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								                    PIONEERING A NEW FRONTIER

								                    IN TELEVISION PRODUCTION:


								                    The Making of "Babylon 5"


								     In 1986, a 32-year-old by the name of J. Michael Straczynski had a

								unique vision:  a saga for television that would take five years to tell,

								and would feature state of the art effects as well as a huge cast of

								characters who would change and grow as empires rose and fell around them.


								     His prospects of getting it mounted were daunting, for a myriad of

								reasons...


								     A 5-year epic with a beginning, middle, and end in which each episode

								would be like a chapter in a book, and each season another volume in a

								continuing story?  It had never been done on American television, except as

								a short-term mini-series.  Only the British had ever attempted it, with "The

								Prisoner" (which lasted a mere 18 episodes) and to a lesser extent with

								"Blake's 7" and "The Who."


								     Stunning visual effects combined with live action as realistic as

								anything seen in motion pictures -- but produced on a limited television

								budget?  No one had ever tried it, much less without traditional motion

								control cameras, intricate models, and a mega-budget to underwrite the

								thousands of hours necessary to create sequences that lasted only a few

								minutes on the screen.


								     Another science fiction series?  The statistics were ruthless: only a

								handful of sci-fi series had lasted three seasons or more during the last

								four decades; 98% of all sci-fi series have been canceled before the third

								season; of the one or two new sci-fi shows typically launched each year, few

								survive beyond a few months.  Even the original "Star Trek," which debuted

								in 1966, finally succumbed to a lack of ratings by 1969, after enduring a

								barrage of critical attack as a poor imitation of "Lost In Space."


								     Amazingly, Straczynski finally succeeded -- although it would take an

								epic effort before his show called Babylon 5 would finally reach the small

								screen as a two- hour TV movie in February 1993, and a year later before his

								5-year saga began unfolding in the form of a weekly series.


								                      How the Odyssey Began


								     Rarely has a television series been conceived with as much dedication

								to forging new frontiers within the medium.


								     "The fact is that I grew up a fan of science fiction -- particularly of

								the sagas: Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, the Dune books, the Lensman books,

								Childhood's End and Stranger in a Strange Land," says Straczynski.


								     "So I wanted to do for television what I grew up reading in those great

								sagas. And the reality is that no one in American television had ever tried

								to do a real honest-to-God saga for television -- with a beginning, middle,

								and end over a period of, say, five years:  where the first year is equal to

								the introduction you get in a novel; the second year is the rising action;

								the third year is the complication, and so on, with foreshadows and back

								references and character changes.


								     "Although the British had done it with 'The Prisoner,' and to a lesser

								extent with 'Blake's 7' and 'Dr. Who,' no one in this country had ever

								applied a strict, literary novel technique to television."


								     But Straczynski had other concerns as well, resulting from the several

								years he had already spent working in television as a staff writer and story

								editor on a number of animated and live action series.


								     "My perception was that as much as one-third of any TV series budget is

								wasted on poor planning and short script deadlines.  Typically, a script is

								delivered only days before it's going to be shot, and often just 24 hours in

								advance.  There's even been cases where pages are landing on the set as the

								cameras are rolling.  As a result, the crew is working all night making sets

								and costumes, and getting paid time and a half.  Add to that the cost of

								complex special effects, prosthetics, elaborate sets and alien costumes, and

								science fiction shows quickly become the worst offenders.


								     "So I thought, there's got to be a better, smarter way of doing this --

								of changing the fundamental way television is produced, and how would I do

								that?" Straczynski says.


								     That's when he began thinking about what it would take "to design a

								show along more logical lines for science fiction, since the major source of

								expense is creating new worlds every week.  I thought about the sorts of

								shows I like in tone...'Hill Street Blues,' 'St. Elsewhere,' even "M*A*S*H,'

								and in each case, there was a stationary locale and your stories come to

								you.  In other words, where people in trouble come to you."


