pittrek

The Blu-ray releases (and some DVD releases apparently) of Star Trek TOS feature the episodic teasers. For most of time I thought that these teasers are the original 60’s versions, but from what I’ve just learned, the spinning footage of the Enterprise which can be found at the beginning of each of the trailers from the first 2 seasons have been only added there when the show went into syndication. Apparently originally in the 60’s run each teaser started directly with a shot from the episode. In some episodes it’s possible to guess WHICH shot it was, e.g. during the “spinning Enterprise” shot of Court Martial you can hear the court bell ringing, which is I think a good giveaway of what footage we should be seeing, but in most cases it’s really hard to guess.

So the logical question is - are the ORIGINAL 60’s teasers available somewhere? If not officially, at least in some unofficial form? I have seen some scans from the 35mm prints in the 2016 book Star Trek: Lost Scenes, so I assume “somebody” should have the prints, at least I hope so.

Nice, thanks. Yes, I know that most of these techniques are a thing of the past, that’s one of the reasons I am interested in them. It’s all turning into lost art, so the least we can do is to preserve the knowledge about how things were done back in the analogue ages, hopefully it makes sense to anybody other than me.

Wonderful, thank you very much. I almost forgot I started this thread 6 years ago, and you decide to revive it on my birthday 😃 Great information, thank you. Could you maybe be go to more details with the optical printer part? I got information from several different websites, and they usually say mutually exclusive things. I assume different companies have used different processes or different processes were used in different eras?

Let’s examine a case I mentioned here 6 years ago, feel free to correct me (PLEASE do 😃 )
It’s 1976 and we want to film a shot in which we see our heroes in the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon watching outside, where they see space, the Death Star and the Tie Fighter.

So we need these elements

• shot of the Falcon interior, in front of a blue screen

• shot of the star field

• shot of the Death Star, assuming again in front of a blue screen

• shot of the Tie Fighter in front of a blue screen (I assume)

• correct?
  Now we need 2 mattes for every one of these elements, correct? How do we get them? I read something about rephotographing the bluescreen footage over a red filter onto a high contrast black and white film, and making negative copies of this again on high contrast black and white film, until we get 2 mattes - one has white parts where the original object was and black where the blue screen was, and the other is the negative of that, meaning it has black over the original object (e.g. ship) and everything else is white. Is that correct? Also should they be “white” or “transparent”? Or does white color become transparent during the compositing?

Wraith64 said:

pittrek said:

Because of huge changes in personal life a few years ago I was forced to basically abandon my online activities and all other fan activities, but I’m slowly getting back.I noticed a few people here claiming they have video taped these episodes, is anybody willing to put them somewhere?

Hi all… really late to the party. I recorded all of the SciFi Special Edition episodes with greater or lesser success on VHS. I may have missed bit here and there but I gave it my best effort at the time. I will GIVE anyone here those tapes in exchange for any digital yield they end up getting from them.I just don’t have the time or equipment to digitize them myself but I would love it some this material can be saved. I have not checked the tapes recently but I will before sending them out just to make sure they are still viable. Let me know if this is still a thing you are interested in.

Do you remember if they were the Shatner versions or the Nimoy versions? I unfortunately have no way how to digitize NTSC tapes, but it would be cool to have these preserved

OK guys, some of you know who I am, some of you don’t - long story short I run https://www.youtube.com/user/TrekkieChannel and the most popular videos there are the comparison videos. I have compared all different versions, all different transfers etc. but I never could compare the audio mixes, since I always used to watch TOS dubbed - the first time I have seen TOS in English was on the 2004 DVD set. However a few comments

