Pete Tranter's Sister

[Pete Tranter’s Sister]

Not paying the licence fee is a criminal offence, regardless of the current debate of whether or not it’ll instead become a civil offence when the 2016 charter is drawn up.

When I go shopping, I can choose which products and services to support or otherwise through my purchases. I cannot choose not to fund the BBC and furthermore, what those companies do with my money once I’ve my made my purchase is really out of my hands. I made the conscious decision to give them that money and I don’t expect a voice in the matter after that. I can simply remove my support by not buying what they’re selling. If they use some of the money to fund television advertisements, fine, it’s their cash at that point.

I don’t have that decision with the BBC and it is not an essential service like the police, fire brigade or NHS and it doesn’t deserve to be maintained, essentially, via taxation.

[Pete Tranter’s Sister]

In the short term, I’d much rather see the licence fee go towards all of the terrestrial broadcasters as a whole, rather than be confined to the BBC. I don’t believe in the licence fee. For me, it’s like paying Ford for the privilege of driving on the roads even if you buy a Nissan and frankly, the sooner it was scrapped, the better. I really do get the feeling that the BBC, behind closed doors are starting to plan twenty years down the line for when the corporation will no longer receive public funding, or a shadow of what it takes in now, or receives what it does now but is completely restructured into a more commercial arm of a new company with a new charter that incorporates other commercial broadcasters. I could easily see Channel 4 and the BBC becoming part of a single company but with very different programming styles and receiving shared revenue from the licence fee and commercial enterprises. Just look at Disney and how many studios it runs, each successful and each catering for different audiences.

My complaint to the BBC was not based on some single reaction to a single programme. It was the tipping point for my frustration at this once well-loved and respected broadcaster which has been in the news for years with nothing but scandal and reports of huge amounts of taxpayers money being wasted and series after series of just nonsense being put on the air. I may not like much of what BBC Three puts out, but I understand the need for that channel. Then I saw what was on that night and I thought ‘Really? This is good ol’ Auntie claiming to be putting out its best, every time? Bollocks to this’.

[Pete Tranter’s Sister]

If someone could transcribe the EastEnders omnibus for me and post it up every week, I’d appreciate it immensely.

[Pete Tranter’s Sister]

First there are kisses, then there are sighs, then before you know where you are, you’re saying goodbye.

[Pete Tranter’s Sister]

Craig sounds like a husky transsexual now.

[Pete Tranter’s Sister]

In the episode Stasis Leak, when Lister plays Rimmer’s skeleton like a xylophone, he strikes the same rib in succession, yet he produces two clearly different tones. I mean, what are we to believe, that this is a magic xylophone or something? Ha-ha, boy, I really hope Ed Bye got fired for that blunder.

Clancy wasn’t a fuck-up like Abe or most of the parents in The Simpsons. I’d like to think the writers are happy keeping him forever enshrined as a well meaning, gruff, Archie Bunker-esque father / airline host and know that delving too far into the back-stories has diminishing returns for the audience at a story level and only really panders to the needs of writers and obsessive fans to explain away every conceivable plot hole or mystery surrounding the life of a main character.

Clancy was an army veteran, a good dad to Marge, Patty and Selma, he voted Republican throughout his life, he grew older, saw the first few years of his grandchildren’s lives and then snuffed it, leaving Jacqueline a widow, the end.

Abe on the other hand was a piece of shit to his wife and son.

[Pete Tranter’s Sister]

From The Simpsons Wiki…

We know that Clancy is deceased from the only episode where his death is mentioned (Jazzy and the Pussycats), where Homer says he had bought Marge a “white-noise machine” to help her deal with her father’s death. The cause or time of his death is undetermined. In an issue of the comic Simpsons Illustrated, Lisa reveals that Clancy died in an accident in 1985. What is known is that his death occurred some time after Lisa and Bart reached a toddler age, since he still appeared alongside toddler Bart and Lisa in “Walking Big & Tall”. Clancy is also known to be dead because he never appears with Jacqueline, who is portrayed as a single woman.

In one Treehouse of Horror episode, he was eaten by King Homer at his and Marge’s wedding.

So now we know, kinda.