								     From there, he recalled what he had read about post-World War II

								Germany, "where American, French and British forces (and, I think, some

								Russian) patroled equally to make sure that no one side got the upper hand,"

								as well as "the early free- ports of the 19th century, which were noted for

								some pretty rough characters, for adventure, for intrigue and smuggling.


								     "Put those various elements together...and you've got Babylon 5," he

								explains of his decision to anchor his story on a futuristic United

								Nations-like space station in which some quarter-million humans and aliens

								of diverse cultures and competing ambitions attempt to negotiate their

								differences in neutral territory from episode to episode.


								     Finally, there was the ultimate challenge that any series bearing his

								name would have to meet -- simply because Straczynski is by nature both a

								literary disciple and a bottom-line pragmatist at heart.


								     "I'd seen so many science fiction shows by then that backed into a

								budget, and thus went forever over budget, that I wanted to challenge myself

								to develop a show that met several important criteria," he says.


								     "1) It would have to be good science fiction.  2) It would have to be

								good television, and rarely are science-fiction shows both good sci-fi and

								good TV; they're generally one or the other.  3) It would have to take an

								adult approach to science fiction, and attempt to do for television sci-fi

								what 'Hill Street Blues' did for cop shows. 4) It would have to be

								affordable and done on a reasonable budget.  5) It would have to look unlike

								anything ever seen before on TV, and present not just individual stories,

								but present those stories against a much broader canvas."


								     It was a big agenda, but the idea finally struck.  "One day, literally,

								I was noodling around with this, and the entire story line just came in a

								flash.  I saw the whole five year story in just one incredible revelation,"

								he says of that moment in 1986.  "Then I spent the next two years trying to

								write down what I saw in that one moment of perfect clarity."


								                      Getting Babylon 5 Made


								     After writing the series bible (that includes the 5-year story arc

								which only Straczysnki is privy to) and a two-hour screenplay, he presented

								the idea to Douglas Netter and John Copeland.  The former head of the MGM

								studios, Netter had been the executive producer and Copeland the producer of

								"Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future," the syndicated science

								fiction series for which Straczynski served as story editor (as well as

								writer on 11 episodes) in 1986-87.


								     "Joe came to John and I right after we finished 'Captain Power' and

								said, 'I've got an idea for a science fiction show that can be contained,

								that we can do for a price, that has the potential to be greater than

								science fiction shows have been,'" Netter says.  "But it took us six years

								from that point to get the pilot made."


								     The problem was, Netter recalls, that "the networks had had science

								fiction pitched to them before, along with the caveat, 'We can do this for a

								reasonable price.' Of course, that was one of the great lies in Hollywood.

								And even though John and I had an excellent reputation for bringing shows in

								under budget and on time, as soon as they heard about big effects, red flags

								would go up in their minds.  They were afraid that any attempt to do a

								science fiction show on a tight budget might result in inferior production

								values."


								     And like everyone else, Warner Bros. didn't see how a high-quality show

								could be done on a cut-rate budget.  "They said, 'Well, if you are going to

								do it for that, this stuff will look terrible.'  And we said, 'No, it

								won't," Netter remembers.  To prove their point, Straczynski, Netter, and

								Copeland had Ron Thornton -- who had worked with them on "Captain Power" and

								subsequently pioneered the use of CGI effects on an Amiga computer --

								produce a startling 50-second sequence featuring a computer-generated space

								ship being tracked from far in the distance to its arrival at the space

								station's docking bay, all in one shot.


								     When they showed it to a group of Warner Bros. Executives and TV

								station heads who were part of PTEN, the reaction was everything they had

								hoped for: "When it was over, they said, 'We've got to see that again!'"

								Netter recalls.  "And then when we said, 'We did it on a desktop computer,'

								they were just like flabbergasted."


								     As a result, they finally got their production deal, and Babylon 5

								debuted as a two-hour pilot movie during the week of February 22, 1993, to

								an impressive 10.3 GAA national rating.  Just the month before, Paramount

								(one of the many studios they had pitched years before) also launched "Star

								Trek: Deep Space Nine," another story anchored on a stationary space

								station.  Of the much-noted coincidence, Netter says, "We were in

								development long before 'Deep Space Nine.'"


