KH Martin

Usually agree with you, but couldn't disagree more strenuously on the TREK part of your comment. Contrast, color, style, the CG doesn't do justice to the originals at all, except in a couple of new matte paintings that look halfway like they could be period. Now if you were to cut the new space shots into the Trek animated series from the 70s, I'd agree, because the ships look like damn cartoons.

It's because the original elements are GONE. Recomping the original elements digitally if they had ever been found would have been a decent compromise, but I find the so-called remastered TOS TREK effects to be godawfully cartoonish, especially the ship stuff, which doesn't have the nice strong key look that was the best thing about the originals. All of the TMP fx elements are gone too ... Paramount apparently didn't want to pick them up, so EEG and Apogee wound up tossing them when they ran out of space in the early 80s. ILM did some tweaking to a Trumbull warp drive shot for the first time the ship goes warp in WRATH OF KHAN, but I think they were just doing stuff to a dupe taken out of the first film, not working with original elements.

Article of mine on CAESAR cinematography is up at http://www.icgmagazine.com/web/king-of-comedy/

Agreed. Ethically, technically and aesthetically.

Well, I do wonder about the comcast HD process, if it was a true representation. I didn't see this particular problem on JURASSIC, but on ANT-MAN, anytime there was fast side-to-side character movement, there was a weird black edge around foreground characters on the side they were moving to. I've seen the same thing on a TV channel that reruns LOVE BOAT and DYNASTY and other 80s horrors, and there I figured it was some kind of uprez, but they wouldn't have had to do that for ANT-MAN. And it was present throughout the entire movie (another tribute to how well the film worked for me, as it would have driven me crazy if it had been less involving.)

That right there is pretty O-T-T weird in my opinion. Sure, emphasize things by adding a little. But using hard light from a wrong direction? That sounds wrongheaded in extreme. I just saw JURASSIC WORLD on PPV yesterday. Outside of hating almost every minute of the thing (rooted for dinosaurs this time, unlike previous sequels that I actually liked), I was amazed at how hard the movie was on my eyes. Day exteriors such as the endless flyovers of live-action-with-digital-extension vistas all had that 'cranked to 11' added-in-post color oversaturation/contrast look. Seemed like parts of many day frames were overexposed and as many underexposed (the nuGALACTICA look, where almost nothing in frame seems properly exposed.) It was like by messing with the image all the time, they were trying to set a standard of non-credibility? Why? To make the dinos seem more real by comparison? I imagine the 1956 MOBY DICK looked pretty weird to a lot of filmgoers, but it wasn't like the printing B&W with color to desaturate became a go-to for tons of other features of the time ... not the way a lot of stylistic excesses do now.

Me too! But the one thing that really shook me when I first watched it was that it sounds like Goldsmith's OMEN score took more than just choir from the Barry music -- it is strange that Goldsmith, who deserved a half-dozen oscars, only won for something that sounds like recycled Barry, but got the shaft for TREK, WIND&THELION, PATTON, CHINATOWN and so so many others. As for the adapting from theater aspect, I'm usually not in favor of 'opening up' the play, because the dynamics of character and situation often work off the enclosed feel of the stage, much like a submarine movie does. Cutting outside all the time can dilute the tension. Also, I think it puts the onus on camera to come up with compositions that work with the set and the characters as part of that landscape, so camera can actually be even more important in an adaptation where there isn't any room for an Edge Arm.

I've never heard the O'Brien books being described as an inspiration for TREK (Roddenberry and Nick Meyer both cite the Hornblower novels, which is odd given how each man had a vastly different take on trek by the time their paths crossed), but I have heard M&C called the best non-TREK trek movie outside of GALAXY QUEST. As for the argument that you can't put across everything trek in a 2hr film, that is true, however it doesn't mean you can't deliver enough goods to make it worthwhile. SERENITY, which is probably the most engaging TREK-style space feature I can recall, delivered everything we got from FIREFLY in spades while also upping the ante for the bigscreen. (the science was for crap, but that was my main/only bitch with the series too.) I'd argue that DEEP SPACE NINE and FIREFLY/SERENITY give a lot more of the original TREK feel of ethical dilemma and frontiers than anything we've gotten in any visual format since the 80s (TREK VI did a nasty character assassination number on the principals to serve its plot ends.) I'm troubled by the notion the new series will likely inhabit the Abramsverse, but shoot, there's going to probably be new GALAXY QUEST and LOST IN SPACE series, maybe they'll put across more of the Trek values and storylines that appeal to me. TREK09 is one of the biggest messes ever, and there sure is a ton of suffering in it for a 'fun' movie.

Not sure if it was this forum or not, but I remember somebody saying a screening of the Coens' MAN WHO WASN'T THERE in the pacific northwest had a reel two that was in COLOR -- now that is a pretty huge screwup, since it was only foreign markets that demanded (and got) non-monochrome versions of the film.

I'm gonna have to mention that to the editor at ICG, can't believe that never registered with me before.

Coming from antique-school (that's your grandfather's version of old-school), you could also do some in-camera enhancements to the light shafts, assuming you have static camera positions. That would involve ghost-glass (or just a high quality piece of glass) and reflecting in a drawn-on shape for the light shafts to embellish whatever practical light you use to hit the piano and guitarist. This can be as simple as cutting a tear-drop shaped piece of white or light blue posterboard and making sure it just misses on the depth of field or using the glass to reflect a chalkboard at right angles to the set on which you draw the light shaft. You could then power windows in post to amp up the light you did have that falls inside the light shafts. I'm big on using garbage liner type material to create a metal-deck for flooring, so that is kind of a duvetyn approach to that part, only cheaper.

