Babylon 5: The Lost Tales *NEW B5 Story*

[sky75]

Babylon 5: The Lost Tales, starring original cast members Bruce Boxleitner, Tracy Scoggins and Peter Woodward will be released on July 31, and will sell for $24.98 (approx 75 mins). The movie will be in Anamorphic Widescreen (1.78:1), with Dolby Digital 5.1 audio. It looks like just a single bonus item for the set, "Straczynski Diaries" - A first person, inside look at the creative process involved in making the Babylon 5 film.

This first DVD, entitled "Voices in the Dark," covers the same 72 hour period of time as Sheridan travels on board a Presidential Cruiser en route to Babylon 5 from Minbar for a celebration marking the 10th anniversary of the founding of the Interstellar Alliance. One part of the story follows Sheridan as he picks up an unexpected visitor on the edge of Centauri space, Prince Regent Dius Vintari, and a warning about what will come afterward delivered by the techno-mage, Galen. The other part of the story is set aboard Babylon 5, as Colonel Lochley summons a priest from Earth space to deal with a problem that may have dark supernatural overtones. The two parts of the greater story intersect at certain key plot and thematic points, so that they overlap and complement each other while telling separate, but simultaneous, stories.

The first DVD is going to require nearly 200 EFX shots, taking us all over Alliance space, and Babylon 5, which is being redesigned using the latest CGI technology. The same CGI is being used to create virtual sets a la Sin City, but on an even more detailed basis, in many cases integrating them with practical sets based on the original blueprint designs for Babylon 5.

A number of behind-the-scenes pieces were shot for inclusion on the DVD, as well as a number of original short pieces that will be filmed in February which feature glimpses into the future of Babylon 5 and her characters.

We have set-up a temporary webpage of photos from the shoot from my personal collection. These images mark the very first photos to emerge from production. [http://babylon5scripts.com/TLT-JMS-photos.html]

For more information, keep an eye on www.babylon5.com as well as Babylon5scripts.com. WB will be integrating the internet as a key component for promoting B5:TLT and we are pleased to be a part of that effort.

I don't know if anyone here is a Babylon 5 fan but this new straight to DVD release is very exciting.

[EvaUnit02]

The actors must be very happy to find some work outside of B-movies and the convention circuit in several years.

[sky75]

The actors must be very happy to find some work outside of B-movies and the convention circuit in several years.

I imagine so. Although you may have seen Mira Furlan (Delenn) appearing in Lost (I can't remember her character's name but she's the semi crazy woman in the Woods). Jerry Doyle (Garibaldi) is apparently doing a talk radio show and a year or two back was running for governor of whatever state he's from.

Unfortunately some of the actors have passed on since their last appearance in the show including Andreas Katsulas (G'kar), Richard Biggs (Dr Franklyn), and Tim Choate (sp?) (Zathras).


Eva did you used to watch the show? And Will you be picking up this release?

[EvaUnit02]

Eva did you used to watch the show?

Yes I did, I remember fondly watching it with my older brother (also other scifi shows like the Treks and Stargate). I didn't see much of Season 5 though, it was fairly shitty with no more Shadow War going on.

Will I get this on DVD? After I get the season boxsets, which I will do eventually.

[sky75]

Eva did you used to watch the show?

Yes I did, I remember fondly watching it with my older brother (also other scifi shows like the Treks and Stargate). I didn't see much of Season 5 though, it was fairly shitty with no more Shadow War going on.

Will I get this on DVD? After I get the season boxsets, which I will do eventually.

that's good to hear. While I'll agree the 5th season doesn't compare after the shadow War and the race to save Earth. It does tell more of the overall story giving it a more sense of completeness plus it features the awesome season five finale "sleeping in light".

Eva, did you see the TV movies "In the Beginning", "A Call To Arms", "a River of Souls", "Third Space", and a spin-off movie pilot "Legend of the Rangers: to Live and Die in Stardust"?

The Lost Tales Video diaries are now available to download... Well the first batch are.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APTPy3MLmNI

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... bylon+5%22

http://www.vmix.com/view.php?id=2422707&type=video

[EvaUnit02]

I saw parts of Legends of the Rangers, thought it was pretty arse.

I'll get the movie boxset after I get the season boxsets (including Crusade).

I quite liked Crusade, too bad that didn't last very long before getting the axe. Would've liked to have seen the how the later story arcs after they had cured the plague would've played out.

[sky75]

The Legend of the Rangers has a bad name and personally I don't think it's as bad as people say. Apart from that awful martial-arts weapon system it shown enormous potential as a TV series. Especially if you think back to Babylon 5 's pilot movie "the gathering" which was pretty goddamn awful. It is unbelievable that JMS could turn that into such a good series, I believe he could do the same with Legend of the Rangers... Although I doubt we'll ever know.

