So it appears JMS has taken down B5 scrolls

[Republibot 3.0]

What Jan said. Yes, I can agree with Jan . . . . . . on the rarist of occasions. Has something to do with lunar cycles, unicycles or something.

Here's a link, probably not the one Jan is referring to, but it covers the same sort of ground.
http://midwestemmys.org/about/order/

Wait, wait, wait, are we *ACTUALLY* talking about the Emmies, or are we talking about JMS going all Roddenberry and taking credit for stuff he had no part in? I thought we were talking about the latter, and the former was just symptomatic of that.

If we're *ACTUALLY* *JUST* talking about the Emmies, then I'm suddenly kinda' bored. I'd assumed there was more to this.

For instance, what is it you're accused of having changed on Wikipedia?

 

[JonFrain]

What Jan said. Yes, I can agree with Jan . . . . . . on the rarist of occasions. Has something to do with lunar cycles, unicycles or something.

Here's a link, probably not the one Jan is referring to, but it covers the same sort of ground.
http://midwestemmys.org/about/order/

Wait, wait, wait, are we *ACTUALLY* talking about the Emmies, or are we talking about JMS going all Roddenberry and taking credit for stuff he had no part in? I thought we were talking about the latter, and the former was just symptomatic of that.

If we're *ACTUALLY* *JUST* talking about the Emmies, then I'm suddenly kinda' bored. I'd assumed there was more to this.

For instance, what is it you're accused of having changed on Wikipedia?

Jan seems to be stating that JMS has a right to claim that he won an emmy for VFX for B5. Seems kind of questionable to me. But again, I'd need to see JMS' statement regarding him winning an emmy and see what the rules are. Technically he likely didn't have anything to do with the VFX other than some suggestions, the written word and requests for changes to their early versions of stuff. As an executive producer and show runner he does have control over the final product. It just seems the PC way to phrase it is "we won" the Emmy for B5 unless it's regarding the writing of the show. There is a clear distinction between Emmy awards and Emmy certificates. The latter sounds mainly like a resume boost and a way for the academy to make some extra cash.

FFF seems to be outright rude in questioning her though and I can't blame her for not participating anymore.

It seems like FFF is making a big deal out of nothing though. Seriously.

 

[Republibot 3.0]

FFF seems to be outright rude in questioning her though and I can't blame her for not participating anymore.

That doesn't bother me as much as it probably should. I hated George Lucas before Hating George Lucas was cool. I'm an utter dick when it comes to the "Cult of Roddenberry," just because he was a glory hot. (Conversely, I don't hate Trek at all, it just kinda' doesn't talk to me anymore). Likewise, I frequently jump to Fred Frieberger's defense (Though he arguably doesn't deserve it) mostly out of obstinence.

So a little bit of constructive disrespect is healthy. It keeps people honest. This is probably a character flaw on my part.

It seems like FFF is making a big deal out of nothing though. Seriously.

So does FFF have OTHER issues with JMS, or is that the only one?

 

[Jan]

Here's an idea I had that's at least somewhat related to the conversation. Since I've got all of the scripts, often more than one draft, would anybody be interested in finding out what the description was of a ship or effect they like at the script stage? An awful lot of the development of all CGI would have happened in meetings that there are no records of but if anybody's interested, give me an episode and tell me what you're interested in (approximate part of the episode) and I'll post what the description (if any, of course) was in the script.

Jan

 

[Republibot 3.0]

Here's an idea I had that's at least somewhat related to the conversation. Since I've got all of the scripts, often more than one draft, would anybody be interested in finding out what the description was of a ship or effect they like at the script stage? An awful lot of the development of all CGI would have happened in meetings that there are no records of but if anybody's interested, give me an episode and tell me what you're interested in (approximate part of the episode) and I'll post what the description (if any, of course) was in the script.

Jan

Yeah! Well, we get our first shot of a Hyperion in "A voice in the wilderness," our first shot of the Agamenon in "Points of Departure" and our first shot of an Explorer Class Ship in "A Distant Star."

