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- <TITLE>From jms re: yr 4/5 (18 Dec 1996 16:10:03 -0700)</TITLE>
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- <H2>From jms re: yr 4/5</H2>
- <h3>Date: 18 Dec 1996 16:10:03 -0700</h3>
- <pre>There's been a fair amount of speculation and concern about the fifth
- season, and how the story is laying out to handle the possibilities of
- renewal vs. no renewal. Though the ratings have continued to improve
- despite the shifts and changes in the syndication marketplace -- it's a
- very different market than it was when we first debuted -- nothing is
- certain yet about a fifth season. Some at WB say yes, some say no. My
- job is to pick my way through this minefield and make it all work, and
- assure the story ending where is was meant to end. So how does one do
- this?
-
- Here's the skinny.
-
- First, you have to understand that writing is a *process*, and that
- process is constantly changing. Ask any writer, and they'll tell you
- that many times they've been working on a short story, or a novel, and
- they have to edit for space. This applies to both fiction and
- nonfiction writers. Sometimes it's done by the writer, sometimes by
- the editor. On my second novel, the editor told me at the halfway mark
- that we'd have to keep the book down to 100,000 words, which was about
- 75-100 pages less than I'd been planning on, so the story had to be
- adjusted to fit. As a journalist, I've often walked into the office
- with a story in hand and been told, "Okay, you've got 15 column
- inches," or 25 column inches, or 10 column inches...and you just learn
- to write to fit. Every writer goes through this.
-
- And in most cases, the average person never knows. Done properly, it
- should be seamless. Look at Stephen King's The Stand, cut by almost
- 25% by the editors at first, then later released with all the ancillary
- material replaced. I've read both, and the latter is not appreciably
- better than the former...if you didn't know the material was there, you
- would never have missed it.
-
- This also happens on a per-episode basis. At LosCon, I showed a
- finished scene from 405, and the daily of the master shot of the same
- scene, which had another minute or so of material cut from the finished
- scene. We cut material all the time; if you added up all the material
- cut from the third season, you'd have enough for almost two episodes.
- And we often slide material from one episode into another; we slid
- Ivanova's scenes in 402 into 403, and another scene from 405 into
- 406...we've done that in prior seasons as well. Sometimes you go back
- and you *add* material. Again, it's all part of the process.
-
- (Interestingly enough, I just bought the new laserdisk of "Young
- Frankenstein," which has about 15 minutes of material cut from the
- movie for time. I watched it the other night, and of those 15 minutes,
- 13 were easily expendable...only one scene was fairly interesting, but
- not really necessary.)
-
- Okay, so how does all this relate to B5?
-
- My obligation as a storyteller is to get to the end of the story in a
- satisfying way. So after we got the year 4 renewal, and knowing that
- the PTEN business situation had the potential to impact us (when the
- network that supports you is no longer there, so now your entire
- structure is shot out from under you...you've got a problem), I looked
- at the structure for the story, and began planning adjustments so that
- it could go either way without padding anything, and without
- shortchanging the story.
-
- First thing I did was to flip out the stand-alones, which
- traditionally have taken up the first 6 or so episodes of each season;
- between two years, that's 12 episodes, over half a season right there.
- Then you would usually get a fair number of additional stand-alones
- scattered across the course of the season. So figure another 3-4 per
- season, say 8, that's 20 out of 44. So now you're left with basically
- 24 episodes to fill out the main arc of the story.
-
- Now, that arc is very intensive, and has three primary threads: the
- resolution of the Shadow war, the situation regarding Earth, and a
- series of smaller sub-threads that feed off those main threads. But if
- you charge right from one to the other, it's going to feel rushed,
- you're going to need some breathing room between major movements,
- particularly after the shadow war. Not so much stand-alones as episodes
- that let you begin to rearrange your pieces for the next major
- movement. So now you're back up to about 27.
-
- Okay, so *now* what do you do? The solution to that came in several
- unassociated pieces.
