24p: The Final Frontier

[Gregg Lengling]

By Michael Silbergleid

Sep 20, 2004, 18:41
 

I'm a geek. That's no surprise to those of you who know me, but I wanted to clarify that fact before going any further. The reason is simple-I'm going to talk about Star Trek: Enterprise.

Another trade magazine (whose name sort of rhymes with "TV Drek") recently ran an article about Star Trek, complete with a picture of a Borg on their cover. Damn, I thought, they beat me to the story. But I was wrong. The story in "Drek" was about "Borg Invasion 4D," the theme ride at the Hilton in Las Vegas (wasn't NAB five months ago?). The story focused on some production stuff and lots on projectors.

"TV Drek" missed the Star Trek story entirely.

The story is that since 1966, all of the Star Trek series have been shot on film, including Enterprise...at least until now.

Season four of Star Trek: Enterprise is being shot digitally, on a Sony HDW-F900.

Director of photography Marvin Rush adopted digital after conducting tests on the show's standing ship sets and some exteriors. Those tests proved that the new generation of HD 24p video now easily rivals film in look as well as practicality, according to StarTrek.com.

"If anything, it's neck and neck with film. And I'm just talking about aesthetics, image to image. I'm not talking about other aspects of how easy [the digital camera] is to work with or how flexible it is," Rush said in an interview with StarTrek.com.

In two days of tests, Rush's team was able to shoot more footage than planned, in less time than budgeted. And when they showed the footage to executive producers Rick Berman and Brannon Braga, "they both walked out of the room and said basically, 'Wow, why weren't we doing this before?'"

Some of the improvements that compelled Rush to make the switch were the new camera's ability to capture detail in the extreme bright areas of a shot, such as when pyrotechnics are used. "And it's actually superior to film in some respects, such as in low-light situations. It has better depth of field, no variance in frame registration, and many other advantages that only a cinematographer can explain," he said.

This makes a lot of sense for Enterprise. For those of you that don't know, there are no ship models used in the show. Model work was replaced with CGI ships for the series, and it's a very special effects-intensive show.

What is the promise of Enterprise shooting digitally? Cost and time savings.

"It's dangerous to over-promise, but I believe that we will actually be shooting faster-not that we're cutting corners, I just don't think it'll take as much work to get a shot ready," Rush said in his StarTrek.com interview. "I think that the problems get solved a little quicker with the HD camera."

If this were just another "digital replaces film on a TV show" story, that would be the end of things. But it's not. As I continued to read the StarTrek.com interview, I found the meat of the story: HD was now being perceived by some as being better than film.

When talking about the "look" of the show, Rush explained that the digital picture will be timed to perfectly emulate film and match the look of the show's first three seasons. Then he raised a question: "Do you really want it to look the same? I think that there are some aspects to the HD look that are superior-you see a little more detail in the shadows. My personal taste is, why not keep them? It's just more fidelity, you know."

Yes, we do know.

[StarvingForHDTV]

Come on 24-1, HURRY UP!!!!

[John L]

When is this new "Star Trek" suppose to debut?

-John L.

[Gregg Lengling]

Season 4 premieres on October 8th.
( and no that is not a typo, it's been moved to Fridays....the kiss of death)

[summerfun]

Originally posted by Gregg Lengling
Season 4 premieres on October 8th.
( and no that is not a typo, it's been moved to Fridays....the kiss of death)

Maybe not the Kiss of Death as much anymore. With DVR, I don't care what night they put a show on. I will never watch a live program again. NO MORE COMMERCIALS, EVER.

I just wish they did not preempt the show for basketball so much of the time.

[John L]

I doubt WCGV will be ready for HD yet.  They still doing SD.  I expect once they go 1080i they will offer HD shortly thereafter.

Jimboy if yer reading this, how is the progress of WCGV, ch. 24 coming along?

I doubt it will be ready soon.  I'm sure they will have HD by the time they repeat this fall season's ST.

-John L.