[Pete Tranter’s Sister]

I pitched in and completed the questionnaire although at the end I couldn’t quite clarify why I prefer the earlier seasons and it bugged me because there’s a very elemental difference, at least to me, between the first few seasons and the modern era.

There’s a sweet, endearing nature to the earlier seasons of The Simpsons that just feels completely absent now. The amount of writing and rewriting that went into the characters and story was a rarity for an animated show, even today, and serves as a testament of how joyous it must’ve been for the first batch of writers to work on the scripts and not only know how successful it was but why it was. It was down to the hard graft of writing sessions going on into the wee hours and really pushing and pursuing the dynamics and subtleties of each character. That characterisation serves as the catalyst for the plot and the inherent traits of each character are never taken for granted simply to fuel a plot-line as seen now where comedies and dramas just exaggerate the more obvious traits of each character to beyond impossibly absurd and unfunny levels as the episode count reaches into the hundreds.

I don’t mind if The Simpsons reuses elements or whole chunks of plot and story from earlier episodes, there’s limited routes for wholly new themes after so long but there’s unlimited ways of expressing those ideas and showing how each character reacts and reflects within those stories. I don’t mind if The Simpsons accelerates forward and shows how Marge and Homer got together in a different era other than the original backdrop of the ’70s, but never, ever let the playground of nostalgia and the ability to pull pop culture references into the plot overshadow the endearing tale of how that silly, foolish but loveable guy manages to win the heart of Marge Bouvier.

I don’t even mind new avenues of comedic expression being utilised such as the rise of sight and reaction gags, cutaways and meta humour but let them be intertwined fully and seamlessly into the episode. When they are used correctly, they work beautifully. When they’re lumped in to bring an episode up to time or nod and wink at the audience, forget it, you’ve dismantled the core of The Simpsons, which is to tell tales about a very average but extraordinary family and the town in which they live.

I once asked my girlfriend what part of the $pringfield episode she remembered most and it was Bart’s casino. The total length of those segments that derive from the main plot but never wholly break away was what, two minutes or so but it was fucking gold from start to finish. From Bart hustling on the phone to book Robert Goulet to the man himself singing Jingle Bells, Batman Smells before whacking Milhouse with the microphone. You ever gonna see something so profoundly crazy but seemingly right ever happen again in The Simpsons?

I just don’t see the love in The Simpsons now, it seems so… well made but useless.

[Pete Tranter’s Sister]

August 1st, 2016.

[Pete Tranter’s Sister]

I’ve built a myriad of models but none more than two feet and without rather comprehensive guides. I’ve always been interested in a 6 or 12 foot build of the Crimson Short One to serve as a nice talking point at Dimension Jump but alas, I foresaw two main challenges.

1 – If it’s travelling, it has to travel in sections and be well protected from bumps and shocks that will dislodge the finer details, let alone warp the main structural plates. This means it has to be modular and able to be assembled and broken down easily and not show the seams between separate sections or where finer details were reattached once it’s arrived at its destination. Thankfully, it can be done with Red Dwarf as there is plenty scope to obscure joins with various layers hull plating and little oddities such as the observation deck..

2 – There’s reference material on-screen for a relatively accurate build of either the original BBC model or the Series X build which is a cut and shunt of the Remastered ‘pencil’ model. But both are open to interpretation. I’d never, ever diverge from the canon look, colour and use of components such as the scoop, engine and side details but I’ve always wanted a build of Red Dwarf that ideally serves as a transition between the original and new looks to remove the sheer ironmonger-esque feel of the original but step back from the streamlined feel of the Series X model, not that there’s anything wrong with that.

[Pete Tranter’s Sister]

You’re quite right. I just deinterlace video as soon as it rears its manky, useless, Babylon 5 loving head on my screen so everything is a frame to me.

Frame Flask, Frame Cat, Frame Microphone, Frame Rather Sad Knob.

[Pete Tranter’s Sister]

It’s Always Fun, Fun, Fun In The Sun, Sun, Sunny In Philadelphia.

The Gang Wrestle With The Pan-Dimensional Liquid Beast From The Mogadon Cluster.

[Pete Tranter’s Sister]

More than three-quarters of the visual information was removed, it’s near-genocide.

