The Promo
mike...@news.delphi.com
I got to see and record the promo for the series. I was hoping
for somewhat longer promo, but what was shown was terrific. 8-)
If Jeff Jarvis has any more mean comments about B5's CGI then
I suggest that we all burn him in effigy, :-)^100.
Ron Thornton's work is super and if the entire season like
that, he deserves another Emmy and more.
The asteroids look beter than those in _The_Empire_Strikes_Back_
and more importantly did have the super-ridiculous concentration
of asteroids that the TESB had. As much as I love TESB, its astronomy
leaves something to be desired.
I knew that G'Kar and Londo would have improved makeup, but it seemed
to me that Delenn's makeup was also improved. I might be wrong, it
was a very sort glimpse. The glimpse made Mira Furlan look beter then
in the pilot.
Mike Hopkins mike1...@delphi.com
michael...@oubbs.telecom.uoknor.edu
"No cute kids or robots... ever." - JMS
David C. Navas
>for somewhat longer promo, but what was shown was terrific. 8-)
Yeah, in, what, ten seconds we had about seven different CGI shots (that
I counted). Minus the titled trailer....
>If Jeff Jarvis has any more mean comments about B5's CGI then
>I suggest that we all burn him in effigy, :-)^100.
Why bother with the effigy thing -- hey Beavis.... ;)
>The asteroids look beter than those in _The_Empire_Strikes_Back_
>and more importantly did have the super-ridiculous concentration
"did" or "didn't"? I still think that asteroids this close would
eventually have collided unless they're under strong external gravitational
influence -- or unless they're a part of a dumb-weapon system ala Last
Starfighter.
Still, really, they looked great!
>I knew that G'Kar and Londo would have improved makeup, but it seemed
>to me that Delenn's makeup was also improved. I might be wrong, it
Londo I recognized. G'Kar sounded different to me, somehow, and both the
"lizard" and the "monk" looked way different. I kinda liked Delenn's
original head piece. Her eyes end up looking "haunted" instead of
"deep". Ah well. Only my personal appearance, and let's face it, it's
hard to make a real judgement call from that piece....
The question I have is what the devil was that other ape-like creature?
And was that the music we're likely to hear for the series?
--
David Navas ja...@netcom.com
dna...@us.oracle.com
"Talent develops in quiet places; character, in the full current of human life"
Scott Advani
I can't believe some of the things I saw... right up the gun, for one
thing... some of the other stuff I was trying to see around the overlaid
faces.
Looks good.
Great, actually.
-= Scott =-
--
Scott Advani | Org.: Campus Crusade for Christ, Canada
Scott_...@mindlink.bc.ca | Box 300; Vancouver, BC; V6C 2X3
------------------------------+----------------------------------------
"Hey! This isn't a ToasterBox... It's an Amiga with the word 'Amiga'
scratched out and the word 'Video Toaster' pasted on top of it!"
Benjamin B. Thomas
I single-stepped through the promo with my handy-dandy VCR...
I can't believe some of the things I saw...
Please be so kind as to tell the rest of us what you saw. Not all of us
had a station which was nice enough to include the promo in the
rebroadcast. Thanks.
-benjy
David C. Navas
>In article <31...@mindlink.bc.ca> Scott_...@mindlink.bc.ca (Scott Advani) writes:
> I single-stepped through the promo with my handy-dandy VCR...
> I can't believe some of the things I saw...
Ditto. I had a great dream of flying the Millenium Falcon through that
asteroid field last night for some reason :)
>Please be so kind as to tell the rest of us what you saw. Not all of us
Ah, good point.
The first scene opens with the launch of the StarFury. I missed taping this
scene, so I can't say much about it except what I remember. The Fury was
lifted, tipped, and released -- very fast. The rest I did get on tape.
The interior launch shot is replaced by a shot of the StarFury coming out of
the bay. The bay area is a patchwork of steel gray and red. There's a
feeling of roundness to the entrance, and several edges remind you of gears
(lots of tooth edges -- large and small). The StarFury itself is hidden
behind a large blue with purple-highlights sign:
C O M I N G I N
J A N U A R Y
making it difficult to see much more.
