RE: cliffhangers...not between episodes,...

 Posted on 1/5/1993 by STRACZYNSKI [Joe] to GENIE


RE: cliffhangers...not between episodes, certainly. Between seasons,
it's...hard to explain. There are, or will be *changes* that happen from one
season to another (as planned), specific events that take place that should
bring one up short...but "cliffhanger" in the sense of leaving some guy
hanging from a string over a lake of fire...no, no plans for such at this
time.

RE: kids...boy, that one sure hit a nerve on both sides, didn't it?
That's good. An argument like this is what a show or story should do, get
people discussing the issues.

Meanwhile, on other areas....

****WOW****

I was in the editing bay today during the pre-dub of B5 (which I'll
explain more , which btw has a nifty huge projection screen, twelve or fifteen
feet across, so I got to see some of the show as if at a theater...plays
pretty well.

Anyway...what a pre-dub is, is this: those who saw the earlier version of
the pilot will remember, for instance, the scenes in the main corridor of the
station (well, one of them, anyway). You have Sinclair and Garibaldi talking.
It's an un-mixed scene...just as filmed, there are just two guys talking. All
the rest of the set is silent.

But now...NOW...you're in the editing bay, and now you add in the
background voices, human and alien...mechanical sounds nearby...an intercom
voice advertising station services...then layer in the music, and suddenly
it's a MOVIE! Someone said that sound is half of a movie, and you forget that
until it hits you in the face.

The pre-dub is where you layer in the voice tracks (original, from the
production; adr (automatic dialogue replacement) for lines that were not
sufficiently audible or need to be looped; incidental dialogue (computers,
background characters) and walla (general crowd sounds). You decide how much
of any of these is too much, how much more you need, what the balance is...if
you need to use the surround capability to put this voice HERE or THERE....

Then we previewed some scenes with music, and did a little of the same
there (we'll do more during the final mix Thursday through Tuesday). For
instance...most music cues are anywhere from a few seconds long to maybe a
minute or more. Ours tend to be longish...the longest is a cue that lasts 7.5
minutes, and goes inside the station, outside the station, to different
*parts* of the station, and the music continues throughout. We figured that
we needed to better differentiate the sound inside vs. outside the
station...so in the music cue, we drop the electric guitar out of the mix for
the inside scenes, and put it back in for the outside scenes, for instance.

The result, basically, being that it becomes a *M*O*V*I*E* for the first
time. And boy, it cooks, lemme tell you. There are moments of absolute and
inutterable self-doubt in a project like this, especially when paired with the
monumental press machine from elsewhere which is doing everything possible to
bury us in the interests of preserving an economic monopoly and critics who
figure we're a clone of another show. But then you turn around and see
something like this, and you know it's going to work...and it really helps.

jms



RE: cliffhangers...not between episodes,...

 Posted on 1/5/1993 by STRACZYNSKI [Joe] to GENIE


RE: cliffhangers...not between episodes, certainly. Between seasons,
it's...hard to explain. There are, or will be *changes* that happen from one
season to another (as planned), specific events that take place that should
bring one up short...but "cliffhanger" in the sense of leaving some guy
hanging from a string over a lake of fire...no, no plans for such at this
time.

RE: kids...boy, that one sure hit a nerve on both sides, didn't it?
That's good. An argument like this is what a show or story should do, get
people discussing the issues.

Meanwhile, on other areas....

****WOW****

I was in the editing bay today during the pre-dub of B5 (which I'll
explain more , which btw has a nifty huge projection screen, twelve or fifteen
feet across, so I got to see some of the show as if at a theater...plays
pretty well.

Anyway...what a pre-dub is, is this: those who saw the earlier version of
the pilot will remember, for instance, the scenes in the main corridor of the
station (well, one of them, anyway). You have Sinclair and Garibaldi talking.
It's an un-mixed scene...just as filmed, there are just two guys talking. All
the rest of the set is silent.

But now...NOW...you're in the editing bay, and now you add in the
background voices, human and alien...mechanical sounds nearby...an intercom
voice advertising station services...then layer in the music, and suddenly
it's a MOVIE! Someone said that sound is half of a movie, and you forget that
until it hits you in the face.

The pre-dub is where you layer in the voice tracks (original, from the
production; adr (automatic dialogue replacement) for lines that were not
sufficiently audible or need to be looped; incidental dialogue (computers,
background characters) and walla (general crowd sounds). You decide how much
of any of these is too much, how much more you need, what the balance is...if
you need to use the surround capability to put this voice HERE or THERE....

Then we previewed some scenes with music, and did a little of the same
there (we'll do more during the final mix Thursday through Tuesday). For
instance...most music cues are anywhere from a few seconds long to maybe a
minute or more. Ours tend to be longish...the longest is a cue that lasts 7.5
minutes, and goes inside the station, outside the station, to different
*parts* of the station, and the music continues throughout. We figured that
we needed to better differentiate the sound inside vs. outside the
station...so in the music cue, we drop the electric guitar out of the mix for
the inside scenes, and put it back in for the outside scenes, for instance.

The result, basically, being that it becomes a *M*O*V*I*E* for the first
time. And boy, it cooks, lemme tell you. There are moments of absolute and
inutterable self-doubt in a project like this, especially when paired with the
monumental press machine from elsewhere which is doing everything possible to
bury us in the interests of preserving an economic monopoly and critics who
figure we're a clone of another show. But then you turn around and see
something like this, and you know it's going to work...and it really helps.

jms