Could you check those, please?

 

[JonFrain]

Here's an idea I had that's at least somewhat related to the conversation. Since I've got all of the scripts, often more than one draft, would anybody be interested in finding out what the description was of a ship or effect they like at the script stage? An awful lot of the development of all CGI would have happened in meetings that there are no records of but if anybody's interested, give me an episode and tell me what you're interested in (approximate part of the episode) and I'll post what the description (if any, of course) was in the script.

Jan

Very nice of you. I have several I'd love to see. But I'll need to find how far into each episode they appear to save you time.


1) The first one ship around sigma 957 in "Mind War".

2) The league of non aligned worlds vessels in "Deathwalker" would reveal a lot.

3) Kosh's vessel in "The Gathering"

4) Shadow Vessel in "Signs and Portents"

5) Shadow creatures in "Chrysalis"? I'm not sure when their first appearance was. I just remember them appearing in the comics and looking nothing like their on show counterpart.

The thing is that it's probably an iterative process with him providing feedback on designs before they actually do any rendering. So even if the scripts are sparse, he could have a big impact on them.

 

[JonFrain]

So does FFF have OTHER issues with JMS, or is that the only one?

No clue. I didn't know about him until recently. I never really read the posts on B5 scrolls.

 

[Republibot 3.0]

2) The league of non aligned worlds vessels in "Deathwalker" would reveal a lot.

Oh! yeah! Good one! I wish I'd thought of that!

5) Shadow creatures in "Chrysalis"? I'm not sure when their first appearance was. I just remember them appearing in the comics and looking nothing like their on show counterpart.

Entirely possible. Of course Earthdome looks nothing like Switzerland in the comics either. <G>

On that note, something I've always found curious is that after "Signs and Portents", people online were asking Joe "What the hell was that?" and he said it was a new species called "The Shadowmen." He used that several times, though later on he said it was a working title. I've often wondered if the original intention was to have them be more humanoid, or at least playable by a guy in a costume. Then someone said, "Hey, we can do this with CGI...."

The thing is that it's probably an iterative process with him providing feedback on designs before they actually do any rendering. So even if the scripts are sparse, he could have a big impact on them.

I would expect so. I'd expect a lot of back-and-forth between the art department and Joe, actually. I remember someone saying that Joe's idea for the Starfuries was basically a B-wing-looking thing from Star Wars (I've seen what I think is that in the Rattlesnake art, so I believe it), , and there's the story about him wanting to use a magnetic tractor beam, and someone in the FX department saying "We could do a claw instead." I could see The Shadows being a result of one of those kinds of discussions.

Conversely, I could see the initial attempt at a Drakh being an example of one of those discussions going horribly wrong. The alien we meet there was obviously intended as a Drakh, but it's been reconned as "The Drakh Emissary" because it just looked ridiculous. That was "Lines of Communication" I think - the description of the Drakh from as per the script would be interesting to know.

 

[Triple F]

Bit more to the "claw" idea than that, but your essentially correct.

B5Scrolls should be back up this weekend. Download it, and give the interviews a read. You’d probably find John C’s, Paul Bryant's, Steve Burg's (maybe even John Vulich’s) and the one this quote comes from, Ron Thornton’s, the most interesting. (John Copeland confirmed what Thornton was saying about the secret development of them)

I don’t know how long Joe had the idea for the Vorlon angel - he always kept that pretty close to his chest. But we didn’t find out about it until the very last minute. Though it turned out all right, a bit more warning to set it up would have been nice. : ) The non anthropomorphic Shadows though was my idea, developed with John Teska.

As you know, originally Joe was calling them shadow men. His thinking was something like the C.S. Lewis approach that appeared in a lot of his work like the Perelandra stuff. You only glimpsed them in the corner of your eye, existing in a sort of twilighty mist just out of focus, but when you turned they're was nothing there. Which I felt was a great idea, and it’s very cool, and we approached it a bit like that when you first saw them. But I felt we could take it a stage further by creating a really alien looking alien. So without Joe knowing, we developed the spider/scorpion look to them which also kind of tied in with the appearance of their ships which we had developed earlier.

