Ric Easton
Senior HTF Member
- Joined
- Feb 6, 2001
- Messages
- 2,830
I heard a rumor on another forum that Warner may be bagging the idea of any future releases. Anyone know the scoop? I want this one badly!
-Ric
-Ric
for a future DVD release will have corrected effects shots?
The F/X shots are correct, at least as far as the producers, Straczynski and Netter, are concerned. When they elected to shoot the series in Super35 while composing for both 1.33:1 and 1.77:1, they realized that the time and money for doing the same with the CGI would not be there. The F/X would have to be done at 1.33:1. Although there was a vague hope that if the show did well enough Warner Bros. might be persuaded to extend and re-render the pure CGI, and recompose the composite live-action/CGI stuff, they realized that they needed a "plan B" as this was unlikely.
Plan B was to design and compose such shots with "dead space" nar the top and/or bottom so that they could be cropped to 1.77:1 when the time came. This is exactly what has been done, since WB has indeed declined to spend tons of money tweaking the F/X of a nearly 10 year old cult TV show. Everybody surprised by this, please raise your hands.
Having now watched a couple of runs of the entire series in widescreen on The Sci-Fi Channel (since the initial run where Warner Bros. and their subcontractor had actually screwed up the new masters) along with the Anamorphic transfer of In the Beginning, I'd say they did a pretty good job. I think most of the FX or composite shots (especially on a widescreen TV) look better and more focused trimmed to 1.77:1. The few shots that don't work are more than made up for by the improved appearance of the purely live action footage - which, after all, makes up the majority of every episode.
Some technical issues about how the cropped 1.77:1 CGI is actually trasnferred to DVD have been raised, but those are way over my head and I have no idea to what degree Warner Bros. has listened to the criticism levelled at the first disc in this regard. (On my set, In the Beginning looked better than it ever has, including the CGI, and that's good enough for me.)
If you take a look at Bart Barenberg's site you'll see frame comparisons between the (*gasp*) UK VHS "standard" and widescreen releases, which I think bear out my preference for the "cropped" widescreen.
Regards,
Joe
movie, it was discovered that WB had lost all the CGI models and other digital assets.
While it is true that they had lost all of the source files (models, textures, backgrounds, etc.) it is by no means clear that they lost all the files for the finished shows. The two sets of materials were likely stored separately. Certainly they had access to the fully-rendered files as recently as when they were creating and then fixing the Sci-Fi Channel widescreen edition. So there might be something to work with - if WB is willing to spend the money. We'll just have to see.
Regards,
Joe