								     Particularly impressive is the fact that Babylon 5 is produced "with

								syndication dollars," Copeland stresses.  "This show is not done at a

								deficit.  It pays for itself strictly out of the advertising dollars

								generated every year.  And I don't know anybody else out there who's doing

								this exciting of stuff with the same economic realities we're dealing with.

								We're spending half of what an episode of 'Star Trek' costs, and one-third

								of an episode of 'Space: Above and Beyond.'"


								     "We're doing what no one else is doing in town," adds Straczynski,

								"which is taking full advantage of the latest technology.  We have almost a

								completely-digitalized studio, which no one else has at this point.


								     "In addition, we plan things out way ahead of time.  Before we roll one

								frame of film, we know what stories we're going to be doing that year, what

								sets we're going to have to construct, what effects we're going to need, and

								we always have a minimum of three scripts in hand.  So this gives all the

								different parties concerned enough time to sit down and design things and

								build things properly, without having to rush.  As a result, we're not

								paying 24 hours of overtime to get things done in time. It comes down

								basically to planning, which no one else does in this town."


								            Babylon 5's Revolutionary Special Effects


								     In 1964, "Star Trek" presented what were then fantastic new images of

								planets and space vessels unlike anything seen before.  In 1977, "Star Wars"

								used what was then state-of-the-art technology to create amazing space

								battle scenes -- involving motion control cameras, intricate models, and

								untold months of shooting time to complete sequences that would last mere

								minutes.  In 1994, Babylon 5 pioneered the newest breakthrough in special

								visual effects as the first science fiction show to produce astonishing

								outer space scenes without models or cameras.


								     Certainly, computer technology for producing effects is no longer the

								novelty that it once was.  Hardly a motion picture is made today in which at

								least one scene isn't enhanced electronically.  The difference between

								Babylon 5 and other effects-laden TV shows and movies is that "we were the

								first to do everything with desktop computers," says Copeland of the show's

								Emmy Award-winning special visual effects.


								     "We don't use expensive silicon graphics machines.  We don't use

								high-end software.  Initially all the 3-D computer animation was done on

								Amigas using the Video Toaster.  Today, however, all the 3-D computer

								animation is done on PC clones and DEC Alpha platforms running on a readily

								available piece of software called LightWave 3-D.  LightWave was originally

								part of the Video Toaster, but has been ported out as a software program

								available for many different computer platforms.


								     "The matte paintings are done in a combination of Photo Shop and

								Electric Image.  We do all our compositing in MacIntoshes.  We edit on

								Avids.  We even assemble the show in a computer; we don't do it in a regular

								video online bay anymore," Copeland continues.  "And everything we use is

								available down at your friendly local computer store.  We just push it a

								little harder."


								     Besides Thornton's breakthrough experiments with an Amiga in

								combination with New Tek's Video Toaster in the early 1990s, Copeland had

								already been working with computer-generated effects for "Captain Power" in

								1986.  "A year before they started shooting 'Roger Rabbit,' two of the

								creatures in our series were completely done with 3-D computer animation and

								composited into live action scenes with the actors.  Nobody had done that

								and we did it for 22 episodes.  Of course, we're talking mere minutes

								compared to what we do now on Babylon 5, because we were using a whole

								different type of computer then."


								     Not only is the production able to produce effects faster -- typically

								in just two weeks -- through the use of computers, but the end product,

								Copeland believes, is more realistic than traditional models.  "We can

								actually go from a 150 kilometers away right up to something and look at the

								bulkheads on it.  You can't do that with a model, because there isn't a

								stage big enough that would allow you to make such a shot in a single move."


								     It's also notable that Babylon 5 features more visual effects footage

								per episode than any other series -- both past and present -- with a

								cumulative 90 minutes during the first season, 120 minutes in the second,

								"and a little bit better than that this year," according to Copeland.


