title: Smolensk air disaster

text: While Polish commentators saw Putin's participation in the ceremony held on 7 April as a symbolic gesture, they were touched when Putin and Tusk paid tribute and laid flowers at the site of the crash. Tusk knelt and briefly hid his face in his hands, then stood up as Putin patted him on the shoulder. The two hugged, then gave a joint press conference on the investigation into the crash. Polish commentators noted this was a human gesture, and a display of emotion that Poles had longed to see from their eastern neighbours.


title: Smolensk air disaster

text: On 11 April, holding a bouquet of red roses, Putin was reported to have appeared truly distressed as he escorted Kaczyński's body to a Warsaw-bound plane. Later Putin said in a Polish television interview: "This is of course first and foremost Poland's tragedy and that of the Polish people, but it is also our tragedy. We mourn with you".


title: Smolensk air disaster

text: The Russian response has been noted favourably by Poles, with talk of a thawing in the relationship between Russia and Poland. Witold Waszczykowski, deputy head of Poland's National Security Bureau, told Reuters, "We did not expect this gentle, kind approach, this personal involvement from Putin. Naturally it will have a positive impact on the relationship between our countries." Jerzy Bahr, the Polish ambassador to Russia also stated, "We can sense Russian solidarity at every step of the way."


title: Smolensk air disaster

text: As part of this thawing of relations, on 28 April 18 days after the crash, Russia's state Archive publicly published a number of previously secret files on the Katyn massacre on their website. The files were declassified in the early 1990s, but before their publication they were only available to specialized researchers.


title: Smolensk air disaster

text: The strongest admission was yet to come. On 26 November 2010, the Russian State Duma passed a resolution admitting that Soviet leader Joseph Stalin personally approved the Katyn massacre. The Soviets had long claimed Nazi Germany were the ones responsible. Although this stance changed in 1990 when Mikhail Gorbachev admitted the Soviet NKVD secret police carried out the massacre, the November 2010 resolution was the first time the Russian government admitted direct involvement by Stalin.


title: Smolensk air disaster

text: In an interview with "Rzeczpospolita", Andrei Illarionov, Vladimir Putin's former advisor, noted, "... contrary to the promises, the investigation of this crash is neither transparent nor dynamic." and added, "... the Polish side does not have full and free access to documents and evidence." Illarionov was also one of the signatories of an open letter written by Russian dissidents, which voiced concerns about the conduct of the investigation. According to the letter, "rapprochement with the current Russian authorities is more important for the Polish government than determining the truth about the plane crash." Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk responded that his government would obtain flight data from the Russian investigators before making its own judgment and revealing it to the public.


title: Smolensk air disaster

text: At least 96 countries, 13 international organizations and several other entities expressed their reaction on behalf of the incident. An official mourning was proclaimed in 18 countries other than Poland. Condolence books were opened in many public locations such as the Polish centre in Hammersmith, where Prince Charles signed their condolence book.


title: Smolensk air disaster

text: Twenty-three countries observed a varying number of days of official mourning; Brazil: 3, Bulgaria: 1, Canada: 1, Cape Verde: 1, Croatia: 1, Czech Republic: 2, Estonia: 1, Germany: 1, Georgia: 1, Hungary: 1, Latvia: 1, Lithuania: 4, Maldives: 2, Moldova: 1, Montenegro: 1, Poland: 9, Romania: 1, Russia: 1, Serbia: 1, Slovakia: 1, Spain: 1, Turkey: 1, Ukraine: 1.


title: Smolensk air disaster

text: Victims of the airplane crash were also commemorated by minute of silence before several football matches throughout Europe, including El Clásico Real Madrid C.F. – FC Barcelona in Spain; or FC Baník Ostrava – 1. FC Slovácko and Prague derby AC Sparta Prague – SK Slavia Praha in the Czech Republic.


title: Smolensk air disaster

text: Some concern arose that Kaczyński's funeral would have to be delayed as a consequence of volcanic ash emanating from Iceland and the resulting air travel disruption in Europe. Only one airport in the country was open, and several international dignitaries were unable to attend. The funeral nonetheless went ahead as scheduled.


title: Smolensk air disaster

text: NATO was reportedly concerned over the possible compromise of many of its secret codes and communications procedures to the Russian government. Many of the Polish government and military officials on the aircraft apparently carried secret NATO communication key codes and devices which were recovered by the Russians after the crash.


title: Smolensk air disaster

text: , Russia is still in possession of the wreckage and black boxes of the Tupolev, having refused various requests made by the Polish government to return the items. In 2018, PACE issued resolution #2246 which calls Russian Federation to hand over the wreckage of the plane.


title: Smolensk air disaster

text: Conspiracy theories have been in circulation since the day of the accident, claiming in general that the crash was in fact a political assassination, an act of war against Poland or an elaborate coup attempt, possibly orchestrated by Russia. The range of such theories has been described by some international media as "dizzying"; from the idea that the fog around the airport had been artificially produced, to victims' bodies being doctored in fake autopsies, to the idea that explosives were planted on board the plane. Reports favourable to such conspiracy theories have in particular very often referred to an alleged detonation that happened immediately before the plane hit a birch tree.


title: Smolensk air disaster

text: Soon after the crash, Artur Górski, a Polish MP from the Law and Justice party, claimed that the Smolensk air traffic controllers were ordered to prevent the plane from landing, so that the president could not attend the Katyń ceremony, resulting in the crash. Górski later apologized for his remarks. Law and Justice's leader Jarosław Kaczyński and the head of the parliamentary committee of investigation Antoni Macierewicz have been described as long time supporters of the assassination theory, and have repeatedly accused the then prime minister Donald Tusk of being involved in a cover-up. Macierewicz repeated these accusations as newly appointed minister of defence in 2016, causing a significant controversy in Polish, Russian and international media.


title: Smolensk air disaster

text: On 30 October 2012, Polish newspaper "Rzeczpospolita" reported that traces of explosives had been detected by investigators in the wreckage of the Tupolev, on the wings and in the cabin. The claims were denied by Polish prosecutors—who claimed that a number of common substances could as well have produced the observed readings—and were later withdrawn by the owner of the newspaper. "Rzeczpospolita"'s editor-in-chief and three other staff, including the author of the article, were fired from their jobs. The author of the article in question, Cezary Gmyz, maintained that what he wrote was confirmed by four independent sources.


title: Smolensk air disaster

text: The editor-in-chief of Rzeczpospolita published a video in which he explained that he decided to publish the article only after talking to the Public Prosecutor General, Andrzej Seremet.


title: Smolensk air disaster

text: Seremet responded by claiming that he told the editor that the highly energetic particles detected can be of "various" origin.


title: Smolensk air disaster

text: In November 2015, a court in Poland ruled in favour of the sacked journalists, stating that the information published in the article correctly reflected the state of knowledge at the time of publication.


title: Smolensk air disaster

text: After the 2012 publication, there was some discussion about the trustworthiness of the handheld explosives detectors used. The Supreme Military Prosecutor's Office (NPW) announced that they examined the interior of the other Polish government Tu-154M (the one that did not crash), and during the examination the handheld explosives detectors did, in some places, signal the presence of explosives - implying that the readings of the instruments in general cannot be trusted. The manufacturer of the detector countered that the only way the detector can be fooled is when its benchmark (an element containing trace amounts of explosives, for reference) is clogged because of very high concentrations of specific substances in the surrounding air - for example, when put inside a bottle of acetone, or very close to a sample of perfume - which according to him is very unlikely to happen in the field; and even then it behaves in a way that would cause the user to notice the device is malfunctioning, because it alternates between different substances being reported instead of reporting just one of them. The results of an experiment conducted by some journalists seem to confirm that.


title: Smolensk air disaster

text: A relative of one of the victims brought back remains of the victim's clothing and a piece of seatbelt (including the clip) from Smolensk, and sent them to the United States for private examination. The examiners did not find traces of explosives on the piece of clothing. They did, however, find traces of TNT on the seatbelt. The analysis was qualitative, stating that the substance was present but not determining its quantity.


title: Smolensk air disaster

text: In 2017, it was announced that the British Ministry of Defence was engaged by the Polish Government to examine the wreckage of the aircraft for traces of explosives. The work would be done by scientists based at the Forensic Explosives Laboratory at Fort Halstead, Kent. In early 2019, Polish right-wing weekly "Sieci" reported that partial results from the Forensic Explosives Laboratory were in, and that the "traces of explosives" were confirmed in the "vast majority" of a few dozens of samples that had been tested by the British so far. British air accident investigator Frank Taylor, who was involved in the investigation into the losses of Pan Am Flight 103 and British Airtours Flight 28M but did not investigate the Flight 101 crash apart from inspecting photographs presented by Antoni Macierewicz, claimed that there were explosions on board the aircraft, including in its wing, immediately before it reached the tree.


title: Smolensk air disaster

text: According to Polish experts, trace amounts of high explosives could be present in the airplane due to frequent presence of military personnel onboard, or as result of contamination on the ground (Smolensk area was a battlefield during World War II). The fact that the traces were found on some parts of the airplane (e.g. belts) but not on others (e.g. bodies), their trace amounts and chemical character all have been described as inconsistent with the hypothesis of an in-flight bomb explosion. The 2013 report of Maciej Lasek commissio also did not corroborate the idea. For example, the bomb explosion theory is not supported by the fact that the plane's debris is concentrated in a relatively small 160x50 m area, and no parts of the plane's interior were found before the first ground contact.


title: Smolensk air disaster

text: In July 2010, a group of Polish MPs, mostly from the Law and Justice party, formed the "Parliamentary Committee for the investigation of the Tu-154M crash in Smolensk", chaired by the party's deputy leader Antoni Macierewicz. Later in November, Macierewicz called for the United States to lead an independent international commission on the accident. Some US Republican congressmen supported this idea but the U.S. has never acted upon it.


