On Mon, 17 Dec 2007 14:23:50 -0700, Anim8rFSK <ANIM8Rfsk@cox.net>
wrote:

>> > Writers want to write, not form and manage companies.
>>
>> What Mac said.
>
>Mac doesn't know many writers. The ones I know don't want to write;
>they have delusions of adequacy, and want to produce or direct.

TV is a writer's medium, movies are a director's medium. The reason
that writers want to direct movies is to protect their scripts. In
television, they *get* to protect their scripts by showrunning, in
which the EP credit that they get is translatable to
"playwright/author/creator." Not all writer-showrunners direct -- Joe
Straczynski only directed the last episode of Babylon 5 (and the
recent Lost Tales DVD) even though he was the showrunner/creator and
wrote something like 2/3rds of the entire run -- they'd rather tell
the stories, run the writers' room and leave the directing to the
directors. Heck, Berman & Braga and Millar & Gough rarely, if ever,
directed/direct their shows (Treks and Smallville), for which we
should be very, very thankful.

-- Rob
--
LORELAI: I am so done with plans. I am never, ever making one again.
It never works. I spend the day obsessing over why it didn't work
and what I could've done differently. I'm analyzing all my shortcomings
when all I really need to be doing is vowing to never, ever make a plan
ever again, which I'm doing now, having once again been the innocent
victim of my own stupid plans. God, I need some coffee.

"Rob Jensen" <ShutUpRob@aol.com> wrote in message
news:mlvim35co61tu7liu2gdst9k9bok6g37b9@4ax.com...
> On Mon, 17 Dec 2007 14:23:50 -0700, Anim8rFSK <ANIM8Rfsk@cox.net>
> wrote:
>
> >> > Writers want to write, not form and manage companies.
> >>
> >> What Mac said.
> >
> >Mac doesn't know many writers. The ones I know don't want to write;
> >they have delusions of adequacy, and want to produce or direct.
>
> TV is a writer's medium, movies are a director's medium. The reason
> that writers want to direct movies is to protect their scripts. In
> television, they *get* to protect their scripts by showrunning, in
> which the EP credit that they get is translatable to
> "playwright/author/creator." Not all writer-showrunners direct -- Joe
> Straczynski only directed the last episode of Babylon 5 (and the
> recent Lost Tales DVD) even though he was the showrunner/creator and
> wrote something like 2/3rds of the entire run -- they'd rather tell
> the stories, run the writers' room and leave the directing to the
> directors. Heck, Berman & Braga and Millar & Gough rarely, if ever,
> directed/direct their shows (Treks and Smallville), for which we
> should be very, very thankful.

I wish JMS hadn't directed the B5-TLT: Voices in the Dark, and would
have instead had Mike Vejar, Janet Greek, Tony Dow, Jerry Apoian, Jesus
Treviño, Adam Nimoy, David Eagle or Stephen Furst direct it.

--
Mac Breck (KoshN)
-------------------------------
"Babylon 5: Crusade" (1999)
Durkani: It doesn't matter if they believe us. Sooner or later the
truth's going to come out. The truth is...
Kendarr: Out of fashion.

In article <476ab1c5$0$29850$ecde5a14@news.coretel.net>,
macthevorlon@yahoo.com says...
> > should be very, very thankful.
>
> I wish JMS hadn't directed the B5-TLT: Voices in the Dark, and would
> have instead had Mike Vejar, Janet Greek, Tony Dow, Jerry Apoian, Jesus
> Treviño, Adam Nimoy, David Eagle or Stephen Furst direct it.

You think it would have made that much of a difference?

"Pete B" <xxxh@_someething.com> wrote in message
news:MPG.21d509eb8592798898b643@news.usenetserver. com...
> In article <476ab1c5$0$29850$ecde5a14@news.coretel.net>,
> macthevorlon@yahoo.com says...
> > > should be very, very thankful.
> >
> > I wish JMS hadn't directed the B5-TLT: Voices in the Dark, and would
> > have instead had Mike Vejar, Janet Greek, Tony Dow, Jerry Apoian,
Jesus
> > Treviño, Adam Nimoy, David Eagle or Stephen Furst direct it.
>
> You think it would have made that much of a difference?

Yeah. Any of them wouldn't have done sooooooooooooo many static shots
of talking heads. None of them would have done floating
drunk/druggie/nausea-cam in the first story, hovering around the
characters like a drunken mosquito. Any of them would have been better
at making it feel 3D instead of a sparse set in front of a 2D
background. A lot of why it feels 2D/flat is due to JMS's directorial
inexperience.

--
Mac Breck (KoshN)
-------------------------------
"Babylon 5: Crusade" (1999)
Durkani: It doesn't matter if they believe us. Sooner or later the
truth's going to come out. The truth is...
Kendarr: Out of fashion.

In article <476b14a7$0$29908$ecde5a14@news.coretel.net>,
macthevorlon@yahoo.com says...
> >
> > You think it would have made that much of a difference?
>
> Yeah. Any of them wouldn't have done sooooooooooooo many static shots
> of talking heads. None of them would have done floating
> drunk/druggie/nausea-cam in the first story, hovering around the
> characters like a drunken mosquito. Any of them would have been better
> at making it feel 3D instead of a sparse set in front of a 2D
> background. A lot of why it feels 2D/flat is due to JMS's directorial
> inexperience.

Why did he do it? To save money?

