SCI FI PI

RYAN ADAMS AND DAVID GRANT, THE PRODUCERS BEHIND THE HD REMASTERING OF STAR TREK: THE ORIGINAL SERIES, SEASON 1, SPEAK TO SCI FI PI ABOUT BRINGING A 24th CENTURY CLASSIC INTO THE 21ST CENTURY!

Ryan Adams, Consulting Producer and David Grant, Executive Director of Television Mastering at CBS/Paramount, have been working together there for almost five years, remastering classic film onto the new HD format.

It’s often painstaking work, but it also involves the thrill of going back to the original celluloid, shot decades earlier. Sci Fi spoke to the men at the coal face of the most exciting revolution in Hi Def viewing, about what it was like to transform one of Sci Fi’s great marques, and what we can expect from them (and Star Trek) in the future.



SF: Ryan, you have quite the experience with High Definition Remastering. What do you do exactly? What is required to bring it up to, say 1080p?

R: When we get a project, we go back, wherever possible, and Star Trek was one of those times, where we went back and pulled out of cold storage the original camera negative. That actual 35 mm film that ran through that camera on set that day is what we’re going to get our hands on. And we’ll scan that, transfer that to high definition, then we’ll go in, completely re-colour correct it, scene by scene, balance it out, add contrast, saturation where needed. Then we’ll have a complete digital clean it up, get rid of any positive dirt, negative dirt, scratches, digs, tears, stains, you name it. Get rid of all of that. We’ll also clean up or restore any audio if required.

SF: You’ve been working in the movies for a while now, on all sorts of projects, Were you fans of Star Trek before taking this project on?

R: Both of us were always aware of Star Trek, obviously, because it’s such a huge franchise, but I grew up catching a rerun here or a rerun there, whatever, but getting this dropped in our lap and actually watching every single episode as we worked on it, we became Star Trek fans. I’ve been joking around calling Dave and I ‘neophyte Trekkies’.

SF: David, did you go through the same experience and ‘turn to the Trek’?

D: Yeah. I like that. Yeah. I’m about ten years older than Ryan so I did see it growing up, but now that I think about it - it really has been running non-stop for the last 40 years! It’s not like he missed anything. This HD transformation now has a life of its own. We’ve been to Comic Con, we’ve been to the Star Trek Convention in Vegas. It was Ryan’s neighbour, Billy Blackburn (Star Trek Extra and Superfan who provides footage for the extras on the new HD DVD) who went with us everywhere we go, and Rod Rodenberry, Gene’s son, we’ve become great friends with him, so now we’ve been welcomed into the fold as part of the Star Trek family.

SF: You both have regular jobs, and are fully functioning adults (both laugh heartily) we assume. What is it about Star Trek that made you fans?

R: All joking aside, I’m kind of glad that I got into this as an adult. I think had I watched this when I was much younger, I think a lot of it would have gone over my head, I don’t think I would have appreciated it as much. When you watch these episodes – Gene Roddenberry, he was a genius, he really was. They were dealing with racism, sexism, segregation, but doing it using aliens, it really was ahead of its time socially. And technically. If you look at their communicators, they’re just like the cell phone I have on my desk right now. When you see the monitor on the bridge, it’s 16 by 9, not even 4 by 3! It’s widescreen! Dave and I will be watching these things and go ‘wow, look at this!’ It was definitely way ahead of its time and as a semi-functioning adult I can appreciate it a lot more now.

SF: Star Trek seems to be the only Sci Fi show to predict the mobile phone!

D: Exactly! One thing that Rod Roddenberry was telling us what that the way that his father told the stories, and changed the issues around, they were able to tell stories and talk about issues that Standards and Practices would not allow on air. It was just brilliant that they were able to do it.

SF: What is the exact temperature that celluloid must be kept at to ensure its preservation?

D: You know, I’m not exactly sure, although I really should find this out since I was in charge of archiving.

R: Oh oh!

D: I’d say we keep it in the 40s (Fahrenheit, about 4.5 centigrade, the same temperature as the usual household fridge).



SF: A lot of diehards have considered this whole new approach and addition of VFX as pure sacrilege. What was the discussion before you decided to go ahead with it?

R: There was a lot of discussion! Ken Ross in New York, Geoff Nemarovsky in New York, Dave and I, Michael and Denise Okuda, David Rossi – a lot of us got together and there were a lot of meetings, and all of it was based on what the fans were going to think. We wanted to make sure, that what ever we did was organic to what Gene Roddenberry had created, we didn’t want to take a chance on doing anything that would turn the fans off. I think we walked that line very well – the fan feedback we’re getting right now is phenomenal, but we really did take the fans completely into the decision making process.