The original footage used for the Remastered episodes was shot with studio cameras employing 50 frames per second, interlaced video, much like every BBC production in colour since the mid-1960s. This entails two frames of video existing on one frame only, with the first frame recorded onto the even fields of the picture and the second on the odd fields.

To achieve the first step of a film-like look, you have to reduce the frame rate by removing the odd fields, cutting the frame rate from 50 to 25. The trouble is, by doing so, you are essentially deleting half the image. To fill in the blank areas, the Remastered episodes took the even fields, duplicated them down to the odd fields and gave them a bit of a blur to soften out the jagged look that occurs when using that technique.

But interlaced video is a strange land of pros and cons. Even though interlaced video squeezes two frames into every frame of video, interlacing artefacts such as ‘jaggies’ which you may have seen on a dodgy digital signal or when editing non-processed video only occur where there is motion. Otherwise, interlaced cameras capture a full frame, full quality image when the scene is static. When motion occurs such as a character moving their hands or walking, the deficiencies of interlaced video becomes apparent.

The Remastered episodes have already at this point, lost three-quarters of their visual information from dropping the frame rate from 50 to 25 and utilising a very early de-interlacing technique that uses none of the odd frame information. Also, the cameras were set up to take in an image every 1/50th of a second. When dropping from 50 to 25, motion is jerkier due to smaller amounts of motion blur which the eye picks up on very keenly as compared to when shooting video with the camera pre-set to 1/25th of a second with motion blur more natural to that timing.

What is left is 25 frames per second video with half the horizontal resolution and frame rate of before. Essentially going from a 50 frames per second, 720 x 576 image to 25 frames per second, 720 x 288. It’s as if we never won a war…

Then on top of all that, there is a grain effect lashed over the image, then it was cropped from a full-screen 4:3 ratio to 14:9, the colour grading was tweaked beyond measure and then there is the infamous editing, effects and sound changes.

Remastered? Rebastard.

[Pete Tranter’s Sister]

It’s one of the many Red Dwarf projects currently on the boil but this one is advancing along at a fair rate.

Essentially, it involves cropping each and every shot, not just scene, not just episode, but every shot to remove black bars at the left and right of the frame. Now, this would be simple and completed in a matter of minutes if the bars were consistent across the entire episode. But, naturally, Red Dwarf was shot on analogue video and each camera, each tape they used for capture had varying degrees in which these unused areas of the frame were evident. So, I cut from one shot with Rimmer talking away to the next with Cat or Holly and find the bars have shifted in or outwards by four pixels, sometimes the bars merge where shots have been layered for special effects and transitions, sometimes the bars have terrible patterning that eats into the shot itself. It’s a fucking pain in the arse but ultimately, what it allows is for a completely consistent, edge to edge new master of the episode to then be saved.

As a result, when the series is upscaled to 720p, what is going in is fully de-interlaced, edge to edge, 50 frames per second progressive video that shows off the absolute full amount of image and detail which can be pulled from the DVD. There’s no changes to colour, no edge enhancement, no personal choices in regards to brightness levels or anything of the sort. This is a precise upscale that takes advantage of the benefits that blu-ray and modern digital formats can bring.

Of course, having said all that, I decided that all those carefully and innovatively created title sequences, overlays and credit rolls were shite and needed completely erased from history. I am recreating them and the sole reason is that although standard definition footage can look really, really nice in high definition when converted properly and with care, superimposed text and credits can look hellish because they originate from the earliest days of computer generated graphics and simply couldn’t compare to the resolution and quality that hand-crafted or really big budget title sequences at the time could bring. Now, this is undoubtedly gonna be a point of conflict but it allows for EVERY single element of these episodes to shine and not be encased at either side by titles and graphics which simply do not hold up in high definition. These are recreations and not revisions so the choice of font, spacing, speed at which credits run, everything will be as it was but they’ll hold up really nice in this brave new world of 938 inch tellies.

So, yes, that’s my plan, go back to your constituencies and prepare for Red Dwarf – HD (kinda).

[Pete Tranter’s Sister]

The End is nigh…

Series I, upscaled, re-titled, de-interlaced, pro-choice, non-unionised, hosed down and given a hat.

