Filming in Hertfordshire

[Andrew_Swallow]

Looks like JMS will be filming in Hertfordshire.

Hertfordshire is the country just north of Greater London.

Given a choice buy/rent in Hertfordshire and catch the train into London.

Not knowing the area very well...if one were going to be spending a great deal
of time in Hertfordshire, which is apparently near London (pity please on a
geographically unenlightened American), would it be better to get a small flat
in London for that time and commute, or get something in Hertfordshire itself?
How long is the trip? Or is there somewhere in-between that would be salutory?

jms

([email protected])
(all message content (c) 2004 by synthetic worlds, ltd.,
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and don't send me story ideas)

p.s. This was posted in the alt.babylon5.uk at 09:37 on 2 July 2004 newsgroup as "Quick Question" so the automatic reader will not pick it up.

[AaronB]

Andrew,

Hmmmm, I wonder what he could be filming...

Maybe you should have posted this in the B5 section.

[Joseph DeMartino]

The note, of course, doesn't say he's going to be filming anything at all. The word "film" doesn't even appear in his post. He may be writing, vacationing, negotiating for future work, or any number of things having nothing to do with shooting movie or television material, much less TMoS.



Regards,

Joe

[Andrew_Swallow]

Originally posted by thebaron
Andrew,

Hmmmm, I wonder what he could be filming...

Maybe you should have posted this in the B5 section.

Hertfordshire

http://www.hertfordshire101.co.uk/

Map showing relationship to London


TMOS is not the only thing JMS is working on.

The Elstree film studio is about 100 yards into Hertfordshire, near the country border to Greater London. The train journey to the centre of London takes 20 minutes.

Star Wars and The Avengers were filmed at Elstree.

http://www.elstreefilmtv.com/

(The location Map is under Professionals)

[Andrew_Swallow]

Information about the new Leavesden film studio

http://www.hiddenextra.com/ECHO/leavesden.htm

You could jog from Elstree to Leavesden.

[Andrew_Swallow]

Originally posted by Joseph DeMartino
The note, of course, doesn't say he's going to be filming anything at all. The word "film" doesn't even appear in his post. He may be writing, vacationing, negotiating for future work, or any number of things having nothing to do with shooting movie or television material, much less TMoS.

All of which can be done from a hotel room in London. To renting a flat in the countryside for a long period you need a reason to be there. It may be the CGI.

[Joseph DeMartino]

All of which can be done from a hotel room in London.

Or Los Angeles, for that matter, unless you want to have face to face meetings with people, in which case you'll probably want to go to Hertfordshire if that's where they are. (And either stay in that area or commute from London if that is convenient.)


Some people don't like living in hotels for weeks on end, and for anything more than a month or so would prefer renting an apartment - which is also cheaper in the long run.

Of course, if a giant studio is bankrolling you, you don't worry about expenses, and if they want to save money by putting you in an apartment that is their business and it is up to their staff (both in the U.S. and the U.K.) to make it happen. You don't have to go to an internet newsgroup and personally ask where Heretfordshire is in relation to London and how long the commute is going to be if a major corporate entity is paying the bills. They have travel departments that handle that sort of thing, and they have offices of their own in places like London. The mere fact that he doesn't seem to be utilizing the global resources of Warner Bros. in this respect suggests that they aren't involved in whatever he's up to. And the fact that whoever he's working with in the U.K. isn't handing this for him suggests that they aren't exactly financial giants, either.

This is sounding less and less like anything connected with a "major motion pictutre" and more like JMS taking a working holiday in the U.K. to finalize some non-B5 projects that he may have been considering with U.K. partners recently. It makes sense that he'd want to take care of any such possible business in the couple of months he probably has before pre-production on TMos starts up and the movie monopolizes most of his time for the next year or two.

So we still have nothing in his post and no persuasive inference to suggest that what he's talking about is a movie or that it has anything to do with TMoS.

Regards,

Joe

[Andrew_Swallow]

Now what could the project be?

A film based on his comics:
Supreme Power.
Midnight Nation.
Dr Strange.
Joes Comics.
Something else.

A TV series:
Science Fiction.
Mystery.
Something different.
Babylon 5: The Next Generation - this time JMS owns the characters and keeps the profits.

The secret joint project.

Channel 4 buys most of its programs from independent producers; being small companies they have no money. The BBC is copying the idea particularly for BBC3 and BBC4. The minor satellite channels must get their original material from somewhere.

[Joseph DeMartino]

Babylon 5: The Next Generation - this time JMS owns the characters and keeps the profits.

Not possible for two reasons:

1) Warner Bros. owns Babylon 5, the underlying literary rights, the copyright, the trademarks and all derivative works. Period. End of story. JMS can never work in the B5 universe with WB's permission, participation and ownership of the resulting work.

2) No production entity that spends millions of dollars turiing a writer's pile of sterile pages into a living, breathing, TV series or movie is going to give that writer ownership and all the profits to be derived from those characters in the future. Stop confusing the movie and TV biz with the wold of comic books - they have nothing to do with one another. At best the writer might be given "a piece of the action" - a theoretical share of the profits. These are known as "monkey points" for the simple reason that only a monkey would be dumb enough to believe that he would ever see any of the eventual profits. (JMS's original deal with WB gives him exactly this kind of "profit participation" and it is essentially worthless since studio bookkeeping is very good at "proving" that nothing has ever made a profit. JMS now knows enough to ask for as much as he can get up front.)