This scene "wave" dissolves (ala SeaQuest ripple dissolves) to a shot of the
StarFury from the rear going into hyperspace. You can see the four thrusters
in the back of the ship turned on (despite the annoying sign still up on
screen). A very bright light appears in front of the ship with two subtle,
elliptical light/optical effects (the name escapes me right now). The light
turns into radiating lines which engulf the ship and the screen.
The next scene is of a Delta-wing ("triangle") ship with serious motion blur
(except for the far edge of the wing for some reason). The ship is flying
past the camera position -- in the background is a large tanker-type ship
against that omnipresent nebula. The Delta fighter appears to be the same
color as the Narn, though it's tough to tell. The design itself makes the
ship look like it's more comfortable in air than in space. As the ship
passes, a Narn head (G'Kar?) fades in on the top left, followed closely by
Londo in the bottom right. (Voice over starts here saying -- "You're time
is [coming?] up, it's our turn now!" Sounds kinda like G'kar, but higher
pitched somehow....)
As the ship passes the tanker, we can see the same red/gray steel patchwork
which seems to indicate an Earth Alliance vessel. A StarFury is seen flying
in from the top right. Both ships fade out, and the scene switches
perspective (I think). The StarFury is seen center screen (slightly behind
Londo with his mouth wide open barring his teeth), and the Narn (?!) ship is
barely visible on the bottom of the screen. Only two engines of the StarFury
are firing. The tanker's red/white patchwork is more visible as stripes
around what looks to be about three -long- cylinders. Part of the tanker is
reflecting a bright light -- could be the StarFury's engines, though there is
only one bright spot. Nebula and starfield behind, of course.
The StarFury, with only it's rear port (?) engines firing is clearly turning
around to meet the Delta wing fighter. When it's 45 degrees through it's 180
turn, the engines turn off. As it rounds it's turn, you catch a glimpse of
four engines (starboard rear and port forward) engines firing to stop the
ship's turning. Scene abruptly cuts to behind the StarFury (again, but it's
turned around as you'll recall). The tanker is clearly visible in the top
right of the screen, the Delta wing center screen behind the StarFury. The
latter's engines are firing all four forward engines (to match velocity from
the D-wing, presumably). Bright nebula in the background. The StarFury fires
energy (?) weapons of some kind as it backs away quickly, and the Delta
fighter explodes in a brilliant orange ball of destruction, metal bits are
visible shooting away from the ship as the Fury exits bottom left. The camera
zooms into the energy ball for the next cutaway -- the explosion seems to lick
between nearby metal pieces -- "cold" bits of metal shooting away at high
velocities. The whole scene was (fortunately) unobscured by those darned face
insets.
As the fireball fades, more face insets are dissolving onto the screen. This
is the asteroid scene. (The voice over is beginning the "It's our turn now"
part of the dialog.) Three asteroids are immediately visible -- one on the
left takes up about a third of the screen. Two smaller ones are on the right
top and bottom. This time four faces are fading onto the screen, which makes
seeing anything here -very- difficult.. The asteroids are very lumpy --
mostly round, but -very- lumpy with lots of nooks and cranies, and a very
compelling rock look to them. Two StarFuries pass the screen as the faces
dissolve off the screen. Lightwave motion blur that computes several distinct
scenes per frame is very evident as the right StarFury (left on our screen,
right from their perspective) closes on the camera. The weapon cannon on the
Fury approaches then engulfs and swallows the camera. Black scene explodes to
white, then fades back to black with the Babylon-5 center title shooting back,
and the "Premieres January 26th" shooting forward to sit over the title.
The face insets mentioned above are (from top left clockwise) a new "ape"
species of some kind, Sinclair in a full-face mask breather, a minbari
(Delenn? Doesn't look the same), and in the bottom left, a Vorlon.
The music is similar to DS9 in some ways (I think). Lots of horns. Mostly,
though, there's plenty of sound effects (though what they're sound effects of
is very difficult to tell).
Steven Grimm
The promo looked nice, but I agree with others that it was too short. I can
only assume that they're saving the good stuff till the big advertising push
later this year and in January.