August 1st on blu-ray.

[Pete Tranter’s Sister]

[Pete Tranter’s Sister]

Ok, here is a Series VII test. I’ve reconstructed the frame using a modern de-interlacer, interpolated up to 50 fps and lessened colour saturation to bring it into line with the first two series. It’s not even close to the finished product but it’s a start.

http://www.filedropper.com/rd7test50fps

[Pete Tranter’s Sister]

It’s not a fucking drug deal in front of Cappsy’s flat, it’s just some extra frames on the telly, bro.

[Pete Tranter’s Sister]

It’s gone, started over, I’ll put another up soon though along with a Series VII test and a mock-up of the HD titles for Series IV.

BECAUSE I’M GOOD TO YOU ALL.

[Pete Tranter’s Sister]

It’s on hiatus until I finish off pre and post-episode idents and VHS promos. I’m currently working on ‘BBC Manchestering’ Series VII and a few other bits and bobs.

Series VII’s film look was partly achieved by halving the frame rate. Having had a good goose at the episodes frame by frame, I’ve noticed that they were shot on standard studio cameras then the odd fields were knocked out and the even fields duplicated down. Essentially a quick and dirty way to convert 50 fps interlaced video to 25 fps progressive. Because it was 1996 or so when this happened, the conversion process completely ignored any information that could be retained from the odd fields and as a result, fine details ended up blocky and obscured as the vertical resolution of the image was essentially halved.

So, skip to 2015 and I’ve been able to interpolate new odd fields that use information gleamed from the even fields and furthermore, interpolate up to 50 fps to bring the series back into video land.

Finally, I’m looking into the possibility of upconverting Series I to VI into HD, formatting new titles and end credits that closely adhere to the originals, colour grading, stereo conversion and other fixes that I can’t recall at the moment.

So that’s Series X De-mastered, Series VII BBC Manchestered and Series I – VI High Definitioninginised.

[Pete Tranter’s Sister]

It’s progressing along as we speak, inbetween creating the definitive Queen videography and bumping Series VII back into the video look.

The widescreen (16:9) presentation of Series X has brought the principal characters closer to the camera than they would be in the first six series (4:3), so I’ve decided to crop the picture to 14:9 which is exactly halfway between those two screen ratios. The traditional 4:3 presentation looked too claustrophobic and jammed together. Also, the 14:9 ratio was used in the Remastered episodes but we don’t talk about them, ever.

So, I go shot by shot, reframing and using Series III and IV as a reference to judge whether characters should be dead on centre in the frame or slightly skewed based on camera setup. Turns out that when you really analyse the shots in those particular series, they must’ve had the work experience lads behind the lens.

And now, we move onto liars.

Father Peter Thornton.

Father Desmond Kearnes, remember him?

[Pete Tranter’s Sister]

Right, this is a VERY early light and motion test of the first fifteen seconds of Trojan. No colour grading bar contrast and saturation tweaking, no re-framing of the shot, no camera imperfections, nothing. The following is to simply assess how well the frame interpolation holds up alongside picture resizing and deinterlacing.

If all that sounds a tad technical, basically I’m doing all I can to make a beautifully shot show look rather shite and VHS’d. To properly gauge the difference in motion, play the beginning scene of Trojan as originally broadcast then play mine.

The following file is 50 frames per second, so if your rubbishy computer can’t handle it, tough…

https://www.sendspace.com/file/o3sm3z

[Pete Tranter’s Sister]

I do plan to have a copy or two as prizes for the next Dimension Jump. I’m hoping to get it signed by the cast and have Doug Naylor chase me for copyright infringement. It will hurt when Chris Barrie looks at me blankly and wonders why I’m handing him fan-made VHS tapes but I’m willing to sacrifice my remaining integrity for said signatures.

Let’s be fair, why would Doug Naylor want the new episodes to go out looking decidedly ‘BBC Manchester’ when he has pined for a movie with all the fancy visuals and thematic additions that would come with it. Modern production has allowed him to capture the big screen mood but alas, the clash with blanket lit sets to help both the feel of the show and to allow a quicker setup and recording rate because of the return of the audience is tangible and evident onscreen.

