ALL SCI-FI

[Pow]

J. Michael Straczynski was continually told by studios he was trying to sell his Babylon 5 show to that producing a science fiction television series was always too costly as numerous sci-fi TV series had proved time and time again.

JMS was absolutely determined to prove studios wrong and whenever he got his chance to produce Babylon 5 he vowed it would be cost effective and never go over budget, and still be a quality production.
He dreamed that in doing this he could provide a practical working business model for other creators/producers of sci-fi TV shows so that they could successfully sell their own TV shows.

In the interest of saving $$$ and getting in on an innovative new technology, B5 became an early adopter of computer-generated visual effects, not only for its space battles, ships, planets, and the titular space station but also set extensions.

Note from me: Seaquest DSV would be the other early sci-fi TV series to utilize CGI for their underwater scenes, Seaquest, undersea colonies and so forth.

More to come.

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Another cost-cutting technique by JMS was to not utilize the Warner Brothers Studio sound stages. B5 production was filmed outside L.A. in a former hot tub factory.

JMS enforced a strict schedule for shooting. Typically one hour television dramas shoot over eight, fourteen hour days.

B5 filmed seven, twelve hour days. The cast and crew found this to be a less grueling filming schedule and it was a morale booster.

JMS's obsessive story planning helped keep the budget under control.

Other shows typically suffer script rewrites during pre-production or even during the shooting of an episode.

Note from me: Reading about the making of ST:TOS episodes in several books, there were frantic re-writes of scripts during the shooting of episodes that the script was based upon.
One example was "Shore Leave." Gene Roddenberry was on the outdoor location where that episode was being filmed and sitting under a tree doing re-writes on that script.

JMS was always several weeks ahead with the final scripts for episodes. This made an enormous difference.

Costumes for civilian characters were often bought off the rack and then tweaked by the costume designers, rather then making wardrobes from scratch.

Note from me: The cast of the Sci-Fi Channel's first live action TV show Mission Genesis all wore clothing that had been purchased at a sports wear shop.

Using only CGI for B5 they were able to blow up ships as often as necessary. Since the vessels were created digitally, no real models, as traditionally were used on sci-fi shows at that time, were destroyed. Destroying practical models would have been an expensive thing to do if that particular model might have been needed again in a future episode.

B5 could also "kitbash" their space ships. That is, they can digitally create unique ships from already existing designs.

Location filming. B5 never did any which saves on the budget. Whether shooting on a studio back lot, or leaving the studio and shooting at such popular locations as Vasquez Rocks, Bronson Canyon, or some other outdoors locale, all takes valuable time and money. And you better hope & pray the weather is with you.

Note from me: I always enjoy it greatly whenever a TV show can film off the sound stage. Be it on their back lot replica streets, or at some scenic park. It always enhanced the look of a series for me by giving us real world places and expanding the vistas. It just made it real.

Too often we would watch an episode of some show where the actors were supposed to be on the surface of a planet and it came off as totally artificial.

On ST:TOS they did a very fine episode called "The Galileo Seven." The writing and acting was first rate, but the set of the planet that the Galileo shuttlecraft had crashed on was as phony looking as they came. The bright lighting certainly did not help at all. In any event, I found it distracting to the story. Perhaps the production crew did the best that they could under the pressures of filming on a tight schedule, and within a limited budget.
I just know that it did not work for me.

So that episode would have been an excellent example of where location shooting would have vastly improved the show's overall look.

However, I cannot fault JMS's logic that by never filming B5 outside the sound stage it does indeed significantly save on the budget.

Today with the sophisticated virtual sets technology available, and such incredible new innovative tech such as the LED Wall created for The Mandolorian, perhaps outdoor filming will become less and less necessary over time.

JMS provided other science fiction TV producers with a fine model of just how to produce a show and keep it at, or under budget, as JMS did with B5.

Sadly, this paradigm has not been followed by shows that got themselves into trouble of one kind or another.
Whether it was through ignorance or arrogance, who can say?

I have read that Terra Nova became quite a mess behind the scenes with its production and cost overruns. The recent Swamp Thing TV series collapsed because of production issues.

Now maybe JMS's model could not rescue these series with all their problems. It does seem that any producers that are going to tackle doing a weekly sci-fi TV show should at least talk to JMS and study his overall plan. They could benefit a great deal from it.