You're showing your age, I know folks in their 30s who think that originated as a Brosnan GOLDENEYE light.

Just saw Claudio's name as chief lighting tech (why not 'gaffer' I wonder?) on CRIMSON TIDE when I rewatched last night.

Hey, that THE 2001 FILE book on Harry Lange's designs is out. Not a ton of text but my god, illustrations of so many variants in design for instrumentation, ships, costumes ... and a couple of myths debunked on the first page I read, too. I have all of Frayling's books on Ken Adam (even the one about the art exhibit) and this one is just as worthwhile for design fanatics. Can't really go into any detail on it (have a proposal to interview author and do a review waiting at SMITHSONIAN's AIR & SPACE mag, a market I've been trying to crack this whole century), but if you're a dedicated 2001phile, it's worth the money.

I'm supposed to talk with Claudio soon about something else, will ask him then, but I think it was just when they got rid of Orci as director, they let everybody else fall out as well.

I didn't even remember that it was music used in the 09 film initially, but the pop in the trailer DID make me think of 'momma told me not to come' being used in the SUPERNOVA trailer, and how screamingly wrongheaded that was. (I actually enjoy SUPERNOVA to a slight degree, though I think along with STAR TREK TMP there should be an edit-your-own version, given how it went through so many distinguished hands -- Walter Hill up through the first cut, then Jack Sholder, FF Coppola and more.)

Actually all it means is that they might be from the same time and space as the BATTLESTAR GALACTICA remake ... another newer reason for Fox to get up in arms over a Galactica!

I always thought THE CHASE and/or YESTERDAY'S ENTERPRISE should have been saved for the TNG feature films, instead of the awful stuff they did do (I dislike all four of them, and really don't get the love for FIRST CONTACT at all.) But honestly, I have a much better feeling about this than the last couple (couldn't be much worse, I think TREK09 is a complete and utter atrocity, and INTO DARKNESS is only watchable by comparison with 09), and have already read some speculation that the antagonist will have a legit point of view, with respect to an environmental issue (mining) or Federation/STarfleet politics, something that will call into question how good our good guys' side really is ... if so, that will offset for me at least a few of the token action setpieces that might not otherwise engage me. I just rewatched the gorn episode of TOS last night (big lizard guy) and the moment when McCoy acknowledges our guys could be in the wrong still resonates for me. Guarded enthusiasm, even if the VFX still have that terrible gauzy look to the space scenes that characterized 09 and ID. At least the unmotivated lens flares don't seem omnipresent.

About merchandising, that's for sure. There actually was a fair amount of merch for 2001 planned, though not all of it got to market. I had a huge jigsaw puzzle, like 5000 pieces, showing several scenes from the movie, but about 4900 of those pieces were black! I worked on it for about 3 years before giving up, around the time I got into filmmaking as a teen. Then there was a game manufactured called pentominoes, but the scene showing them play it in the film got cut, so I think distribution was cancelled. And there were model kits of the space clipper and the moon bus, though not many of the latter. How many movies got THICK making-of books back in the pre-motioncontrol days? 2001 did.

Never seen anything like that, in the early drafts, she is imprisoned in a cloud city instead of deathstar, but I don't recall anything about it hovering over the ocean. MAKING OF SW by Rinzler didn't have anything like that I can recall, and that is supposed to be the definitive account (though it DOES miss completely on ILM's brief closure late in 1976, when virtually no VFX had been finalled.)

Sorry to sound the negative notes further, but are you sure Lucas wasn't just regurgitating more of the stuff that Phil Kaufman originally brought to the proceedings? It was originally a Kaufman project with Lucas as I recall (derived from Talbot Mundy stories, I think?) and Kaufman wound up having to take some kind of action to get a decent back end on the thing after Spielberg came into the picture. And we're talking about Kaufman when he was at the top of his game with BODY SNATCHERS, too (though now that I've read most of his STAR TREK treatment, it wasn't all roses.)

Have you ever read even a synopsis of the early drafts? They are godawful bad, and he was right, they would NOT have worked. Even after AMERICAN, it amazes me he could have gotten much seed money for SW. I really think that while he got the structure right (after a fashion), the film wouldn't have worked without the outside rewrite dialog punchup, which gave it some life and fun.

Regardless of how on his game GL may or may not have been, Taylor also ran afoul of producer Gary Kurtz repeatedly, and you'd better believe Kurtz knew filmmaking nuts&bolts from inside to out after going through the Corman factory. Taylor was protecting the studio's interests (and that may have been the case on CONAN also, where he was replaced early in shooting.) Having said that, I gotta say the GL concept of putting heavy diffusion all through the film (instead of the selective use they employed, mainly on the desert planet stuff) sounds ten kinds of crazy to me, ESPECIALLY given the heavy VFX load. Maybe they could have made it work when they planned to do the cockpits with front projection, but since that didn't fly, they did everything bluescreen, and bluescreen with diffusion in optical era ... nuh-uh. That approach DOES tie in with the notion of David Watkin being approached, though ...

It's like he is suffering through Gordon Willis syndrome, but without even being political (I've interviewed him several times, and shoot, I feel self-conscious while writing the pieces, thinking, 'is this going to help make the slightest difference in the voting?') Then again, Willis didn't even get NOMINATIONS for most of his great stuff, Deakins at least almost always gets nominated, so maybe his is really Susan Lucci syndrome.

Our piece on SW cinematography/vfx is up on ICG's site: http://www.icgmagazine.com/web/far-and-away/