 

[Jan]

Okay, here's the first one that I knew I could find easily. Skipping all dialogue.

EXT. SKYDANCER
PANNING AWAY from the survey ship to a nearby empty sector of
space, as we begin to SEE a DISTURBANCE FORMING in the fabric
of space. (Good luck, Ron.) It's almost but not quite like a
jumpgate forming...rather, it's space itself seeming to bend,
collapse.

INT. SKYDANCER COCKPIT
Catherine is working at the equipment before her...when
suddenly there's a FLASH of blinding, bone-white light that
floods the cockpit and burns into our eyes. It washes over
everything, terrible in its brilliance.
She raises an arm to cover her eyes.

EXT. SKYDANCER
Something massive -- and I mean massive, ten miles across,
glowing and gossamer and fire and nightmare, an impossible
alien construct of angles and colors -- moves past the
Skydancer in B.G. The Skydancer is barely a speck against it.
We can see only a portion of it. We should get from this a
sense of overwhelming power, and mystery.
(Note: this is not a shadowman craft; that's later.)

INT. SKYDANCER COCKPIT
VIBRATING -- not shaking, vibrating -- caught in the wake of
something unimaginably huge. This is the nearest spaceborne
equivalent to a '57 Chevy caught in a UFO encounter. The light
is terrible.

EXT. SKYDANCER
As the alien craft moves toward a hole opening up in space, a
time/space distortion that is almost painful to look at.
It moves into the distortion, which closes after it. The
Skydancer is abruptly alone...and drifting.
FADE OUT:

Jan

 

[Triple F]

Ha, this could be fun.

Ron Thornton on the eventual design/model of the sigma walker ship.

The design was basically down to time again. I needed to quickly come up with something old and organic. Luckily we had a very high rez model of a human skeleton, look closely, most of the detail on that ship is actually human foot bones. Also there was a great tool in D-Paint for the Amiga. It allowed you to paint in animation mode. That was all of the ships surface animation, so it only took me about 3-4 days to build and texture it.

Interesting jms said “good luck Ron” when mentioning the disturbance. As it turns out (as revealed in the interviews), the electrical distortion round the ;jump point’ with all that energy arcing about wasn’t actually done by FI. It was hand drawn by Kevin Kutchaver a frame at a time. (Other examples of him doing that pop up in things like Big Trouble in Little China).

 

[Republibot 3.0]

B5Scrolls should be back up this weekend. Download it, and give the interviews a read. You’d probably find John C’s, Paul Bryant's, Steve Burg's (maybe even John Vulich’s) and the one this quote comes from, Ron Thornton’s, the most interesting. (John Copeland confirmed what Thornton was saying about the secret development of them)

The non anthropomorphic Shadows though was my idea, developed with John Teska.

HA! I was right!

 

[Republibot 3.0]

Okay, here's the first one that I knew I could find easily. Skipping all dialogue.

Thank you!

EXT. SKYDANCER
PANNING AWAY from the survey ship to a nearby empty sector of
space, as [...] painful to look at.
It moves into the distortion, which closes after it. The
Skydancer is abruptly alone...and drifting.
FADE OUT:

Huh. Well, we sorta' got something similar to that.

There's a thing in writing where you don't have to describe something, you can just call it 'unimaginable' and then throw a lot of adjectives at it. Lovecraft did this a lot: "A huge, shimmering ball of unimaginable horror, slithering with endless coiled nightmares and begirded with edlritch flame and a million gore-soaked tongues all bleeding out curses so profane as to be incomprehensible to the human ear." You know, for the kids! I do that myself a bit.

Basically: "I can't think of anything that really scares me, so I'll just sort of create a word salad that sets the mood, and trust the reader to insert his own nightmares there."

