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Crusade -- "War Zone"

Re: Crusade -- \"War Zone\"

well.. as a fanatic I started to watch crusade in the jms order not the aired order. Yes I think cgi is not up to the level. The music is great.. i like intro when the ship fires and there is that riff.. The actting, though im no actor, i think it is good, but yes, it is true, sometimes they seem they are just around waiting for something to happen.. but just think that was meant just for first season and as seasons go by the characters would just go more and more hectic and things go faster.. Anyway, to me it seemed all weirdo the first time i watched it.. but each time i enjoy it more and more.. to follow up the critic i think it seems like they just cram lochley on the series by force using any excuse posible so b5 is on the series...
 
Re: Crusade -- \"War Zone\"

What gets me with the CGI in Crusade, is that there was a marked dip in quality BELOW the levels we saw in B5 season 5.

I know the CGI did a nosedive in quality at the start of S4 with the loss of Foundation Imaging and Ron Thornton (one of the first of several bad decisions by Babylonian producations, imho) but by the end of S5 it had picked up again. Then Crusade came a long and, well, stank! The dramatic drop in budget combined with the greater amount of scenes is probably the main problem.

Viewing on higher quality DVD does not help.

I think B5 still holds up today, mainly in elegence and the fact that it did not try to do too much other than space shots, (easily lit). Crusade was more ambitous and therefore had more scope for failure.

Farscape refined this somewhat, have only 4-10 new shots per ep, but make them movie quality, as opposed to 20-30 shots.

Meanwhile, Foundation Imaging went on to do DS9 and Voyager, producing some of the best effects seen in TV sci-fi. Ron Thornton is now doing the all-cgi new Captain Scarlett with Gerry Anderson (this rocks, btw).

One last thing, I would'nt make the error of comparing the effects in Crusade/ B5 to modern shows, (i.e. BSG, where ZOIC are the new masters), its easy to do so though, as the medium is still rapidly developing.
 
Re: Crusade -- \"War Zone\"

and there should be *zero* difference onscreen to what has been the case
on B5, except that it will continue to improve over what we've done in the
past.
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These are all fair points that he made, but the quote above was not sadly true, at least imho. The CGI took a hit in quality, I suspect because it lacked the creative input and quality of Foundations' seasoned directors.

In particular, the realistic ship and fighter movement in zero G that made seasons 1-3 was not as well thought out, leaning more into Star Wars style dogfights.

We also saw much less iconic ship designs after that period, nothing to rival the Thunderbolt or Whitestar. Remember Loriens' flying space fish??

Still, if they would have been given trainee animators anyway, then it may well have been a bit off..
 
Re: Crusade -- \"War Zone\"

I think that, for me, is the key point. If Babylonian were going to be paying more, and getting trainee animators rather than "seasoned directors" (for which read Ron Thornton), then who knows what we would have ended up with.

In particular, one of the crucial points that JMS made was that the increase in price would lead directly to the FX being less ambitious and with fewer "re-dos".

I agree that some elements dropped off, in particular Ron Thornton's use of all three dimensions in space battles was exceptional and that suffered, but I didn't feel that the overall movement of spaceships in zero-g was that badly effected.

And, I have to confess that I rather liked Lorien's "flying space fish" as you call it, and the other first one ships that we hadn't seen before.

The following post (recreated from an e-mail from JMS to, I assume, Mojo Leibowitz) makes clear that neither Ron Thornton nor Foundation Imaging were responsible for all of B5's ship designs right from the off - he specifically mentions the Star Furies for one.

Here's the message

Overall, I believe this is one of those issues which is like taking an aspirin ... you have taken the tablets, but your head still hurts. Does that mean that the tablets haven't worked, or your head would have ached so much worse if you hadn't taken them? You'll never know.

Likewise here. With the changes that FI were demanding, would we have ended up with FX that were the equal of previous seasons, better, or worse. We'll never know.
 
Re: Crusade -- \"War Zone\"

I actually liked War Zone. It was straightforward, and benefitted from that. I'm not a nig fan of the rest of Crusade at all.

As for speical effects, I recall reading a Ron Thornton interview where he was talking about the SFX on Space: Above and Beyond. He said, quite rrightly, that some of the texturing on the ships was lovely, but the designs on the ships were rubbish (though I liked the Hammerheads, personally). He made the point of saying that the CGI guys might be good with computers, but rubbish when it coms to designs, because they don;t have experience in model building. Thornton had tons of experience with model building, starting with the stuff he did for the BBC and then the work he did when he went over to America. So he knows how to design spaceships and stuff so that they look interesting. For those FX guys that onlyy have experience with computers, maybe they don't have the necessary talent to build spacecraft.

I thought when Netter Digital took over the SFX, season 4's effects weren't too bad. The battle in "Into the Fire" did have a 3-dimensional element to it (like when the First One's ship sjump in). But by season five the effects seemed to have gone completely down hill. The ships didn't move right, they would fly too close together in the same orientation, and it all looked a bit crap to be honest. The effects in Call to Arms get better, but some of the effects in Crusade were hit and miss.
 
Re: Crusade -- \"War Zone\"

I actually liked War Zone. It was straightforward, and benefitted from that. I'm not a nig fan of the rest of Crusade at all.
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Overall, I liked War Zone as well, but it is one of the weaker Crusade episodes. IMHO, it's saved by David Allen Brooks, Gary Cole, Carrie Dobro, Daniel Dae Kim and Peter Woodward.


The effects in Call to Arms get better, but some of the effects in Crusade were hit and miss.
Click to expand...

Can't argue with that. Crusade had some spectacular effects (most of the beauty shots of Excalibur, most of the cityscape shots, Galens fireball that he used to get Max's attention), some that looked grainy and too high in contrast (the flashback of the Shadows destroying the ship carrying Dureena's people and some of the escape pods; the Warlock destroyer jumping back to hyperspace) and some that looked awfully static and 2D (the view of B5 in the viewscreen as they're taking Lochley back to B5*) and some that looked fake and like unfinished models (the mine in The Long Road; the Moradi ships in The Needs of Earth).

Crusade CGI was uneven.


* similar to the one showing B5 as Delenn and Sheridan arrive back after Into the Fire.
 
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