'Star Trek: TMP' Remake CGI Pics

[Saturday, March 10th, 2001]
There have been more leaked pictures from the remake of 'Star Trek: The Motion Picture', the pictures are of the CGI representation of The Enterprise. The CGI and other special effects that are to be featured in the Director's Cut, is said to complement the original story and not remake the story. The actual physical film is to be remade so that you get a clearer picture and the CGI is going to accomadate the film. For more pictures click on the picture below

IGN FilmForce

Paramount is currently prepping a new television series to replace UPN's soon-to-be-concluded Star Trek: Voyager & a tenth feature film is being scripted by Gladiator co-scribe John Logan. And, for the first time in the franchise's history, a Trek project is being revisited by its original director – Robert Wise – who is re-working Star Trek: The Motion Picture into a "Director's Edition". This new version of the film will better reflect what Wise had in mind when the movie was first released (in 1979), but was unable to achieve due to time, budgetary, or technical restraints.

IGN FilmForce has previously brought you pictures of the starship Enterprise, rendered in CGI (Computer Generated Imagery) by Foundation Imaging, and the same company's re-envisioned Planet Vulcan, replacing the volcanic planetscape seen in the original version of the film.

Foundation has handled all of the new effects work for Wise's TMP Director's Edition. The newer material they have generated will be carefully matched to the original product (Foundation digitally sampled film grain from original prints of the ST:TMP, and has duplicated the same film grain / film qualities in their new work. Their CGI material will appear extremely similar – if not identical – to John Dykstra and Douglas Trumbull's non-CGI original effects when integrated amongst them).

The company will also be "cleaning-up" some of TMP's original effects work. For example, many of the dreaded "flickering matte lines" (the blue lines around ships or people – a byproduct of sloppy or hurried optical compositing) evident in the original film will be removed to make for a cleaner diffusion/separation between different layers of TMP's original visual effects.

It should be pointed out that TMP: DE is not a traditional "Special Edition". Whereas George Lucas' Star Wars Special Editions featured flashy visual enhancements filled with a dynamic style & whizbangery (that sometimes seemed a bit incongruous when merged with ILM's original material), the effects in TMP DE will be much more understated in nature. Many of the DE's new effects shots exist simply to tell the film's story better.

Two examples: in the original film, there were several sequences in which a cut-away to an FX had been planned (say, cutting away from reaction shots of the Enterprise bridge crew to an exterior/establishing shot of a rapidly-approcahing bolt of enery – heading towards the ship). The FX for such cut-aways were not completed back in 1979, thus they did not make it into the original release version of the film. But, they have now been rendered and included in the DE, bringing the movie a bit more tension and narrative cohesion. Another example: the restoration of imagery outside certain viewports. One specific instance involves a sequence between Decker and Ilia, which was originally designed to have a background of V'Ger composited behind actors Stephen Collins and Persis Khambatta (the conversation took place against blackness in the original release of the film, because the planned/required effects were not finished at the time). The background material (Enterprise viewports with V'Ger's interior visible beyond them) has now been realized & incorporated into the film.