That was the first thing that hit me reading his description. <G>

 

[Republibot 3.0]

Ha, this could be fun.

Ron Thornton on the eventual design/model of the sigma walker ship.

The design was basically down to time again. I needed to quickly come up with something old and organic. Luckily we had a very high rez model of a human skeleton, look closely, most of the detail on that ship is actually human foot bones. Also there was a great tool in D-Paint for the Amiga. It allowed you to paint in animation mode. That was all of the ships surface animation, so it only took me about 3-4 days to build and texture it.

Interesting jms said “good luck Ron” when mentioning the disturbance. As it turns out (as revealed in the interviews), the electrical distortion round the ;jump point’ with all that energy arcing about wasn’t actually done by FI. It was hand drawn by Kevin Kutchaver a frame at a time. (Other examples of him doing that pop up in things like Big Trouble in Little China).

Wow and Wow to both of those.

 

[JonFrain]

Okay, here's the first one that I knew I could find easily. Skipping all dialogue.

EXT. SKYDANCER
PANNING AWAY from the survey ship to a nearby empty sector of
space, as we begin to SEE a DISTURBANCE FORMING in the fabric
of space. (Good luck, Ron.) It's almost but not quite like a
jumpgate forming...rather, it's space itself seeming to bend,
collapse.

INT. SKYDANCER COCKPIT
Catherine is working at the equipment before her...when
suddenly there's a FLASH of blinding, bone-white light that
floods the cockpit and burns into our eyes. It washes over
everything, terrible in its brilliance.
She raises an arm to cover her eyes.

EXT. SKYDANCER
Something massive -- and I mean massive, ten miles across,
glowing and gossamer and fire and nightmare, an impossible
alien construct of angles and colors -- moves past the
Skydancer in B.G. The Skydancer is barely a speck against it.
We can see only a portion of it. We should get from this a
sense of overwhelming power, and mystery.
(Note: this is not a shadowman craft; that's later.)

INT. SKYDANCER COCKPIT
VIBRATING -- not shaking, vibrating -- caught in the wake of
something unimaginably huge. This is the nearest spaceborne
equivalent to a '57 Chevy caught in a UFO encounter. The light
is terrible.

EXT. SKYDANCER
As the alien craft moves toward a hole opening up in space, a
time/space distortion that is almost painful to look at.
It moves into the distortion, which closes after it. The
Skydancer is abruptly alone...and drifting.
FADE OUT:

Jan

Thanks. That one's pretty vague in description. He's describing a feeling more than anything.

 

[JonFrain]

Ha, this could be fun.

Ron Thornton on the eventual design/model of the sigma walker ship.

The design was basically down to time again. I needed to quickly come up with something old and organic. Luckily we had a very high rez model of a human skeleton, look closely, most of the detail on that ship is actually human foot bones. Also there was a great tool in D-Paint for the Amiga. It allowed you to paint in animation mode. That was all of the ships surface animation, so it only took me about 3-4 days to build and texture it.

Interesting jms said “good luck Ron” when mentioning the disturbance. As it turns out (as revealed in the interviews), the electrical distortion round the ;jump point’ with all that energy arcing about wasn’t actually done by FI. It was hand drawn by Kevin Kutchaver a frame at a time. (Other examples of him doing that pop up in things like Big Trouble in Little China).

Never noticed the footbone thing. I just saw it as a weird mushroom.

 

[Jan]

Kosh's vessel. Not much but this early description of the jumpgate is cool.

EXT. DEEP SPACE - JUMP POINT
We SEE two rod-like structures, a quarter-mile long, floating
well apart from one another. Suddenly, the space between them
begins to SPARK and GLOW. A bright-white luminescence leaps
between them as suddenly space itself seems to bend, and through
the gate a ship emerges backward, engines firing to decelerate.
Even by alien standards, this ship is pretty alien looking.

(note that that last line was crossed out. Tis comes from the 2/27/92 draft that had JMS' handwritten notes as published in B5 script book #1)

Jan