SF: Did anyone discuss updating the monsters?

D: No. No one said it out aloud, because they didn’t need to.

SF: Are you currently working on Season 2?

R: We’re currently working on Season 2 and 3 full force.

SF: Have you discovered new challenges as the process continues?

D: Well, as we’re working on Season 2, we’ve discovered new, I guess you wouldn’t call them HD DVD ‘effects’ but features, we can safely say we have come across new technology that we’re using in Season 2.

R: Again we’re thinking about the fans. What can we give them that’s new, something different, what’s the new technology that these discs can do. Interactivity, interconnectivity. We’re still trying to decide what’s going onto the disc but there may be some interactivity with the fans and the disc features.



SF: Star Trek: The Next Generation is now a 20 year old show – has there been any discussion about its HD remastering?

R: Oh yeah! We get that all the time. David and myself have been doing some tests on what it would take to put the Next Generation onto high definition. We are having meetings and we’re still in discussion. Nothing has been determined, but it’s just as big, actually it’s a much bigger project than the original Star Trek.

We were fortunate and lucky enough with the original Star Trek that we had the original negative. With Next Generation, they actually posted on video, which means there’s no cut negative. So we’ll have to go back to the dailies reels.

SF: Damn! That’s a lot of work!

R: Yeah! So now you know. We’re talking 8 inch floppy discs. We’ll actually have to repost it. So we’re desperately looking into it. But we wouldn’t give it away for all the world. We love the stuff.

SF: Is Billy Blackburn a huge (perhaps slightly too huge) fan or was he just at the right place at the right time?

R: No, he was just in the right place at the right time. He was originally Deforest Kelley’s stand in, and he’s actually, I think, he’s in the second most amount of episodes of anybody. He played Lieutenant Hadlee, the navigator, and he was a plusser in every episode, a lot of different extra characters in the background, he was in the Gorn costume for the close ups, he played the White Rabbit in Shore Leave – he’s in everything.

D: Lucky for us he brought his camera everyday and did some behind the scenes filming.

R: The material we got from Billy was just a great bonus.

D: Literally never seen before.



SF: Who was behind the look of the new ships?

R: The visual effects was pretty much the Okudas and Dave Rossi’s baby, they really did a wonderful job of overseeing that, which was a real blessing for us at the studio and the network, because they’ve already got the respect from the fans, because they’ve been associated with Star Trek for so long. They were really the perfect people to oversee that because the fans knew we were taking it seriously because people like that were in charge of those effects.

D: We worked with them hand in hand. We were doing the restoration at the same time they were doing the visual effects.

SF: How long does it take to remaster one episode of Star Trek?

R: It was a case by case basis. There was one effect – in The Menagerie, where we come through the dome of the Enterprise – that one effect took six weeks to do.

D: In the mastering, some episodes were dirtier than others, and others took more time to colour correct.

SF: Any feedback from the Star Trek family about what you’ve done?

D: Bob Justman, one of the original producers of the show, came in and said he had seen some of the footage and he was just beside himself because we had captured the colours and everything that they had tried to get 40 years ago. He said that the colours in the uniforms and the sets and all of the stuff is exactly what they wanted but that they couldn’t get because of the technology back then. He said ‘you’ve finally done it’.

SF: That’s probably the most gratifying result you could possibly have out of all of this.

R: I had no idea that would come out of his mouth. Also Rod Roddenberry saying he’s backing you 100% - what more could you want?

SF: Can you let slip anything, at all, about what’s coming up for Seasons 2 and 3?

R: Truth be told – no. We’re still making sure that the stuff’s going to work! I’m not going to let anything slip that’s not 100% going to happen.

D: We had meetings last Friday – where Ryan and other execs came in from New York and they went over to Technicolour and Technicolour were showing them some new technology stuff that we’ve been talking about for a while, and it looked to work great, but that’s still being worked on.

R: There’ll definitely more of that never-before-seen Billy Blackburn on-set footage.



SF: Are you guys now the ultimate Trek heads?

R: No, we’re still fledglings.

SF: What’s your favourite episode or moment out of all Star Treks?

D: I really loved the Menagerie, that we screened in theatres.

R: I’m saying the same thing. Seeing what Roddenberry originally had, as the pilot, and how he morphed it into this great two part episode. It’s pretty incredible. Also with the original footage from the pilot, the ‘hippy Spock’. He definitely had great eyebrows!


Check out the before and after video from Paramount!


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