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Star Trek (TOS) FX Then & Now
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Fri Mar 20, 2020 5:04 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

Ah-ha. So, we're back to the initial assumption that this is just a matter or taste. Okay, I'm fine with that. You dislike the faceted plates in the ship's outer hull for the reason you stated..


scotpens wrote:
They're jarring and ugly.

Obviously you admire the beauty of the original design. That's okay . . . but is a Klingon Battle Cruiser supposed to look attractive? Confused

I submit that the "ugly version" is more appropriate for this race of warriors.

As for the enhanced CGI effects which have apparently redesigned some of the scenes they replaced with the wonderful new effects . . . . gosh, I love 'em all! Very Happy

Changing something that's good to something that's better doesn't bother me. In fact, a few years ago I actually gave up watching TOS episodes because I was so unimpressed with the aging, unappealing, and visibly outdated FX I'd been seeing since the 1960s.

Even in the 1960s my standards were higher than most of the FX which this popular series could present.

I have very little fondness for the original special effects, and we've established that you've always been more impressed by them that I ever was. To me, they needed fixing right from start. I can't seem to make allowances for flawed FX because of low budgets or outdated technical expertise.

If something doesn't appeal to me, I can't excuse it because "they did their best".

But when the DVDs with the enhanced FX came out, I was delighted by this sudden improvement in the look of the series! AT LAST the special effects looked as good as I had always wanted them to, all the way back to the 1960s!

But, as we've firmly established here, it's really just matter or taste. Cool

You resent any changes in the way the original FX looked. I've never liked the darn things anyway, so for me the changes are quite welcome.

But I've certainly enjoyed analyzing our differences and presenting my opinions concerning the cause. Cool

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Krel
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PostPosted: Fri Mar 20, 2020 9:54 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Bud, I assumed that the ships were rendered that way because that was the state of the art at the time. Not because of shoddy or lazy work.

But as Mojo from Foundation Imagining said: CGI allows you to make poor effect quicker. You have to work a lot harder to make CGI look like even poor model work.

I admit that I have no love for the new effects, I don't find them to be an improvement over the originals, and found many to be of video game quality (I also feel the same way about some effects in the CGI Kong movie). I also didn't like some of their designs. Admittedly, a personal view point.

I don't disapprove of CGI. I just think that it is used in the wrong place sometimes. For instance, I prefer painted matte paintings myself. I find CGI ones to have a sameness without the subtle color shading that a painted one has. A lot of that has to do with the way the colors are applied in CGI, they are more of a fill function. They probably could do a CGI matte painting like a painted one, but given the time it would take, it wouldn't really be cost effective.

Back when B5 came out, I was talking to my Brother-in-law (a computer guy) about how I found the colors in CGI to be peculiar. He said that is because with a filmed model, the light is reflective, but in a CGI model or, the light is generated from the model. Probably not the best term, but it's what I can remember now.

CGI gets better all the time, but there are very few CGI images and effects that I haven't eventually been able to tell are CGI. There is just something that is a little bit "off" to me.

I like CGI, it has made a lot of programs possible that wouldn't have been made, because of the effects costs. It has also allowed them to make a lot of bad choices too. But then a lot of that is also a personal view.

But I do believe that real is better than toon.

David.
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Sat Mar 21, 2020 11:39 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

Nice comments, David. I enjoyed them. Very Happy

I suspect that our differing opinions on CGI stem from the fact that I like both the ultra-realistic CGI and the visibly stylized versions.

Your closing remark helped me understand why I don't dislike CGI when it obviously IS computer generated.


Krel wrote:
But I do believe that real is better than toon.

I'm pretty sure that I'd have a more positive reaction than you to CGI even when it was only "fair", simply because I regard it as moving artwork, and obviously I'm pretty enthusiastic about art. Very Happy

Remember the Saturday morning kids' show from 1994 called Reboot? The very early CGI which that show used would certainly not be consider "realistic".

But to me, it was pure sugar-coated, cream-filled "eye candy"! I still love this colorful and beautifully designed production. Very Happy

The opening credits alone are a feast of sci-fi elements which still knock my woven cotton footwear right off! (To coin a phrase).

Watch the first part of the video below and you'll see a fine example of why I never think CGI is "bad" just because it looks like CGI.


