With the track-by-track liner notes which I thoroughly enjoy reading, what I don't understand is how easily Intrada and La La Land Records can have them within the enclosed booklets but GNP can't.
It's not that they can't. They've opted not to, almost certainly for cost reasons. They've been upfront with this, so if it's a dealbreaker for you, don't buy the CD. I personally consider the online notes a bonus; I'd buy the CD if there were no notes at all. I suspect that's true of 99% of the purchasers of these CDs.
I'd buy the CD if there were no notes at all. I suspect that's true of 99% of the purchasers of these CDs.
Absolutely!
I am actually starting to prefer the online notes over booklet ones. Booklet ones get lost or damaged over time. The booklets in the TOS box had to be immediately removed because the cases were cutting holes in the booklet covers. So I had to toss them into a safe place which is much harder to read then if I could just pull them up on my computer or mobile phone screen. I will always value physical media because of backup issues but I am starting to question a lot of printed matter. Full sized reference works will always be better in print but 9 pages or so of liner notes you just don't need it printed.
I would like to say however that the Generations liner notes with actual pages is a far superior presentation than how the First Contact was printed like a film strip. If I wanted to print it I am sure I could make it work but it would be many times easier to print the Generations liner notes.
Thanks again GNP! If you never produced another Star Trek CD again I would be satisfied with the collection available. However, if you want to do more restoration work I will happy buy into that as well. Keeping the price down is always a bonus so thanks as well for keeping it affordable.
I'd buy the CD if there were no notes at all. I suspect that's true of 99% of the purchasers of these CDs.
Absolutely!
I am actually starting to prefer the online notes over booklet ones. Booklet ones get lost or damaged over time. The booklets in the TOS box had to be immediately removed because the cases were cutting holes in the booklet covers. So I had to toss them into a safe place which is much harder to read then if I could just pull them up on my computer or mobile phone screen. I will always value physical media because of backup issues but I am starting to question a lot of printed matter. Full sized reference works will always be better in print but 9 pages or so of liner notes you just don't need it printed.
My only qualm with the TOS set was the booklets. They should have been in a single binded hard bound book as was done in the Herrmann and Superman blue Box set at Varese and FSM respectively. It looks presentable, handier and awe inspiring that way. I know it was done through some concious decision during the last stages even though it was originaly planned as a single book in the early announcement. Oh well..
Rewatched Insurrection yesterday and there are parts where the music is chopped up and thrown around so it will be nice to hear some of those cues intact. Of the unreleased material, "the holodeck", "the speech" and "deploying the collector" are some of my favorites (though in the latter I do feel the brass is a tad out of tune). The finale does seem to cut between the two versions, real curious to hear that revised cue for the first time
Lukas, your explanation about The Healing Process certainly makes sense, and I can totally understand why it didn't make sense to include an edit of the revised action music going into the original denouement music.
What I don't understand is, why didn't Jerry WRITE the revised action music in a way that would lead to it nicely joining to the original denouement music? Seems like a strange oversight for him to make (But then again there are precedents, such as Williams not ending Victory Celebration on the right note to nicely segue to the ROTJ End Credits).
What I don't understand is, why didn't Jerry WRITE the revised action music in a way that would lead to it nicely joining to the original denouement music?
Warning: Inside this entry you may find something that may not ever leave your brain for the rest of your life.
Insurrection had an 11th hour change: the original ending of the villain being sent out into the planet's radiation belt had him age backwards into nothingness. It was considered anticlimactic by Paramount and they wanted an ending with more punch.
But it was really late in the game and they had to make the release date. So they reshot a new ending... and didn't even have time to properly finish it. Look no further than the fact that they shot the entire climactic fight on a blue screen soundstage... and never inserted a background!
Which should tell you how short-scheduled Jerry had to be to bang out a new ending. I'd surmise thats why it didn't "flow" correctly, musically - but its more an educated theory that fits other facts than anything concrete.
Makes one wonder about Paramount and its trust and loyalty to STAR TREK (at that time). FIRST CONTACT was a huge success for them. Why did they give INSURRECTION such short shrift?
Makes one wonder about Paramount and its trust and loyalty to STAR TREK (at that time). FIRST CONTACT was a huge success for them. Why did they give INSURRECTION such short shrift?
Short shrift? I don't think so. They simply had to make their release date, and the film was not testing well. Last-minute reshoots are actually very expensive.
But it was really late in the game and they had to make the release date. So they reshot a new ending... and didn't even have time to properly finish it. Look no further than the fact that they shot the entire climactic fight on a blue screen soundstage... and never inserted a background!
Is that a fact? About the blue screen? Because I was watching the alternate ending in the deleted scenes section and to my surprise the unfinished shot of a top view that looks down into the collector, the part that is suppose to be repeated to give the illusion it has a deep shaft, well to my surprise there is a green screen there! You can see the effect at around 0:03 and again at 0:34 (the same picture you linked to) in the video below; why would they put a green screen there to duplicate the blue column progression? Makes no sense.
