the film really come alive and gives everything more depth. The voices no longer sound flat and are now far more nuanced and natural sounding. Previously the dialogue often sounded hollow as if dubbed in, like in animation. I love hearing all the added background sounds that simply weren’t there before.

Visually we now have more colour and depth. The film no longer looks grey and sterile. It’s gorgeous to look at. The uniforms also look much better than before as you can see the texture and play of light and shadow on the fabric better. Maybe because I’m so familiar with the main things we’re supposed to see I noticed so much more going on in the background.

Finally they edited this with a deftly wielded scalpel. Now the film moves and I found nothing felt dragged out unnecessarily. It’s properly paced.

Succinctly, this is indeed what we should have gotten back in 1979. If this is what we’d gotten I think the film would have been judged less harshly.

Watching this felt like an extension of TOS. The characters feel more like themselves. This certainly stands in stark contrast to what Trek is like today, particularly from JJtrek onward.