ATTN:JMS-Improvisation:yes or

 Posted on 8/31/1994 by jmsatb5@aol.com to rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated


When you're shooting a show, invariably you get to the stage and
find that you have, for instance, three lines, one per character in the
room...and you're trying to get them out the door, and it moves better
if you give one line to one character and the other two to the other
character. That sometimes happens. But rarely. In the Garibaldi's yell
case, it was written as a quick shot, he yells and we're out. The
director wanted to extend the shot a bit, visually. I wasn't in the
studio at the time, so Jerry improvised a series of yells.

This sort of thing is *extremely* rare on the show; the actors and
directors know they *cannot* change dialogue on the set without approval
from me or Larry. On any given script, no more than about 3-6 lines get
modified for staging purposes once we get to the set. And always with
approval required. This is an absolute, hard and fast rule. The only
reason the Garibaldi thing happened is that they figured it was just a
yell, so nothing could get messed up story-wise (which is the primary
reason this is so strict; change one word in a line and it could screw
up plot points three episodes down the road) by having him yell a few
specific lines. If I'd been there for that scene, I would've written him
something a little less reminiscent of "Aliens."

jms