								                    Babylon 5's Virtual Studio


								     As well, Babylon 5 has pioneered a concept called The Virtual Studio,

								in which key members of the production team are located around the globe and

								linked up via the Internet or other means.


								     The show's world-class original music score is created for each episode

								by LA-based composer Christopher Franke (formerly of Tangerine Dream), who

								conducts his Berlin Symphonic Film Orchestra, located halfway around the

								world in Germany, in real time despite the 15-hour time difference.  Making

								it possible are four fiber optic cables that connect the two studios, as

								well as video cameras and large-screen television screens on both ends.


								     Producers Strazynski and Copeland are able to monitor the progress of

								new special effects in development simply by dialing up Ron Thornton's

								Foundation Imaging studio over a modem.  "We can check key frames and

								animation sequences -- or if they're designing a new ship that they want us

								to look at, we can pull up a frame of that and make comments about it before

								they go through the time intensive, expensive process of rendering a shot,"

								Copeland recounts.  As a result, Thornton and his crew rarely have to visit

								the set.


								     Emmy Award-winning matte artist Eric Chauvin resides and works in

								Washington state, yet is able to render all of Babylon 5's necessary matte

								paintings long-distance with only an occasional trip South.  "We send him

								the film frames on 8mm digital tape.  He then imports them into his

								Macintosh, does his painting using a program called Photoshop, and Fed Ex's

								the frames back to us on digital tape," Copeland says.  Hopefully, the day

								will soon come when it is not necessary to courier raw materials between

								locations.  In the meantime, Copeland explains, the Internet "is really a

								cowpath as far as transmission of real data" and only useful for conveying

								sketches and information.


								     Also through the miracle of modems, Straczynski is able to commission

								freelance scripts -- 17 to date (all during the show's first two seasons),

								with more to come next year -- from the best science fiction writers in the

								world, regardless of their location.  Historically, television writers

								either had to live in Los Angeles, or days would be lost waiting for scripts

								to arrive by express mail.


								                       The Babylon 5 Model


								     Altogether, the production's innovative approach to achieving feature

								film-quality production values on a fat-free budget has been dubbed The

								Babylon 5 Model within the industry.


								     Curious producers and studio executives are frequently given tours of

								the entire operation, including the production's state-of-the-art facility

								in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles.  A former manufacturing plant for

								swimming pool and hot tub pumps, the 70,000 square foot building was

								purchased by Babylonian Productions and converted into three sound stages

								and production offices in just nine weeks -- and ready for shooting on day

								one of week ten.


								      "What I've tried to do over the years is to verse myself in the

								technological tools that will provide us a better opportunity to

								successfully do our job for less money and save us as much time as we

								possibly can," explains Copeland -- who also serves as the Executive Vice

								President of Netter Digital Entertainment, Inc., and the supervising

								producer of their new science fiction children's series, "Hypernauts," which

								they are producing in association with creator Ron Thornton's Foundation

								Imaging, Inc., and Greengrass Productions, Inc., for ABC's Saturday morning

								line-up.


								     "To that end, we have an ADR booth here at the stage.  So if we have to

								replace dialogue, if we have to loop any lines, we can get actors in between

								scenes. We don't have to schedule them on their day off and send them to a

								different place to record this stuff.  We can also identify bad dialogue on

								the part of a guest actor and loop it before they get off the clock and we

								have to bring them back and pay them."


								     But technology aside, Copeland believes that they couldn't do what they

								do every week without the ingenuity and resourcefulness of their production

								team.


								     "We try to give people enough creative freedom to be able to take

								things in their own directions and refine them.  Because if we're telling

								everybody exactly what to do, we've hire the wrong people for the job.  Or

								we shouldn't be here, because we're inhibiting the creative process.


								     "Also, we try to make everybody feel like they have a vested interest

								in the show.  We solicit contributions from everybody.  Just because you're

								a grip doesn't mean you don't have a good idea about something.  So we try

								to share the creative process with everyone involved.  And it's been

								returned to us ten-fold.  We've held onto probably 85% of our crew over

								three years, which is very unusual."


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