Visual Effects in Discovery

[PhotoBoy]

To be fair, I think it's pretty safe to say that most of Discovery's money went to their 3 Bridge sets. I mean that Ship of the dead Bridge is like a cathedral.

I’ve been impressed with how they’ve constructed this season’s plots and arcs to revisit and reuse those sets as much as possible, I thought it was strangely extravagant when the first episodes aired to have built the Shenzhou bridge for just two episodes. I thought maybe the Shenzhou bridge would be the new TNG Battle Bridge set and end up being endlessly redressed as the bridge for every Federation ship we see from now on.

TNG set builder #1: So what does the script need this week?
TNG set builder #2: They want a new science lab on the Enterprise.
TNG set builder #1: How will we find time to build that???
TNG set builder #2: Fuck it, let’s just redress the battle bridge.

 

[eschaton]

It's weird. The space shots in the first two DSC episodes were pretty good. Not perfect, but decent. After that, everything got weaker it seems. You hardly ever even see the Discovery moving. It's very static. That frustrates the piss outta me. I'm a ship geek and I like my starship porn.

As I've said elsewhere, I believe that Fuller blew far too much money on the first two episodes (which is part of why they fired him) and they've done everything on the series on an extreme budget since then to make up for the losses.

1. Very little location shooting, with most of the stories taking place on already made stage sets (Discovery, Shenzhou, Klingon ships, etc).
2. Relatively few guest actors outside of the main crew.
3. Minimal extras.
4. Uninpressive CGI.

I expect the second season will be better on all of these measures, because they'll be able to spread the money more evenly across the whole season.

 

[Vger23]

As I've said elsewhere, I believe that Fuller blew far too much money on the first two episodes (which is part of why they fired him) and they've done everything on the series on an extreme budget since then to make up for the losses.

1. Very little location shooting, with most of the stories taking place on already made stage sets (Discovery, Shenzhou, Klingon ships, etc).
2. Relatively few guest actors outside of the main crew.
3. Minimal extras.
4. Uninpressive CGI.

I expect the second season will be better on all of these measures, because they'll be able to spread the money more evenly across the whole season.

I think your theory is dead-nuts on. Makes perfect sense.

 

[Mudd]

No. Every episode I saw looked extravagantly expensive, and I gave up before they got to the "planet" shows. Money and resources are not the problem at all.

 

[BillJ]

No. Every episode I saw looked extravagantly expensive, and I gave up before they got to the "planet" shows. Money and resources are not the problem at all.

CBS must have interfered in this show, a lot. It feels like the first time these people actually made a TV show, which we all know isn't true. But, there is a novice feel to it all.

 

[Tuskin38]

That looks good. I pretty sure the Star Destroyers in Rogue One were all CGI and they looked very realistic. So why does the CGI in Discovery look so bad in comparison? This show has one of the biggest budgets of any show ever made. I expect better.

Rogue One probably had a bigger budget.

They 3D scanned all the parts that made up the original Star Destroyer studio models in the OT, they even went out and bought the WW2 model kits that ILM used in the 70s to make the greeble.

Whenever the Discovery uses the spore drive it looks really cheap and silly when it spins. Plus how are the crew now thrown across the room the instant it happens? Cool idea but the execution isn't that good.

It's just a visual distortion, the ship isn't actually spinning. You can see a couple spore jumps from inside the bridge and looking out the view screen, all the crew sees is the flash.

 

[Mudd]

CBS must have interfered in this show, a lot. It feels like the first time these people actually made a TV show, which we all know isn't true. But, there is a novice feel to it all.

It could conceivably improve next year. It looks like there was a lot of late, improvised rewriting to studio edict afher CBS canned Fuller.

 

[CorporalClegg]

CBS must have interfered in this show, a lot. It feels like the first time these people actually made a TV show, which we all know isn't true. But, there is a novice feel to it all.

There definitely seems to be a lot of waste, which goes to the point I've made several times CBS really needs to bring in someone more experienced at the top.

Because for me it goes beyond just the VFX - it's the whole art department.

People Jab The Crown for its monstrous budget. But you can go through it frame by frame and easily account for every single one of those $130m.

On the other hand, it's been suggested Disco costs ~$8m an episode, and I can't, for the life of me, figure out where half of it goes.

 

[Gepard]

Compare the Klingon Torchbearer suit, with its intricate 3D printed details, multilayered finish, and thirty seconds of screen time, with the MU Starfleet uniform armor, which features prominently and has filigree that looks like it was cut by hand out of cardboard and glued onto a very simple base form. Somebody dropped a ball somewhere.

