Babylon 5- The Lost Tales *SPOILERS*

[Joseph DeMartino]

Ah! So, I wasn't the only one who thought of that when I originally read the respective comment. I was quite impressed with the cgi done on the faces of Patrick and Ian at the beginning of X3.

They did that on a feature film budget and a feature film schedule, and for only a couple of minutes of sceen time. They probably spent several months working on that sequence, and thousands of hours of computer time rendering it.

This isn't remotely comparable to doing something like this on a TV movie budget schedule and for every shot with the two characters in a 30 or 45 minute story.

Regards,

Joe

[B5_Obsessed]

They did that on a feature film budget and a feature film schedule, and for only a couple of minutes of sceen time. They probably spent several months working on that sequence, and thousands of hours of computer time rendering it.
Regards,

Joe

And it was not totally convincing, either.

[AmyG]

Yeah, what Joe says (and darn him for beating me to it, as usual!).

[Jan]

What about using prosthetics for something like this? I mean, they've been using them to add wrinkles and age people for, well, forever I think. How about using them to smooth skin and 'youthen' them? Seems to me it'd be bound to be more convincing than CGI.

Jan

[ljg702]

Actually I think In the Beginning showed that bruce with a short hair cut does a passable job of looking much younger, as it's a wedding, just keep lockley behind the bride's vale at all times. No need for budget busting fx

[Jan]

Oh, I definitely think that Tracy would be the easier 'fix' of the two. Wonder if they use veils that far in the future.

Jan

[Joseph DeMartino]

Actually I think In the Beginning showed that bruce with a short hair cut does a passable job of looking much younger, as it's a wedding, just keep lockley behind the bride's vale at all times. No need for budget busting fx

Yeah, but that was Bruce in 1998, age 48. In B5 itself he was already playing a character by a couple of years than he was. (Sheridan was about 40 when he took command of B5.) So he was trying to play Sheridan at around age 30 at the time of the Minbari war, 10 years younger than Sheridan's age, 18 years younger than his own.

Now you want to have Bruce in 2006 or 2007, at the age of 56, to play Sheridan at around the age of 22. (Sheridan and Lochley married right out of the Academy. If both graduated high school at the usual age of 18 and the Earthforce Academy is a four year institution like most of its Earth predecessors, they'd be around 22 - or maybe younger - when they graduated.) Tracy is only three years younger than Bruce. Do the math.


There isn't that much foam latex in all of Hollywood, kiddies. Short of sending them over to the set of Nip/Tuck for a quick facelift, I don't see how they could do a story depicting their marriage without using other actors to play their younger selves. And that would kinda defeat the purpose of The Lost Tales.

One of the ways Doug Netter managed to get the orginal series to come in on budget was by making sure all the masks and make-ups were just good enough for TV. Make-up houses tend to think in terms of movies - a 100 foot screen and 35mm or 70mm film. Under those conditions seams show and badly blended colors are visible from the back row of the balcony. On standard def TV on a 32" screen, not so much. But now with 50" and 65" HD screens become common (and 100" front-projection systems becoming affordable) HD productions really do have to come much closer to film standards, and this is causing problems in the industry. I suspect that's part of the budget issue they ran into on TLT. If you want to do a Mars planet exterior that will hold up on HD-DVD* or HD broadcast, you're going to need a lot more render time. Same with the alien makeups.

Regards,

Joe

* Warner Bros. is one of the big backers of Toshiba's HD-DVD format and they're also releasing product for Sony's hi-def Blu-Ray Disc. Since B5's demographic includes both sci-fi geeks and technology early adopters, there is a good chance that WB will release the first disc in both HD and regular versions, or even do a two-sided discs with HD on the A side and a standard def version on the other. They're already doing that with some new releases and this one might be a good candidate. By next spring, if player prices have come down enough, I might even be considering an HD player, and B5:TLT would be one disc that could tempt me to make the leap.

[AmyG]

There isn't that much foam latex in all of Hollywood, kiddies. Short of sending them over to the set of Nip/Tuck for a quick facelift, I don't see how they could do a story depicting their marriage without using other actors to play their younger selves.

Actually, Tracy was on Nip/Tuck a few weeks ago, which is what prompted my comment (although she wasn't getting any work done on the show -- she and her daughter were double-doing Dr. Troy <g>). She's still a really beautiful woman, but she is looking at least closer to her age these days.

