Back to Earth – Technical Specifications

Film has been HD since 1985 ish, it’s only now we have the format to do it justice. I’m not sure about TV but I’m sure everything has been HD for a while, so it’s not a case of producing it in any less than high quality, they already do. The problem is the cost to make it into the format like Blu-Ray. So in affect they reduce the quality to what you see on screen. I did ask about a 5.1 transfer for the Dwarf DVD’s, again it’s down to cost. I would suspect as much as I want a HD version of Red Dwarf it’s impossible in this financial climate.

>Doctor Who is not HD, I made this enquiry when I was shooting something before.

I’m surprised you had to go so far as asking them, since it’s pretty common knowledge.

>Seb, I wasnt too sure tbh. Even when things are common knowledge, most of the time It?s people making asumptions. Best to get It straight from the horses mouth.

Yeah, fair point. As you and Andrew say, though, the majority of UK stuff *isn’t* HD, so the fair assumption is usually that something isn’t until you hear otherwise (and besides, if Who was in HD, the BBC would have been advertising the fuck out of the fact!)

First Dwarf in widescreen! I’d completely forgotten about that!

It would have been nice to have it in HD – sure, Dave isn’t HD, but future-proofing it would have been nice – but I understand why, as presumably money is pretty damn tight on this production.

I really hope it doesn’t have a film effect, but we’ve gone through this discussion ad nauseum. As it’s an audience show, and the film effect seem to have fallen out of fashion with them (My Family used to have one but now doesn’t, amongst other shows), maybe I’ll be in luck…

> Personally I would like to experiment by using the film effect for exterior stuff and take it away for set work

Surely back in the day this clashing of recording media was a necessity rather than a valid artistic choice? Frankly, it’d be insane to manufacture such a jarring change between location and studio scene. You silly billy.

But… that would look terrible!

I hope it all shot for an NTSC format for blurry Ameri-vision!

Besides, Norm in HD…..just imagine it.

Imagine the commentaries.

“Look at that spot, norman. Your nose is crooked…and what’s with the hair? It looks like a paintbrush! Not me mention the spot and your hair. And look at your nose! Not as bad as your hair, though. It looks like a paintbrush! It looks exactly like someone has put a high definition paintbrush on your head!”

WOOOO!

>Surely back in the day this clashing of recording media was a necessity rather than a valid artistic choice? Frankly, it?d be insane to manufacture such a jarring change between location and studio scene. You silly billy.

Definitely. Commentaries of old shows like Doctor Who and Blake’s 7 which have the producers and co on have always mentioned how they hated the different distinctive looks between the studio tape and the 16mm film. Heck Monty Python even based a sketch on the whole thing.

Personally, as much as i’ll probably get slapped with a wet fish for this, I’d prefer the film effect in this new Dwarf too. Unless it’s an audience multi-camera show, in which case interlaced look all the way, as has been said. Multi-camera lighting and set setups just don’t seem to work with film effect, just look at ‘My Family’ when they did it, ouch! Has there been actual confirmation that it’ll be a multi-camera audience show? For some reason it being called ‘Earth’ seems to suggest a lot of location work. I know Red Dwarf managed to make multi-camera look really great, but for some reason i just think a modern audience expects single camera now, especially for sci-fi.

>Can it be very different from anything in Series 8 too?pretty please?

8 was hardly ‘classic dwarf’ (apart from the BitR Bunk scenes which I actually rather liked,)so I’m optimistic the answer to that question is “Yes.”

I’m glad I’m not the only one.

>Getting your information from Screen Wipe, eh? In context, that?s not what the sketch was actually about?but Charlie Brooker, and the magic of editing, would have us believe otherwise.

Damn Charlie Brooker and his evil editing ways!

‘Sirs, we appear to be surrounded by a world where the whole video image is displayed 25 times per second, thus going some way toward mimicking the look of film. I believe this may be the work of The De-interlacer! They used to tell tales on the Nova 5 of a rogue simulant who crash-landed on the far side of the fabled Telecine system, residing there for hundreds of years until, as the result of a freak experiment, he invented the 2:2 pulldown system, thus eliminating the need for the 4% PAL speedup and allowing him to leave the planet without being mobbed by people pissed off at people’s high voices on DVDs and TV broadcasts of films and US TV shows’

>Damn Charlie Brooker and his evil editing ways!

I didn’t actually see the episode in question (of Brooker, that is) but there was a discussion here around the time about the misappropriation of that sketch. In protest, I grew a wart.