title: Smolensk air disaster

text: In March 2015 the Polish committee published a report in which it claimed that two separate explosions took place on board the Tupolev in the last few seconds of its flight, bringing the aircraft down; a third explosion allegedly occurred after the impact with the ground. The committee's conclusions were partly based on a paper by Dr. Wiesław Binienda of the University of Akron, in which the author presented computer simulations that claimed to prove that the impact with the birch tree could not have severed the plane's wing. The paper, however, was self-published and not peer-reviewed. According to group's scientists – Binienda, Kazimierz Nowaczyk from the University of Maryland and Gregory Szuladziński – the direct cause of the crash was not a collision with an obstacle, but two explosions in the last phase of the flight: first on the left, by which the plane lost part of the left wing, then another inside the hull. Alleged contradictions, errors and manipulations in the official reports has been pointed out. Binienda also claimed that the cut wingtip couldn't fly over 100 m from the tree, the hull couldn't be torn to the outside by a collision with the ground, there should be a crater in the ground as a result of the crash if the plane wasn't torn in the air before. Szuladzinski's report stated that: any landing (or fall) in a wooded area, no matter how adverse, and at what angle, could not in any way result in such fragmentation, which has been documented. Nowaczyk analyzed data from FMS and TAWS system and came to the conclusions that the plane flew over the tree and was torn at a height over 30 m above the ground. Wacław Berczyński, a former software engineer at Boeing, pointed to the pulled out rivets of the sheeting and claimed that it could be caused only by an internal explosion.


title: Smolensk air disaster

text: Starting in October 2012, an independent (financed by its participants) Smolensk Conference was organised annually in Warsaw and attended by scientists and researchers from Polish and foreign universities to provide a forum intended to introduce and discuss independent studies related to the catastrophe. The last (fourth) of these meetings was convened in November 2015 and its proceedings (with summaries and abstracts in several languages) were published in 2016 (with a letter from the President of Poland, Andrzej Duda). The Scientific Committee of the Conferences was chaired by Professor Kazimierz Flaga. The Advisory Committee included 114 academics.


title: Smolensk air disaster

text: Following Law and Justice's victory at the 2015 Polish parliamentary elections, the newly conservative government appointed the chair of the Polish Parliamentary Committee of Investigation, Antoni Macierewicz, as defence minister, and the question of the Smolensk crash was brought back into the government's agenda. New foreign minister Witold Waszczykowski announced that Poland would sue Russia in a human rights court over Moscow's withholding of the wreckage. The Consul of Europe's Parliamentary Assembly designated a special investigation rapporteur who will carry out an inquiry on whether holding back the wreckage and other evidence material by the Russians is justified.


title: Smolensk air disaster

text: On 25 November 2015, government spokeswoman Elżbieta Witek called for former Prime Minister Donald Tusk to be put on trial for his handling of the 2010 air disaster. Adam Lipiński, from the Prime Minister's Chancellery, accused Tusk of negligence and weakness in handling the investigation and the restitution of the wreckage. Deputy Minister of Culture Jarosław Sellin stated his absolute conviction that there were explosions on board the Tu-154 and that the real cause of the Smolensk crash had not yet been established. Polish President Andrzej Duda, from the Law and Justice party, wrote a letter to the participants of the 4th Smolensk Conference that took place on 14 November 2015 in Warsaw, describing the official Russian and Polish accident reports as 'simply hypotheses' inconsistent with evidence, and stating that the investigation on the crash is not complete.


title: Smolensk air disaster

text: In November 2015, the government shut down the "faktysmolensk.gov.pl" website, which had been set up by state authorities under Tusk's cabinet to explain in simple terms the findings of the official investigations. No reason was given for the website closure. An independent mirror was created shortly afterwards.


title: Smolensk air disaster

text: In February 2016, Macierewicz announced the official reopening of the investigation in the so-called Committee for the Re-investigation of the Smolensk Air Crash (), declaring that the previous inquiries were "riddled with mistakes" and reaffirming his belief that the aircraft disintegrated mid-air immediately before impacting the ground. As part of the renewed investigation, the remains of the deceased Polish president were exhumed on 14 November 2016.


title: Smolensk air disaster

text: In January 2018, the Committee claimed that a number of explosions had occurred aboard the airliner, with these claims being formalised during the presentation of their preliminary findings in February. The head of the previous commission, Maciej Lasek, dismissed the claims as "illusions" and "propaganda". In April 2018, the Committee published a further report which said that the plane was destroyed in a mid-air explosion, and that Russian air traffic controllers at the Smolensk air base had misled the pilots about the plane's location during its approach to the runway; this report was described as one focusing on technical issues, with Macierewicz stating that the final report was yet to be published.


title: Smolensk air disaster

text: In June 2021 a ruling was delivered in a long trial where officials were accused of negligence in the flight's preparation. The judge stated that there were four parties directly involved in the flight preparation: the President's Office (KP), the Prime Minister's Office (KPRM), the Government Protection Office (BOR) and the 36th Special Aviation Regiment, with each of these having broken numerous procedural safeguards which would have prevented the crash. The President's Office should not have requested flight to an airport that was legally closed and not ready to accept such flights, the Prime Minister's Office should have not accepted and proceeded with the President's requests as it was not compliant with existing laws and procedures, and similar negligence was shown in the actions of the remaining two parties.


title: Smolensk air disaster

text: The date of publication of the Committee's final report had been repeatedly delayed since 2016, with these delays generating a significant amount of frustration and criticism even among its members. Glenn Jorgensen, Marek Dąbrowski, Wiesław Chrzanowski and Kazimierz Grono were eventually removed from the Committee and published a statement in which they rejected the conclusions of the report and their authorship. Law and Justice MEP Beata Gosiewska, who had requested a written version of the final report from Macierewicz without result, accused him of turning the investigation into an object of ridicule and of exploiting the disaster to advance his political career. In February 2021, Civic Platform senator Krzysztof Brejza made a request to the Polish Ministry of National Defence for information on how much the Committee's efforts had cost; the Ministry did not furnish Brejza with these figures, leading him to bring a legal case which, in September, he ultimately won. In December, following Brejza's receipt of the information that he had requested, it was reported that around 22.63 million złoty had been spent by the Committee between its 2016 inception and February 2021 despite the continued absence of the final report; in comparison, around 6.11 million złoty had been spent between the immediate aftermath of the crash in 2010 and the publication of the 2011 reports.


title: Smolensk air disaster

text: On the twelfth anniversary of the Smolensk disaster, 10 April 2022, both Macierewicz and Jarosław Kaczyński alluded to the imminent publication of the Committee's final report. The report was subsequently published the following day and essentially repeated earlier allegations that the plane was destroyed by explosives as part of a Russian assassination plot; the report's publication was marked by a press conference where Macierewicz described the events in Smolensk as constituting an act of unlawful interference by Russia. The report was briefly retracted, and the webpage on which it was hosted temporarily taken down, when it was reported that imagery of victims' corpses had been included in the report without distressing aspects of those images being redacted; Macierewicz subsequently issued an apology to the victims' families and to any private individuals who had seen the images. The images originally formed part of classified addenda from 2016 that discussed the burns on the victims' bodies; the author of the addendum, Marek Dąbrowski, said that his work had been retracted about a year before over disagreements with the Committee's work and was therefore used without his consent, and that he did not want to be associated with the actions of Macierewicz. It was also reported that other parts of the report, which was eventually republished on the domain belonging to the publisher of niezalezna.pl, a right-wing daily, were poorly redacted and the shaded text could be quickly uncovered using conventional software.


title: Smolensk air disaster

text: Shortly after the report's publication, the director of the Interdisciplinary Modeling Centre (Interdyscyplinarnego Centrum Modelowania Matematycznego i Komputerowego UW, ICM) to whose "mathematical modeling" results the report referred on a number of subjects declared that the ICM had never participated in the work of the Committee and its computing resources had been used on a commercial basis for computations he described as pseudo-scientific.


title: Smolensk air disaster

text: In September 2022 TVN24 journalist Piotr Świerczek published an extensive investigation, including interviews with members of the Committee and external experts, documenting numerous cases where Macierewicz manipulated their results or reports of external laboratories, and came up with conclusions which were inconsistent or contradictory to the expert assessment of the evidence. For example, the American National Institute for Aviation Research (NIAR) was hired to test whether the wing of a Tu-154 could break off upon impact with a birch tree as was reported to have happened during the disaster. The simulated collision saw the wing breaking off the plane upon impact in similar fashion to the findings of the 2011 reports. The NIAR's conclusions were completely ignored by Macierewicz and then misrepresented to prove the opposite case, namely that the wing cut through the tree without significant damage. Similar manipulations were applied to the pyrotechnical simulations of the wing, where a redacted photo was presented to fit the hypothesis that the wing suffered an internal explosion. Voice recorder analysis was interpreted by the Committee in complete contradiction to the conclusion of a voice analysis expert who did not confirm that any explosions could be heard. The Committee responded by insisting on the accuracy of the new report's version of events and by accusing TVN24 of committing its own manipulations and presenting Russia's point of view; in contrast, Donald Tusk, who now served as leader of the Civic Platform, called for Macierewicz to be tried and imprisoned in connection with the reported manipulations. Jarosław Kaczyński denounced critics of the Committee's report as being "agents of [Vladimir] Putin" during a Sejm debate on TVN24's findings, and would later use a press conference to make similar comments about there being a "powerful front" defending Putin; Kaczyński also claimed that the NIAR report would be published, but did not offer any specific timeframe for this to happen.


title: Smolensk air disaster

text: On 1 December 2022, Law and Justice attempted to amend a planned Sejm resolution on recognising Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism in order to include a section describing Russia as being "directly responsible" for the Smolensk crash and for the 2014 shooting down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. All members of the opposition refused to vote on the amendment, depriving it of the required quorum; the resolution itself failed to pass after Elżbieta Witek, a Law and Justice member of the Sejm who currently serves as its Marshal, refused to allow a vote on the earlier, unamended version. Borys Budka, leader of the Civic Coalition's Sejm caucus, accused Macierewicz of "still trying to impose his lies" about the crash and asked if he and Kaczyński were attempting to provoke a war with Russia; in turn, Macierewicz accused the opposition of being a "pro-Russian formation" unwilling to tell the truth about "Russian terrorism". On 4 December, a further report from TVN24 stated that the National Public Prosecutor's Office had asked several international experts to examine the bodies of eighty-three Smolensk victims, with these examinations failing to find any evidence that the victims' injuries were caused by an explosion. The experts' opinion was submitted to the Prosecutor's Office on 20 September 2022, but the latter had yet to reach a decision on public dissemination at the time of TVN24's report. On 14 December, a second attempt to pass the Sejm resolution recognising Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism was boycotted by opposition caucuses since the resolution once again included an amendment attributing direct responsibility for the Smolensk crash to Russia; the boycott led to the resolution being successfully passed, with Macierewicz thanking supporting Sejm members for making "a great decision that breaks the previous Smoleńsk lies".


