Well, all of last week I was in Vancouver for the first week of shooting on the
two-hour TV movie BABYLON 5: LEGEND OF THE RANGERS. (I'm back now for a
while.) It's been a terrific experience to date. The dailies look great.
Mike Vejar is on board to direct, and is keeping the look and feel consistent
with what we've done before, but at the same time (in collaboration with our
new Director of Photography Henry Chan) is taking the look even a step further.
The sets (courtesy of production designer Steve Gaeghan and his band of
artistic types) look more detailed, more textured, more realistic than much of
what we've done before on B5. (This is in no way to diminish what we did in B5
on sets, it's just a different approach.)

Andreas Katsulas showed up mid-week as G'Kar, and despite having been away from
that makeup for three years, was instantly back in character starting with the
first shot and straight on through.

The cast have proven themselves excellent. It's natural to take some time to
find your character, and find the lines...but from the moment they landed on
set, they had their lines letter perfect, and the chemistry is there between
them. SFC has seen the dailies and they're absolutely enchanted with what's on
film.

I wish I had colorful stories to tell, but we're talking here about a bunch of
dedicated professionals who appreciate the legacy of B5 and are doing
everything they can to make this next installment the best possible. (About
the only negative thing to happen all week was my losing my California state ID
midweek, which I'll have to go in to replace this week at my local DMV.) It's
a very elaborate production, with everything from pyros to wire works and other
stuff, in addition to the usual glut of CGI we tend to do, but so far it's all
going quite well.

I've been taking digital pictures of the production which will soon be
available on the SFC website...and there are some beauts there. I'll let you
know when they're up.

In the interim...know that the show is going extremely well, and I think that
people are going to like the cast a lot. They're good, well-trained, dedicated
people.

I think it's going to go over very well indeed.

jms

(jmsatb5@aol.com)
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and don't send me story ideas)