TNG-R - Replaceing Mattes

[Christopher]

Technically the mattes are high enough resolution too.

That's not true. The bluescreen compositing they used required using second- or third- or later-generation images that were degraded in quality from the original film elements. (When you rephotograph a photograph, the graininess increases, and optical compositing often required rephotographing the same film elements multiple times.) Also the matte lines become more evident in high-definition.

If they still had the original, individual film elements that were shot for TOS, they could've recomposited them in high definition, since the original film elements would be in full, undegraded resolution. But my understanding is that those weren't preserved, which is why they had to replace the whole shots with CGI.

I don't know if they did tabletop miniatures in TOS-R...

If you mean in the original TOS, no, I don't think there were any tabletop miniatures. Cityscapes were all either Albert Whitlock matte paintings or dioramas/backdrops in the background of live sets.

 

[22 Stars]

I think a tweak here or there to some shots would be nice. And I agree, new CGI city scapes where Angel One was used over and over would be a good thing.

As TOS-R did very well, adding even one nice new CG establishing shot with our characters inserted, can open up otherwise obviously stage-bound episodes. Spock's Brain, Amok Time and Way to Eden come to mind.

 

[Tom]

CBS is going to keep this project as cheap as possible, I would expect very little to actually change, unless they need to.

 

[Dukhat]

Even if they do hold up in HD, I say replace them anyway. It makes no sense to have the exact same cityscape represent all those completely different worlds. They only did it back then because they HAD to. This is a perfect example of something they should change simply because they can.

Just because they can do it doesn't mean that they're going to. Most likely they're going to do the bare minimum required to make it HD to make the most on their returns. That means that if the five million times that Angel One appears works just fine every time with an HD transfer, then that's what they're going with.

 

[JJohnson]

We've all seen that one matte shot that showed up as a cityscape for like six or seven different alien worlds (Angel One was its first appearance, AFAIK). Don't tell me they shouldn't at least try to replace something like THAT?

That specifically is a case in which I would be in favor of changing it. If there's the same random alien ship for 10 different races, replace that too, while we're at it.

 

[JJohnson]

I think a tweak here or there to some shots would be nice. And I agree, new CGI city scapes where Angel One was used over and over would be a good thing.

As TOS-R did very well, adding even one nice new CG establishing shot with our characters inserted, can open up otherwise obviously stage-bound episodes. Spock's Brain, Amok Time and Way to Eden come to mind.

I think Catspaw did this as well. In Best of Both Worlds, part 1, I would replace the city matte painting there, to cite one example. The DVD of it is a very obvious painting. The CG there could only help.

 

[RAMA]

Don't get your hopes up guys, most of these planetary scenes are a lot more complex than you realize to re-edit into. I wouldn't even expect too many skies to be be redone, much planetscapes.

RAMA

 

[StalwartUK]

Yeah I doubt there will be any drastic changes. As long as the original mattes have been cleaned up and restored to their full original glory I'll be happy.

 

[Jon1701]

Cost & volume will be a huge factor.

Don't forget there will be seven seasons of episodes to do. Maybe they will fix the odd effects shot, but I don't think they will have the money or the time to do anything the OP is suggesting.

Certain things, I'm convinced, will look worse. Don't forget - this thing was not supposed to be viewed in HD. The lack of clarity forgave a lot.

I'm not looking forward to the ready room scenes. I fear they are going to look fake as hell.

 

[Maxwell Everett]

I'm not looking forward to the ready room scenes. I fear they are going to look fake as hell.

I assume you're worried about the starfields? Picard's Ready Room was really no different than any other set with a window, such as the Observation Lounge or Ten Forward. If the Enterprise was at warp they'd use bluescreen and comp in streaking stars. Or, by season two, if they were meant to be in orbit they had a practical moving starfield which was fairly large and did the job just fine. The "stars" were often seen as little out-of-focus bokeh discs or polygons anyway, depending on the f-stop or focal length of the lens used.

http://tng.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/s3/3x18/allegiance225.jpg
http://tng.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/s3/3x16/theoffspring234.jpg
http://tng.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/s3/3x15/yent311.jpg

 

[AviTrek]

Don't get your hopes up guys, most of these planetary scenes are a lot more complex than you realize to re-edit into. I wouldn't even expect too many skies to be be redone, much planetscapes.

RAMA

Rama, do you think the planet shots in orbit will be redone?

 

[Christopher]

Rama, do you think the planet shots in orbit will be redone?

Oh, I wish they would be. A lot of the planets in early TNG were very strange-looking. But if they were created as film elements, as miniatures or matte paintings, they probably wouldn't be replaced. The press release did say the FX would be recomposited rather than redone, so only the elements created on video would be likely to get replaced by newly created material. And the point was well-made earlier about the budget concerns.

 

[Brikar99]

Rama, do you think the planet shots in orbit will be redone?

Oh, I wish they would be. A lot of the planets in early TNG were very strange-looking. But if they were created as film elements, as miniatures or matte paintings, they probably wouldn't be replaced. The press release did say the FX would be recomposited rather than redone, so only the elements created on video would be likely to get replaced by newly created material. And the point was well-made earlier about the budget concerns.