I doubt we'll get that story.

[Joseph DeMartino]

Actually, Tracy was on Nip/Tuck a few weeks ago

I know, that's why I said what I did instead of just saying they would have to get facelifts. And yes, Tracy is still definitely a fine looking woman. Of course, Bruce's wife Mellissa Gilbert was also on Nip/Tuck recently, but the less said about that, the better. Wouldn't want this thread going to the dogs.

Joe

[PMvanova]

(haven't posted here in a while..been lurking.

I for one am thrilled about any news... this is very exciting to read JMS posts about production starting up.

(as a comparison, I followed the production and filming of ROTS and loved seeing it unfold)

The magic words for me, reading the last post from JMS was that Chris Franke was on board... I think they learned from their departure in music from Crusade. (Personally hated the music)

So, whatever happens I will be looking forward to watching the various projects unfold...
"Ain't it a kick in the pants?"

[OmahaStar]

think they learned from their departure in music from Crusade. (Personally hated the music)

Oh get over it already. It's been SEVEN years! [edited]


[Personal comment edited --Jan]

[Jan]

'Fraid we can figure that the music from Crusade was controversial, Omaha. Personally, I loved the title sequence and could see what Evan Chen was maturing much as Chris Franke did in his first season.

That said, JMS said *long* ago that Christopher Franke was the only composer he could conceive of for Babylon 5. We might well see Chen back if there were Crusade follow-ups so it's simply what works for JMS, not any 'lesson' that I know of.

Jan

[Joseph DeMartino]

That said, JMS said *long* ago that Christopher Franke was the only composer he could conceive of for Babylon 5. We might well see Chen back if there were Crusade follow-ups so it's simply what works for JMS, not any 'lesson' that I know of. Jan

I liked the music for ACtA and Crusade. It was different from B5, just as JMS intended it would be. The idea was to give the spin-off its own identity. And nobody seems to have noticed that Franke had already "returned" to the B5 fold for Legend of the Rangers. As JMS said at the time, the Rangers pilot was "a B5 project" commissioned based on "B5 ratings [on Sci-Fi]" - and therefore he wanted Christopher Franke. He added that if Sci-Fi expressed interest in Crusade (which at that point they hadn't aired) he would want Evan Chen to do the music for any future Crusade projects.

Jan is right, this has nothing to do with any "lessons" being learned, and everything to do with maintaining the style and aesthetic of B5. Anyway, I've just added another item to my list of reasons for hoping that Crusade comes back someday - to hear all the heads exploding around the world when JMS hires Evan Chen to write the score.

Regards,

Joe

[Shabaz]

I think where Franke had to grow into writing for a television series, he already had a pretty strong musical voice by the time he came in for B5. The stuff he wrote from the start felt like it fitted in the scenes they were made for, and he grew more in terms from going from slightly bland synth tunes to these really big and multi layered pieces he later made.

With Chen, I sometimes got the feeling he was still looking more for a strong well defined musical voice, or at least one that really worked for Crusade. And that he was more in a process of trial and error than Franke was, since he was in a much more experimental phase than him in terms of his evolution as a musician. Sometimes his music did work for me though, like the openings tune and certain other scenes, but at times it felt like he was still looking for a appropriate musical voice, rather than finding out how his musical voice can be best used to tell and support the narrative. Which may have caused the weird disconnect a lot people complained about; that at times (especially in ACtA) it felt like the composer wasn't really watching what happened on screen, but instead trying to do his own thing, maybe because he had more to work out still.

But I do think that there were a couple glimpses of something interesting that he was growing into, that needed a slightly stronger voice using it. Not to take away the uniqueness, but to make it more targeted and focused in its purpose of supporting a narrative. I'm actually kind of curious what type of music he makes today, 7 years later, and how it would sound if he would take another crack at Crusade. Can't really find anything recent by him to listen to though, to see how he sounds now. I don't suppose anyone knows of anything I can use to listen how his music sounds these days?

[SLerman]

Does anyone know offhand how old Franke and Chen were (or how much experience they had, if they didn't do the normal 18-22 in college then out into the real world) when they started on the shows. As has been mentioned, Chen may have still been experimenting with what styles of music he wanted to create. 10 years of experience can make a pretty big difference.