Kirok,
It is possible to get most of the handlink sounds "clean", just have to know which episodes to record from. Alas, my collection of clean handlink sounds was many hard drives ago.
I recently produced a clean recording of the leap sound. It's a mixture of the leap from It's a Wonderful Leap and The Leap Back, as the outtro of Wonderful Leap and the intro of Leap Back were the quietest. I also emphasized the phaser fire shot part of the leap sound (once you know where it is, you can't miss it).
I've posted my 16-bit WAV of the "clean" leap effect
here.
I have captured the "leap to black" on Mirror Image from the 5th season DVD and then spent a couple of hours on speck, dust, and hair removal, and then color correcting it. So I have a clean "plate" of the leap spiderweb effect. To use it over a person (instead of black), it probably needs two passes (one with just the white selected set to 100% opacity, one with just the blue glow set to overlay) to do the effect justice. The uncompressed images are rather large (65MB) but I can post them if you need them.
I am curious what digital paint programs people are using these days for animation. Early on, I played with Illuminiere and it was great, but very buggy and crashed a lot. I've only ever done QL effects (I've done the hologram effect, the imaging chamber door, and several leap effects) frame-by-frame in Adobe Photoshop. I only have the result of these effects on VHS now.
When I did my hologram effect (walking through a table), because I have not had any training as an actor, and because even the best actors have difficulty with blue screen, I found that taking a still photo of the set with all furniture in place, and then removing the furniture that Al will be walking through (adding blue tape lines if necessary to outline where the furniture was) and filming the live shot with Sam and Al together like that and then using Photoshop to re-add parts of the furniture as needed was easier in the long run.
We are not limited to a Quantel Paintbox and the time (and budget) crunch of a weekly televised show.
Now, to go off on a tangent, I have really thought that to really match the quality of effects being used these days on TV, I think leap effects should be done in 3D motion. I know this is a LOT more work. I have visualized many times the camera coming around the person as they are leaping in, and the spider web effect has to change in perspective to match the camera movements. The only way to really do this would be a starburst particle effect in 3D Studio Max that tracks the camera movements.
But considering the extra effort involved, I would certainly not look down on someone for doing the 'classic' QL effect that worked just fine for all those the original episodes.
