>Now *wait* a minute. That means that we're getting the episodes, *and*
>extras, for about the same per-time price as the movie disc.
>
>Anyone else here feeling gypped?

The movies were limited in number, these are going to be printed in much larger
amounts, the more you do, the more you can bring down the price.

>Wait a second. Parts of B5 showed up on Crusade, though--and all of *those*
>sets were put into storage. So did they have to rebuild the sets for
>Crusade? (Especially since the "Value Judgements" script had a set that was
>supposed to be a redress of one of the B5 corridors...) And are those still
>around?

No. Most of the B5 sets were scrapped after we finished production, in large
measure because they'd just gotten trashed over 5 years of shooting, and
because WB didn't want to pay to store tens of thousands of cubic feet of sets
for a show that was done. (This is par for the course on all series, btw.)

We saved a small number of the B5 sets for Crusade (part of the zocalo, some
conference rooms, a couple of quarters and a hallway, that's about it) since we
were going to be going back and forth to B5. But when Crusade went down, those
sets were also elimated, as were the sets for Rangers.

This may seem like a bigger deal than it is; TV sets are not like feature film
sets, they are made from lesser grade lumber, and they're not finished to the
same degree because TV is more forgiving visually. You can get away with
things that will appear on a small set that you could never get away with on a
big screen.

If someone said "Okay, do a new season of (fill in the name of the show)," the
costs of building new sets would be probably about the same as if we'd stored
all those tens of thousands of feet of old set for X number of years, and which
would also have endured more wear and tear through the fold-and-hold process.
Why pay all that money to get old sets when you can pay the same amount and get
new ones?

jms

(jmsatb5@aol.com)
(all message content (c) 2002 by synthetic worlds, ltd.,
permission to reprint specifically denied to SFX Magazine
and don't send me story ideas)