title: Smolensk air disaster

text: In general, the assassination theory did not find much support among the general population of Poland. Since 2012, support for the notion that the Smolensk disaster was in fact an assassination generally oscillated between one-fourth to one-third of Poles. This distinction goes strongly along party lines - during the 2020 Polish presidential election for example, while 56% of Andrzej Duda's electorate believed in the theory, support for it among other candidates' voters was in the single or low-double digits. Support for the assassination theory surged during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, with an April 2022 poll conducted on behalf of wPolityce, a right-wing pro-government magazine, finding that 48% thought the assassination theory was plausible and 33% did not, with the remaining 19% being undecided.


title: Smolensk air disaster

text: The assassination theory did not gain significant traction outside of Poland, with foreign outlets generally describing the claim as a conspiracy theory or an allegation, while Russia has consistently denied any involvement in the crash. However, in his March 2022 address to the Polish Sejm, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy appeared to give credence to the theory, speaking of the "silence of those who knew exactly everything but still looked constantly at our neighbour [Russia]". Ruslan Stefanchuk, Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada, also voiced a "personal convinction" that Russia was involved in the crash.


title: 2K resolution

text: 2K resolution is a generic term for display devices or content having horizontal resolution of approximately 2,000 pixels. In the movie projection industry, Digital Cinema Initiatives is the dominant standard for 2K output and defines 2K resolution as . For television and consumer media, is the most common 2K resolution, but this is normally referred to as 1080p.


title: 2K resolution

text: In the cinematography industry, 2K resolution traditionally refers to a digital scan of 35mm film with a resolution around 2000 pixels wide. Typically this is done at , but the exact dimensions vary based on the aspect ratio and size of the scan area.


title: 2K resolution

text: Another common 2K resolution in cinema is . This is the resolution of the 2K container format standardized by DCI in their Digital Cinema System Specification in 2005. The resolution of the encapsulated video content follows the SMPTE 428-1 standard, which establishes the following resolutions for a 2K distribution:


title: 2K resolution

text: However, the term "2K" itself is generic, was not coined by DCI, and does not refer specifically to the DCI 2K standard. Usage of the term "2K" predates the publication of the DCI standard.


title: 2K resolution

text: The resolution has also been referred to as a 2K resolution by other standards organizations like NHK Science & Technology Research Laboratories and ITU Radiocommunication Sector (which were involved in the standardization of 1080p HDTV and 4K UHDTV).


title: 2K resolution

text: Another resolution that is often referred to as 2K is 2560 × 1440 (1440p) however that is a common mistake in marketing and is called QHD by the DCI.


title: Star Trek Generations

text: Star Trek Generations is a 1994 American science fiction film and the seventh film in the "Star Trek" film series. Malcolm McDowell joins cast members from the 1960s television show "" and the 1987 sequel series "", including William Shatner and Patrick Stewart. In the film, Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the USS "Enterprise"-D joins forces with Captain James T. Kirk to stop the villain Tolian Soran from destroying a planetary system in his attempt to return to an extra-dimensional realm known as the Nexus.


title: Star Trek Generations

text: "Generations" was conceived as a handoff from the original cast of the "Star Trek" films to the cast of "The Next Generation". After developing several film ideas concurrently, the producers chose a script written by Ronald D. Moore and Brannon Braga. Production began while the final season of the television series was being made. The director was David Carson, who previously directed episodes of the television series; photography was by franchise newcomer John A. Alonzo. Filming took place on the Paramount Studios lots, and on location in Valley of Fire State Park, Nevada, and Lone Pine, California. The film's climax was revised and reshot following poor reception from test audiences. The film uses a mix of traditional optical effects alongside computer-generated imagery, and was scored by regular "Star Trek" composer Dennis McCarthy.


title: Star Trek Generations

text: "Star Trek Generations" was released in the United States on November 18, 1994. Paramount promoted the film with merchandising tie-ins, including toys, books, games, and a website—a first for a major motion picture. The film opened at the top of the United States box office its first week of release and grossed a total of $118 million worldwide. Critical reception was mixed, with critics divided on the film's characters and comprehensibility to a casual viewer.


title: Star Trek Generations

text: In 2293, retired Starfleet officers James T. Kirk, Montgomery Scott, and Pavel Chekov attend the maiden voyage of the USS "Enterprise"-B. During the shakedown cruise, the starship is pressed into a rescue mission to save two El-Aurian refugee ships that have been snared by a massive energy ribbon. The "Enterprise" is able to save some of the refugees before their ships are destroyed, but becomes trapped by the ribbon, and Kirk goes to a control room to help the ship escape. While the "Enterprise" is freed, Kirk is presumed lost in space and dead after the trailing end of the ribbon tears open the ship's hull.


title: Star Trek Generations

text: In 2371, the crew of the USS "Enterprise"-D is in a holodeck computer simulation, celebrating the promotion of shipmate Worf to lieutenant commander. Captain Jean-Luc Picard learns his brother and nephew have been killed in a fire and is distraught that the Picard family line will end with him. The "Enterprise" receives a distress call from a stellar observatory, where an El-Aurian, Dr. Tolian Soran, launches a probe at the nearby star. The probe causes the star to implode, creating a shockwave that destroys its planetary system. Soran kidnaps "Enterprise" engineer Geordi La Forge and is transported off the station by a Klingon Bird of Prey belonging to the Duras sisters.


title: Star Trek Generations

text: "Enterprise" crewmember Guinan tells Picard that she and Soran were among the El-Aurians rescued in 2293. Soran—who lost his family when their homeworld was destroyed—is obsessed with returning to the energy ribbon to reach the "Nexus," an extra-dimensional realm of wish fulfillment that exists outside of normal space-time. Picard and Data determine that Soran, unable to fly a ship directly into the ribbon, is altering its path by removing the gravitational effects of nearby stars. Soran plans to destroy another star to bring the ribbon to Soran on the planet Veridian III, consequently killing millions on a nearby inhabited planet.


title: Star Trek Generations

text: Upon entering the Veridian system, Picard offers himself to the Duras sisters in exchange for La Forge, but insists on being transported to Soran directly. La Forge is returned to the "Enterprise", but unwittingly exposes the ship's defense details through the transmitter installed in his VISOR device. The Duras sisters attack, and the "Enterprise" sustains critical damage before destroying the Bird of Prey by rigging their cloaking device and firing photon torpedoes. When La Forge reports that the starship is about to suffer a warp-core breach as a result of the attack, Commander William Riker evacuates everyone to the forward saucer-section of the starship, which separates from the engineering section just before the breach occurs. The resulting shockwave sends the saucer-section crashing onto the surface of Veridian III, damaging it beyond repair.


title: Star Trek Generations

text: Picard fails to stop Soran, as Soran succeeds in launching another probe into the Veridian system's star, resulting in a similar shockwave to the one that destroyed the observatory. The destruction of the Veridian star and the disappearance of its gravitational force alters the course of the ribbon. The shockwave causes the destruction of Veridian III and the "Enterprise" and its crew, but not before Soran and Picard enter the Nexus, and Picard finds himself surrounded by an idealized family, but realizes it is an illusion. He is confronted by an "echo" of Guinan left behind in the Nexus. Guinan sends him to meet James T. Kirk, safe in the Nexus. Though Kirk is initially entranced by the opportunity to atone for past regrets, he realizes it lacks danger and excitement. Having learned that they can travel whenever and wherever desired through the Nexus, Picard convinces Kirk to return with him to Veridian III, shortly before Soran launches the probe.


title: Star Trek Generations

text: Working together, Kirk and Picard distract Soran long enough for Picard to lock the probe in place; it explodes on the launchpad and kills Soran. Kirk is fatally injured in the effort and, after he dies, Picard buries him on the mountain with his "captain" badge. Three Federation starships arrive to retrieve the "Enterprise" survivors from Veridian III. Picard muses that given the ship's legacy, the "Enterprise"-D will not be the last vessel to carry the name.


title: Star Trek Generations

text: The main cast of "" reprise their roles in "Generations": Patrick Stewart as Captain Jean-Luc Picard, Jonathan Frakes as Commander William Riker, LeVar Burton as Chief Engineer Lieutenant Commander Geordi La Forge, Brent Spiner as Lieutenant Commander Data, Gates McFadden as Chief Medical Officer Commander Beverly Crusher, Michael Dorn as Lieutenant Commander Worf, and Marina Sirtis as ship's counselor Commander Deanna Troi. Recurring characters from the series return, including Barbara March and Gwynyth Walsh as the villainous Klingon sisters Lursa and B'Etor Duras, Patti Yasutake as "Enterprise" nurse Lieutenant Alyssa Ogawa, and Whoopi Goldberg as Guinan.


title: Star Trek Generations

text: Malcolm McDowell plays Tolian Soran, the film's antagonist. McDowell had worked with Stewart on stage decades earlier, and relished the chance to kill Shatner's character. He liked his character's spiked hair and black ensemble, and requested that his character not have alien features to avoid lengthy makeup sessions.


