4K Restoration/1979/Star Trek: The Motion Picture

VFX Douglas Trumbull

• "we had to figure out how to do part of the visual effects in 65-millimeter negative, and part of the visual effects in 35-millimeter VistaVision, because we were both using different techniques"
• "I haven’t been contacted about a 4K restoration, is that all the visual effects shots were shot in 65 millimeter. And that’s what we did on the restoration of Blade Runner, which makes it look so much better. We went back and scanned the original, the dupe negatives of the visual effects shots were cut into the original, so the movie in a Blu-ray version looks much, much better. So I don’t know what’s going to happen with Star Trek: The Motion Picture, no one’s even talked to me about it. I don’t know if they’ve retained the negatives of the 65 millimeter shots."

2021 4K release

• "Paramount has scanned the original camera negative and master interpositive elements to produce a new 4K Digital Intermediate"
  • "there’s a bit of blurring/artifacting apparent in the grain on a few VFX shots that suggests digital grain management"
  • "Preston Neal Jones’ excellent book on the making of the film, Return to Tomorrow, VFX producer Richard Yuricich notes, “We have two or three negatives that are much better than what’s in the film, but there was absolutely no time to cut them in.”"

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2022 Director's Cut Restoration

• In 2022 a 4K restoration of the Director's Cut was released which included 8K and 6K scans of original VFX elements supplied by the Paramount Archive.
• David C. Fein and Daren Dochterman in Sound and Vision
  • "In addition to the hundred Director's Edition shots, there were approximately 85 new shots that were assembled from the original VFX photography. Paramount's archive did an incredible job locating and transferring all of the footage we needed to recomposite many of the effect shots from the first-generation negative." (Fein)
  • "The home theater experience actually surpasses the color and latitude of a conventional theater presentation." (Dochterman)
  • "I met the amazing John Lowry of Lowry Digital. He may have been the first person to discover that film emulsion can be deeply scanned, revealing additional images that you can't see with the naked eye" (Fein)
  • "Another challenge was developing a new system that enabled every frame of the original negative to be examined and make subtle and necessary adjustments: shaky frames, distracting grain, unfinished effects, missing color elements and even necessary framing tweaks." (Fein)