Time Difference of The Gathering and The Gathering SE

[Lope de Aguirre]

I'm aware of many alternative Scenes, new SFX and newc music but how much longer is the SE in comparison to the 1993 version?

[cornholio1980]

I'm aware of many alternative Scenes, new SFX and newc music but how much longer is the SE in comparison to the 1993 version?

It isn't longer at all. Yes, many new scenes were added, but other ones were (at least partly) cut and the whole pilot was tightened up. It's a whole new (and better) experience which you should definitely check out

[Lope de Aguirre]

It isn't longer at all. Yes, many new scenes were added, but other ones were (at least partly) cut and the whole pilot was tightened up. It's a whole new (and better) experience which you should definitely check out

Thanx! I got both DVD-Version already but without Time Index.

I could have chekced it, but I thougt somebody knows it and it will be answered very quickly. No, please! Lay down the pipe...

Ah and yes, the new version is MUCH better!

[Leto II]

Here are some JMS comments on the new cut's running-length (from late 1997/early 1998, right before or after it aired on TNT):

"[Could] you spare a few words on how you went about the re-edit? Did you start with what you wanted to get back in, or trying to find out how much time you could recapture?"

The first thing I did was to sit down with the editor assigned to the re-edit, Suzie, and go through the original script for the pilot. My first words to her were, "Put everything in that ain't there." To that end, she redigitized all of the footage from missing scenes, and had available all of the available footage of the other scenes for digitizing as we went.

Note that I said all the *available* footage. The folks at WB who held custody of the film (we don't keep that stuff, we're not allowed to by contract, they store film, negative, prints, all that stuff) put the negative canisters into storage...and at one point in the intervening 4 years, there had been water damage, and on another occasion, apparently rats had gotten in there and chewed some of the original negatives (and in most cases there weren't positive struck of those takes).

Take your reaction to the foregoing, put it in front of the Hubble telescope, and you will have mine.

However, we lucked out...where there were some takes that are gone, we were able to find enough others (masters instead of a two-shot, or a close-up instead of an over-shoulder) and B-camera footage that we were able to build solid versions of those scenes. We didn't always have as many choices as we're used to but there was more than enough for our needs.

Suzi then dumped all of the newly edited additional scenes into the existing pilot, and that gave us the new running time (we added about 14 minutes). So at that point, John and I went in and worked to slice down the previously existing scenes, doing what we do with B5: tightening every loose screw and nut as much as we could. One or two incidental, unimportant scenes in the original pilot went out, because they added nothing and shouldn't have been there in the first place (a total of about 3 minutes). The remaining 11 minutes we made up in just tightening scenes, which were *so* lax and slow that it's amazing at times.

In some cases, we substituted one take for another in the pre-existing pilot when we had a better reaction, or played scenes closer for more intimacy. (One of the problems with the pilot is that it kept the audience far from the action, and the actors far from each other, something we changed in our shooting style for the series...here we tried to change it when we could and when we had the coverage.)

Tiny example: when Kosh falls down upon arriving at B5, that sequence ends with a big honking wide downshot of a nearly empty docking bay, with Kosh far from us, and Sinclair looking down (away from us) when he says "Damn." Then we go from that to a wide shot of the medlab. Same framing. So I had Suzie look for a take where we panned up from a close on Kosh, to a close on Sinclair for that line, so it's more immediate, more personal, and the jump to the next scene doesn't feel like the one before.

See, directors like to stay wide in their cuts, so you can see their nifty camera angles, see the set, the lighting...but after you've established where we are, most people want to see the *characters*, not the walls or how the camera moves. That was what we tried to fix where we could.

We couldn't totally re-edit the pilot, because we hadn't been given the money for something that intensive (the main expense is in opening up all the audio stems in the sound mix). But all the stuff I wanted back in, is now in, and the scenes I wanted to fix, I fixed.

I also got the thing back to its original format. All TV movies are 6 acts. Because PTEN wanted more commercial breaks, I had to re-jig the structure of the thing into 9 acts, which meant moving some scenes into places where they weren't as effective, and frankly after 9 acts you just get tired of watching. Here I was able to move scenes around and get back to the original 6 act structure that was intended for the thing, and that alone makes a huge difference in how the film feels.

One of the biggest changes is the one least immediately apparent. After we finished the original pilot, some folks at WB felt that Laurel was too...strong. They will rarely put it in terms quite as blatant as that, but that was the message...she was "unlikeable, unsympathetic, harsh." Meaning some of the guys felt she was too strong, let's cut to the chase, okay?

They wanted her to loop her lines, soften their (her) delivery. I fought this tooth and nail. I fought this until finally I was pulled aside and it was communicated to me that B5 was, after all, still an unknown property, could be a big failure, and if we ever wanted to see this thing on the air, we'd accommodate this note (which was, I have to admit on balance, one of the few they had). The advice was, in essence, "Pick your battles."

So, reluctantly, I let it get looped by Tamlyn.

But now, when the re-edit was commissioned, and with the person at the studio who insisted on this now no longer AT the studio, I told Suzie, "Screw it, put back her original production track and trash the loops." Instantly, Laurel's energy level comes up, the performance is better...it just *feels* more natural now.