title: Star Trek Generations

text: In the film's initial script, the entire principal cast of "The Original Series" was featured, but only three members appear in the film: William Shatner as Kirk, James Doohan as Scott, and Walter Koenig as Chekov. Leonard Nimoy and DeForest Kelley declined to appear as their characters Spock and Leonard McCoy. Nimoy felt there were story problems with the script and that Spock's role was extraneous. Producer Rick Berman told the press, "Both Leonard Nimoy and DeForest Kelley felt they made a proper goodbye in the last movie." Nimoy and Kelley's lines were subsequently modified for Doohan and Koenig. The news that not all of the "Original Series" cast was in the film was not passed to all of "The Next Generation" actors. When Goldberg arrived on set on her first day, she immediately asked to see Nichelle Nichols, who portrayed Nyota Uhura in "The Original Series". When told that Nichols was not in the film, she said to Koenig, "The fans have been waiting for years to see Nichelle and me and Uhura and Guinan on screen together." Patrick Stewart said that he had made an effort to ensure the original cast's involvement in the film: "I didn't want us to sail into the future just as "The Next Generation" cast."


title: Star Trek Generations

text: Alan Ruck plays "Enterprise"-B captain John Harriman. When approached for the role, Ruck assumed he would play an alien, saying, "Look, when I shave every day, I don't look in the mirror and say, 'Hey! There's a starship commander.'" Berman informed him that the character was from a wealthy and connected family, and was placed in command as a stepping stone to a political career. Jacqueline Kim plays "Enterprise"-B helmsman Demora Sulu. Kim consulted with art supervisor Michael Okuda to make sure her hand movements and manipulations of the ships' controls were consistent and accurate. Glenn Morshower played an "Enterprise"-B navigator; he apologized to the director for a poor first rehearsal, because as a "Star Trek" fan he was unused to performing along with actors he had idolized for years.


title: Star Trek Generations

text: Many of the minor characters throughout the film appeared in different roles in the television series. Tim Russ, who appears as an "Enterprise"-B bridge officer, played a terrorist in "Starship Mine" and a Klingon in "", and later joined the cast of "" as the Vulcan Tuvok. Various background roles were played by the main cast's stunt doubles.


title: Star Trek Generations

text: In 1992, months before the official announcement of a followup to "", Paramount Pictures executives approached "The Next Generation" producer Rick Berman about creating another feature film. Berman informed writers Ronald D. Moore and Brannon Braga that Paramount had approved a two-picture deal approximately midway through "The Next Generation"s sixth season. Moore and Braga, convinced Berman had called them into his office to tell them "The Next Generation" was cancelled and they were out of a job, were instead given the task of writing the film. Berman also worked with former "Next Generation" producer Maurice Hurley to develop possible story ideas, intending to develop two film scripts simultaneously and prioritize whichever was most promising. Executive producer Michael Piller turned down the opportunity to develop ideas, objecting to what he saw as a competition for the job. Moore and Braga's script was ultimately chosen. The writers spent weeks developing the story with Berman, before taking a working vacation in May 1993 to write the first-draft screenplay, completed June 1.


title: Star Trek Generations

text: Moore described "Generations" as a project with several required elements. Berman felt that having the original cast of the previous "Star Trek" films felt like a "good way to pass the baton" to the next series. The studio wanted the original cast to only appear in the first minutes and Kirk only recurring at the end of the film. Other requests included a Khan Noonien Singh-like antagonist, Klingons, and a humorous Data plot. At one point, the writers toyed with the idea of pitting the two crews against each other. "We were obsessed with the poster image of the two "Enterprises" locked in combat: "Kirk vs. Picard, One Must Die!"" said Moore. Ultimately, the writers could not come up with a plausible explanation for such a conflict, and abandoned the idea.


title: Star Trek Generations

text: In the initial draft of the screenplay, the original series cast appeared in a prologue, and Guinan served as the bridge between the two generations. The opening shot would have been the entire cast crammed into an elevator, happy to be back together. The "Enterprise"-D's destruction also appeared—the saucer crash had first been proposed by Moore as the conclusion to part one of a sixth-season cliffhanger story that was scrapped. Kirk's death was developed in Braga, Moore, and Berman's story sessions. Moore recalled that "we wanted to aim high, do something different and big... We knew we had to have a strong Picard story arc, so what are the profound things in a man's life he has to face? Mortality tops the list." After the idea of killing off a "Next Generation" cast member was vetoed, someone suggested that Kirk die instead. "We all sorta looked around and said, 'That might be it,' " Moore said. The studio and Shatner had few concerns about the plot point.


title: Star Trek Generations

text: Refining the script meant facing the realities of budget constraints. The initial proposal included location shooting in Hawaii, Idaho, and the Midwestern United States, and the total budget was over $30 million. The budget dropped to $25 million after negotiations. A revised version of the script from March 1994 incorporated feedback from the producers, studio, actors, and director. The writers changed one sequence where Harriman trained his predecessors in the "Enterprise"-B's operation after Shatner felt the scene's joke went too far. Picard's personal tragedy was written as his brother Robert's heart attack, but Stewart suggested the loss of his entire family to add emotional impact. The opening sequence took place on the solar observatory with two Rosencrantz and Guildenstern-influenced characters talking shortly before an enemy attack; "Next Generation" writer Jeri Taylor suggested that the opening should be something "fun", leading to the switch to the holodeck scene.


title: Star Trek Generations

text: Nimoy turned down the chance to direct the feature. The producers chose David Carson. The British director had no feature film experience, but had directed several episodes of "Star Trek", including the popular "Next Generation" episode "Yesterday's Enterprise" and the "" pilot "".


title: Star Trek Generations

text: "Star Trek" veteran Herman Zimmerman served as production designer, collaborating with illustrator John Eaves for many designs. Zimmerman's approach to realizing a vision of the future was to take existing designs and use them in a different manner to express living in the future. Taking cues from director Nicholas Meyer's approach to "", Zimmerman noted that future humanity will still have the same furniture needs, so a logical approach was to start with what would remain the same and work from there.


title: Star Trek Generations

text: Transitioning from television to film meant that sets and designs needed to be more detailed, with a higher level of polish to stand up on the big screen. Zimmerman felt obliged to improve the sets fans had watched for seven seasons, especially the bridge. Zimmerman repainted the set, added computer consoles, raised the captain's chair for a more commanding presence, and reworked the bridge's ceiling struts; he had always been unhappy with how the ceiling looked, but never had the time or money to rework it.


title: Star Trek Generations

text: The script called for an entirely new location on the "Enterprise"-D: stellar cartography. The script described the location as a small room with maps on one wall. Finding the concept uninteresting, Zimmerman designed a three-story circular set to give the impression the actors were inside a star map dominated by screens. Zimmerman's previous work designing a crisis management center influenced the design. The backlit starmaps that covered three-quarters of the wall would have been infeasible to create in the years before the rise of large-format inkjet printers and computer graphics software. The starmaps were replaced with a bluescreen for scenes where the static images would be replaced by computer-animated star maps by Santa Barbara Studios. Stellar cartography was one of the largest sets ever constructed on a Paramount lot.


title: Star Trek Generations

text: The film marked the first appearance of the starship "Enterprise"-B. The ship was a modification of the "Excelsior", a model designed and built by Bill George and effects house Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) for "" a decade earlier. Co-producer Peter Lauritson, illustrator John Eaves, and Zimmerman designed the "Enterprise"-B with additions to its hull, some of which were added so that they could depict damage to the ship without harming the underlying model's surface, and to improve the look of the ship when it was filmed from angles called for in the script. The ship's bridge was based on previous designs for the "Enterprise"-A and "Excelsior" sets Zimmerman had created for "The Undiscovered Country", using pieces from each. The surrounding spacedock for "Enterprise" maiden voyage was a modification of the model created for "" (1979), refurbished and modified to better fit the film's anamorphic screen frame.


title: Star Trek Generations

text: Like Zimmerman, George took the opportunity of the "Enterprise"-D's screen debut to touch up the model. Because "Generations" featured the "Enterprise"-D separating into its saucer and engineering sections, the original model built by ILM for the television series was hauled out of storage. The ship was stripped, rewired, and its surface detailed to stand up to scrutiny. George changed the paint job, as he recalled they had been in a rush to prepare the model for television and its green-and-blue color scheme did not properly read on film. The paint scheme was shifted towards a "battleship grey", with glossy tiled areas reminiscent of the original feature film "Enterprise".


title: Star Trek Generations

text: While "Generations" made use of new sets and props, set decorator John M. Dwyer reused existing props or made new ones out of premade materials where possible, rather than spend money on new items: a torture device was created from a birthing chair, nose hair clippers, and flashlights; packing materials formed the shapes of set walls for the Bird of Prey bridge; and Soran's missile used a bird feeder and other garden store supplies for its interior elements. The stellar observatory set was filled with props from "The Next Generation", with some added in deliberate nods to past episodes. Other reused sets included the Klingon bridge built for "" and ribbed plastic walls in the Jefferies tubes, repurposed from the sets of "The Hunt for Red October". Original set pieces and props included paintings for the settings in the Nexus.


title: Star Trek Generations

text: Robert Blackman, "The Next Generation" long-serving costume designer re-designed the Starfleet uniforms which the "Enterprise"-D crew would wear in the film. Blackman crafted militaristic-looking uniforms with rank sleeves inspired by "The Original Series", high collars, and jackets reminiscent of the uniforms developed for "The Wrath of Khan". The redesign was abandoned, and the cast wore combinations of the uniforms from " The Next Generation" and "Deep Space Nine"; the only new addition was an Eaves-designed angular communications badge that replaced the previous oval shape. Time was so short that Jonathan Frakes and Levar Burton borrowed the costumes from "Deep Space Nine" actors Avery Brooks and Colm Meaney. Also created by Blackman was a skydiving outfit worn by Shatner; though the scene was cut from the film, the costume was used in the "Voyager" episode "".


title: Star Trek Generations

text: Berman backed Carson's choice to hire John A. Alonzo, the director of photography for "Chinatown" and "Scarface". Alonzo was shown more than a dozen "Star Trek" episodes to familiarize himself with the franchise. He favored lighting scenes as much as possible from within the sets rather than staging lights and flags for each shot. Carson credited this approach with saving time and allowing more freedom when shooting. He later wrote that the production moved at a "TV-like" pace; principal photography concluded after 51 days.