"Pete B" <xxxh@_someething.com> wrote in message
news:MPG.21d60f922adddb5498b672@news.usenetserver. com...
> In article <476b14a7$0$29908$ecde5a14@news.coretel.net>,
> macthevorlon@yahoo.com says...
> > >
> > > You think it would have made that much of a difference?
> >
> > Yeah. Any of them wouldn't have done sooooooooooooo many static
shots
> > of talking heads. None of them would have done floating
> > drunk/druggie/nausea-cam in the first story, hovering around the
> > characters like a drunken mosquito. Any of them would have been
better
> > at making it feel 3D instead of a sparse set in front of a 2D
> > background. A lot of why it feels 2D/flat is due to JMS's
directorial
> > inexperience.
>
> Why did he do it? To save money?
>

http://www.jmsnews.com/msg.aspx?id=1-17589

--
Mac Breck (KoshN)
-------------------------------
"Babylon 5: Crusade" (1999)
Durkani: It doesn't matter if they believe us. Sooner or later the
truth's going to come out. The truth is...
Kendarr: Out of fashion.

"Mac Breck" <macthevorlon@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:476b14a7$0$29908$ecde5a14@news.coretel.net...
> "Pete B" <xxxh@_someething.com> wrote in message
> news:MPG.21d509eb8592798898b643@news.usenetserver. com...
> > In article <476ab1c5$0$29850$ecde5a14@news.coretel.net>,
> > macthevorlon@yahoo.com says...
> > > > should be very, very thankful.
> > >
> > > I wish JMS hadn't directed the B5-TLT: Voices in the Dark, and
would
> > > have instead had Mike Vejar, Janet Greek, Tony Dow, Jerry Apoian,
> Jesus
> > > Treviño, Adam Nimoy, David Eagle or Stephen Furst direct it.
> >
> > You think it would have made that much of a difference?
>
> Yeah. Any of them wouldn't have done sooooooooooooo many static shots
> of talking heads. None of them would have done floating
> drunk/druggie/nausea-cam in the first story, hovering around the
> characters like a drunken mosquito. Any of them would have been
better
> at making it feel 3D instead of a sparse set in front of a 2D
> background. A lot of why it feels 2D/flat is due to JMS's directorial
> inexperience.

FWIW, in the above comments, I'm just trying to nail down WHY I didn't
like certain scenes of B5:TLT DVD #1, and WHY they felt 2D to me. As a
layperson, when I first watched the DVD, some stuff felt wrong, fake and
false, but I didn't know why, in a technical sense, i.e. the
specifically what was wrong and how to correct it. Generally, it just
didn't feel like you were there. Then, I tried to figure out why it
felt wrong by watching some B5 & Crusade episodes, and rewatching the
B5-TLT DVD several times. My comment "A lot of why it feels 2D/flat is
due to JMS's directorial inexperience." is my best guess at the
underlying cause. I think that the directors that I mentioned above,
who directed some of my favorite B5 episodes and movies, and my favorite
Crusade episodes, would have done better because they would have brought
their experience to bear, and would have influenced the scenes for the
better. They would have taken what JMS wrote and made it easy to
suspend disbelief because it would have looked like you were there, like
all of it was real. That's the thing about B5 and Crusade. Those
places felt real. You felt like you were *there*, watching what was
going on. B5 and Crusade pulled you in, and kept you there until the
credits rolled. This DVD threw me out of the story in several places.

I remember somebody, maybe Anim8rFSK, said that it felt videogamey (or
something to that effect). That's true, except that in a videogame, you
can often move inbetween objects on the screen and that tends to make it
feel more 3D. In B5-TLT Lochely's quarters, with respect to the
background (lamps and wall unit) and middle ground (chair and couch), we
didn't even have that. The best we got were characters moving between
foreground (coffee table and the stuff on it) and the middle ground
(couch and chair). Now, if say Lochley had moved around the room and
interacted with the stuff in the background, that would have helped. It
would also have helped if the camera had moved, both pans (angular) and
fore-aft and lateral moves, because that would have shown depth in the
background. Static shots don't do that. Static shots reek of an
inexperienced director, like a photographer sho shoots all horizontally
framed shots with the subject dead center. Maybe it was partly a
limitation of what they could do with greenscreen, but JMS said the
stuff in the background in Lochley's quarters was real, so that couldn't
have been the problem in those shots.

--
Mac Breck (KoshN)
-------------------------------
"Babylon 5: Crusade" (1999)
Durkani: It doesn't matter if they believe us. Sooner or later the
truth's going to come out. The truth is...
Kendarr: Out of fashion.

<sigh> A typo always seems to make it through.

"who" not "sho" ....Hey, the w and s are next to each other.

--
Mac Breck (KoshN)
-------------------------------
"Babylon 5: Crusade" (1999)
Durkani: It doesn't matter if they believe us. Sooner or later the
truth's going to come out. The truth is...
Kendarr: Out of fashion.

In article <476c70ff$0$29890$ecde5a14@news.coretel.net>,
macthevorlon@yahoo.com says...
> > Why did he do it? To save money?
> >
>
> http://www.jmsnews.com/msg.aspx?id=1-17589
>
>


Hmmmmmm, so yes then *g*

Mac Breck wrote:

> <sigh> A typo always seems to make it through.
>
> "who" not "sho" ....Hey, the w and s are next to each other.
>

*giggles* We know that Mac. Where the keys are, I mean.