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Some general stuff....

Today, John Copeland and I finished re-editing "The Gathering,"
the B5 pilot movie. While there were some areas we couldn't get into
because of the complexity in redoing the mix, virtually every scene got
tinkered with to one degree or another, and most important, the roughly
14 minutes of footage left out of the original version is now back in.
The whole thing is tighter and faster, and there's more recent CGI,
we'll have Chris Franke re-score it, and it's just in general a lot
better. (Some parts of it even make more sense now.)

One additional change: because of the desire on PTEN's part to
have as many commercial breaks as possible, the 6-act script was
jerry-rigged and broken down into 9 acts. One side-effect of this is
that 9 acts wears on you, and wears you out, more than the standard 6.
You start to get a feeling of being led up to things too often, and
there isn't time to dwell on the acts you're in. I was finally able,
with this re-edit, to move scenes back around again to what I
originally wanted in a 6-act structure (you'll see a number of scenes
juxtaposed from their original order).

Anyway...the TNT Special Edition is much improved over the
original.

Other stuff: the fanclub site continues to expand and improve.
If you haven't been around in a while, you may want to check it out
again sometime soon (http://www.thestation.com). The chat room is
running better than ever before, there are new graphics, and the B5
Emporium should be online in a matter of days allowing purchase of B5FC
stuff online with credit cards. (Mail order stuff is still being
processed.)

Latest additions to the lineup: Psi Corps hats and pins, patches
of various sorts, Earth Alliance pins, Ship Recognition charts in
poster form, and others.

Finally, I'll be a Guest of Honor at this year's LosCon, held
Thanksgiving weekend in L.A. at the Burbank Airport Hilton. My 2-hour
B5 presentation will be Sunday afternoon, where I'll be showing clips
from the two TNT tv-movies (including lots of stuff from the finished
prequel), from upcoming S5 episodes, new bloopers and so on. I'll also
be joined by John Copeland, producer, and Harlan Ellison, our
conceptual consultant. This is always an SRO venue for us -- LosCon
has been a part of B5 from the start -- so you may want to get there
early. (Or even go the day before; it's a fun convention.)

jms