 

[Tuskin38]

Didn't the material the Starfleet uniforms made from, come from Switzerland?

 

[Ronald Held]

What is the general reputation of the VFX company doing DSC?

 

[johnjm22]

Robert Meyer Burnett said some of the episodes were costing up to 12M.

I thought the cheapness of the last episode really stood out. Specifically on Georgiou's ship. The sets seemed very limited. This is on top of the fact that the episode was only 37 minutes long.

Sometimes having a big budget is counterproductive. It can lead to excess, waste, losing focus on what matters, and biting off more than you can chew.

 

[Galaxy]

I’ve been impressed with how they’ve constructed this season’s plots and arcs to revisit and reuse those sets as much as possible...

Actually, I was surprised how they did not do that. The Ship of the Dead bridge set must be most likely the most elaborate set on Star Trek this side of the DS9 Promenade, and yet it featured in, what 3, 4 episodes? I would have thought it would be featured in almost every Episode of the 1 season.

What is the general reputation of the VFX company doing DSC?

Pixomondo is generally regarded as one of the best addresses in the business. They won an Emmy for Game of Thrones, and an Oscar for Hugo. Lately they did effects for the some of the Marvel films, Wonder Woman etc.

 

[Galaxy]

As I've said elsewhere, I believe that Fuller blew far too much money on the first two episodes (which is part of why they fired him) and they've done everything on the series on an extreme budget since then to make up for the losses.

Besides stuff like the Torchbearer suit, and the sets, shooting in Jordan must have cost them a fortune. Ironically those desert scenes did not really turn out that impressive.

 

[shapeshifter]

I don't get why they just don't make it look like this.

It's too dark. All I can see is the background, partial silhouette of the EE with faint bussard and thin crescent of the primary hulls forward section.

 

[David cgc]

Pixomondo is generally regarded as one of the best addresses in the business. They won an Emmy for Game of Thrones, and an Oscar for Hugo. Lately they did effects for the some of the Marvel films, Wonder Woman etc.

Of course, they came in later than expected, after the attempt to create an in-house VFX team fell through somehow. The whole situation, and the output, makes it seem to me that there are a lot of conflicting visions and orders coming down. "Make it bright and colorful, but also stark and realistic. Evoke the old show, but look totally stylish and modern."

 

[jaime]

It's cheating to use the HD recomposite as an example of TNG's effects. I'm sure if I redid that shot of Discovery using the same model in twenty years (or, um, tonight), I could make it look ten times better. But, then, someone behind the scenes really seems to love this candy-colored Guardians of the Galaxy look.

Correct me if I am wrong, but the TNG Re masters didn’t redo these things, just rescanned the original negatives? So that’s the exact same shot as it was, just rescanned for HD.
Redoing the DSC shots would take more work, and they are theoretically already rendered at the same HD as the TNG remaster.
So I would say it’s a fair comparison, and those details on the D are on the model, and the work was done years ago...no new work done, just rescan the neg and recomposite with the other elements? No trickery involved (different for shots that were cg or had elements lost originally, and different to the TOS remaster.)
Basically, aside from Rez, there’s no difference in the presentation (which is why the star field in Saturn on the opening credits is now really really noticeable.

 

[Galaxy]

It's too dark. All I can see is the background, partial silhouette of the EE with faint bussard and thin crescent of the primary hulls forward section.

It is not quite as dark in the actual movie: (Skip to 1:50)

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That scene is actually a good example. The background looks pretty bad, and that "Fog" is just annoying, however the Enterprise-E swinging around like that with the music is just gorgeous. Discovery would have had the ship stationary for 1, 2 seconds and then cut.

 

[Tuskin38]

Correct me if I am wrong, but the TNG Re masters didn’t redo these things, just rescanned the original negatives? So that’s the exact same shot as it was, just rescanned for HD.

You are correct for most of the shots in TNG-R

 

[Galaxy]

Correct me if I am wrong, but the TNG Re masters didn’t redo these things, just rescanned the original negatives? So that’s the exact same shot as it was, just rescanned for HD.

All of the special effects shots (Phasers, shields etc) had to be redone, as they were created on VHS tapes for the show. As far as I am aware most of the shots of the physical models were reused (scanned). Tobias Richter supplied a (absolutely gorgeous) cgi model of the Enterprise-D which was used where the original footage was missing or to degraded.