_______________ ReBoot: Ep 01 - The Tearing


__________

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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Mon Apr 06, 2020 3:27 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

After watching Star Trek: Discovery and seeing just how freakin' awesome CGI can make a science fiction series look, I'm more convinced than ever that TOS could be enhanced with computer generated sets, special effects, and even costumes to actually make it look look remarkably like Star Trek: Discovery! Cool

As for all you folks who don't want TOS to be changed in any way . . . that' fine. Just don't watch the enhanced versions. Confused

But as for me (and perhaps other folks), my standards for what does-and-does-NOT visually impress me over the last 50 years have changed. When I was kid in the 1950s, an old black & white TV looked just peachy. Smile

When I was teenager in the 1960s, I was very impressed by a 24" color TV!

Now I have a 50" HD television . . . and I can't imagine how I managed to watch movies and shows on those crappy old TVs! Shocked

Times change, technology advances, people get older and (hopefully) wiser, and our standards for excellence should NOT remain stuck in the days when we were young, naive, and easily impressed.

Therefore, I'm delighted by the fact that everything innately good about TOS can be retained in enhanced versions — while all the aspects that were hampered by technology which is now a half-century old can be improved.

Isn't that what technological progress and artist excellence is supposed to do?

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Powerslave214
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PostPosted: Mon Apr 06, 2020 4:15 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I find it more than a bit sad that many of the illustrators/art dept. members (Sternbach, Okdua, Drexler, etc.) were willing to work on Discovery and would have given it a design lineage that was a natural continuation, but they were turned down.
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Tue Apr 07, 2020 4:43 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

As I mentioned in an earlier post, some of the set designs in Voyager are, in my opinion, more appealing than those in Discovery, despite the incredible CGI details and scope which were added.

I think that idea is consistent with your comment.

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johnnybear
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PostPosted: Sat Apr 11, 2020 7:27 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Some of the planets look better in the CGI and some don't! The lack of other spaceships in the first season was jarring indeed but the Klingon D7s of the third season didn't need any tampering. Llikewise the Tholian ships later on and the Amoeba in season two!!!
JB


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Maurice
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PostPosted: Thu Apr 30, 2020 10:04 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Matt Jefferies designed the Klingon ship with a body that was inspired by a manta ray, hence the bowed back and the various curves on the underside. Though it's not very apparent in the show because of the way the model was lit, the ship had a two-tone paint job with a darker gray top and a lighter sorta sea foam green underbelly, much the way some animals have lighter colored bellies.

Besides the CGI version being a rush, crap mesh, it makes that fannish mistake of trying to retcon the ship to bit better with the models that followed in subsequent productions. As such it is visually at odds with the rest of the show.

And this is my big objection to this kind of messing around. It's people with modern sensibilities monkeying with something they don't necessarily understand.

First, you're literally erasing the hard work of people to make something fashionable to the moment (changes which already looks dated a bit over a decade later).

Second, these ill-informed changes are at odds with the overall look of the series. The whole show is antique looking, so why focus on the effects? The way the series is shot, lit, acted, edited, and scored are as outdated as the effects. The reason people focus on the effects is because they are the "easy" fix, not a necessary one.

Third, a lot of the these CGI artists don't understand cinematography, and the shot composition in many of their replacements are things a first year film-school student would point out as incorrect.

Finally, because the updates are what are widely distributed you can't just go back to the originals. Watch Star Trek on CBS All Access and all you can see are the Remasters. So, effectively, the originals are gone unless someone goes out of their way to find the physical media
.
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johnnybear
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PostPosted: Sat May 02, 2020 7:53 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Or still owns the clamshell DVD editions from 2004?
JB
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Pow
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PostPosted: Thu Dec 30, 2021 7:53 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

From Star Trek: A Celebration by Ben Robinson & Ian Spelling.

Today, visual effects are commonplace. They are used to doing things you'd never expect — to replace a sky, or extend a building, or cover up the join in someone's wig. In a science-fiction show there can be hundreds of shots in a single episode. In 1966, things were very different.

Hardly any TV shows used visual effects routinely, and even fewer needed spaceships and phaser blasts on a weekly basis.

It's easy to forget it now, but STAR TREK was ambitious. The effects were cutting-edge and were produced by some of Hollywood's most famous effects artists.

The effects were so demanding that they involved several different companies.

The effects shots for the pilot and first few episodes were handled by The Howard Anderson Company that was founded back in 1927.

The Anderson Company was responsible for commissioning the original models of the Enterprise itself and for filming the space shots. They also came up with the transporter effects.

The original plan was for the Anderson Company to deal with all of STAR TREK's effects, but it soon became clear that this wasn't possible. By the time they were filming "The Corbomite Maneuver," Darrell Anderson was working so hard that he ended up in a hospital with exhaustion.

