posted
A quick glance at the deflector array shows these are not the same model. There are other subtle differences, but that is the glaring one to me.
-------------------- I have plenty of experience in biology. I bought a Tamagotchi in 1998... And... it's still alive.
Registered: Apr 2005
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posted
Why, oh, why did they meddle with the scrap belt?! (rhetorical) The old one at least hinted at starship wreckage, the new one is just junk! Why not at least throw in some wreckage, not hard to do with cgi.
-------------------- "The Starships of the Federation are the physical, tangible manifestations of Humanity´s stubborn insistence that life does indeed mean something." Spock to Leonard McCoy in "Final Frontier"
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posted
Agree on the scrap, but I figure they did it for expedience.
The matting around the Miranda under the Enterprise is really obvious - do they usually tidy them up a bit better than that for the blurays?
-------------------- I have plenty of experience in biology. I bought a Tamagotchi in 1998... And... it's still alive.
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quote:Originally posted by Starship Freak: The old one at least hinted at starship wreckage, the new one is just junk! Why not at least throw in some wreckage, not hard to do with cgi.
I think we had this discussion recently: before they spend time & money on new CGI models they rather use what they have. By the way, the junk reminds me a little bit of the debris field of the USS Horatio. Wild guess: Could it be that the remainings of the USS Horatio had been brought to the surplus depot as well? Then this debries field would be indeed the wreckage of a startship.
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quote:Originally posted by o2: By the way, the junk reminds me a little bit of the debris field of the USS Horatio. Wild guess: Could it be that the remainings of the USS Horatio had been brought to the surplus depot as well?
It's possible, though I'm curious to know why the far background objects needed to be replaced with random CGI flotsam. Was it because those objects might be revealed to be non-Trek items? If that's the case, then this is actually a change I don't quite approve of, as I would have liked to see exactly what was originally used in the FB.
Although I will say that I do approve of that Batris-type freighter no longer being that silly orange color.
-------------------- "A film made in 2008 isn't going to look like a TV series from 1966 if it wants to make any money. As long as the characters act the same way, and the spirit of the story remains the same then it's "real" Star Trek. Everything else is window dressing." -StCoop
Registered: Jun 2000
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posted
o2: I agree, but there is a world of difference in proberly doing a cgi model to be used for closeups, and doing something on the cheap and quickly. (Has been done in Trek before, ask Doug Drexler)
-------------------- "The Starships of the Federation are the physical, tangible manifestations of Humanity´s stubborn insistence that life does indeed mean something." Spock to Leonard McCoy in "Final Frontier"
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posted
Maybe the original background junk footage was either lost or low quality and so had to be replaced?
-------------------- “Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.” — Isaac Asimov Star Trek Minutiae | Memory Alpha
Registered: Nov 2000
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posted
Sounds like the obvious explanation. But I would love to hear what the original debris field consisted of. Lost in time...
-------------------- "The Starships of the Federation are the physical, tangible manifestations of Humanity´s stubborn insistence that life does indeed mean something." Spock to Leonard McCoy in "Final Frontier"
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quote:Originally posted by o2: Regarding the costs involved: I would estimate the hourly costs with 100 Dollars. Assuing that the (stock) footage is alreday available this job should be done in 1 day, resulting in net costs of 800 Dollars. Usually this amount will be multipled by 3 to 5 to cover quality assurance, management, office equipment, etc. so that we receive a total of 4000 Dollars. I expect the real costs to be significant lower since certain synergies apply (the shot in question had been updated with a CGI planet, so all the processing steps after the shot has been finshed by the artist are already covered. The additional starship in it would only be a by-product).
Your profile says that you also work in the IT business. Can I assume that your question was therefore only rhetorical? Please share your insights with us.
4000 Dollars is a lot of money and no project manager is spending this kind of money without a good reason. On the other hand: I have to spend between 60 and 70 EUR for each season (85 to 100 Dollars). This is really a high price for a show considering that no sets were build, no actors had to be paid and no film crew was employed. Don't get me wrong. I love to see TNG in HD (this is the luxury I allow myself). But every now and then I would like to see a little surprise in there. Why? Because I'm assured that this is the last release.
You said I should not complain so much. For my defense I have to say that I was lured by the change of the Tsiolkovsky's registry in 'The Naked Now'. I understand this as a signal that they will indeed change thinks like that every once in the while.
My question was completely rhetorical, because I have no idea of the costs involved. None of us do. No actors had to be paid? Are you sure they contracts don't cover money made from re-releases? Same with any of the old production staff. And your costs have completely missed out on a whole load of factors. As has been said, they've spent months tracking down the original footage and re-editing it. Bits like the Starbase from 11001001 (from memory, bitches!) were taken from the original film stock from ST III, lots of shots have been reframed to remove things like tripods, the colour-grading has been changed across all episodes, every single piece of CGI in the show at the moment has had to be redone practically from scratch...
Besides, hourly costs of $100? Assuming that they're at least 5 staff on the project, you're only paying them $20 an hour for quite technical skills? Never mind that you've left no money for paying for the computer software (which even if already bought might need to be continiously relicenced), the specialist hardware such as the monitors required, a general IT infrastructure including email, file servers, anti-virus software and so on, office space, electricity, food and drink, cleaning, transportation costs, running and maintaining the equipment required to read the old film stock, advertising money, paying for all the blu-ray extras like the commentaries, cast and writers get-togethers, and lots more that I can't think of because I'm not a project manager...