• the BD set does NOT contain the “original” broadcast versions, at least in the sense that they are DIFFERENT cuts from the 2004 PAL DVD releases. Some differences from memory - in The Naked Time the Blu-ray uses the fixed effects, the DVD uses the wrong shots of the planet (the shots start with black space and after a few frames the planet appears). All episodes of season 1 have now on the Blu-ray the same opening credits, the same theme take and Shatner’s speech, the DVD has different credits for each of the first batch of the episodes. WNMHGB - DVD has “Leonard Nimoy”, BD has “Also staring Leonard Nimoy”, The Man Trap - DVD has “Star Trek created by Gene Roddenberry”, Blu-ray has “Star Trek”. DVD has “William Shatner”, BD has “Staring William Shatner”, Leonard Nimoy is again “Also Staring” in the BD but not the DVD, and the DVD has a different take of the theme. And so on, you get the picture.
• the Roddenbery Vault BD “original” versions are again NOT original. The one thing I noticed without any other proper comparison is that the Gorn blinks in the “original” version, which of course is wrong.
• I have the 2007-2008 UK DVDs but I haven’t found any differences to the 2004 DVD set to be honest, but again - I’m not good at noticing audio changes.
• The Cage had much more versions - the full color version which was shown to NBC and is ultimately lost, the black and white copy which is the longest available version (and my favorite) but it misses a few seconds (at least the copy I have, according to the audio recordings Gene’s copy which he used to show was complete so this might be simply a case of a film print detoriating so much that a few seconds could not be saved). Then there is The Menagerie, which features 2 shots of Vina dancing, which were NOT RELEASED on ANY other future version and are not even on the black and white cut, so I don’t know what is the source for The Menagerie. Then there is the 1986 hybrid color/black and white version. After Bob Furmanek found the trims (but obviously not ALL of them), they released the full color version in 1988, which features some slowed down footage, then there is the 2001 DVD version which features some re-recorded music and some new unnecessary censorship, the 2009 “original” version ommits even more seconds thanks to even more pointless censorship and changes the order of the shots and there is also the version with new CGI effects

I plan to completely re-do all of the old comparison videos and make them the defnitive videos containing all changes, so if this project isn’t dead, any information (and evidence in form of a sound clip) of audio changes would be amazing

So sad to read this. Always loved his posts, including the more technical ones

Thanks to the people who have contacted me privately, but there seems to be a misunderstanding - I don’t need the black and white version, I have it already, I needed some help or tips for colorization 😃 But thanks to all of you who wanted to send me their copy

Because of huge changes in personal life a few years ago I was forced to basically abandon my online activities and all other fan activities, but I’m slowly getting back.I noticed a few people here claiming they have video taped these episodes, is anybody willing to put them somewhere?

Tack said:

In terms of the COMPLETE version of this pilot, there is a chance it was released on a Portuguese VHS tape in about 1987. A clip of this has shown up on YouTube where it doesn’t cut from the uncut black and white footage to the color 1967 footage. I think a couple of complete shots could have also been taken from the original trailer for The Menagerie.

From what one TrekBBS user has said, the original editing was much looser and the ending in particular was very noticeable with this (the final conversation with the Talosians is said to be much more somber in the original than the Menagerie recut).

I don’t know if this Portuguese VHS has ever been ripped or not, but it would be seemingly invaluable.

EDIT: Proof: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMg5IuQRlMo

My copy comes from a South American collector, not sure about the original source. But it could be this one. So any good tips for colorization? 😃

This is my first post here in 4 years, so the first thing … Hi everybody who remembers me 😃

I have a small request regarding The Cage, an unaired 1964 pilot to a show, which you probably heard about, called Star Trek. There are multiple versions available, a brief re-cap.

The first 1964/1965 version was shown only to NBC execs and their family members. It existed as a full color 35mm film. The writer/producer of the pilot, Gene Roddenberry, had in his possession a 16mm black and white copy of this version, which he has shown on numerous conventions during the 1970’s. This version was never shown on TV, or released commercially.

In 1966 during the production of the first season the production team was not able to deliver a finished episode every week, especially because of the optical effects which took much longer than they thought. To save some time, Roddenberry wrote a new two part story called The Menagerie, and they incorporated different bits of The Cage into The Menagerie. The editors thought that they are working with just a print of the pilot threw out all of the scenes they didn’t use in The Menagerie, not knowing that they have been given the original negatives and that they have basically forever destroyed it. They have done tons of other changes too, mostly in the audio mix, they added or replaced music, and added new sound effects. Also, the mail voice of The Keeper was pitch shifted to sound more female.

In 1986, for the 20th anniversary Paramount wanted to give the fans something special, and they wanted to release The Cage for the first time, that’s when they found out that the original negative no longer exists. So they went to Roddenberry, who gave them his 16mm black & white copy. The result was a so called “extended version”, which starts and ends with a new footage by Roddenberry, and mixes footage from The Menagerie (including the new Talosian voice and new music/effects) with the 16mm black and white footage. For whatever reason they didn’t do it properly and the result is roughly 30 seconds shorter than the original version, cutting out mostly dialogue.

In 1988 the full color trims, which were cut out in 1966 were found by Bob Furmanek. He gave them back to Roddenberry, who sold them to Paramount. The result was a new full color version, mixing footage from The Menagerie with the newly found color trims. However they probably didn’t find ALL of the trims, or some of them were unusable, because there are shots which were slowed down to make up for the missing seconds. The audio is the same as in the 1986 version. This was first released as a part of the 1988 TV special “The Star Trek Saga - From One Generation To The Next” which aired between seasons 1 and 2 of Star Trek The Next Generation, and a few years later released on Japanese laserdiscs (and maybe even elsewhere). Again, this version was full color, but still roughly 30 seconds shorter and some shots were slowed down.