title: Star Trek Generations

text: Filming commenced on March 28, 1994. "Generations" and "The Next Generation" were filmed simultaneously on different soundstages on the Paramount Studios lot. Scenes that did not feature the television series regulars were filmed first, starting with those in the "Enterprise"-B deflector room. The scenes of Harriman, Chekov, and Scott reacting to Kirk's apparent death were filmed a week later, to allow time for the deflector room to be suitably distressed to visualize the damage.


title: Star Trek Generations

text: Stage 7 was where the "Enterprise"-B's bridge, deflector room, and corridors were built and filmed. The jolts and shocks of the ship in the hold of the energy ribbon were created by camera bumps and motors to shake the set. Filming of the scenes took place in April 1994, while residents were still skittish from the recent 1994 Northridge earthquake; the effects staff deliberately hid the set shakers until cameras were rolling to elicit more genuine reactions. The stellar observatory set was an elaborate redress of the "Enterprise"-B's bridge, with added levels and swapped walls changing the layout. Control panels styled after those in the original "Star Trek" series helped suggest the age of the station.


title: Star Trek Generations

text: The cast of "The Next Generation" started filming their scenes for "Generations" four days after wrapping on the show. After the filming of the series was complete, there were only six months remaining before the film's release date. The "Enterprise"-D crash scenes were filmed mid-May 1994, and were among the last remaining shots before the existing "Next Generation" sets were demolished to make way for "Star Trek: Voyager". As a result, the crew distressed the sets for the crash damage more than would have been normal during the series' run.


title: Star Trek Generations

text: Despite the budget cuts, "Generations" shot many scenes on location. The rushed pace of filming meant that not all locations had been selected before the start of principal photography, and the production was still scouting locations until two weeks before the final scenes. The production exhausted possible options within Los Angeles' studio zone and looked up to away for suitable locations. The "Enterprise"-D promotion ceremony on the holodeck was filmed on , a full-scale replica of the first American sailing ship to visit Japan. Carson fought hard to keep the shoot during budget trims, deciding to sacrifice other days in the schedule to keep the scene. "Lady Washington" was anchored at Marina del Rey and sailed out a few miles from shore over five days of shooting. Some of "Lady Washington" crew appeared amongst "Enterprise" crew members.


title: Star Trek Generations

text: Picard's house in the Nexus was a private home in Pasadena, California; almost all the furnishings were custom props or outside items. Portions of the scene were shot in May 1994, followed by new shoots five months later. The revisions included adding Picard's nephew René to his imagined Christmas celebration with his family. The house of Kirk's Nexus recollections was located in Lone Pine, California, with the cabin filled with props to represent Kirk's career, from a Klingon bat'leth to a painting of his "Enterprise".


title: Star Trek Generations

text: Carson wanted a suitably remote and alien mountain location for the film's climax at Soran's compound. The scenes were filmed over eight days on an elevated plateau in the "Valley of Fire", north-east of Las Vegas, Nevada. The rise's height and sloped sides required cast and crew to climb using safety ropes and carry all provisions and equipment with them. The heat was difficult for all involved, especially Shatner, who wore a wool costume. Safety harnesses and wires used to keep performers safe from tumbling off a precipice were removed digitally in postproduction.


title: Star Trek Generations

text: As originally filmed, Kirk was shot in the back and killed by Soran. Test audiences reacted negatively to the death, so the scene was rewritten and reshot over two weeks so that Kirk sacrifices himself by leaping across a broken walkway to retrieve Soran's control pad and de-cloak the probe. Paramount allowed the film to go over budget to $35 million for the re-shoots. As the production crew had already spent weeks removing traces of their shoot from the Valley of Fire, the set had to be rebuilt under a very tight schedule, followed by effects work to remove wires and rigging in time for the footage to be included in the final cut.


title: Star Trek Generations

text: "Generations" special effects tasks were split between the television series' effects vendors and ILM. ILM CG Supervisor John Schlag recalled that it was easy to recruit staff who wanted to work on "Star Trek"; working on the film "gave me a chance to be a part of the whole "Trek" thing ... ILM is practically an entire company filled with "Trek" geeks". The screenwriters filled the initial drafts with exciting—and expensive—effects. Effects supervisor John Knoll's team then storyboarded the effects sequences, figuring out how to best service the script as cheaply as possible. When even those estimates proved too costly, ILM continued cutting shots. "[We had] nothing left to cut, and we still had to cut stuff out," Knoll recalled.


title: Star Trek Generations

text: Previous "Star Trek" films had used conventional motion control techniques to record multiple passes of the starship models and miniatures. For "Generations", the effects artists began using computer-generated imagery (CGI) and models for certain shots. No physical shooting models were built for the refugee ships, although George recalled that he created a quick physical miniature for CG modeler Rob Coleman to develop his ideas from, rather than try to articulate his feedback without it. Other CG elements included the solar collapses and the Veridian III planet. Knoll used a digital version of the "Enterprise"-D for the warp effect; the limitations of the motion-control programming and slitscan effect for the original meant that the effect "barely holds up", Knoll said, whereas the CG recreation could keep consistent lighting throughout. While digital techniques were used for many sequences and ships, a few new models were physically built; these included the observatory, built by model shop foreman John Goodson.


title: Star Trek Generations

text: The climactic battle between the "Enterprise" and the Klingons over Veridian III was accomplished using traditional motion control, but without the budget for practical explosions and special breakaway models, impacts and battle damage were simulated with practical compositing tricks and computer-generated effects. The destruction of the Bird of Prey was a reuse of footage from "The Undiscovered Country". Weapons fire and energy bolts were hand-animated, but Knoll had a different idea for the photon torpedoes. A fan of the impressive, arcing look of the torpedoes from "The Motion Picture", Knoll scanned in footage from the film and turned to computer-generated effects. A simulator program created a similar look that could be animated from any point the effects artists wanted, without the expense and tedium required—shining lasers through a crystal in a smoky environment—to recreate the look optically.


title: Star Trek Generations

text: Carson described the Nexus energy ribbon as the true villain of the film; ILM was responsible for conceiving what the ribbon would look like with no natural frame of reference. "When creating something from scratch, it's always important to rough out the whole thing... because there are so many paths you can explore, it's easy to get bogged down," recalled effects co-supervisor Alex Seiden, who had worked as a technical director on the from "The Undiscovered Country". Knoll decided the ribbon was a rip through universes, filled with chaotic energy, taking inspiration from images he had seen of magnetic fields around Uranus from a Jet Propulsion Laboratory simulation. The airfoil-shaped core of the undulating ribbon was enhanced with electrical tendrils. To sell the ribbon's vastness in space shots where no sense of scale would be available, Seiden and George created a debris field of embers that trailed the ribbon. The inside of the ribbon was conceptualized as similar to a dense electrical storm, with electricity fogging the screen. Because of the complex interplay of the ribbon elements with the ships that would be trapped within it, ILM decided the refugee ships and "Enterprise"-B should be CG models. To make the switch between computer-generated and motion-control passes of the physical model appear seamless, ILM created a wireframe of the physical model, with the computer-generated model's textures taken from photos of the physical model, shot in flat light with a long lens. The tendril strike that sends Kirk into the Nexus was simulated with the layering of multiple pieces of animation, including CG explosions Knoll rendered on his personal computer and a recycled explosion effect from "The Empire Strikes Back".


title: Star Trek Generations

text: The "Enterprise"-D crash sequence was filmed in a forest floor set extended by matte paintings, built outside so ILM could use natural light. A model "Enterprise" saucer was constructed specifically for the shots; the model's size gave it the right sense of scale for flying dirt and debris, an illusion enhanced by shooting with a high-speed camera to give the saucer the expected slow movement of a massive object. ILM shot its crew members walking about their parking lot and matted the footage onto the top of the saucer to represent Starfleet personnel evacuating the saucer section.


title: Star Trek Generations

text: Dennis McCarthy, the principal composer for "The Next Generation", was given the task of writing "Generations" score. McCarthy became the first "Star Trek" composer to work on both television and film projects. Critic Jeff Bond wrote that while McCarthy's score was "tasked with straddling the styles of both series", it offered the opportunity for the composer to produce stronger dramatic writing. The film's opening music is a choral piece that plays while a floating champagne bottle tumbles through space. For the action scenes with the "Enterprise"-B, McCarthy used low brass chords. Kirk was given a brass motif accented by snare drums (a sound not used on "The Next Generation"), while the scene ends with dissonant notes as Scott and Chekov discover Kirk has been blown into space.


title: Star Trek Generations

text: McCarthy expanded his brassy style for the film's action sequences, such as the battle over Veridian III and the crash-landing of the "Enterprise"-D. For Picard's trip to the Nexus, more choral music and synthesizers accompany Picard's discovery of his family. A broad fanfare—the film's only distinct theme—first plays when Picard and Kirk meet. This theme blends McCarthy's theme for Picard from "The Next Generation" first season, notes from the theme for "Deep Space Nine", and Alexander Courage's "Star Trek" theme. For the final battle of Kirk and Picard against Soran, McCarthy used staccato music to accentuate the fistfight. For Kirk's death, McCarthy mated lyrical strings with another statement of the Courage theme, while a shot of Picard standing over Kirk's grave is scored with more pomp. The Courage theme plays again at the film's close.


title: Star Trek Generations

text: The original soundtrack was released in 1994 on cassette tape and CD. In 2013, GNP Crescendo Records rereleased the soundtrack as a two-disc, expanded collector's edition including previously unheard tracks.


title: Star Trek Generations

text: The marketing of "Generations" included a website, the first to officially publicize a motion picture. The site was a success, being viewed millions of times worldwide in the weeks leading to the film's release, at a time when fewer than a million Americans had internet access. Paramount also promoted the film on the Prodigy online service.


title: Star Trek Generations

text: Tie-in merchandise released to promote the film included collectible cups and calendars from Jack in the Box, promotional kiosks at Kmart stores, and action figures. Due to production timelines, these figures wore the Blackman-designed Starfleet uniforms that were ultimately unused in the film itself. Other collectibles included a 600,000-run special issue of "Entertainment Weekly" dedicated to the film, and stamps and souvenir sheets produced by Guyana. A novelization of the film written by J. M. Dillard spent three weeks on "The New York Times" Best Seller list. Paramount's licensing group estimated promotional partners could add up to $15 million in the film's support.


