Ideas and Suggestions for :Star Trek The Motion Picture (True Fan Edit) — Page 11

DarenDoc posted a link to one of his pages on TMP:DE, where he posted some early mockups of changes that he wanted to make that he didn't have time to do.

http://www.betafive.com/PORTFOLIOSITE/TrekTMP.html

Maybe we could use this for more ideas.

This is awesome. It's hard to imagine a movie more in need of a fan edit. Can't wait to see the finished product.

I love how we're fan editing a movie that was already fan edited with the director's involvement.

EDIT: I just posted a link to the "Blueprints" on DarenDoc's blog.  I'm freaking out right now.

Daren's reply:

Well, your ideas are interesting… but I’m gonna have to pass. Much as we’d like to believe we still have our “fan” attitude toward the project, the DE was overseen and crafted by Mr. Wise to be his final cut of the movie… and I’d have to respect his wishes on that. It was not a “fan edit”.

While your thoughts are certainly welcome, and I have nothing against people doing mash and mix-ups for their own fun and learning, I have to say that none of your additions actually contribute much more to the story of the film. Sure, it would be fun to see the Enterprise return to earth after her 5 year mission, but that’s not the story of the film. The story is about seeing our familiar characters out of their element in the beginning of the film, and the journey to bring them back to their rightful states and be the characters we’ve known and loved.

And, just to be a nitpicker, I really dislike the treatment of the main titles. Makes it look like First Contact or Generations… not my cup of tea.

So, thanks, but no thanks on this one. But will be interesting to see what you guys come up with.

As Mr. Spock would say...

"Fascinating"

I really didn't expect him to be for the radical style changes, but I was kind of hoping for him to want to fix the few shots he may not have gotten to do 10 years ago.  Oh well, he didn't disapprove and he said he is interested in what we can do!

I still like the TOS prologue, no matter what.  Reminds us of the characters in their element so the beginning is even more of a drastic change for them.  Especially if we can make the right voiceover to go with it.

In fact, I think I would be happy with this edit if it was ONLY matte line removal and digital matte tweaks plus the new intro.  The possibility of the restructuring is just icing on the cake for me.

I think there is something odd about Star Trek the motion picture original (1979)

Time (00:39:05) Scotty on the intercom right front with (echo and partly on the surrounds) now there’s something fishy going on here!

The laserdisc or early versions Dolby stereo have a dry like sound to the voice a natural sound.

Time (01:07:41) Missing (sound effect) right front when, Sulu programs the new course heading the sound of the button is missing! This is soft sound on the HF yeah, not bad for someone that’s 42 at the time to spot this. Sigh

I don’t think, Star Trek the motion picture was, mixed with stereo surrounds in mind, but is on this version and it sounds out of place from most other discrete six-track Dolby stereo mixes.

Still its miles better than that, rushed Dolby mix director’s cut that more than a few Foley effects missing.

Angel mentioned 3D models, so I'm going through and finding ones that may be useful in this edit.

TMP Enterprise (not 100% detailed, I'm sure, but could be used in long shots maybe)

TMP Enterprise Hanger & Cargo Bay (could be re-meshed or used as a base to fix possible angle problems)

Spock's Shuttle (not in this edit as far as I know)

Klingon Cruiser (not bad at all)

Regula 1 (could be flipped for new orbital complex shots)

Travel Pod

V'ger Cloud

Drydock

All this and I can't find the air tram that Angel was originally looking for.

UPDATE: I joined scifi-meshes.com and am putting out a call for models we might be able to use.  We do have someone who can do 3D stuff, right? ;-)

That drydock needs a full vertical section added to it.  Here's the original being restored by FX man Ed Miarecki.

Ziz said:

That drydock needs a full vertical section added to it.  Here's the original being restored by FX man Ed Miarecki.

On the guy's full website, he shows how the actual model was modified for Generations to hold the B, which this model is apparently based on judging by the differences.

http://www.ncc1701.us/18.html

Amazing stuff all over his site.  There are no words to express my jealousy of this guy, his skills, and his toys.

More models, tons more from Foundation3D:

TMP Enterprise

TOS Enterprise

Original design (could be used for partial refit)

TMP Drydock

TMP Klingon Cruiser

TOS Klingon Cruiser

These are all meshes for Lightwave done by what my research shows to be the two most popular mesh-ers, Dennis Baily and prologic9.

Looking at all of these models has got me really excited, we do have someone with Lightwave, right? ;-)

I hate to triple post, but they do have separate topics, at least.

I tweaked my poster design.  Replaced/rematted several elements and brought out the true green to the Klingons.

I felt bad for color balancing the ships to green, but after some research online I found that they are supposed to be green, not the grey they appear to be.  I white-balanced the top and middle ships to their natural green, but the bottom ship (taken from the fly-under shot) still needed color balancing.  This film needs a lot of love to show its true colors.