Which is no bad thing, after all, Series X on blu-ray is absolutely stunning. The Beginning for me is like watching the long-awaited film if it was made a decade ago, regardless of the fact elements are based off the pre-production movie script.

Series XI will be a contrast from X visually but we won’t see as such a difference from say… Series II to III or even V to VI. I suspect the audience will return but we’ll see something akin to a high definition Series VII.

Hmm, now there’s a thought… who’d like a demastered VII?

[Pete Tranter’s Sister]

Peter bloody Jackson? Paul Jackson.

Guys, you’ve gotta know your lines. You’ve GOT to know your lines.

[Pete Tranter’s Sister]

22 months later… I’ve restarted this project and finding myself facing one visual question.

I recently listened to a Dwarfcast where the group couldn’t quite explain how the ‘filmisation’ techniques applied to Series VII looked so good. Namely, was it a simple interlace frame removal that dropped the frame rate from 50 to 25 or something a tad more obscure that came along between the analogue to digital video filming switchover in the late 90’s / early 2000’s.

Either way, Series VII looks great. The lighting around the sets, the locations and the filmisation technique still stands up 17 (!) years later and in watching Series X again to figure out where to crop for the traditional 4:3 picture ratio as seen in Series I to VI and VIII, I came to the conclusion that Series X doesn’t fit itself very well.

Series X utilises both blanket lighting for the main sets (as seen in the majority of the first six series) and areas of mood lighting as predominantly seen in Series VII and Back To Earth. Now the problem is that blanket lighting doesn’t look great on modern, progressive, high definition cameras. The 25 frames per second output of those cameras immediately aligns itself with a more film-like look and in that, we’re all very accustomed to film grain, moodier lighting, areas of contrast and different colour palettes.

It seems the team made the decision to allow the design of the sets and overall atmosphere of the new episodes to harken back to the earlier series but modern production studios naturally use modern filming techniques and equipment. So what you get is a clash between traditional lighting and colour palettes and the modern age. The remastered editions of the first three series comes up against this clash as well. You can apply all the filmisation techniques as you like to shift colours, add grain and remove the video look to an extent but you can’t do sod all about the original lighting. It immediately shows itself up as video.

The Demastered project is essentially the reverse of the remastering project. I’m flattening colours, removing contrast, upping the frame rate and adding the visual and audio quirks of the analogue era that we all remember and pretend to love and in initial tests, it’s been a rare treat to see some of the footage come out looking as if it was filmed not too long after Series II. I’m going to go that far and say some of it looks decidedly… submarine and Peter Jackson-ish.

Not all of it can though. Some of Series X just looks great from a film standpoint visually and no amount of muddying up can make it look as if it was filmed at BBC Manchester studios circa 1990. Tough, that’s the sacrifice.

Right, onwards, I’ll post up a few tests in a few days and of course, I appreciate any comments and suggestions.

[Pete Tranter’s Sister]

I always wanted Bill Bailey as Holly.

As for Hattie, I always assumed she didn’t play Holly, just herself as she doesn’t seem much different in real life.

[Pete Tranter’s Sister]

Are you implying that Hattie Hayridge has forgotten how to ‘be’ Hattie Hayridge?

[Pete Tranter’s Sister]

I don’t know what all this palaver is about, Nu-Who is bollocks anyway.

Yeah, I fucking said it, fuck the lot of you.*

*I love you all!

[Pete Tranter’s Sister]

I recall a lad in school mentioning in slightly jokey, nervous tones about browsing ITV Teletext and finding a gay dating section. According to his Facebook profile, he’s a Billy Bender Bummer Bum Bummite, shoulda been more obvious really…

[Pete Tranter’s Sister]

I shall forever mourn ORACLE and Paramount Comedy Text.

[Pete Tranter’s Sister]

Is.

[Pete Tranter’s Sister]

I loved The Stonk when I was a kid and I just listened to it again after 21 years.

It fucking sucks.

[Pete Tranter’s Sister]

THANK YOU.

[Pete Tranter’s Sister]

I’m booking into a charming gothic nightmare of a hotel a solid fifteen minutes walk away at the back end of an industrial estate.

[Pete Tranter’s Sister]

The fourth series would’ve been nice to see as it was written off the momentum of the first three.