I've always been under the impression that the blue interior of the collector fit the Son'a color palette (if you look at the other interiors of the ships) and really what exactly would they show through that blue screen? Space? That wouldn't match with the exterior of the ship (or make sense). I think it's a coincidence, remember that blue and green screen technology wasn't as widely known in 1998; it's because a lot of actors and actresses started to say 'we had to do a lot of green/blue screen shooting' in the following years it became more part of the film language lexicon. Also with making-of featurettes being included on dvd, footage of blue and green screen became more recognisable. I was just thinking back the other day, when Insurrection came out, the only clips I saw of it beforehand was a small 5 minute feature on Belgian tv, there was no youtube or extensive webpage with trailers etc. Nowadays they show you the trailer, the making of, ... well before it's released lol.
Here you can see, when they cut to the ship where Worf & the other Son'a are on, it also has the blue background:
Makes one wonder about Paramount and its trust and loyalty to STAR TREK (at that time). FIRST CONTACT was a huge success for them. Why did they give INSURRECTION such short shrift?
Short shrift? I don't think so. They simply had to make their release date, and the film was not testing well. Last-minute reshoots are actually very expensive.
True. But wouldn´t it have been better to delay the release date to give the new ending more time and care?
Yeah, blue screen went out in the early nineties. (I think because green is easier to key off of, but blue is easier to remove chemically. When everything went to computers it wasn't a chemical process anymore, so green. Is that right?)
Any geek growing up in the Star Wars era was VERY aware of blue screen.
Blue screen / green screen or "Chromakey" is all the same thing. The difference in color is depending on the effect and the environment (actors wearing what).
I remember they had to use a weird color backdrop (orange, I believe) for the Raimi Spider-Man movies since one character was red/blue and the other was mostly green and they were being filmed on the same set.
I've also seen a fuchsia colored backdrop once or twice.
I always wondered about that blue, because it is the exact color of a blue screen. But I wondered (and still do) if that was simply chosen because huge blue screens existed, so it was an easy thing to put out the "windows" on short notice even if they had to intention of replacing it.
wouldn´t it have been better to delay the release date to give the new ending more time and care?
Easier said than done. Not all release dates are considered equal. Delaying even just a few weeks would mean losing the holiday season release window, and in general the best time to release franchise would-be blockbusters is Christmas or summer. Delaying a release by six months -- especially when theaters have been booked and trailers and promotions have been running -- is no small feat. And if you've spent tens of millions of dollars on a film, the longer you wait for release, the longer you're sitting on that deficit, which doesn't make economic sense.
Of course, all of these things are done from time to time (though rarely to great effect). But at the end of the day, the movie was what it was -- reworking that climax would only help so much. So they had to weigh the potential benefits of tweaking the ending vs. the problems stated above. I'm sure they decided it wasn't ultimately going to be worth it.
Blue screen / green screen, et al, are still terms that are used all the time. Not sure why you think they "went out in the 90s." The color is selected after consideration of what colors have been used for the sets and costumes and what kind of lighting scheme will be chosen.
I always wondered about that blue, because it is the exact color of a blue screen. But I wondered (and still do) if that was simply chosen because huge blue screens existed, so it was an easy thing to put out the "windows" on short notice even if they had to intention of replacing it.
I worked with someone who had a connection to this movie a few years back. He assured me that there was supposed to be a star field and a planet out of those windows, but there just wasn't time to do all those shots in the end... so they left 'em blue!
The background on the Son'a ship in the clip above would NOT be used for keying an image into the scene. It is textured and I believe I see some movement in there. In the collector, however, the lighting and color of the blue is flat and even and the whole picture is a little low contrast. That's exactly how many VFX houses instruct cinematographers to light elements that are to be keyed out later. I actually somewhat like this movie (much more than GENERATIONS and NEMESIS, to be sure), but I think that letting this scene go out "blue" made the movie look really bad. I don't think it takes someone who knows a little about film and TV to detect that there was supposed to be something happening there that isn't.
But I wondered (and still do) if that was simply chosen because huge blue screens existed, so it was an easy thing to put out the "windows" on short notice even if they had to intention of replacing it.
On one hand, I've wondered that myself.
On the other hand:
1.) Why would the interior be blue when the ship's exterior is gold? (And its not some kind of fancy ship either, its basically a giant hollow solar sail for collecting space energy)
2.) Why would any director decide to make the interior of anything that shade of blue without it intentionally being a blue screen shot? It calls attention to its self fairly obviously.
The background on the Son'a ship in the clip above would NOT be used for keying an image into the scene. It is textured and I believe I see some movement in there. In the collector, however, the lighting and color of the blue is flat and even and the whole picture is a little low contrast. That's exactly how many VFX houses instruct cinematographers to light elements that are to be keyed out later.
Not flat and even all over the place as the grey bulk skeleton, platforms and metal of the collector are also lit blue and reflecting blue? Wouldn't that make it difficult to remove? Also the gas sequence would be rather difficult to blue screen back then no? I'm still not convinced they intended to remove it, especially after seeing that green screen in the extras.
2.) Why would any director decide to make the interior of anything that shade of blue without it intentionally being a blue screen shot? It calls attention to its self fairly obviously.
Because blue and green screen weren't identified by an audience as being such back in 1998?