When Roddenberry's team came to film the show's seventh episode "The Balance of Terror," they brought in Linwood Dunn's Film Effects of Hollywood. He was widely regarded as one of the best special effects men in the business, and had been responsible for the design of the optical printer.

Dunn's team specialized in the unusual phenomena the crew encountered.

The Westheimer Company spent most of their time devising transporter shots, phaser beams, and disintegration shots, and adding images to the various viewscreens around the ship. They also created planets, and colorized them so they could be reused.

Their staff included a young Richard Edlund, who would go on to work on Star Wars and form his own company, BOSS films.

In the second season Van der Veer Photo Effects started to take on more of the effects work. Their most impressive shots included the giant space amoeba from "The Immunity Syndrome."

The Anderson Company and Linwood Dunn commissioned matte paintings from Albert Whitlock Jr, a legendary figure who is widely regarded as one of the greatest matte painters in history.

Together, these companies made the impossible look real and as a result, every year that STAR TREK was on the air, the visual effects were nominated for an Emmy. The show never won, but the people and companies who worked on it would go on to win more than a dozen Academy Awards.

Sidebar: As a lifelong aficionado of special/visual effects I find the history of the profession fascinating.

And who in the he-double-hockey-stick beat out Star Trek at the Emmy Awards in the visual effects category all three years!!! Man, I gotta look that one up.

It really took a village to produce the weekly effects for ST:TOS and any special effects heavy shows back then.

I'm guessing that the TV series today that require numerous effects each week are in the same position in that no single optical effects house can take care of all the visual needs for one TV show.
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Krel
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PostPosted: Thu Dec 30, 2021 10:10 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The original plan for the Enterprise bridge was to have constantly changing images on the small view screens using slide projectors. That plan died when they found out that each individual slide projector would be required to have a union operator. Laughing

David.
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Pow
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PostPosted: Thu Dec 30, 2021 10:11 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The winner of the 1967 FX Emmy award was L.B. Abbott for The Time Tunnel.

Have to say that TTT had some doggone awesome special effects goin' for it.

From the overhead scenes with the complex's power core, and the long shot of the tunnel on its platform.

The scene of Tony & Doug tumbling inside the tunnel with its swirling visuals was also awesome.

I always wished that producer Irwin Allen had put as much care in the scripting of his science fiction TV shows as he did the production values.
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Fri Dec 31, 2021 2:45 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

One important consideration in the debate about replacing existing FX with new CGI is the nature of the audience the show is being retool for.

To put if bluntly, guys, the original audience for TOS (for example) is pretty old, and frankly a few hundred of us probably die every day!

So, the studio isn't really making these new FX for the old folks who were delighted by the original scenes and resent the changes — they're making the new stuff for a younger audience who appreciates aspects of TOS that aren't related to special effects . . . which looked outdated to them the first time they say them! Shocked

The changing nature of our culture and the people who have grown up in it s often the reason we Old Timers complain that "they just don't make 'em like they used to!" Mad

No, they certainly don't . . . because they don't make audiences like they used to, either. Confused

So, modern filmmakers make films for modern audiences, which means old fans of shows like TOS often don't like certain aspects of the new shows.

The "updated" CGI special effects are an attempt to graft something new onto something old. And since that's the case, people like me who (for whatever reason) actually like the new/old combination should be more understanding people who feel differently about the attempt to "improve" shows like TOS.

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PostPosted: Fri Dec 31, 2021 3:13 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

One of my problems with the new CGI replacements is that they rarely, if ever, try to fit the design style of the original show. It's a more modern design style, which doesn't match or fit the original, and so sticks out like a sore thumb.

David.
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Fri Dec 31, 2021 5:38 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

Exactly, David! Very Happy

And that, of course, proves my contention that the folks who updated the FX weren't trying to match them to "the design style of the original show" — the were trying to match them to the FX of the 21st Century!. Very Happy

And, as I've often said, I'd be delighted if they'd use CGI to give the whole series a "full face lift" and upgrade the sets, the costumes, and the interiors — leaving nothing unchanged except the actors and their brilliant performances in these timeless stories . . . with a whole new look!

Frankly, I have no special love for plywood sets, plastic props, and shower curtain costumes that were used because the show had so damn little money! Shocked

So, I agree with you that the new FX don't "fit the design style of the original show". What I really want is for the design style of the show to be changed to fit the new FX! Cool

After all, it's been a half century since this series first aired! And since it's supposed to present us with a vision of future, shouldn't we correct it's fuzzy vision a bit with 21st Century technology!
Shocked
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