In 2001 (NTSC) / 2004 (PAL) Star Trek was released on DVD, and it was yet ANOTHER version, this time even shorter. They cut out the “You were like a wild little animal” line (probably because political correctness started to creep in at that time and comparing a woman to an animal considered to be tolerable anymore), lots of shots were trimmed, and some shots are in a different order.

For 2009 the Blu-ray versions were released and they featured not one, but 2 new versions of The Cage, the first one is again shorter than the DVD version, and again has a different order of shots in some scenes. The second version is the same cut, but all effects scenes were replaced by new CGI effects.

If you are interested in a much more detailed comparison of all versions, check these youtube videos I made a few years ago:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYJ0L12Tidw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ik16AZsRzzI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9f3huRphs7c
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uytyu8coPDM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6VrLjKPj_I
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgGf_JDbKc8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Lw4Eev7tZc

Anyway, back to the topic.

I have the holy grail of all Star Trek collectors - a copy of a VHS transfer of the original 16mm black and white version. It looks really bad, it is low resolution, and it is cropped too much compared to the Blu-ray, but it’s the real thing - it has the original soundtrack, featuring the real voice of Malachi Throne as the Keeper, it has the missing 30 seconds, it’s all there.

The first thing I have of course created was a mix of the Blu-ray footage and the new black and white footage. Meaning I have literally cut the Blu-ray version scene by scene and replaced the black and white shots with them. The final result is of course hard to watch. You see some cuts are very small, like 2-3 frames from the end of the shot, meaning when you watch my combined edit, you watch a shot in full colour, suddenly it changes to black and white for a split second and then it continues being full color. So I have created a second version, in which I decided to slowly fade out the color version of the shot, so the changes come much more natural and this version is much more fun to watch, but still, it’s far from perfect.

So my idea was very “simple”. Just colorize the black and white footage. Sounds simple, right? I mean we have the perfect color reference for every single shot, what could possibly go wrong? Well, I tried everything. I tried every method I could find online. I tried automatic methods, I tried manual methods. The best looking versions I achieved when I first ran the shots via DeOldify, which created versions with almost perfect skin tones, but the rest was pretty bad, and then imported these into DaVinci Resolve, where I tried to match the shots to the Blu-ray footage, but I just can’t do it.

So, after almost a year, I give up. Then I remembered that this forum actually used to be read by a huge number of very talented people, many of them being fans of the original Star Trek. So, I am here 😃 Is here anybody who has the knowledge how to colorize the black and white shots in a way that cutting or cross-fading them with the Blu-ray footage would be “watchable”? We are talking here about roughly 30 seconds of footage. Anybody who could help me with this? Thanks a lot

The print looks amazing!

Days? No clue, I usually try to watch every movie on the first day it opens, but I honestly don’t remember if I’ve seen every one of them on the first night. Other theatres? Nope, I live in a small town which had 4 theatres in the 90’s but after the digitalization a few years ago we have now just one which works the whole year and one which is showing movies only in the summer. However a multiplex should be in a huge shopping center which is being built right now, so the situation should improve in the next few months.

Tobar said:

Pittrek, you’re just looking at domestic numbers.

Worldwide box office for both was:
Solo - $392,619,489
Ant-Man and the Wasp - $544,532,061

AM&TW made a decent profit if those production budget numbers are accurate.

That’s much better, so worldwide just Solo bombed? Interesting.

DominicCobb said:

pittrek said:

Collipso said:

SilverWook said:

Disney is probably going to focus on Episode IX for now. Once Galaxy’s Edge opens in the theme parks they have the perfect opportunity to cross promote or announce new movies.

Funny how Solo has made more money than Ant-man & The Wasp and nobody is calling that a bomb. 😉

Solo didn’t make more money than the new Ant-man and it was 100 million-ish dollars more expensive.

https://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=untitledhansolostarwarsanthologyfilm.htm
https://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=ant-manandthewasp.htm

A film needs to make 2 - 2.5 times its budget to only break even.
Solo budget - 275 millions, needs 550 - 687.5 millions to break even, made 213 millions.
Ant-Man and the wasp - budget 162 millions, needs 324 - 405 millions to break even, made 211 millions.

So in the case that the numbers I just googled are correct, both movies bombed, but Solo lost more money.

Not necessarily true as you aren’t factoring in worldwide grosses were Ant-Man made a decent bit more.

