B5: TLT Production Comments

[Tim_Fleming]

JMS thinks that there will be more B5:TLT DVDs and from his posts I'd gather that Warner Home video is of a similar mind. However this makes the production schedule a little puzzling to me. If production continues at its current rate then there will be an 8 month turn around between shooting and release (assuming worst case that the 2nd quarter means June). If Warner is confident about there being more DVDs then wouldn't it be more profitable to shoot several DVDs at once (thus reducing production costs) and then release them during the course of the following year? Perhaps Warner Home video is waiting on sales figures. If this is true then it could be another year until B5:TLT is back in production. Someone please post what an idiot I am and how I'm misunderstanding the situation.

[FuryPilot]

Perhaps Warner Home video is waiting on sales figures. If this is true then it could be another year until B5:TLT is back in production.

No, I think you've got a handle on it. WB certainly wants some sales figures on the first DVD release. Perhaps after that they *might* start producing multiple DVDs at at time, but I very much doubt it.

FP
Not an expert on the thinkings of WB, but then again, is anyone?

[Joseph DeMartino]

You're not being an idiot, and you've very nearly answered your own question.

1. Yes, everyone is confident that there will be more stories to follow. Everyone who shoots a pilot is confident that it is going to be picked up as a series. If they weren't confident that studio would never have approved the script, then spent millions shooting it, and none of the cast and crew would have taken the jobs. There has to be some level of belief. But there is also, always, uncertainty. The industry is what it is. Things happen. The public is unpredictable.

2. Nobody has ever done a direct-to-DVD sequel to a TV series that has been out of production for several years. Nobody has done anything like a direct-to-DVD TV series. WB is feeling its way in the dark here. The one thing you don't do in such a situation is commit massive resources upfront and continue production before you've even got your first run out of post production and seen what you've really got. There is no model to tell them how many releases a year might be sustainable, or how steadily the catalog titles might sell after the rush of the initial release.

3. There is still the broadcast (or cable) TV wiildcard. Once "Voices" is out of post, WB will undoubtedly try to sell it as a TV movie and a possible series of such to some broadcast or cable outlet. Remember the old NBC Mystery Movies with the rotating roster of detectives like Columbo, McCloud and Banacek in a series of 90 minute movies? Warner Home Video is opening up a whole Direct-to-Disc division and "Voices" is one of the pilot projects. Lower budget telefilms designed to pay for themselves with disc sales could be sold to TV at very low prices (since whatever is charged would be pure profit) and, in effect, serve as commercials for the discs. B5:TLT could become part of a package anthology that would run in a regular weekly or monthly timeslot, alternating with other WHV productions. That would allow for a more regular production schedule in and of itself.

4. The TLT situation is analagous to the orignal series DVD situation. Warner Bros. wasn't sure how the show would do on DVD. First they released a barebones edition of The Gathering and In the Beginning to "test the waters". When that sold unexpectedly well, they produced the first season on DVD, and even sprung for some extras - but they didn't go all out or spend as much money as they might have. And they didn't start production on S2 until they had seen the sales figures on S1. Once they did see those sales figures, they acclerated the production schedules for the remaining discs, no longer waiting for sales results of one set before starting to prepare extras, menus, etc. for the next. Once they were satisified that release was a success they could streamline their production schedules and make things more efficient. But they couldn't do so before they were sure.

Contrast that with Paramount and Trek. After 40 years of marketing the series world wide, they knew the shows would sell. Although they missed the boat on the full-season set concept initially, releasing TOS on individual discs, they eventually came around. When they did, they could be certain that their fans would buy every episode of every series. So they did all the DVD production work on all 7 seasons of TNG before the first set went on sale. They had the whole thing ready to go to replication and packaging so that they could release a season a month for six months (and then release the last two seasons within less than 30 days of each other to make the whole package available by Christmas.) They did the same for the other series. You can do that sort of thing when you have the kind of marketing track record that Trek has. B5 has done extraordinarily well, but it isn't in Trek's league.

