Originally posted by: tweakerJaiman: You're say that all the series (TOS, TNG, DS9, Voyager and Enterprise) were shot on film? For some reason, I thought that a couple of the later series had been shot on videotape. But you're saying that the live action shots were caught on film, then transfered to tape along with the effects? I'd hope so, because TNG looks like ass.
Yeah, the series live-action was shot on film.
At least the bulk of the live action... In "Best of Both Worlds", I see evidence that some viewscreen shots, and perhaps some regular live action, may have been done on videotape (the interlacing is 60 unique fields per second) . The shots involving transporter effects appear to have been videotaped as well. OTOH, what I'm seeing might be explained by 30-fps film cameras, and entire sequences run through the effects-computers and then put to tape. I seem to recall reading (in a book/magazine) that the computer-painted transporter effects, in the early days, were photographed straight off of the computer monitor, but I can't find the source.
Anyway, to save money, they did all their visual effects, compositing, and titles, for TNG through Season 4 of Voyager, with primitive hardware, and primitive computers. Then they output that directly to tape. They did the final editing to tape along with it. Up until the last couple of seasons of Voyager, they used D2 tape for the broadcast master - vastly better than VHS, but still crap. (I don't have an official source on "D2" but a credible source says he got it direct from Paramount
Dvdscan article. It says that Seasons 5, 6, & 7 of Voyager went to Digital Betacam.
The pre-CGI new-series stuff was awful. The alien ships were dinky miniatures, hastily lit. There were a variety of compositing/effects techniques used. But painfully primitive stuff. I've had the displeasure of going over a few scenes of TNG "Best of Both Worlds" (both parts) frame by frame, over & over, doing some work for a project. The Enterprise-D looks nice, but everything else... wow...
Oh, and you were talking about the film clips from the dailies...are you saying that those actually looked pretty good?
Oh yes. Dailies, mind you, not the final prints. Even the model shots. Another thing confirmed in those DS9 interviews, was that the film density was high. That means you didn't generally see the flaws from the matting process - those dissapeared into the black of space, unless you set the projector a few inches away from the screen (a sheet of white paper, in my tests). The Enterprise wasn't a washed-out blue with faint shadowing, it had a nice gradation of midtones into healthy shadows.
I had a few of those clips myself, but they faded to pinks and purples.
That isn't to say that the smalller miniatures were lit convincingly, especially in the first season. There were several sizes of Enterprise miniatures. When they used the tiny ones, you could tell. But the lighting on the large miniatures looked pretty darn good.
Of course the original's stock shots got tedious, but the current round of CGI typically does variations on the stock shots, with no regard to coming up with similarly attractive camera angles. And they don't spend much effort on achieving convincing movement. (The original series didn't have the camera technology to do much with ship movements).
On the other hand, the CG is being done in widescreen, the camera angles might look better that way.
Eurogamer Xbox HD downloads screenshots The article.
I'm blown away by the new effects work on the landscapes. (Although they effed up on the window shots - they tracked the original. In the original, when the camera moved across the room, it became painfully obvious that there was a painting on the set wall, a few feet away. The view outside the window should only shift slightly when you move across a room). Norman's (I, Mudd) access panel was a huge upgrade. The Mirror Mirror hand-agonizer lightning was horribly misguided (it didn't use primitive electrical sparks), but the funky effect that Checkov seemed to lean into, in the agony booth was awesome. And the phaser fixes & such are very welcomed.
Also, for a shabby as the ship effects are, the planets, in the orbit shots, are beautiful.
But the new-effects ships never look as good as DS9's best CG, nor hold a candle to Enterprise's CG. And many shots look ghastly - like test shots before the final render. Two different guys did a better job, than CBS, on The Doomsday Machine.
Daren R. Dochterman. (I had a link to the other guy, but the site has been moved or taken down. I'll try to remember to try to dig it up).
Originally posted by: C3PXReally seems like they are rushing them.
All I could find on internet were 12 episodes in crappy DivX / XVid. Does anybody here have it complete / or in better quality ?
