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- Babylon 5 posts by JMS for Oct, 1992
-
- This file includes a compilation of posts on GEnie by J. Michael
- Straczynski in the Babylon 5 topic. The posts are copyright by JMS
- (and compilation copyright is by GEnie).
-
- NOTE: This is when the GEnie category was being reorganized.
- Undoubtable there were more posts in October... but they have
- apparently been sacrificed to the bandwidth gods.
- ----------
- Category 18, Topic 22
- Message 681 Thu Oct 01, 1992
- STRACZYNSKI [Joe] at 01:23 EDT
-
- In my copious spare time, and obviously unofficially, I've been laying
- out the first season or two, sketching out which episodes would hypothetically
- go first, where to lay in the saga, and I find that I keep getting dragged
- more to saga-episodes rather than the stand-alones. It's as if, having had
- this thing waiting to be told for so long, there's the overwhelming desire to
- just GET IT ALL OUT...sort of projectile storytelling. But you can't do that,
- you've got to parcel it all out a bit at a time, just like the information
- here (which, he reminded himself, I've generally released far more quickly and
- in more detail than I'd originally anticipated).
-
- What interesting is how some things expand in your mind once you've
- filmed a pilot like this. Here's Character X, who you always saw a certain
- way, had a few stories in mind...and suddenly the *performance* and the
- casting makes you realize that there's a MUCH broader potential here than
- you'd originally thought...a character likely to steal the show...and now
- suddenly you begin spinning out new stories for that character...but if you
- emphasize THAT person, how does it affect a) the over-arching storyline, and
- b) the other characters?
-
- My first impulse is to give every major character an episode right up
- front, give everyone a chance to establish him- or herself. But on the flip
- side of the argument, that means (since we have 9 regular or recurring
- characters) spending as many as 8 episodes with our PRIMARY character,
- Sinclair, less involved or held at some remove. Which seems counter-
- productive.
-
- Telling the stories...that ain't hard. Putting it all in the right
- sequence, now that we have the benefit of having cast, THAT's the challenging
- part.
-
- BTW, for those who are curious, there are two photos of Yr Obdnt Srvnt in
- the new Hollywood edition of WRITER'S DIGEST. And if, as they say, every
- picture tells a story, these tell quite a story (though one I just can't look
- at any more, it's too painful).
-
- jms
- ______
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