The secret joint project.

What "secret" joint project? Between whom?

(Still wondering why this thread is called "Filming in Hertfordshire" rather than "JMS in Hertfordshire" since all we know is that he's going to be there at some point.)

Regards,

Joe

[Andrew_Swallow]

Originally posted by Joseph DeMartino
Not possible for two reasons:

1) Warner Bros. owns Babylon 5, the underlying literary rights, the copyright, the trademarks and all derivative works. Period. End of story. JMS can never work in the B5 universe with WB's permission, participation and ownership of the resulting work.

JMS may have found a way of reducing Warner Brothers to the distributor of the program. Season 5 and Crusade showed that the money comes from the TV channels rather than from Warner Brothers. By simply setting the series after "Sleeping in Light" half the copyrights are no longer applicable, possibly including the name "Babylon 5".

If I can change the headquarters of the Interstellar Alliance on the home world of a race with a head bone called the Minbari to the parliament of the Galactic Confederation on the prime planet of a species with horns called the Maxpubers, so can JMS.

Ten years ago Sci-Fi would not have taken JMS's phone call let alone given him a multi-million dollar advance. He needed Warner Brothers as a middleman. Today Sci-Fi and possibly Channel 4 will take his phone call.

If Warner Brothers are not providing the money then he either uses the new names or gets a licence for the old names from Warner Brothers and his production company does the accounting.

[Jan]

If I can change the headquarters of the Interstellar Alliance on the home world of a race with a head bone called the Minbari to the parliament of the Galactic Confederation on the prime planet of a species with horns called the Maxpubers, so can JMS.

Oh, for pity's sake! Would you please show me exactly where you got the impression that JMS would ever do something so dishonorable? That sure doesn't jive with the picture I've gotten from reading his posts the past several years.

If you must indulge in wild speculation at least keep it within the realm of the possible.

Jan

[Andrew_Swallow]

Originally posted by Joseph DeMartino
What "secret" joint project? Between whom?

(Still wondering why this thread is called "Filming in Hertfordshire" rather than "JMS in Hertfordshire" since all we know is that he's going to be there at some point.)

There is the ôRising Starsö film trilogy, if it is still being made.

Do not forget from the 15 June 2004 posting
[quote]
Oh...and I've been offered an EP position on a network series, and while I
don't usually do that on shows I don't create or develop, when I heard what
this project was, I had to get on board. We still have to negotiate a deal,
and work out how that will interface with the stuff that'll be going on later
in the year, but fortunately the start date for the series should work out, at
least at this point.
[quote]

We have not been told where these are being made or who is paying for them.

If JMS were only spending a couple of days in Hertfordshire he would just check into a hotel and not worry about minimising travelling time. It is a long stay with repeated journeys to London that requires finding somewhere to live half way between the two. Going somewhere on a long holiday and not staying there does not make sense, so he is going to Hertfordshire to work.

Negotiations can go on for weeks. They may happen at a companyÆs head office but if you put your head office in the middle of nowhere you have to go to your customers. In the movie industry your customers are going to be in or near a film studio or possibly at their headquarters in London. The banks definitely have their head offices in London and so do TV channels like the BBC, the British film theatres and the censor. If JMS's aim was to mostly set up deals he would base himself in London.

If the head offices of the suppliers are not in Hertfordshire then it is the production area(s). If there is a Computer Generated Image firm there JMS may be filming the CGI. The county contains hundreds of beautiful buildings and fields suitable for location filming plus two major film studios.

My conclusion is that JMS is going to Hertfordshire to film, he just did not realise that it was close to London.

[Andrew_Swallow]

Originally posted by Jan
Oh, for pity's sake! Would you please show me exactly where you got the impression that JMS would ever do something so dishonorable? That sure doesn't jive with the picture I've gotten from reading his posts the past several years.

That is not dishonourable, that is tough negotiation with an organisation that routinely rips off its actors and writers.

[Radhil]

Originally posted by Andrew_Swallow
That is not dishonourable, that is tough negotiation with an organisation that routinely rips off its actors and writers.

That said, JMS hasn't seemed to have any problems with them before, and seemed to make a point during the series that they were giving him a lot of breathing room. But that could be because he was quite clear and precise about what he'd need, and drew a line they respected.

We'll see I guess.

[Jan]

Originally posted by Andrew_Swallow
That is not dishonourable, that is tough negotiation with an organisation that routinely rips off its actors and writers.

Exactly what does:

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If I can change the headquarters of the Interstellar Alliance on the home world of a race with a head bone called the Minbari to the parliament of the Galactic Confederation on the prime planet of a species with horns called the Maxpubers, so can JMS.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

have to do with negotiation please? What examples can you offer of WB 'routinely' ripping off its actors and writers? You specifed that an organization does that rather than an industry so from your example you must mean WB, correct? As for how JMS reacts when he's being treated dishonorably, I refer you to what happened between him and Top Cow. Hint: he doesn't respond by sinking to the level of the dishonorable ones.

Jan