Post by B5Erik on Aug 20, 2015 13:32:54 GMT
Many people have said that the CGI/visual effects on Babylon 5 look dated. Some have said that the visuals look bad. I would take exception to that to a degree, and here's why...
First, the DVD's that most people are judging the effects by were botched. They cropped the effects shots and blew them up to a bigger size to fit the widescreen image. They didn't even upscale them. So, of course they're going to look bad. Fuzzier, grainier, and far less impressive than when they were originally broadcast. It's a shame that Warners cheaped out on the DVD sets and didn't think forward for future HD broadcasts because the end result is a rather mediocre looking set of visual effects, even for a show from the mid 90's.
Second, the visual effects were done extremely well in most ways. The long shots of the station still look beautiful. Long shots of ships still look pretty good. And the way that motion in shown with the ships was so well done, so realistic in terms of the physics of how the ships move, that with just improved resolution these shots would still look amazingly impressive today. Even in low res shots the battles are still fairly impressive because of how well the movement of the ships was constructed.
While it would be an somewhat expensive undertaking, redoing the visual effects wouldn't be as hard as doing fresh effects for a new show or movie would be since the effects company would only have to recreate the shots with HD CGI graphics. The design of the ships, the motion patterns - that part is already done and only needs to be emulated. The show as a whole still holds up as one of the greatest ever on TV (writing, acting, direction), so with updated, improved CGI the show would get a shiny makeover that would allow it to stand up to anything produced today.
Even so, the original effects were pretty darned impressive on TV back in 1995. We just don't get to watch the effects the way they originally looked, unfortunately.
First, the DVD's that most people are judging the effects by were botched. They cropped the effects shots and blew them up to a bigger size to fit the widescreen image. They didn't even upscale them. So, of course they're going to look bad. Fuzzier, grainier, and far less impressive than when they were originally broadcast. It's a shame that Warners cheaped out on the DVD sets and didn't think forward for future HD broadcasts because the end result is a rather mediocre looking set of visual effects, even for a show from the mid 90's.
Second, the visual effects were done extremely well in most ways. The long shots of the station still look beautiful. Long shots of ships still look pretty good. And the way that motion in shown with the ships was so well done, so realistic in terms of the physics of how the ships move, that with just improved resolution these shots would still look amazingly impressive today. Even in low res shots the battles are still fairly impressive because of how well the movement of the ships was constructed.
While it would be an somewhat expensive undertaking, redoing the visual effects wouldn't be as hard as doing fresh effects for a new show or movie would be since the effects company would only have to recreate the shots with HD CGI graphics. The design of the ships, the motion patterns - that part is already done and only needs to be emulated. The show as a whole still holds up as one of the greatest ever on TV (writing, acting, direction), so with updated, improved CGI the show would get a shiny makeover that would allow it to stand up to anything produced today.
Even so, the original effects were pretty darned impressive on TV back in 1995. We just don't get to watch the effects the way they originally looked, unfortunately.