Text 16189, 116 rader
Skriven 2007-07-28 02:03:18 av Jon (2662.babylon5)
     Kommentar till en text av rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated
Ärende: Comic-con report:  Friday - B5 TLT Panel (I think I avoided spoilers)
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Jon here, reporting live from San Diego Comic-Con 2007!  (Well, almost
alive..it's 2 a.m....and those martinis earlier dind't help.  Nor did
the shots.)  This is a partial version of my jmsnews.com review,
edited for newsgroup sensibilities.  Joe Straczynski is referred to as
JMS and Joe Nazzaro is referred to as Joe, to make things less
confusing.

I have a looooose transcript of what happened at the panel this
afternoon, which basically is what I could type on my laptop before it
died, and as I could keep up with what was being said. Afterward, I
recall only a small amount of interesting information as of note from
the b5 panel this afternoon though. It was really disappointing to see
the lack of good questions being asked by audience members, though
kudos to Joe Nazzaro for providing excellent questions for the panel
to bounce off of. Without you Joe, that wouldn't have been that great
at all. Thanks for moderating. JMS had a "prize for good questions" he
was giving out (2 tickets to a play this evening) and he was hard
pressed to give them out. I"ll try to give you some of the highlights
from what I saw.

I'll reiterate some of Jan's comments before continuing with my mini
"transcript" review. The mini-comics are wonderful, and really you
should see TLT or read the comic if you get a chance before I spoil
the thing. Just really a nice (very short) piece by JMS. Different
art, and i"m not familiar with the artist's prior work. The name
escapes me after the few drinks I've had this evening.

Sock puppets. Mr. Nazzaro passed some out to the crowd, and the actors
had some of their respective characters, very funny. This joke will
never get stale.  It's crescent fresh!

The line was cut off for questions fairly early, much to my chagrin,
as I didn't get up there in time after trying to frantically type
everything that was being said. I had a couple of good questions too.
Bummer.

That said, there wasn't much new to report, a lot of jokes from the
actors back and forth (which were very funny, as is typical)..a very
quiet Samm Barnes and Doug Netter, and a funny JMS as well. If
anyone's interested in my sorta half-transcript-that-hasn't-been-
proofed-and-doesnt-hold-the-entirety-of-every-statement-said..you're
welcome to it. I got about half of the panel (the first half) and I
got *most* of what was said, but not all verbatum. I tried to get the
actors/JMS comments as best I could while paraphrazing Joe Nazzaro so
I could keep up, but I couldn't keep up with everything (and my laptop
died at one point). Hard to type that fast, sorry. At the same time,
we didn't learn too much from this panel.

JMS repeated a lot of what we know, stating that TLT came about
because a B5 feature film would be tought without Andreas/Richard, but
we could continue with character pieces which work well.  God bless
their souls.

The most interesting comments by Tracy, Peter and Bruce were about
working with the green screen and how instead of the cameras moving
for a scene, the actors had to move and the cameras remained stagnant,
which posed an intersting challenge as the same scene was shot a few
times from different angles. Very cool and innovative directorial
ideas. The clip that was shown followed with the coolness. Directorial
quality from what I can see is very very high without giving
spoilers.  For the most part though, Tracy, Peter and Bruce really
just bounced jokes off of each othert. I didn't really see too much
interesting out of them other than the fact that Tracy repeated a
couple of times how she was very very proud of the Lockley piece, and
that she loved doing it. I have a gut feeling it's going to be not so
much a favorite by the mass public, but also that it may be *my*
favorite segment. Speculation of course, I'll tell you if that's true
on tuesday.

JMS was asked why he chose to direct TLT himself..and he and others
mentioned that the reasoning was behind the fact that TLT was a
straight-to-DVD release done on a low budget, which as never been done
like this before, and it would be difficult to translate to a director
without an example from which to work upon for future reference. So,
naturally, he had to embark upon it himself.  I'm personally quite
happy about that, judging from his prior directorial work.

Doug Netter answered Nazarro's question about how TLT impacted the
home video question. It was nice to hear Doug speak.  This was his
first con, according to the panel. Basically he talked about an
unknown return on revenue and the risk involved, plus the low budget
of the dvd provides for an interesting conundrum to create high
quality. Even further compounded by the fact that it was done rather
quickly. This was Doug's only real speech. Couple of quips here and
there otherwise. I'm glad he showed up.

Samm Barnes talked about the B5 family and how accepting and wonderful
they all were. We all know that though. Good people work on this show.
Normal people who don't have a celebrity ego, which is part of its
appeal.  Basically the only time she talked as well.

Audience questions were really disappointing. I wish I could have
gotten in line to ask something better, and I apologize that I didn't
because it makes for a lack of an intersting review. Lots of "Are e
you going to do an Ivanova story?" "So..what's the name Zathras mean?
Is it like a mispronunciation of Straczynski?" "Are you gonna do a
Garibaldi Story?" "What about Crusade?" kinda questions. A lot of the
audience didn't seem to be B5 regulars but more comic-con mainstream
type.

There were two moments where I think JMS gave some good information:

Nazarro asked a question regarding TLT being published as a scriptbook
eventually, and we received an affirmative answer.

That's good news. I'll be happy to have that in the collection and
commentary by JMS.

The second interesting part is about a future project. JMS said that
he had hoped he could announce it, but it's probably a month away from
the go ahead to say something about it. No clues to what it was. I
hope it's a future TLT installment.  Or a Snow White sequel.

Will comment tomorrow after the Straczynski solo bit.
--- SBBSecho 2.12-Win32
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