[Bud Brewster]

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Notable Special Effects creator, Ron Thornton (1957~2016), was approached by Babylon 5 producer John Copeland to create a short film to promote Babylon 5 to the WB network executives.

Ron was invited to submit a proposal for the visual effects using the traditional physical models that had always been used for science fiction television shows up until that time.

Ron experimented with CGI and wondered whether this new technical process could possibly utilized for the B5 promo?

B5 creator J. Michael Straczynski did the pitch to the executives and showed a 10-second animation piece of film by Ron.

This short film helped to convince the WB to greenlight the series not only due to how impressive the animation appeared, but the lower cost factor for the special effects budget.

Initially Straczynski had the outer space star ship battles storyboarded for Babylon 5 and would write a detailed description of these battles. Straczynski found that with this new fangled CGI visual effects that Thornton was able to far exceed anything Straczynski wrote with the complexity of the battles, and include even more vessels than Straczynski would come up with for the scripts.

Eventually Straczynski would give up penning space battles for his show. He'd simply put in the script "A battle, a Ron Thornton special."

Ron was a true innovator and pioneer in being one of the very first visual effects artists to introduce CGI to television shows. It was groundbreaking and Ron should be remembered and honored.

[Pow]

B5 News

Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski announced that there will be a B5 animated movie.

Babylon 5: "The Road Home"

Travel across the galaxy with john Sheridan as he unexpectedly finds himself transported through multiple timelines and alternate realities in a quest to find his way back home. Along the way he reunites with some familiar faces, while discovering new revelations about the history, purpose, and meaning of the Universe.

Returning to provide the voices for B5 characters are: Bruce Boxleitner (John Sheridan), Claudia Christian (Susan Ivanova), Peter Jurasik (Londo Mollari), Bill Mumy (Lannier)Tracy Scoggins (Elizabeth Lochley), and Patricia Tallman (Lyta Alexander).

JMS is writing the script and describes the story as heartfelt, nonstop, and a love letter to the fans.

This is wonderful news if this project does get produced. B5 was a marvelous and imaginative series. Unlike Star Trek which has managed to expand the original Trek show into six other TV series (and a number of feature films), poor B5 has never received much in the way of reboots. There were a couple of B5 made-for-TV movies, and a direct-to-dvd. However, the series has never been properly revived.

JMS did manage to have a B5 related show titled Crusade, but that only lasted one season. He also produced the B5: Legend of the Rangers TV-movie pilot, but that wasn't picked up.

JMS is a terrific writer, and I am a fan of his B5 Universe, so I'm pleased that he's getting the opportunity to being us back to it. I'm very confident in it because he is writing the script for it, and a good portion of the cast from the live action series are returning to provide the voices of their B5 characters. Now let's hope the animation is up to snuff. How the current writer's strike in Hollywood will affect this project, who can say? It could delay it, or even derail it entirely. Cross your fingers, toes, and eyes B5 fans.

[tmlindsey]

[lyncat]

[Bud Brewster]

______________________________________________

That is indeed both a tragic and heroic story.

The tragedy, of course, is the terrible mental condition which Michael O'Hare had to endure. The heroism was his unselfish decision to consider the well being of this colleagues on the show.

Whenever I hear about people who must endure terrible conditions like that, I feel lucky that I don't have to deal with anything that serious! (Knock on wood . . .)
_________________
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

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The Babylon 5 budget for an average episode was $600,000. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was $1,300,000.

B5 Producer John Copeland, drawing from his experience from Captain Power & the Soldiers of the Future, pinched pennies without sacrificing ambitions for B5 when creating a blueprint for the production of B5. CGI saved the series tons of money. At that time in 1994, science fiction television shows were still using expensive models for their series. CGI was a revolutionary new visual effect that hadn't been utilized much at all. The other brand new science fiction series to employ CGI in 1994 was SeaQuest DSV.

J. Michael Straczynski had a devil of a tome trying to interest the networks in his B5 creation. When he pointed out the success of Star Trek: The Next Generation, he was constantly told by network executives that Trek was a unique phenomenon unto itself and did not represent a hunger by an audience for more science fiction.