Ultimately the bigger failure for Solo was the foreign grosses (which is what tentpoles moreso rely on there days). SW has always had a predominantly American fanbase - perhaps the fact that this was a film made specifically for a fan favorite character hurt perceptions. People in China don’t have any real allegiance to Han Solo, so maybe there was a failure in marketing there to make it seem not just for the hardcore fans.

Yes, I used only US domestic results, because those were the numbers I found.

Now speaking for myself - I have seen all of the Star Wars movies since the 1997 special editions in the same theatre. During the 1997 SE run, it was sold out. During the prequels it was full, almost sold out. TFA was sold out, Rogue One was pretty full, TLJ was pretty empty. You know how many people have been there for Solo? If I remember correctly something around 6. Star Wars used to be pretty popular here, but it’s slowly dying.

Collipso said:

SilverWook said:

Disney is probably going to focus on Episode IX for now. Once Galaxy’s Edge opens in the theme parks they have the perfect opportunity to cross promote or announce new movies.

Funny how Solo has made more money than Ant-man & The Wasp and nobody is calling that a bomb. 😉

Solo didn’t make more money than the new Ant-man and it was 100 million-ish dollars more expensive.

https://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=untitledhansolostarwarsanthologyfilm.htm
https://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=ant-manandthewasp.htm

A film needs to make 2 - 2.5 times its budget to only break even.
Solo budget - 275 millions, needs 550 - 687.5 millions to break even, made 213 millions.
Ant-Man and the wasp - budget 162 millions, needs 324 - 405 millions to break even, made 211 millions.

So in the case that the numbers I just googled are correct, both movies bombed, but Solo lost more money.

Interview with Anas Abdin - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByduvAexiKI - if this is true, it explains the heavy rewrites and getting rid of the tardigrade

So it looks like CBS and Netflix are being sued for copyright infringement (for Discovery of course) by the guy who created the Tardigrades game. This is going to be a lot of fun

Funny, I thought Leia looks OK-ish, but Tarkin looked like something which came directly from my nightmares

I have absolutely no proof for this so feel free to ignore this post, but the bootleg version I used to watch on my VCR in the early 90’s was a bit different. During the chasm jump Luke first missed, then Leia kissed him, then he tried again, this time he made it and Leia kissed him again, “for luck”. I remember thinking it’s funny what a young guy can do when he’s “properly motivated”. The second difference was during the meeting before the Death Star attack. After the wamp rats comment Luke and the pilot next to him shook hands and introduced themselves. And I’m pretty sure the guy introduced himself as “Wedge”, and I was pretty confused that there are 2 different pilots named Wedge. The third and last change I remember was the third Biggs scene right before they go inside the ships. I was very confused when back in 1997 I found online a list of SE changes and this scene was listed there - to me, it was always a part of the movie. I actually had a feeling that it originally was a bit longer.

The tape doesn’t exist anymore, I replaced it with the first official VHS tapes when they were released here and later with the SE tapes, so I have absolutely no proof that these are something else than messed up memories, but if you want a rumour list, here are mine.

I said it before, say it again - Yoda with a lightsabre is like Gandhi with a machine gun

The ships look great. The people? Yikes. Also, the trailer has twice as more dislikes than likes? Wow, why?

As I said before - I enjoy the action scenes in AOTC. I enjoy nothing (except for the score) in ROTS.

DominicCobb said:

pittrek said:

DominicCobb said:

I will say anyone who doesn’t think AOTC is the worst prequel (or the worst SW movie as a whole) is a fucking lunatic.

Wow. Thanks, I guess.

I will say I’m willing to hear an argument before I pass final lunatic status. But it’s not looking good for you.

I don’t remember insulting people who like TLJ, which is in my opinion the worst SW movie, and the worst movie I have seen in years, but OK. But what kind of “argument” you want to hear? There is nothing objectively quantifiable about opinions. I personally can’t take seriously anything which looks like a video game. Hell I’ve seen video games which look more realistic than this “movie”. If you can’t get “absorbed” in the movie, you will immediately start to notice different things. Like the acting, where you can clearly see the actors are doing it because they are contractually obligated to do so and not because they care. The story is much worse than in AOTC, it’s just a collection of random scenes followed by what seems to be a 10 hour long boring duel. Which reminds me - the editing. The scenes just come and go, most of them don’t have any beginning, middle or an end. Enough or should I continue? As I said the only positive thing I can say about this movie is that the score is great as every thing Williams ever did.

DominicCobb said:

I will say anyone who doesn’t think AOTC is the worst prequel (or the worst SW movie as a whole) is a fucking lunatic.

Wow. Thanks, I guess.

Finally managed to watch the purist edition, great work.