title: Star Trek Generations

text: Several tie-in video games were released to tie in with the film's release. Absolute Entertainment published "" for the Game Boy and the Game Gear handheld devices. Three years after the film, MicroProse produced "Star Trek Generations", which featured the film's cast as voice actors. The game roughly followed the plot of the film with most of the game played in a first-person perspective.


title: Star Trek Generations

text: Versions of the film's script leaked out in advance of the film. A bootleg script revealed the energy ribbon and Kirk's death; James Doohan confirmed the script's authenticity at a fan convention in March 1994, but his agent denied he had seen the finished script. In September, another copy of the film's script leaked onto the internet. As a result, news of Kirk's death was widespread.


title: Star Trek Generations

text: "Star Trek Generations" was previewed in the United States and Canada on November 17, 1994, and grossed $3 million from 1,525 theaters. The film opened to a wide release in 2,659 theaters the following day and grossed $23.1 million during the opening weekend, averaging $8,694 per theatre. It was the highest-grossing film during the first week of its release in the United States, staying in the top ten for a further four weeks. The film went on to gross $75,671,125 in the United States and Canada and $42,400,000 internationally, making $118 million worldwide against a $35 million budget. In the United Kingdom, "Generations" opened on February 10, 1995, at number one with £2,040,000. In Japan, the film grossed $1.2 million its opening weekend, a large amount considering the franchise's usual poor performance in that market. Given its moderate budget, "Generations"s gross was considered a success.


title: Star Trek Generations

text: "Star Trek Generations" earned mixed reviews from critics and fans. The film holds a 47% rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 57 reviews, with an average rating of 5.50/10. The website's critical consensus reads, ""Generations" stands as a mediocre changing of the guard for crews of the Enterprise, with a dull plot that sometimes seems like an expanded episode of the television series." On Metacritic, the film has a score of 55 out of 100 based on 22 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade B+. Writing about the film decades later, "Den of Geek" described the film as "divisive", and "Tor.com" noted the film had been picked apart for years by fans and the film's own writers. In 2001, the BBC gave it 2 of 5 stars, summarizing, "Devotees may find it necessary (if depressing) viewing."


title: Star Trek Generations

text: Critics complained the film felt like an overly-long episode of the television series. The "Orlando Sentinel" Jay Boyar agreed, but said the film minimized the television series' tendency to "bog down" by moving to the next scene before boredom could set in. Kenneth Turan called the film safe, and said that it relied heavily on viewers' appreciation for the "Star Trek" television series. Jay Carr of "The Boston Globe" described the film as "reassuringly predictable", saying that it featured elements that would be recognizable by the fans of both series but that the lack of surprises was a benefit.


title: Star Trek Generations

text: "Cinefantastique" Steve Biodrowski praised some of the big-budget touches the film brought to the franchise, but wrote that most of the attempts such as John Alonzo's cinematography seemed to backfire. In contrast, Carrie Rickey of "The Philadelphia Inquirer" and "Den of Geek"s Chris Cummins praised Alonzo's work as one of the few bright spots of the film; "[Alonzo] makes the "Enterprise" look like an actual lived-in starship," Cummins wrote, and "for the first time ever, the crew of the Enterprise-D looked like they were truly in outer space".


title: Star Trek Generations

text: Opinions were divided on whether or not the film was accessible to non-"Star Trek" fans. Critics such as "The New York Times" Janet Maslin suggested that despite being "predictably flabby and impenetrable in places" and suffering from technobabble, there was enough action and spectacle to engage others. Boyar felt that specific plot beats would fly over the heads of casual viewers, but the film's innate sense of fun would keep them engaged. Others considered the film inaccessible to neophytes, and too preoccupied with fan-focused elements that detracted from the overall story, with Roger Ebert critiquing the movie as being "...so concerned with in-jokes and updates for Trekkers that it [could] barely tear itself away long enough to tell a story".


title: Star Trek Generations

text: The meeting of Kirk and Picard prompted comparisons between the two respective actors; Stewart's performance was often considered superior. James Berardinelli and Ebert wrote that Kirk's lack of presence through much of the film was still keenly felt. Biodrowski, in contrast, wrote that Shatner's hammy acting was a better fit for the film than Stewart's subtle delivery. Boyar thought Shatner did a good job playing a straight man in the final sequences and injecting more fun into the film. "The Baltimore Sun" Stephen Hunter considered Shatner and Stewart emblematic of two different eras of stardom, and that Stewart's commanding presence "wipes poor, saintly old Shatner off the screen". "Cinefantastique" and others criticized the scenes between Kirk and Picard as lacking.


title: Star Trek Generations

text: McDowell's turn as Soran received differing opinions. Berardinelli and Rickey called Soran a weak and ill-defined villain, and Hunter dismissed Soran as a nemesis unworthy of the titanic meeting of Kirk and Picard. "People" Ralph Novak called Soran a "standard-issue "Trek" villain", while Maslin, "Newsweek" Michel Marriott, and "Entertainment Weekly" Lisa Schwarzbaum enjoyed the performance. Novak wrote that Data's subplot of learning about emotions was a highlight and probably the most enjoyable part of the film for non-fans, while Ebert said that the premise "could have led to some funny scenes, but doesn't". Coates summed up the subplot as "dreary".


title: Star Trek Generations

text: On July 18, 1995, "Generations" was released on LaserDisc (LD) in the United States. On September 10, 1995, it was released on LD in Japan, with the cover title ジェネレーションズ ワイド版. It was also released on the United Kingdom in 1995 on a PAL format. The film was released in the UK on VHS on 28 December 1998. It was given a DVD release in 1998, with a non-anamorphic transfer and no special features. A new anamorphic transfer formed the basis of a 2004 special edition, with audio and text commentaries and special featurettes. It later received a British DVD release on October 2, 2000. The film was released on Blu-ray in 2009 as part of a box set of "The Next Generation" films, along with additional material.


title: Katy Wix

text: Katy Victoria J Wix (born 28 February 1980) is a Welsh actor, writer, author and artist. She is best known for her television roles as Carole in "Stath Lets Flats," Mary in "Ghosts" and Jules in "Big Boys". She has also appeared as a series contestant on "Taskmaster" and as a recurring character in the science fiction mini-series "" in 2009. She has written two series of her own sitcom for "BBC Radio 4", "Bird Island" and a sketch show for Channel 4, "Anna & Katy". In 2017 her painting was chosen for the Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition. She has written two books of monologues and in 2021 she published her first work of non-fiction, "Delicacy".


title: Katy Wix

text: Wix was born and grew up in Cardiff. She attended the University of Warwick in Coventry before going on to the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama.


title: Katy Wix

text: In 2007, Wix joined the cast of sitcom "Not Going Out" as recurring character Daisy and then went on to be a regular from Series 3 until her final appearance in the 2015 Christmas special. In "" she plays Rhiannon Davies, the sister of Ianto Jones. In 2010, she presented the BBC Three series "The King Is Dead". She made guest appearances on the BBC shows "Horrible Histories", "Outnumbered" (2010) and "Absolutely Fabulous" (2011).


title: Katy Wix

text: She played Phoebe in Tom Basden's stage comedy "Party" and its subsequent three series spin-off on BBC Radio 4 also called "Party". Wix wrote and co-starred in the same station's comedy series "Bird Island", which also featured Reece Shearsmith, Julian Rhind-Tutt and Alison Steadman.


title: Katy Wix

text: In 2017, for the BBC, she portrayed Nurse Cornish in an episode of the TV crime drama "Sherlock", and Florence Fagin in the TV dramatisation of "Decline and Fall." She also featured in the radio series "Ankle Tag" (BBC Radio 4) and "The Accidental AM" (BBC Radio Wales). She also played Mary, one of the main characters, in the 2019 BBC One sitcom "Ghosts."


title: Katy Wix

text: In 2021 she published "Delicacy: a memoir of cake and death," a feminist memoir in which she recounts 21 life-defining moments to do with loss, body image, recovery from eating disorder and love.


title: Harvard Business School

text: Harvard Business School (HBS) is the graduate business school of Harvard University, a private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. It is consistently ranked among the top business schools in the world and offers a large full-time MBA program, management-related doctoral programs, and many executive education programs. It owns Harvard Business Publishing, which publishes business books, leadership articles, case studies, and the monthly "Harvard Business Review". It is also home to the Baker Library/Bloomberg Center.


title: Harvard Business School

text: The school was established in 1908. Initially established by the humanities faculty, it received independent status in 1910, and became a separate administrative unit in 1913. The first dean was historian Edwin Francis Gay (1867–1946). Yogev (2001) explains the original concept:


title: Harvard Business School

text: The business school pioneered the development of the case method of teaching, drawing inspiration from this approach to legal education at Harvard. Cases are typically descriptions of real events in organizations. Students are positioned as managers and are presented with problems which they need to analyze and provide recommendations on.


title: Harvard Business School

text: From the start the school enjoyed a close relationship with the corporate world. Within a few years of its founding many business leaders were its alumni and were hiring other alumni for starting positions in their firms.


title: Harvard Business School

text: At its founding, the school accepted only male students. The Training Course in Personnel Administration, founded at Radcliffe College in 1937, was the beginning of business training for women at Harvard. HBS took over administration of that program from Radcliffe in 1954. In 1959, alumnae of the one-year program (by then known as the Harvard-Radcliffe Program in Business Administration) were permitted to apply to join the HBS MBA program as second-years. In December 1962, the faculty voted to allow women to enter the MBA program directly. The first women to apply directly to the MBA program matriculated in September 1963.


title: Harvard Business School

text: In 2012–2013, HBS administration implemented new programs and practices to improve the experience of female students and recruit more female professors.


title: Harvard Business School

text: HBS established nine global research centers and four regional offices and functions through offices in Asia Pacific (Hong Kong, Shanghai, Singapore), United States (San Francisco Bay Area, CA), Europe (Paris, opened in 2003), South Asia (India), Middle East and North Africa (Dubai, Istanbul, Tel Aviv), Japan and Latin America (Buenos Aires, Mexico City, São Paulo).


