B5 Special Effects Remake (attempt)

We'll have to start working on this again.

That'd be pretty cool!

Hi.
Well it sort of died but i still have all the files backuped. If i have enough spare time ill start on it again I recently started with linear workflow and this could improve my work alot,but its kind of giving me a headache atm to get the linear stuff worked out.
Regarding your request,i will look through my files and send it via pm.

Ok, I'll keep my eyes open! Thanks!

What about reposting some of the images here, too? In fact... It seems to me this site would be a good place to have a repository of great B5 images.

There must be some people still interested in the show: Sales of the DVD's on eBay seem pretty active to me, and the sets are not exactly selling for $5 ea.

Something occured to me.
Somewhere must be the original scene files that were used in the show. From what i know they apparently lost everything but i can believe that its all gone. Surely its someplace on a PC of a former FI or ND employee.
Now if we could get access to the scene files it would make things ALOT more easier,faster and as close to canon as possible. They could be used as reference and as a starting point to improve upon.

http://www.jmsnews.com/msg.aspx?id=1-17 ... gi%20files
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts ... 7cfb8ae225



shabaz.x@gmail.com wrote:
> JMS,
>

> Star Trek: The Original Series is getting a
> makeover for the HD era (more info can be found on their website here:
> http://www.startrek.com/startrek/view/n ... 23775.html ). The
> show is being remastered for High Definition video, and the effects
> scenes are getting a CGI makeover. I had a twofold question about such
> an HD makeover, if I may. A deal with the Sci-Fi Channel got us a
> widescreen version of the show. How realistic is it to expect a similar
> HD treatment for original B5, maybe when HD has become as common as
> colour television now, after another network or syndication deal?
> Possibly with the CGI re-rendering we never got because WB lost the
> computer files?
>

That's a studio question, far outside my expertise. I suppose it's as
possible as anything else.

> Second, is it _technically_ possible to do an HD version of original
> B5? Does the Super 35 film that I believe the live action was shot on
> offer the option of re-scanning for HD? For the live action / CGI
> composited shots, are the live action parts of those still stored in a
> format that would allow rescanning into a higher resolution and
> different aspect ratio? And last, with new CGI assets being created for
> The Lost Tales, would that make it in any way easier for the CGI to
> finally be re-rendered at some future point in time, even with the
> original files missing?
>

Yes, you can up-rez 35mm to HD fairly easily, especially since we had
to deliver film negative masters to WB...but again you'd have to crop
the CGI if you wanted it in wide. We tried experimenting with
up-rezzing Jeremiah to HD and it looked fine.

jms


Joseph Demartino

Hendrik Boom wrote:
> I imagine the hard part would be to get Warner Brothers to *find* the
> film.

As far as I konw Warner Bros. has all of the original film except for
those portions of the negative for "The Gathering" that were damaged
due to poor storage. The original film was used to source the
widescreen digital masters that were apparently used to create both the
Sci-Fi Channel widescreen letterboxed broadcast masters and the
anamorphic widescreen DVD masters. (Although it is possible that they
had to do new transfers for the DVDs if they didn't do the SFC masters
at high enough resolution.)

Depending on exactly how the widescreen masters were created WB may
already *have* HD copies of all the filmed material on hand. (Since
thwy were going to the expense and trouble of re-telecineing everything
to widescreen WB may have gone with hi-res D1 masters which could then
be downconverted to NTSC resolution for the SFC copies, 480p for the
DVDs and held in reserve for eventual HD use. Certainly that's what I
and others urged them to do before the widescreen version was produced.
But that would still leave the issue of the CGI and comp shots, which
would look even worse in comparison to HD live action footage than they
do now.)

Only the CGI files were actually lost and/or destroyed, because the
digital discs, back-up tapes etc. were evidently handled differently at
Warner Bros. than filmed materials and audio tracks.

Regards,

Joe

http://www.jmsnews.com/msg.aspx?id=1-16 ... gi%20files

I don't think this got through the momentary message blockade, so I'm sending
this a second time....

There are a number of elements to this discussion that need to be addressed.

First, a lot of the flaws being seen on the film were there in the beginning;
the difference is that the DVD transfer shows those little flaws more clearly
than when the show is broadcast on tape over the air. Just as a CD will pick
up any glitches in the original analog master, so a DVD will show any
shortcomings in the film or the transfer.

On the CGI question, bear in mind that we were making this show at the very
beginning of CGI effects, and that they had never been done for TV on this
scale before. Many andvancements have been made in the intervening years, but
at the time, the hardware and software we had was pretty rudimentary.

We did not have the tech, at that time, to do our comps in widescreen super35
versions. The software that we used to dump the footage into couldn't handle
it. So we had no choice but to render the CGI and the comps in standard ratio.

We cannot intercut full-frame CGI with widescreen non-cgi stuff because
sometimes we intercut in two-second intervals or less, and the banging back and
forth between aspect ratios would be extremely hard on the eyes.

Nor can this footage be re-rendered because the separate elements do not exist
anymore, only the original un-comped film elements are there. The CGI files
are not around anymore, and to recreate every shot would be prohibitively
expensive. In a big way.

Because of the trend to HD, the widescreen versions, even with these small
glitches, will still have a longer shelf life than if we put them out in
regular aspect ratio. And that is the purpose of the story, to keep it around.

We were the prisoners to the tech that was available to us at the time (for the
first season we were using home Amigas, no less). It was all experimental and
by the seat of our pants kind of stuff. But it was the best anyone was doing
at the time, and we did the best we could with the tools we had.


jms


http://www.jmsnews.com/msg.aspx?id=1-16 ... gi%20files

>Of course, that's a big "if". Without the files, jms
>or other producers would need to re-hire all new
>artists to recreate the original footage. Expensive.
>It was done for the Star Wars Special Editions, but I
>doubt WB would cough up the money for a Babylon 5

Those files are no more.

jms

Something occured to me.
Somewhere must be the original scene files that were used in the show. From what i know they apparently lost everything but i can believe that its all gone. Surely its someplace on a PC of a former FI or ND employee.
Now if we could get access to the scene files it would make things ALOT more easier,faster and as close to canon as possible. They could be used as reference and as a starting point to improve upon.

(hypothetically speaking)
Folks who work in any area of computing tend to take ‘personal’ backups, it's just something you do. Problem is, if they do exist they’ll be sitting under a matress at the back of some lockup or garage, on an old novell server, and on something like lightwave v3 format. In other words, they’re as good as lost. Probably.

Something that would look cool, as well as very unique, would be to do a scene showing how the Omegas were *really* meant to function.

The broadside of missiles which Paul Bryant originally had planned for the show, for example

The detail was designed for a 19th century broadside effect. You know, camera scraping down the side of the Aggie as all the hatches open sequentially just like every swashbuckling movie you've ever seen. Then open to a wide shot as the entire ship's side erupts in flame and missiles.

or even the Starfuries launching correctly.