One of the things that makes what success B5 has had so remarkable is that it wasn't a big ratings grabber, didn't do huge numbers in broadcast reruns, and didn't have more than a decade before the age of 200 cable and satellite channels to build an audience in a more limited TV universe, and thereby become a pop culture phenomenon. People who have never watched one minute of any Trek series know who Capt. Kirk and Mr. Spock are. They know what a phaser is. They recognize the phrase, "Beam me up, Scotty" Jay Leno or David Letterman can make a joke with "Klingon" in the punchline and people will understand it well enough to laugh. You can't make Narn jokes in the Tonight Show monologue and be confident anybody's going to get them. Give us another 20 years.

The last wild card is market research. If WB is thrilled with how the finished film looks, if they think they can advertise it right and that it is going to hit their sales numbers, they may greenlight "x" more discs and tell JMS to go right back into production next spring. Any number of things can lead to that happening.

If production continues at its current rate...

This is the one thing that almost certainly won't happen. There is no "current rate", strictly speaking. JMS is building a prototype. If it goes into production, then we'll see what the 'rate' looks like. Either the first one is going to flop and there won't be anymore, or at some point WB is going to say, "We're doing X discs/movies a year" (4, 6, 8?) and they're going to set up a regular production system for cranking those out. The one thing they won't do is go 8 or 12 months before production runs, waiting for each disc's sales figures or a TV renewal before going on to the next one.

Regards,

Joe

[Darth_librarian]

This may also be why JMS chose to direct, to contain the variables and have as much control as possible over the pilot. If the DVD's go on sale in March - APril 2006, i'd hope production to ramp up by June or July that year... providing it does well. Part of the big inital cost is CGI asset creation. Once this is done, they can move on. That said, the show seems to be using a lot of CGI and green-screen.

I'd also factor in iTunes and other download sites into the equation. Expect individual episodes to end up there.

Worst case scenario, we are all left with another set of dangling lot threads... Argghh!!!

[AmyG]

This may also be why JMS chose to direct, to contain the variables and have as much control as possible over the pilot. If the DVD's go on sale in March - APril 2006,

Oooh, time warp.

[Joseph DeMartino]

Worst case scenario, we are all left with another set of dangling lot threads... Argghh!!!

Of course, with the whole point of The Lost Tales being to offer an anthology show made up of short, self-contained stories, that really won't be a problem.

Joe

[ljg702]

Hopefully once it appears for pre-order on Amazon, the volume ordered will exceed WBs expectations to the extent that they'll authorise additional volumes immediately.

We can hope.

[Joseph DeMartino]

Hopefully once it appears for pre-order on Amazon, the volume ordered will exceed WBs expectations to the extent that they'll authorise additional volumes immediately.

We can hope.

But that will probably only be a couple of months before the discs go on sale, so even if they greenlit the next disc based on those pre-order numbers, that wouldn't move the start of production or the release of the next disc up by very much. A sale to a major domestic TV outlet based on the finished film, or a several overseas sales, or even good market research results and a very positive reaction on WB's part to the completed picture are more likely to produce an early decision and start date for disc two.

Regards,

Joe

[JDSValen]

I thought that when this whole thing started WB greenlit 3 DVDs, not one and the other two depending on how the first one does. Did I miss something?

[Joseph DeMartino]

I thought that when this whole thing started WB greenlit 3 DVDs, not one and the other two depending on how the first one does. Did I miss something?

Not so much miss as misunderstand.

WB greenlit three stories, each about 30 minutes long, that were going to appear on one DVD. JMS decided that they'd have to compromise on quality to meet the technical requirements of all three on the budget for the first disc, so he took the segment that would have had the most complex CGI and the least reusable FX and bumped it to possible disc 2. Then he divided the total budget and time between the other two stories and shot them.

(The third segment was going to be a Garibaldi story that somehow connected to the Sheridan and Lochley segments that are going to be on disc one. Most of the virtual sets, props, costumes, etc. that were created for those two stories - of Babylon 5, Minbar, various ships - can be banked for future use. The Mars stuff from the Garibaldi story would have much more limited utility, so it made more sense to put the maxium resources from the disc 1 FX budget into things that would save time and money down the road.)

Regards,

Joe