So basically, we did a lot...some of it may not be immediately apparent (improving a sound here, altering coverage, adding additional sound layers, redoing a composite shot of the garden), but over the duration of watching it, it's just *better*. It's still a *tad* slower around the middle than I would've liked, but that's a WP (writer problem), nothing that can be fixed in an edit. It's just exposition-dense there, and nothing of a sort that can be cut.

jms

Essentially, they went in and added 14 completely new, never-before-seen minutes of footage to the TNT version, but the other side of the re-editing coin entailed taking out certain bits and pieces that didn't play too terribly well in the PTEN version (then and now).

Roughly 3 minutes went out, including parts of Londo's opening monologue, extended scenes from Dr. Kyle's near-autopsy of Kosh, et al.

However, during many already-existing scenes, new and different -- and in most cases, *better* -- alternate takes were utilized, including close-up character shots during the Kosh docking-bay sequence (replacing the distant, highly disconnecting wide-shots director Richard Compton favored in his 1993 director's cut), a front-view locked off "tunnel" shot of Sinclair and Lyta's procession through the alien sector (eliminating the "muppets"), and other similar changes.

Overall, the TNT producer's cut is vastly superior in nearly every single fashion to the 1993 version, putting back a veritable mountain of meaty character scenes that director Compton gave the snip to. For a time, the original PTEN edition was available -- in the United States -- on videocassette, first via Columbia House, then widely in stores through Warner Bros. After a time, though, it was replaced by the TNT cut, which was also released right from the git-go on laserdisc.

There used to be a website (a few years back, around 2001 or '02, maybe) that provided an intricate, scene-by-scene breakdown of each individual alteration made between the two cuts, not unlike another excellent site that broke down the David Lynch/"Alan Smithee" versions of the 1984 Dune film.

[RedShark92]

Which version of the pilot (original or re-edited) is on the DVD two-pack that featured one disc with In the Beginning on one side and The Gathering on the other?

[Laiden]

I have 3 releases of "The Gathering"

TV DVD Premiere (Blue Slipcase also formatted in widescreen)
In The Beginning/The Gathering Double Sided DVD
B5: The Movie Collection

When you purchase the DVD, it will state at the beginning of the movie "This is a TNT Special Edition Presentation of . . ." or something to that effect.

All 3 of these DVD versions were the TNT SE edition. If you want to know about VHS, the Columbia house and the Retail VHS copies are the TNT SE edition as well.

[Leto II]

Which version of the pilot (original or re-edited) is on the DVD two-pack that featured one disc with In the Beginning on one side and The Gathering on the other?

Yup, they're all identical -- the TNT Special Edition. (Which is the vastly superior cut, anyhow.)

Only the Columbia House VHS tape -- and the first few WB retail iterations -- featured the original PTEN cut. From the outset, the laserdisc contained the TNT producer's edit. The "TV DVD Premiere" set is simply an inclusion of the first The Gathering/In the Beginning flipper DVD from 2001; you get audio commentaries with the B5 Movie Collection, which also contains the three other TNT films, sans Legend of the Rangers.

[Laiden]

Yup, they're all identical -- the TNT Special Edition. (Which is the vastly superior cut, anyhow.)

Only the Columbia House VHS tape -- and the first few WB retail iterations -- featured the original PTEN cut. From the outset, the laserdisc contained the TNT producer's edit. The "TV DVD Premiere" set is simply an inclusion of the first The Gathering/In the Beginning flipper DVD from 2001; you get audio commentaries with the B5 Movie Collection, which also contains the three other TNT films, sans Legend of the Rangers.

I actually bought the WB retail when it first came out and they had the TNT version on them. I know the Columbia House VHS tapes had a possibility but it depends on when you ordered them. The "TV Premiere DVD" is actually formatted into a 16X9 Widescreen display, they just placed Black bars on the top and bottom of the picture.

in summary however, the DVDs are all the TNT SE release

[Leto II]

It must've been a short-lived thing, I guess...I bought the WB Home Video version at Wal-Mart that summer (intended as a backup at the time for my taped-off-the-air copies), and it was actually the PTEN release; I started hearing later about the switchover to the TNT Special Edition, Ó la the laserdisc.

Interesting, re: the "TV DVD Premiere" edition...did they non-16:9 "false-matte" The Gathering, like they did on the Sci-Fi Channel? Haven't picked that one up, but it sounds like something they'd pull.

[Leto II]

Can't believe I forgot:

Finally found that comparison site I mentioned earlier, which breaks down the subtle, beat-by-beat differences between the two versions of The Gathering (original version and the TNT Special Edition):

• Original Version Annotations
  
• Special Edition Annotations
  
• Notes on the Essays

...Blonde-momented, there.

[Laiden]

Interesting, re: the "TV DVD Premiere" edition...did they non-16:9 "false-matte" The Gathering, like they did on the Sci-Fi Channel? Haven't picked that one up, but it sounds like something they'd pull.

yeah, its just cut off on the top and bottom of the screen.