Me, I'm just biding my time till Feb. 2, when we'll get to see what the final
cut of the abovementioned episode is like with sound effects and music. It
promises to be a treat (heck, it was a treat WITHOUT any of that stuff.)
-Steve
Dan Wood
>Not all of us
>had a station which was nice enough to include the promo in the
>rebroadcast. Thanks.
Aren't the stations contractually obligated to play all the pieces?
I remember some scuffle about when the pilot was originally broadcast,
and the ending credits got talked-over. JMS said that they should be
"reported" (to MISTter GariBALdi, no doubt) since they were breaking
their contract.
(This was obviously still in effect in our KBHK-44 San Francicsco
re-broadcast. Probably the only time I've seen that station keep
the ending credits intact by neither talking over, nor shrinking it!)
Jose Gonzalez
>The first scene opens with the launch of the StarFury. I missed taping this
>scene, so I can't say much about it except what I remember. The Fury was
>lifted, tipped, and released -- very fast. The rest I did get on tape.
>
>The interior launch shot is replaced by a shot of the StarFury coming out of
>the bay. The bay area is a patchwork of steel gray and red. There's a
>feeling of roundness to the entrance, and several edges remind you of gears
>(lots of tooth edges -- large and small). The StarFury itself is hidden
>behind a large blue with purple-highlights sign:
There's a another thing in that scene that's easy to miss. If you look on
the left corner of the screen as the StarFury is accelerating toward us, you
can see *another* StarFury being turned for launch in it's bay. You can't tell
if it actually takes off, though. That kind of detail is nice to see.
This show is going to be worth watching just for the effects.
--
Jose Gonzalez
Somebody
>be...@sick-puppy.ai (Benjamin B. Thomas) writes:
>>Not all of us
>>had a station which was nice enough to include the promo in the
>>rebroadcast. Thanks.
>Aren't the stations contractually obligated to play all the pieces?
>I remember some scuffle about when the pilot was originally broadcast,
>and the ending credits got talked-over. JMS said that they should be
>"reported" (to MISTter GariBALdi, no doubt) since they were breaking
>their contract.
I don't know about contractual obligations, but channel 11 in seattle
talked over the credits yet again, and cut the synthetic worlds logo for
the 3rd time... What DOES that hand look like?
They also cut one of the scenes (at the end where Sinclair's GF is leaving)
a bit, but that was because of a timing mistake or something (it wasn't on
purpose)
We did get the promo tho... WOW! Only 2 problems I could see - there's a
little bit of a software problem with the motion blurring - when things
move fast, they get repeated fringes (you can see it if you frame by frame
the delta wing flyby, or when the fighter's gun flies into the camera
without frame-by-framing. It's not very noticable tho) and the explosion -
it looked like the promo people cut part of the explosion frame and used it
for a bitmap-zoom to fade the screen to white. Actually, it looks worse at
full speed than frame-by-frame...
Hey, at the start of the promo, where the fighter is being launched, it
looks like there's a control center above with windows looking over the
fighter bay... but nobody's there! Ooooh, lack of detail! How lame :)
--
J
"Gamera's really neat! Gamera's full of meat! We love Gamera!"
"Joel, do human beings really act like this?" -- Tom Servo
David C. Navas
>little bit of a software problem with the motion blurring - when things
I wonder if motion "blur" isn't a misnomer?
Somebody
>In article <2bn689$h...@news.u.washington.edu> klu...@carson.u.washington.edu (Somebody) writes:
>>little bit of a software problem with the motion blurring - when things
>I wonder if motion "blur" isn't a misnomer?
Well, that's what you want to happen isn't it? It's not exactly how it's
being done, but... Well, ok, the actual motion isn't being blurred, the
objects are, but who cares.
Would you rather call it temporal anti-aliasing? Eeeeeeeew... :)
David C. Navas
[motion "blur"]
>Well, that's what you want to happen isn't it? It's not exactly how it's
>being done, but... Well, ok, the actual motion isn't being blurred, the
>objects are, but who cares.
Yes, but it looks like aliasing by supersampling rather than by image
"smoothing" or "smudging" -- which is why you get several distinct images
per vcr frame.
This is only a guess, of course.