But basically, if the costs are anywhere near as low as $100 an hour I would be staggered. I doubt that would even cover the wages.
(I do understand that you'd like to see more changes. So would a lot of people. And a lot of people complained about the Star Wars special editions, or the remastered versions of Red Dwarf. I do respect the producers desires to keep things clean. Both TOS and TNG remastered weren't done for us, they were done for casual fans. Casual fans would notice the horrible-for-today space shots in TOS. They would notice that TNG is a blurry, smeary mess. They won't notice that the BOPs in Yesterday's Enterprise are bigger than they are supposed to be.)
-------------------- Yes, you're despicable, and... and picable... and... and you're definitely, definitely despicable. How a person can get so despicable in one lifetime is beyond me. It isn't as though I haven't met a lot of people. Goodness knows it isn't that. It isn't just that... it isn't... it's... it's despicable.
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posted
Sorry, just realised we've moved on. I will do the same!
-------------------- Yes, you're despicable, and... and picable... and... and you're definitely, definitely despicable. How a person can get so despicable in one lifetime is beyond me. It isn't as though I haven't met a lot of people. Goodness knows it isn't that. It isn't just that... it isn't... it's... it's despicable.
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quote:Originally posted by o2: The documentary was interesting and the raw material of the graveyard scene allows a somewhat better look at the USS Buran. Did anybody else yet saw the documentary?
So I just bought the BoBW bluray. You're correct, there's a lot of great ship stuff in that documentary, even though there's no new ships. If I had a bluray drive I'd make screencaps, but alas, I don't. Here's what I observed:
1. The GCS nacelle directly underneath the TMP Enterprise saucer is actually blown out at both ends, not just where the bussard collector was.
2. The Chekov does indeed still have the secondary hull underneath the ship (was previously thought to have been removed before filming), and you can see how the Oberth-like pylons are situated on the secondary hull with an almost-front-view of the ship. It actually looks really cool.
3. Not only can we see the Buran in its entirety in the opening shot, it's the closest ship to the camera, and we can make it out extremely well. Why this didn't show up in the episode is beyond me, as the model work was exceptional.
4. We also have great views of the Princeton and Melbourne from the final shots, and how the models were all placed via mounting rods.
5. There's also a *lot* of other stuff in the far background (seen attached to the aforementioned mounting rods), but unfortunately no closeups of them.
6. The interview with Greg Jein was short but very insightful. Besides mentioning the Princeton and the Firebrand (which also seemed to have been reused for that unused battle scene from Emissary if I understood him correctly), he talks about creating models of actual dead crewmembers floating in space but were either too small to see or too gruesome to be filmed.
-------------------- "A film made in 2008 isn't going to look like a TV series from 1966 if it wants to make any money. As long as the characters act the same way, and the spirit of the story remains the same then it's "real" Star Trek. Everything else is window dressing." -StCoop
Registered: Jun 2000
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posted
Thanks for the info Dukhat! Looking forward to seeing screencaps. You know, I was browsing memory alpha recently and saw an image of the USS Freedom that was different than the standard screencap, the ship had drifted further to the right, showing more of the ship, kinda cool actually.
-------------------- "The Starships of the Federation are the physical, tangible manifestations of Humanity´s stubborn insistence that life does indeed mean something." Spock to Leonard McCoy in "Final Frontier"
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7. That GCS nacelle underneath the TMP Enterprise saucer in the first scene reappears as the longish piece of wreckage seen in the far background of the final scene (directly above the Ent-D).
8. The Chekov's upper, angular pod is actually connected to the ship by two pylons on either side of it. The pod itself is not actually touching the ship.
9. In the final scene, the Ent-D is heading right for the Chekov (seen here from above), but to the immediate left of the Chekov in the far background is another shot of the Ahwahnee (in the actual shot it looks like only the top pair of nacelles are showing, but I could make out both pairs in the beauty pass during Jein's interview).
10. Contrary to the side-view schematic Bernd drew up for the Nebula prototype Melbourne on the Wolf 359 page at Ex-Astris-Scientia (showing the small nacelles attached to the end of the secondary hull), I truly believe that those small nacelles are actually attached to some kind of structure sticking out of the back of the saucer. If the top view photo of the ship were normal instead of false-color, we'd be able to make it out.
-------------------- "A film made in 2008 isn't going to look like a TV series from 1966 if it wants to make any money. As long as the characters act the same way, and the spirit of the story remains the same then it's "real" Star Trek. Everything else is window dressing." -StCoop
Registered: Jun 2000
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quote:Originally posted by Starship Freak: I was browsing memory alpha recently and saw an image of the USS Freedom that was different than the standard screencap, the ship had drifted further to the right, showing more of the ship, kinda cool actually.
The picture on Memory Alpha is from the BoBW blu ray disc. I haven't checked if this is a slightly longer cut compared to the DVD.
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6. The interview with Greg Jein was short but very insightful. Besides mentioning the Princeton and the Firebrand (which also seemed to have been reused for that unused battle scene from Emissary if I understood him correctly), he talks about creating models of actual dead crewmembers floating in space but were either too small to see or too gruesome to be filmed.
Jein is most probably referring to the shuttle 'Kotoi' from the USS Liberator. The photo of this shuttlecraft shows a dead crewman within the shuttle (a photo of that shuttle can be seen here: http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Kotoi).
I don't think that this shuttle was actually in BoBW; both blu ray feature and behind the scene material gives us no indication of such an appearence of that shuttle.
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