I'm also trying out my favorite title.  Wish there was a font that had the rounded "E", but I don't feel bad after noticing that's what they used on the Blu-ray boxed set I have and the novel I'm reading.

Here's what I mean about the green (well, lack of it):

This is just a white/black balance.  The DVD is a bit too dark, but at least the ship is green!

5 - PM me your email.  I have a version of the TOS font with the rounded corner E.

pittrek said:

005 - I love the shots you posted. It would be great if somebody ONLY corrected the colours and matte lines

Not sure on the matte lines, but I've been considering buying Sony Vegas Platinum and color-correcting TMP for giggles.  If I get this new job, I'm going to ask my wife to let me buy Vegas.

I'm working on this edit again after an unwelcome interruption...

I also like the green tint on the Klingon ships. I think the color scheme used on the D-7 in Star Trek VI looks best.  That model had a great paint job. The metallic used in TMP looks all wrong. 

FF

It's a shame post production was rushed to meet the release date, resulting in dodgy matte lines and such. Douglas Trumbull couldn't have been too happy having his name on the final product.

I've been wondering if the raw FX footage was saved. TNG used a shot of the Klingon cruiser a few times in the early seasons, only it had a new starfield behind it. And the engine glow was changed from red to blue.

FanFiltration said:

I'm working on this edit again after an unwelcome interruption...

I also like the green tint on the Klingon ships. I think the color scheme used on the D-7 in Star Trek VI looks best.  That model had a great paint job. The metallic used in TMP looks all wrong. 

FF

Sorry to hear about another unwelcome thing in your life.  Seems to happen a lot to you. :-(

Here are some more examples of my white balancing done on the DE:

Keep in mind, this is just making it so the windows/running lights are "white" and space is "black".  The color comes naturally when you do this.  As you can see, the colors are different from shot to shot originally, so some tweaking might still have to be done to make them match.

As for the shooting models, here is my white balanced version compared to the paint job at the time of the film being shot:

Originally the model was green, as seen in this picture of the model during the filming of TMP.  However when it came time to do Kronos One in Star Trek 6, they repainted the model to give it some more flair:

The bottom shot is color balanced to the same windows as the TMP shots.  This is partly where we get the "grey klingon ships" from.

More research shows that a similar thing happened to the original D7 model.  It was green with some grey shading, but bluescreen spill gave it a blue-grey look, which the home model kits gave as its real color.  The crew took the original studio model and repainted it for the Phase II show, but like all of those, they scrapped it and made more detailed one for TMP.

However, the grey color was so engrained into viewers that they repainted the model to this color when they took it to the Smithsonian!

The Remastered version of the Original Series ended up making the D7 a grey color too!

If I find a picture of the shooting model in its original color, I'll add it here too.

EDIT: Apparently they painted a copy of the AMT model for Roddenberry to keep the same colors as the shooting model:

The Polar Lights version is a subdued shade of these colors, as explained in this article.

pittrek said:

Oh God, this looks good.

I always "felt" there's something wrong with the Klingon ship shots, now we can clearly see the problem. FanFiltration - will you re-paint the shots properly before you re-edit them ? (Sorry if it was asked before)

It makes more sense for him to color correct the ships AFTER he edits them, especially since these Klingons will be attacking the Enterprise in some manner and most of the shots won't be used.

Speaking of which, FF, what program do you use to edit?

I am editing this project with my new copy of Adobe Premier CS4 master collection. I'm also using  my older version of Adobe Premier Pro version 1.5, as I am more familiar with it.  I would like to focus on the editing and then hand my finished segments out to people here on this forum who would want to work on certain segments that they personally desire to change.  Any effects corrections or changes left over will be taken on by me and my friend, but only after the edit is tweaked and streamlined into something we are happy with.  

Right now I am working again on Ilia's arrival.  Sometimes those scenes  you may think are going to be very easy to edit, take a huge amount of what I like to call "micro-tweaking" to perfect. These little tweaks can at times take hours (or even days) to smooth out so that the viewer is not consciously aware of the changes. There needs to be absolutely no sign of the changes. It should flow like this was the way it always was intended, and that can be so hard when you don't have the source footage, the unaltered audio, effects, and music tracks and such. If you ever saw my cut of Dune, it is full of these "micro-tweaks", and it made for a very popular edit as far as story telling goes. The down side to that project was that I only had pan/scan source, and also a very lousy encoder. But if you look how I mashed up the scenes, you can see my style of "micro-tweaking".

FF

If I get some software, I'd love to try some color correction on a segment when it comes time.

Playing with the trial of Vegas Movie Studio.  Looks like it can do everything I would be able to do for videos.  Since the copy I made of TMP's video doesn't import in, I can only work with images.  So I made this video mockup of the Prologue:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QbOsi2Wj4s

Good job, that was cool.

FF