A lot of them looked like low-resolution computer generated graphics, but I have no idea how they were made. A lot of the planets in the later episodes were made by stitching together satellite photos and digital paintings if I recall correctly. I feel like that technique would look pretty good composited against the Enterprise-D model.

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

Half-hearted upgrades to HD make me more than a little worried.

I got 4 of the Roger Corman classics on blu-ray and all of them (especially Galaxy Of Terror) looked quite grainy.

Mind you, they had only just come available and some of them hadn't ever been on DVD, so it was still great to have them.

But TNG has been out a long time and if they expect to do a half-assed job "on the cheap" and sell them on blu-ray, I think they're gonna be disappointed.

 

[Timo47]

Rama, do you think the planet shots in orbit will be redone?

Oh, I wish they would be. A lot of the planets in early TNG were very strange-looking. But if they were created as film elements, as miniatures or matte paintings, they probably wouldn't be replaced. The press release did say the FX would be recomposited rather than redone, so only the elements created on video would be likely to get replaced by newly created material. And the point was well-made earlier about the budget concerns.

The planets were created in the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantel_Mirage.
From Cinefex #37: "The Mirage can take a flat raster image and manipulate it into a preprogammed shape. In the case of a planet of course it would be a sphere. To create texture on that sphere, Dan Curry and Rob Legato would generally find an organic texture that actually exists - a rock formation or mudslide, for instance - and photograph it as a 35mm slide. From there it would be transferred to tape and used as a wraparound input source for the planet."

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Rama, do you think the planet shots in orbit will be redone?

Oh, I wish they would be. A lot of the planets in early TNG were very strange-looking. But if they were created as film elements, as miniatures or matte paintings, they probably wouldn't be replaced. The press release did say the FX would be recomposited rather than redone, so only the elements created on video would be likely to get replaced by newly created material. And the point was well-made earlier about the budget concerns.

The planets were created in the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantel_Mirage.
From Cinefex #37: "The Mirage can take a flat raster image and manipulate it into a preprogammed shape. In the case of a planet of course it would be a sphere. To create texture on that sphere, Dan Curry and Rob Legato would generally find an organic texture that actually exists - a rock formation or mudslide, for instance - and photograph it as a 35mm slide. From there it would be transferred to tape and used as a wraparound input source for the planet."

From that evidence, it does sound as though the planet shots might be easily replaceable when recomposed with the model footage. It's quite easy to produce a galaxy worth of planet images by tweaking the inputs to a fractal-based generator program.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

I was very underwhelmed, particularly in the earlier seasons, with mattes such as the establishing shot of the Home Soil structure, http://tng.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/s1/1x17/homesoil021.jpg (I assumed first run this was like a "matte painting" anyway).

 

[Christopher]

The planets were created in the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantel_Mirage.
From Cinefex #37: "The Mirage can take a flat raster image and manipulate it into a preprogammed shape. In the case of a planet of course it would be a sphere. To create texture on that sphere, Dan Curry and Rob Legato would generally find an organic texture that actually exists - a rock formation or mudslide, for instance - and photograph it as a 35mm slide. From there it would be transferred to tape and used as a wraparound input source for the planet."

Okay, so that would mean the planets are video elements with intrinsically low resolution, so they'd need to be replaced for HD. Hopefully with something more believably planet-like, as they did with TOS-R.

 

[NewHorizon]

But TNG has been out a long time and if they expect to do a half-assed job "on the cheap" and sell them on blu-ray, I think they're gonna be disappointed.

I don't see anything half assed about what they're doing. If all of the original passes filmed for the ships exist in 35mm, then it only makes sense to rescan them in HD, just like the live action footage and only use CGI where necessary (phaser shots...or other visual effects that were done on video during the original run). People seem to think that converting a space show like TNG to HD automatically means redoing all of the exterior ship shots...it doesn't. The only reason they were forced to do it for TOS is because the original 35mm filmed ship elements were tossed in the garbage. For TNG, they were carefully stored in a climate controlled warehouse for the last 20 years.

If it so happens that they absolutely need to redo some shots in CGI due to film being damaged or lost, then so be it, but for goodness sake...when the original film stock exists, and can be rescanned, upgraded, recomposited and further tweaked, why recreate the entire library of SFX from scratch? From an artistic and financial point of view, it just doesn't make any sense.

 

[Maxwell Everett]

The planets were created in the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantel_Mirage.
From Cinefex #37: "The Mirage can take a flat raster image and manipulate it into a preprogammed shape. In the case of a planet of course it would be a sphere. To create texture on that sphere, Dan Curry and Rob Legato would generally find an organic texture that actually exists - a rock formation or mudslide, for instance - and photograph it as a 35mm slide. From there it would be transferred to tape and used as a wraparound input source for the planet."

Okay, so that would mean the planets are video elements with intrinsically low resolution, so they'd need to be replaced for HD. Hopefully with something more believably planet-like, as they did with TOS-R.

Or they could scan the original 35mm slides (if they were also archived) at say 8k (40 megapixels or so) and wrap them around a sphere again, this time in Lightwave or Maya and render at 2k.