Somehow I've managed to never see this until now:
Billy Blackburn's Rare Home Movies
- Thread starter A beaker full of death
- Start date
I wasn't sure of that. I bought the DVDs of the original episodes in the yellow, blue, and red clamshell cases, and the home movies are not contained on those. They must have been on the TOS-R set that followed, which I skipped. My next purchase was the Blu-rays.
Yeah, sorry I wasn't very clear. It was the remastered ones. At the time I couldn't afford a blu ray
Yes.
They remastered all of the original effects footage as well, so it looks the best it has in years (I prefer the original effects to the 2006-vintage CGI, which is often cartoony on my big ass TV).
Its blocked for me
drt -- That's exactly what I hoped would happen, the original episodes with every shot intact , but remastered and restored. Original space shots of the ship cleaned up and sharper would be great to see. I suppose they use the re-recorded soundtrack though?
You have the option of choosing what they call the "original mono soundtrack" - however, there was a discussion about this last summer where folks more knowledgeable than myself say the mono tracks are a hodgepodge of earlier sound mixes (I'd guess some are from 80s VHS and syndication masters). Oddly enough, there has never been a release with "night of original broadcast" sound (apparently the original 12" laserdisc release comes closest).
Sounds tempting but the wife would kill me! 
JB
JB
There's only so much cleaning up that can be done on those shots, since the original visual effects elements no longer exist. TNG was able to re-composite their effects when they made new, HD masters, but this isn't an option for TOS.
The only way to come close to having the shots as originally intended is to literally recreate them from scratch including recreating the lighting and everything. I think this would be somewhat time and labour intensive, but doable considering that many shots were reused throughout the series. So once you recreate a specific shot you can simply insert it where it was originally reused as a stock shot.
I could point to Doug Drexler's work on STC as an example of where he recreates a familiar TOS E flyby that impresses as a cleaned up and complete original shot. It mightn't be perfect, but it's as close as I have ever seen it done. The one key difference is Drexler's model is finished and complete all around as opposed to the original 11 footer which was not finished all around. Nonetheless it is much closer to what I envision a poper approach to an enhanced TOS.
I certainly never was railing against any and all CGI on principle. I would think any pockmarks, discolorations, etc, in shots of the ship in space, could be dealt with bit by bit, until all effects of aging were fixed, using, not replacing, the original footage. It sounded as if they might have already done this, from someone's post here .
I don't think that would be possible, as the original source material is no longer in a high enough quality to make it look good. And for most of the effects shots like the Enterprise in orbit, the original elements no longer exist.
It would be like trying to reconstruct a photograph from a 6th-generation photocopy without any access to the original. The best you could do is approximate what it might have looked like, but there would still be a lot of guesswork involved.
Just on poor Billy.
He sat there at the helm po faced under those hot studio lights in fifty odd episodes, he herded green goats in Errand of Mercy, developed a life long case of claustrophobia from being sewn into the rabbit costume in Shore Leave, had himself covered in rubbery goo to be an android in Return To Tomorrow, and created for us an incredible video chronicle of the actors behind the scenes...and for all that didn't even get to utter even an "aye captain" in three years!
Well done Billy...the quiet achiever of TOS. He must have some great stories to tell. A shame he doesn't do cons or write books.
He sat there at the helm po faced under those hot studio lights in fifty odd episodes, he herded green goats in Errand of Mercy, developed a life long case of claustrophobia from being sewn into the rabbit costume in Shore Leave, had himself covered in rubbery goo to be an android in Return To Tomorrow, and created for us an incredible video chronicle of the actors behind the scenes...and for all that didn't even get to utter even an "aye captain" in three years!
Well done Billy...the quiet achiever of TOS. He must have some great stories to tell. A shame he doesn't do cons or write books.