You're not wrong it's a massive shame that Crusade got axed and with all the studio interference from TNT it surprising that Crusade wasn't a whole lot worse. I'm still hoping that the true story arc after the plague was cured gets told. It's certainly possible that it could be brought back in future Lost Tales DVDs, then maybe continued in Crusade straight to DVD movies? Who knows that is what makes these Lost Tales so exciting it may well encourage a TV network to Pickup a whole new Babylon 5 universe spin-off series?


Have you had a look at the Video diaries for the new Lost Tales?

[romerojpg]

I have the Big assed set with every season and TV film in it, still to watch one day. God damn better be space to add these 5 new TV films

I saw it all on TV, but that was a LOOONG time ago now. So rewatching it in Widescreen should be good, as long as it hasnt aged to badly.

[gojensen]

Rewatching it in widescreen is a travesty. Sure the filmed elements looked better... but B5 was always aimed at a 4:3 screen (there were hardly any widescreen sets around back then). Though I do think the later seasons were filmed with widescreen in mind - all the special effects were done for 4:3 (remember they were groundbreaking for TV back in the early 90's ) ... unfortunately, Warner Bros lost/misplaced all datafiles used in the render process - so they couldn't re-render special effects for Widescreen... So instead they opted to... crop them. Yup, blow them up (not nicely done even) and crop of the top/bottom. Resulting in all fx shots looking real crummy. Especially in comparison to the sweet filmed elements.

Oh well. I'll be sure to pick this up once it's out and about though... B5 was one of my fave shows back then... (and about the only scifi aired on telly!)

[sky75]

Rewatching it in widescreen is a travesty. Sure the filmed elements looked better... but B5 was always aimed at a 4:3 screen (there were hardly any widescreen sets around back then). Though I do think the later seasons were filmed with widescreen in mind - all the special effects were done for 4:3 (remember they were groundbreaking for TV back in the early 90's ) ... unfortunately, Warner Bros lost/misplaced all datafiles used in the render process - so they couldn't re-render special effects for Widescreen... So instead they opted to... crop them. Yup, blow them up (not nicely done even) and crop of the top/bottom. Resulting in all fx shots looking real crummy. Especially in comparison to the sweet filmed elements.

Oh well. I'll be sure to pick this up once it's out and about though... B5 was one of my fave shows back then... (and about the only scifi aired on telly!)

I'm fairly certain you've got your facts wrong about the CGI. Can you prove that?

I have the Big assed set with every season and TV film in it, still to watch one day. God damn better be space to add these 5 new TV films

Romero at the present time there is only one new "Lost Tales" DVD guaranteed, although considering when it went on pre-order at Amazon it reached number six in their charts. It's extremely likely that there will be more. Obviously the more sales, the more likely more Lost Tale DVDs will follow

[EvaUnit02]

I'm fairly certain you've got your facts wrong about the CGI. Can you prove that?

I haven't heard the part about the the SFX datafiles being misplaced before, but yes the SFX shots were all cropped for widescreen when TNT or Scifi Channel (can't remember who exactly) ordered widescreen versions for broadcast on their network.

[sky75]

I'm surprised about that I didn't notice anything particularly wrong on my fairly recent viewing of Babylon 5. The picture quality could have been better but the framing of a couple of shots looked a bit wrong. Other than that I enjoyed watching Babylon 5 in widescreen.

[EvaUnit02]

There's not much we can do bout it. If you want the 4:3 OAR you have to watch crap like VHS, VCD or LD.

[degeneration]

In early releases of some sets, particularly the early seasons, there were some scenes that involved a combination of live action and CG which were messed up. The 4:3 special effects shots were stretched to fit the widescreen size giving poo looking pictures for those shots.

Replacement discs were made available from Warner which corrected this. I got mine.

But the quality of the film print on these live action + CG shots is notabley worse than the other shots.

[sky75]

which discs and eps were affected degeneration?

Sorry I wasn't clear Eva what I was trying to say is that while Babylon 5 DVDs are not perfect I'm more than happy with what I've got.

[EvaUnit02]

Sorry I wasn't clear Eva what I was trying to say is that while Babylon 5 DVDs are not perfect I'm more than happy with what I've got.

Probably most people are happy with the current sets, not much can be done since Warner pulled a George Lucas with them (OAR versions not being on DVD).

[romerojpg]

Crusade really was good, shamethe effects were so lame it made me puke they had a budget of what? 1 pound 50p

[sky75]

Sorry I wasn't clear Eva what I was trying to say is that while Babylon 5 DVDs are not perfect I'm more than happy with what I've got.