I wouldn’t mind a new Young Ones series.

WHAT.

[Pete Tranter’s Sister]

Thank Christ he grew into his skull.

[Pete Tranter’s Sister]

Indeed Mick, some of it was included in that Jimmy Savile documentary.

[Pete Tranter’s Sister]

Looks like shit as a single frame but in motion, it captures the first series rather well. Series IV is where I wanna be visually.

[Pete Tranter’s Sister]

Count me in! I’m going to enter the costume competition as Rob Grant.

[Pete Tranter’s Sister]

A solid recreation of the Galaxy idents and themes would be my ideal choice but it’s hampered by the following…

– Galaxy was never well known televisually outside of early BSB subscribers and as such, doesn’t have a deep and instant nostalgic feeling for many, many people unlike early Sky One idents or even the late 90’s incarnation of the Paramount Comedy Channel.

– Using ‘Galaxy’ may seem like a lazy way to tie-in with the sci-fi setting of Red Dwarf

– The idents stand up remarkably well next to modern channel graphics and I really want to capture a late-80’s, early 90’s feel with pastel colours, shit synth music and bad CGI and geometric shapes. Think of a promotional video for some low-key town or company in Middle England who don’t want to spend more than fifty quid on their graphics and that’s the golden ticket. I give BSB and Sky one thing, they fucking well knew how to do a proper ident in the early 90’s.

Hmm… Paramount Comedy Channel, there’s a possibility, I did fucking LOVE that channel in the 90’s before it became just another crappy sitcom marathon pusher.

[Pete Tranter’s Sister]

Kryten was a bit of a spare prick in VIII.

HO HO, DID YOU SEE WHAT i DID THERE.

[Pete Tranter’s Sister]

Sold!

[Pete Tranter’s Sister]

Kryten was quite the camper in Series VII, although this was due to him becoming an overly hen-pecking mother to the boys as soon as Kochanski stepped onboard.

[Pete Tranter’s Sister]

The point is not to make the series better, we’re only two episodes in and I’m already loving it. It’s simply to remove more than one visual barrier between the comedy and the viewer and present the episodes as a uniform continuation of the first six series, namely by rolling back the high definition, 25 frames per second, widescreen presentation.

My initial plan was to leave it there but the prospect of really capturing the quirks of pre-digital, pre-cinematic analogue presentation and pay tribute to a quarter century of Red Dwarf with the first new VHS release in over a decade is something I can’t pass up.

As for colour bleeding and generational loss, any blemishes that I introduce will be very subtle such as colour banding, audio dropouts and the odd twist in the tape with the inherent spookiness that comes with it. We all remember having a favourite movie on VHS as a child and knowing exactly when the tape quirks would show up. For me, it was Back To The Future Part II and as the Delorean lands in Hill Valley 2015, the audio would muffle for a second and a rather thin but annoying grey band would roll up the screen.

At the next Dimension Jump convention, I’m hoping to give away one or two copies as prizes and hopefully get my own copy signed.

Now that I think about it, younger attendees might ask what the fuck a video tape is…

[Pete Tranter’s Sister]

Hmm, I’m going to format the Dave graphics to match the early 90’s UK Gold graphics.

Hooray! Pish graphics ahoy made on a slow as fuck 386 PC with a 40mb hard drive.

[Pete Tranter’s Sister]

The documentary regarding the remastering on the Bodysnatchers DVD makes it clear how best intentions didn’t translate fully into results when it came to reworking and enhancing the show. I can imagine that somewhere along the line, the master tapes for more than one element of audio accidentally ended up in a Ford Escort ‘H’ reg at the bottom of the River Irwell.

[Pete Tranter’s Sister]

Blisschick, I just had a gander on Amazon at the DVD artwork for the American releases of Red Dwarf. You have my sincere condolences.

MANI506, I’ll be kicking the project off as soon as the series X Blu-ray lands so expect it for early to mid-December.

[Pete Tranter’s Sister]

It is quite odd how Kryten looks the most aged (at least the mask is improving episode by episode).

[Pete Tranter’s Sister]

I miss Tony Slattery.

[Pete Tranter’s Sister]

Weapons Grade was hilarious!

[Author]

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