title: Harvard Business School

text: In 2022, HBS is ranked 5th in the nation by "U.S. News & World Report," 3rd in the world by the "Financial Times," 2nd in the world by QS


title: Harvard Business School

text: HBS students can join more than 80 different clubs and student organizations on campus. The Student Association (SA) is the main interface between the MBA student body and the faculty/administration. In addition, HBS student body is represented at the university-level by the Harvard Graduate Council.


title: Harvard Business School

text: In 2015, executive education contributed $168 million to HBS's total revenue of $707 million. This includes:


title: Harvard Business School

text: The school's faculty are divided into 10 academic units: Accounting and Management; Business, Government and the International Economy; Entrepreneurial Management; Finance; General Management; Marketing; Negotiation, Organizations & Markets; Organizational Behavior; Strategy; and Technology and Operations Management.


title: Harvard Business School

text: Older buildings include the 1927-built Morgan Hall, named for J.P. Morgan, and 1940-built Loeb house, named for John L. Loeb Sr. and his son, (both designed by McKim, Mead & White), and the 1971-built Burden Hall with a 900-seat auditorium.


title: Harvard Business School

text: In the fall of 2010, Tata related companies and charities donated $50 million for the construction of an executive center. The executive center was named as Tata Hall, after Ratan Tata (AMP, 1975), the chairman of Tata Sons. The total construction costs have been estimated at $100 million. Tata Hall is located in the northeast corner of the HBS campus. The facility is devoted to the Harvard Business School's Executive Education programs. At seven stories tall with about 150,000 gross square feet, it contains about 180 bedrooms for education students, in addition to academic and multi-purpose spaces.


title: Harvard Business School

text: Kresge Way was located by the base of the former Kresge Hall, and is named for Sebastian S. Kresge. In 2014, Kresge Hall was replaced by a new hall that was funded by a US$30 million donation by the family of the late Ruth Mulan Chu Chao, whose four daughters all attended Harvard Business School. The Executive Education quad currently includes McArthur, Baker, and Mellon Halls (residences), McCollum and Hawes (classrooms), Chao Center, and Glass (administration).


title: Prosody (linguistics)

text: In linguistics, prosody () is concerned with elements of speech that are not individual phonetic segments (vowels and consonants) but are properties of syllables and larger units of speech, including linguistic functions such as intonation, stress, and rhythm. Such elements are known as suprasegmentals.


title: Prosody (linguistics)

text: Prosody may reflect features of the speaker or the utterance: their emotional state; the form of utterance (statement, question, or command); the presence of irony or sarcasm; emphasis, contrast, and focus. It may reflect elements of language not encoded by grammar or choice of vocabulary.


title: Prosody (linguistics)

text: In the study of prosodic aspects of speech, it is usual to distinguish between auditory measures (subjective impressions produced in the mind of the listener) and objective measures (physical properties of the sound wave and physiological characteristics of articulation that may be measured objectively). Auditory (subjective) and objective (acoustic and articulatory) measures of prosody do not correspond in a linear way. Most studies of prosody have been based on auditory analysis using auditory scales.


title: Prosody (linguistics)

text: Different combinations of these variables are exploited in the linguistic functions of intonation and stress, as well as other prosodic features such as rhythm and tempo. Additional prosodic variables have been studied, including voice quality and pausing. The behavior of the prosodic variables can be studied either as contours across the prosodic unit or by the behavior of boundaries.


title: Prosody (linguistics)

text: Prosodic features are said to be suprasegmental, since they are properties of units of speech larger than the individual segment (though exceptionally it may happen that a single segment may constitute a syllable, and thus even a whole utterance, e.g. "Ah!"). It is necessary to distinguish between the personal, background characteristics that belong to an individual's voice (for example, their habitual pitch range) and the independently variable prosodic features that are used contrastively to communicate meaning (for example, the use of changes in pitch to indicate the difference between statements and questions). Personal characteristics are not linguistically significant. It is not possible to say with any accuracy which aspects of prosody are found in all languages and which are specific to a particular language or dialect.


title: Prosody (linguistics)

text: have described intonation entirely in terms of pitch, while others (e.g., Crystal) propose that what is referred to as "intonation" is, in fact, an amalgam of several prosodic variables. The form of English intonation is often said to be based on three aspects:


title: Prosody (linguistics)

text: These are sometimes known as "tonality", "tonicity" and "tone" (and collectively as "the three T's").


title: Prosody (linguistics)

text: An additional pitch-related variation is "pitch range"; speakers are capable of speaking with a wide range of pitch (this is usually associated with excitement), while at other times with a narrow range. English has been said to make use of changes in "key"; shifting one's intonation into the higher or lower part of one's pitch range is believed to be meaningful in certain contexts.


title: Prosody (linguistics)

text: From the perceptual point of view, stress functions as the means of making a syllable prominent; stress may be studied in relation to individual words (named "word stress" or lexical stress) or in relation to larger units of speech (traditionally referred to as "sentence stress" but more appropriately named "prosodic stress"). Stressed syllables are made prominent by several variables, by themselves or in combination. Stress is typically associated with the following:


title: Prosody (linguistics)

text: These cues to stress are not equally powerful. Cruttenden, for example, writes "Perceptual experiments have clearly shown that, in English at any rate, the three features (pitch, length and loudness) form a scale of importance in bringing syllables into prominence, pitch being the most efficacious, and loudness the least so".


title: Prosody (linguistics)

text: When pitch prominence is the major factor, the resulting prominence is often called "accent" rather than stress.


title: Prosody (linguistics)

text: There is considerable variation from language to language concerning the role of stress in identifying words or in interpreting grammar and syntax.


title: Prosody (linguistics)

text: Although rhythm is not a prosodic variable in the way that pitch or loudness are, it is usual to treat a language's characteristic rhythm as a part of its prosodic phonology. It has often been asserted that languages exhibit regularity in the timing of successive units of speech, a regularity referred to as isochrony, and that every language may be assigned one of three rhythmical types: stress-timed (where the durations of the intervals between stressed syllables is relatively constant), syllable-timed (where the durations of successive syllables are relatively constant) and mora-timed (where the durations of successive morae are relatively constant). As explained in the isochrony article, this claim has not been supported by scientific evidence.


title: Prosody (linguistics)

text: Voiced or unvoiced, the pause is a form of interruption to articulatory continuity such as an open or terminal juncture. Conversation analysis commonly notes pause length. Distinguishing auditory hesitation from silent pauses is one challenge. Contrasting junctures within and without word chunks can aid in identifying pauses.


title: Prosody (linguistics)

text: There are a variety of "filled" pause types. Formulaic language pause fillers include "Like", "Er" and "Uhm", and paralinguistic expressive respiratory pauses include the sigh and gasp.


title: Prosody (linguistics)

text: Although related to breathing, pauses may contain contrastive linguistic content, as in the periods between individual words in English advertising voice-over copy sometimes placed to denote high information content, e.g. "Quality. Service. Value."


title: Prosody (linguistics)

text: Pausing or its lack contributes to the perception of word groups, or chunks. Examples include the phrase, phraseme, constituent or interjection. Chunks commonly highlight lexical items or fixed expression idioms. Chunking prosody is present on any complete utterance and may correspond to a syntactic category, but not necessarily. The well-known English chunk "Know what I mean?" in common usage sounds like a single word ("No-wada-MEEN?") due to blurring or rushing the articulation of adjacent word syllables, thereby changing the potential open junctures between words into closed junctures.


title: Prosody (linguistics)

text: Intonation is said to have a number of perceptually significant functions in English and other languages, contributing to the recognition and comprehension of speech.


title: Prosody (linguistics)

text: It is believed that prosody assists listeners in parsing continuous speech and in the recognition of words, providing cues to syntactic structure, grammatical boundaries and sentence type. Boundaries between intonation units are often associated with grammatical or syntactic boundaries; these are marked by such prosodic features as pauses and slowing of tempo, as well as "pitch reset" where the speaker's pitch level returns to the level typical of the onset of a new intonation unit. In this way potential ambiguities may be resolved. For example, the sentence "They invited Bob and Bill and Al got rejected" is ambiguous when written, although addition of a written comma after either "Bob" or "Bill" will remove the sentence's ambiguity. But when the sentence is read aloud, prosodic cues like pauses (dividing the sentence into chunks) and changes in intonation will reduce or remove the ambiguity. Moving the intonational boundary in cases such as the above example will tend to change the interpretation of the sentence. This result has been found in studies performed in both English and Bulgarian. Research in English word recognition has demonstrated an important role for prosody.


title: Prosody (linguistics)

text: Intonation and stress work together to highlight important words or syllables for contrast and focus. This is sometimes referred to as the "accentual function" of prosody. A well-known example is the ambiguous sentence "I never said she stole my money", where there are seven meaning changes depending on which of the seven words is vocally highlighted.


title: Prosody (linguistics)

text: Prosody plays a role in the regulation of conversational interaction and in signaling discourse structure. David Brazil and his associates studied how intonation can indicate whether information is new or already established; whether a speaker is dominant or not in a conversation; and when a speaker is inviting the listener to make a contribution to the conversation.


title: Prosody (linguistics)

text: Prosody is also important in signalling emotions and attitudes. When this is involuntary (as when the voice is affected by anxiety or fear), the prosodic information is not linguistically significant. However, when the speaker varies his speech intentionally, for example to indicate sarcasm, this usually involves the use of prosodic features. The most useful prosodic feature in detecting sarcasm is a reduction in the mean fundamental frequency relative to other speech for humor, neutrality, or sincerity. While prosodic cues are important in indicating sarcasm, context clues and shared knowledge are also important.