Probably most people are happy with the current sets, not much can be done since Warner pulled a George Lucas with them (OAR versions not being on DVD).

There is one detail I would like to see "George Lucas'd" and that would be when we initially see John Sheridan's dead wife Anna (I can't remember if it's a picture or a flashback) it's a different person to whom we finally meet when she returns from Z'ha'dum.

[sky75]

Crusade really was good, shamethe effects were so lame it made me puke they had a budget of what? 1 pound 50p

I agree the CGI could have been better however it didn't bother me. I thought they used it to great effect giving Crusade a real sense of scope makiing these alien landscapes actually feel alien. I also thought the music really added to the experience as well really giving the show a completely alien feeling. I really hope Crusade continues in future Lost Tales releases!

[gojensen]

The transfer of Babylon 5 to DVD created significant problems with regard to special-effects/CGI footage. Several factors complicated the process.

* Although originally broadcast in the standard television aspect ratio of 4:3, all live-action footage was filmed on Super 35 mm film (with a ratio of 1.65:1). The idea was that, once widescreen televisions (with an aspect ratio of 16:9 or 1.78:1) became more popular, the episodes could be easily converted into a wide screen format.
* CGI shots were rendered in the 4:3 ratio, but designed so that the top and bottom of each shot could be removed to create a widescreen image without ruining the image composition.
* All of the purely live-action shots were stored as high-definition digital images.
* However, CGI shots, and shots combining live-action with CGI, were stored in the much lower-definition NTSC digital format. (Again, the expectation was that it would be relatively cheap in the future to recreate the CGI as widescreen.)
* Over the years, the original computer-generated models, etc. have been lost, making it necessary to use the old 4:3 CGI shots.

This has resulted in several consistent flaws throughout the Babylon 5 DVD release. In particular, quality drops very significantly whenever a scene cuts from purely live-action to a shot combining live-action and CGI. This is especially noticeable on the PAL DVDs, since CGI shots had to be converted from NTSC as well as being blown up to fit a wide screen television. In addition, while the live action film was indeed wide screen, shots were composed for 4:3, resulting in a conspicuous tendency for actors to clump up in the middle of the screen.

As for the lost files, it was confirmed by JMS back in 2002 when the discs started trickling out. Read;
http://worldsofjms.com/usenet/post/021209b.htm
And for the take on widescreen framing take...
http://worldsofjms.com/usenet/post/021211b.htm

The files were apparently lost before they made Legends of the Rangers and they had to recreate them from images/drawings... (which is why some of the ships in there look different - and reports even say some fly backwards!)

All this is heavily documented on the web... did you hear something different? Or did you just want me to prove what I said...? :-/

For the CGI scenes, they could've been done much better though. Warner/SciFi (who-ever) chose to do the cheapest and simplest rescaling/cropping they could do... a fan (again back then) took stills from TV and and did some more "cpu-heavy" rescaling which provided a greatly enhanced image to that of the DVDs. But it's what we've got, and I'm pretty sure B5 will never look better than it currently does.

[degeneration]

which discs and eps were affected degeneration?

Sorry I wasn't clear Eva what I was trying to say is that while Babylon 5 DVDs are not perfect I'm more than happy with what I've got.

I honestly can't remember. At dvdcompare or Rewind or whatever it is called, there used to be a huge thread discussing it. I do remember one of the episodes though was the one where Sinclair was kidnapped by some guys who wanted to get into his mind to find out what happened to him at the Battle of the Line.

I'll have a quick browse to see if I can find out any other ones.

[degeneration]

Was the And the Sky Full of Stars episode apparently in season 1.

If you've got this season, check out the scenes where there are FX shots while Sinclair is hooked up to the chair thing. If you've got a faulty disc you'll notice that the print is stretched horribly and wrongly. Will be quite obvious. If it looks fine then you've got an ok disc.

I'm sure there was something wrong with one of the other discs in another season as well, but I might be remembering completely wrongly.

[sky75]

All this is heavily documented on the web... did you hear something different? Or did you just want me to prove what I said...? :-/

.

No I hadn't heard anything different I just wanted to see some proof. I think I had read something somewhere else but saw no proof before.

Was the And the Sky Full of Stars episode apparently in season 1.

If you've got this season, check out the scenes where there are FX shots while Sinclair is hooked up to the chair thing. If you've got a faulty disc you'll notice that the print is stretched horribly and wrongly. Will be quite obvious. If it looks fine then you've got an ok disc.

I'm sure there was something wrong with one of the other discs in another season as well, but I might be remembering completely wrongly.

thanks for that I'll dig up my season one box-set over the weekend if I can find the time and check