Text 16551, 72 rader
Skriven 2007-08-01 22:46:46 av Josh Hill (3027.babylon5)
     Kommentar till en text av rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated
Ärende: Re: Lost Tales: My Review (SPOILERS, obviously!)
========================================================
On Wed, 01 Aug 2007 18:10:59 -0700, Eric Gillespie
<epg@pretzelnet.org> wrote:

>Josh Hill <usereplyto@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> I thought that two office chairs against a black background were
>> pretty lame, myself. You know you're in trouble when characters have
>> to make excuses for the budget.
>
>Funny, I loved that bit, and think it makes sense :).  After I
>finished laughing and thinking "Yep, that's definitely, the Minbari,
>and that's definitely Sheridan!", I thought back to Sinclair's
>struggles with his angled bed in _To Dream in the City of Sorrows_.

Heh. I think about that every single night, now that my own bed is
angled to prevent heartburn . . .

>> They simply must find a way to get a few more sets and some extras in
>> the follow-ups: the complaints are well-nigh universal, and some of
>> the customer reviews I saw on IMDB are so vociferous they lead me to
>> believe that they'll cost sales. I don't think it would take very
>> much. Perhaps the problem will be mitigated in future releases as sets
>> and props accumulate.
>
>I hope so; I agree with the previous poster that the docking bay
>looked terrible, but the lack of sets was even worse.  Those
>incredibly plain hallways!  They looked nothing like B5.  What's
>really odd is how bright they all were.  That can't be due to the lack
>of a real set, can it?

The extras showed a real corridor set. Not sure if they used it in
every hallway scene, or just when the actors had to interact with
objects or cast shadows. I assume the brightness (which I didn't
notice, though I believe you) was an aesthetic decision, though if the
actors were themselves in shadow you might have trouble with light
spill from the green screen.

>> The Sheridan episode was at its best wonderfully strong. I can't help
>> but wonder what would have happened had the already
>> thematically-related Sheridan and Lochley stories been interweaved as
>> A and B plots. The pooling of acting talent -- and I think there was a
>> lot of that on display -- and the alternation of scenes would I think
>> have done much to mitigate the presumably budget-driven paucity of
>> actors and sets. Dramatic tension of course would have been increased,
>
>Now there's a great idea.  Even that couldn't have helped the set
>problem, but it still might be an improvement.

Seems to me that you could get around the set problem by compositing
existing shots of a few familiar scenes into the background -- C&C, a
bedroom, the Zocalo, what have you. You could forex do a shot of
Lochley standing in the front of her office rather than sitting at the
desk, then track her over to the window and have the action occur
there so she didn't have to interact with the no-longer-extant set
(Where was the window, anyway? I'm assuming you could set up the shot
to keep her within the limits of the cyc). Or you could use the garden
-- just a bench, everything else matted in. Composite some extras into
the background -- that way you don't need costumes -- or use some
footage of C&C from the original show, maybe an unused shot of Lochley
or just some background stuff.

Of course, it's easier to amuse oneself with idle speculation than it
is to actually do it with real staffs and budgets and schedules.

-- 
Josh

"Your manuscript is both good and original. But the part that is
good is not original, and the part that is original is not good."
	-- Samuel Johnson
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