-
- First came the word of the two B5 TV movies for TNT, which were
- envisioned as taking place within the arc of our main story. Suddenly
- I had 4 hours into which I could slide some of this material. One
- sub-thread I'd been planning on was a 3-episode arc that would look at
- how the Earth/Minbari War started, and Delenn's situation at the start
- of the war, joining the Council, that sort of thing. Now I was able to
- split that out. So in the series I can, in an episode, get into
- Delenn's role in the war and go into the background of how she got to
- know Dukhat, how she got into the Grey Council, and so on...all the
- stuff you'd need to see prior to the war. Then the two hours covering
- the rest, the progress of the war itself, could be covered in the
- two-hour movie.
-
- With the *benefit* that we'd have a little more money for the movie
- than we would for two conventional hours, so we could do *more* in the
- way of EFX, production value, and so on, which you're going to need to
- really sell the E/M war. So strangely enough, and as tends to happen,
- this has put us in the position of doing it *better* than if I'd
- dropped it into two standard-budget episodes, as was my original plan.
-
- Another sub-thread wouldn't have been introduced until late in year 5,
- in part to set up the possibility of a sequel (which, as I've stated
- from the very earliest days of the show, was always in the back of my
- head) and which would stand on its own in any event; a thread designed
- to illustrate the notion that the duration tends to be a lot longer
- than the war. (You'll understand that one later.) That sub-thread
- would've filled about 3-4 episodes.
-
- Now, again, having the second 2-hour movie lets me slide that piece of
- story into that category and cover nearly all of that ground in doing
- so. The remaining material could (and will, one hopes) be covered in
- the actual sequel itself. (If the sequel never ends up going, the
- material will be sufficiently stand-alone to still work on its own.)
-
- Then, finally, you take the stand-alones you pulled out earlier (which
- nobody would miss, not knowing what was in them), and the final couple
- of sub-threads (not yet introduced or implied in the main series) and
- slide them into the sequel series, CRUSADE.
-
- So if we *had* to collapse everything into a fourth year, it would all
- fit perfectly. If word came that there *was* going to be a fifth year,
- you commission some scripts early, drop some of the stand-alones back
- into the slot, and bring up the sub-threads that would otherwise have
- been transferred into the sequel.
-
- Bottom line is...you're covered either way. You end up where you
- wanted to end up, the main threads get dealt with, secondary or
- tertiary threads have other venues in which they can be dealt
- with...you're solid.
-
- There's nothing particularly extraordinary or amazing in this...this
- is how all writers work, since there are always going to be varying
- constraints in length or venue. Writing is a process, and that process
- is such that it is infinitely variable while still proceeding where you
- want it to go.
-
- So that's where I am currently. If I know the fate of the fifth year
- by late February or early March, I can then flip either way and get out
- cleanly. Worst case scenario is that I might have to write alternate
- scenes or alternate endings for scenes in the last few episodes if the
- word comes much later than that, just to give me the flexibility to
- adjust the story in editing, which would definitely take place after we
- wrapped, at which time we have to have word by contract.
-
- None of this could've been done in three seasons...we had to have a
- minimum of four to give us the flexibility of cutting either way.
- There's no point to reading a book that leaves you hanging for an
- ending, and B5 was meant to have an ending. At this juncture,
- finishing off script 15, I feel very comfortable with the way all this
- is laying out. The flow is there, and I know we'll get where we need
- to. No matter what happens, we're covered. We can handle year 5
- without padding, and handle year 4 without shortchanging the
- storyline. Granted it took only slightly less planning than the
- invasion of Normandy, but it works, and that's the crucial thing.
-
- Anyway...I've gone on for longer than I'd intended. I hope that this
- will answer some of the questions and concerns raised about the
- situation, and explains how you do some of the planning for this kind
- of thing. Again, this online experiment is about letting people
- understand the process of telling a story like this, and of making a TV
- show in general. As I've noted before, telling a story of this nature
- for television, with all the exigencies and real-life surprises
- involved, is like doing an elaborate step-dance while people are
- throwing live chickens and chainsaws at you...but I knew that would be
- the situation going in, and it was only a matter of whether or not the
- story was worth the grief involved in telling it.
-
- And it most definitely has been.
-
- jms
-
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