title: Prosody (linguistics)

text: Emotional prosody was considered by Charles Darwin in "The Descent of Man" to predate the evolution of human language: "Even monkeys express strong feelings in different tones – anger and impatience by low, – fear and pain by high notes." Native speakers listening to actors reading emotionally neutral text while projecting emotions correctly recognized happiness 62% of the time, anger 95%, surprise 91%, sadness 81%, and neutral tone 76%. When a database of this speech was processed by computer, segmental features allowed better than 90% recognition of happiness and anger, while suprasegmental prosodic features allowed only 44%–49% recognition. The reverse was true for surprise, which was recognized only 69% of the time by segmental features and 96% of the time by suprasegmental prosody. In typical conversation (no actor voice involved), the recognition of emotion may be quite low, of the order of 50%, hampering the complex interrelationship function of speech advocated by some authors. However, even if emotional expression through prosody cannot always be consciously recognized, tone of voice may continue to have subconscious effects in conversation. This sort of expression stems not from linguistic or semantic effects, and can thus be isolated from traditional linguistic content. Aptitude of the average person to decode conversational implicature of emotional prosody has been found to be slightly less accurate than traditional facial expression discrimination ability; however, specific ability to decode varies by emotion. These emotional have been determined to be ubiquitous across cultures, as they are utilized and understood across cultures. Various emotions, and their general experimental identification rates, are as follows:


title: Prosody (linguistics)

text: The prosody of an utterance is used by listeners to guide decisions about the emotional of the situation. Whether a person decodes the prosody as positive, negative, or neutral plays a role in the way a person decodes a facial expression accompanying an utterance. As the facial expression becomes closer to neutral, the prosodic interpretation influences the interpretation of the facial expression. A study by Marc D. Pell revealed that 600 ms of prosodic information is necessary for listeners to be able to identify the tone of the utterance. At lengths below this, there was not enough information for listeners to process the emotional context of the utterance.


title: Prosody (linguistics)

text: Unique prosodic features have been noted in infant-directed speech (IDS) - also known as baby talk, child-directed speech (CDS), or "motherese". Adults, especially caregivers, speaking to young children tend to imitate childlike speech by using higher and more variable pitch, as well as an exaggerated stress. These prosodic characteristics are thought to assist children in acquiring phonemes, segmenting words, and recognizing phrasal boundaries. And though there is no evidence to indicate that infant-directed speech is necessary for language acquisition, these specific prosodic features have been observed in many different languages.


title: Prosody (linguistics)

text: An aprosodia is an acquired or developmental impairment in comprehending or generating the emotion conveyed in spoken language. Aprosody is often accompanied by the inability to properly utilize variations in speech, particularly with deficits in ability to accurately modulate pitch, loudness, intonation, and rhythm of word formation. This is seen sometimes in persons with Asperger syndrome.


title: Prosody (linguistics)

text: "Producing" these nonverbal elements requires intact motor areas of the face, mouth, tongue, and throat. This area is associated with Brodmann areas 44 and 45 (Broca's area) of the left frontal lobe. Damage to areas 44/45, specifically on the right hemisphere, produces motor aprosodia, with the nonverbal elements of speech being disturbed (facial expression, tone, rhythm of voice).


title: Prosody (linguistics)

text: "Understanding" these nonverbal elements requires an intact and properly functioning right-hemisphere perisylvian area, particularly Brodmann area 22 (not to be confused with the corresponding area in the "left" hemisphere, which contains Wernicke's area). Damage to the right inferior frontal gyrus causes a diminished ability to convey emotion or emphasis by voice or gesture, and damage to right superior temporal gyrus causes problems comprehending emotion or emphasis in the voice or gestures of others. The right Brodmann area 22 aids in the interpretation of prosody, and damage causes sensory aprosodia, with the patient unable to comprehend changes in voice and body language.


title: Blacksmith

text: A blacksmith is a metalsmith who creates objects primarily from wrought iron or steel, but sometimes from other metals, by forging the metal, using tools to hammer, bend, and cut (cf. tinsmith). Blacksmiths produce objects such as gates, grilles, railings, light fixtures, furniture, sculpture, tools, agricultural implements, decorative and religious items, cooking utensils, and weapons. There was an historical distinction between the heavy work of the blacksmith and the more delicate operation of a whitesmith, who usually worked in gold, silver, pewter, or the finishing steps of fine steel. The place where a blacksmith works is called variously a smithy, a forge or a blacksmith's shop.


title: Blacksmith

text: While there are many people who work with metal such as farriers, wheelwrights, and armorers, in former times the blacksmith had a general knowledge of how to make and repair many things, from the most complex of weapons and armor to simple things like nails or lengths of chain.


title: Blacksmith

text: The "black" in "blacksmith" refers to the black firescale, a layer of oxides that forms on the surface of the metal during heating. The origin of "smith" is debated. It may come from the old English word ""smythe"" meaning "to strike" or it may have originated from the Proto-German ""smithaz"" meaning "skilled worker."


title: Blacksmith

text: Blacksmiths work by heating pieces of wrought iron or steel until the metal becomes soft enough for shaping with hand tools, such as a hammer, an anvil and a chisel. Heating generally takes place in a forge fueled by propane, natural gas, coal, charcoal, coke, or oil.


title: Blacksmith

text: Some modern blacksmiths may also employ an oxyacetylene or similar blowtorch for more localized heating. Induction heating methods are gaining popularity among modern blacksmiths.


title: Blacksmith

text: Color is important for indicating the temperature and workability of the metal. As iron heats to higher temperatures, it first glows red, then orange, yellow, and finally white. The ideal heat for most forging is the bright yellow-orange color that indicates "forging heat". Because they must be able to see the glowing color of the metal, some blacksmiths work in dim, low-light conditions, but most work in well-lit conditions. The key is to have consistent lighting, but not too bright. Direct sunlight obscures the colors.


title: Blacksmith

text: The techniques of smithing can be roughly divided into forging (sometimes called "sculpting"), welding, heat-treating, and finishing.


title: Blacksmith

text: Forging—the process smiths use to shape metal by hammering—differs from machining in that forging does not remove material. Instead, the smith hammers the iron into shape. Even punching and cutting operations (except when trimming waste) by smiths usually re-arrange metal around the hole, rather than drilling it out as swarf.


title: Blacksmith

text: These operations generally require at least a hammer and anvil, but smiths also use other tools and techniques to accommodate odd-sized or repetitive jobs.


title: Blacksmith

text: Drawing lengthens the metal by reducing one or both of the other two dimensions. As the depth is reduced, or the width narrowed, the piece is lengthened or "drawn out."


title: Blacksmith

text: As an example of drawing, a smith making a chisel might flatten a square bar of steel, lengthening the metal, reducing its depth but keeping its width consistent.


title: Blacksmith

text: Drawing does not have to be uniform. A taper can result as in making a wedge or a woodworking chisel blade. If tapered in two dimensions, a point results.


title: Blacksmith

text: Drawing can be accomplished with a variety of tools and methods. Two typical methods using only hammer and anvil would be hammering on the anvil horn, and hammering on the anvil face using the cross peen of a hammer.


title: Blacksmith

text: Another method for drawing is to use a tool called a fuller, or the peen of the hammer, to hasten the drawing out of a thick piece of metal. (The technique is called fullering from the tool.) Fullering consists of hammering a series of indentations with corresponding ridges, perpendicular to the long section of the piece being drawn. The resulting effect looks somewhat like waves along the top of the piece. Then the smith turns the hammer over to use the flat face to hammer the tops of the ridges down level with the bottoms of the indentations. This forces the metal to grow in length (and width if left unchecked) much faster than just hammering with the flat face of the hammer.


title: Blacksmith

text: Heating iron to a "forging heat" allows bending as if it were a soft, ductile metal, like copper or silver.


title: Blacksmith

text: Bending can be done with the hammer over the horn or edge of the anvil or by inserting a bending fork into the hardy hole (the square hole in the top of the anvil), placing the work piece between the tines of the fork, and bending the material to the desired angle. Bends can be dressed and tightened, or widened, by hammering them over the appropriately shaped part of the anvil.


title: Blacksmith

text: Some metals are "hot short", meaning they lose their tensile strength when heated. They become like Plasticine: although they may still be manipulated by squeezing, an attempt to stretch them, even by bending or twisting, is likely to have them crack and break apart. This is a problem for some blade-making steels, which must be worked carefully to avoid developing hidden cracks that would cause failure in the future. Though rarely hand-worked, titanium is notably hot short. Even such common smithing processes as decoratively twisting a bar are impossible with it.


title: Blacksmith

text: Upsetting is the process of making metal thicker in one dimension through shortening in the other. One form is to heat the end of a rod and then hammer on it as one would drive a nail: the rod gets shorter, and the hot part widens. An alternative to hammering on the hot end is to place the hot end on the anvil and hammer on the cold end.


title: Blacksmith

text: Punching may be done to create a decorative pattern, or to make a hole. For example, in preparation for making a hammerhead, a smith would punch a hole in a heavy bar or rod for the hammer handle. Punching is not limited to depressions and holes. It also includes cutting, slitting, and drifting—all done with a chisel.


title: Blacksmith

text: The five basic forging processes are often combined to produce and refine the shapes necessary for finished products. For example, to fashion a cross-peen hammer head, a smith would start with a bar roughly the diameter of the hammer face: the handle hole would be punched and drifted (widened by inserting or passing a larger tool through it), the head would be cut (punched, but with a wedge), the peen would be drawn to a wedge, and the face would be dressed by upsetting.


title: Blacksmith

text: As with making a chisel, since it is lengthened by drawing it would also tend to spread in width. A smith would therefore frequently turn the chisel-to-be on its side and hammer it back down—upsetting it—to check the spread and keep the metal at the correct width.


title: Blacksmith

text: Or, if a smith needed to put a 90-degree bend in a bar and wanted a sharp corner on the outside of the bend, they would begin by hammering an unsupported end to make the curved bend. Then, to "fatten up" the outside radius of the bend, one or both arms of the bend would need to be pushed back to fill the outer radius of the curve. So they would hammer the ends of the stock down into the bend, 'upsetting' it at the point of the bend. They would then dress the bend by drawing the sides of the bend to keep the correct thickness. The hammering would continue—upsetting and then drawing—until the curve had been properly shaped. In the primary operation was the bend, but the drawing and upsetting are done to refine the shape.