Babylon 5 fic + a poll about the script books

[sholio]

New B5 fic, this one's just pure self-indulgence.

A Map on the Skin (Londo/G'Kar, 1700 wds, scars)

I have been thinking about how to handle posting material from the script books. There are 14 of them and scripts for all the episodes, plus alternate versions of some, so it's like. A lot. I figured I'd do a poll about what you want to see most. (Poll is under the cut for mild spoilers.)


I limited it to 5 answers just to cut down the options a bit. Feel free to comment and ask me to look up something - an episode, an actor, etc - if there's anything you want to know about! (Though I don't currently have all the books; I am waiting for more in the mail. So I might not be able to look up everything.)

Poll #34044

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 9

View Respondents

What do you want to see notes on the most?

View Answers

Season 1
1 (11.1%)

Season 2
0 (0.0%)

Season 3
0 (0.0%)

Season 4
1 (11.1%)

Season 5
0 (0.0%)

JMS's philosophical musings about the stuff he writes
3 (33.3%)

Behind the scenes actor stuff
5 (55.6%)

Script changes compared to the filmed versions
6 (66.7%)

The Londo/G'Kar arc
1 (11.1%)

Background on the initial series development
2 (22.2%)

Development of season 4 after the cancellation news
4 (44.4%)

What went wrong with season 5
5 (55.6%)

Season openers/finales
2 (22.2%)

Whatever I find most interesting, even wildly out of order
8 (88.9%)

Something specific (tell me in comments)
0 (0.0%)

Comments

[foxmoth]

Feel free to disregard but if anything pertains to SFX or scoring or postproduction and if you'd enjoy posting (about) that, I am very interested! But otherwise, I'm curious about it all. I keep thinking about doing a rewatch because I never saw S5 because my friends who screened it for me in uni insisted that S5 was so bad due to the cancellation news thingy that I should be spared. :p

[sholio]

Sure, I can keep an eye out for those! I know that he does talk about those in several of the episode introductions. One thing I remember specifically - no idea which book it's in, but I can get the whole thing for you when I find it again - is that the space battle scenes were scored by dropping out each beat of music that happened to hit on the beat of a space battle effect, so the f/x noises and the music coexist together without muddying each other. I don't know if this is how it's commonly done, or if the show pioneered it, but I thought that was a very interesting bit of trivia.

I disagree strenuously with your uni friends, lol, but then I disagree with a lot of people's "best/worst season" lists for most shows! (Also, it's easier to have a more balanced perspective on a show that's 30 years old and a long-closed canon; people usually react more strongly to events in a new long-awaited season! I've definitely ragequit more than one canon when it wasn't what I wanted.) Anyway, I'm trying to drag a friend or two into watching for the first time, so there might be another round of rewatch notes happening at my DW if I do that. And I would obviously love to come talk about it with you if you rewatch as well! (I thought I'd have more to say about B7, but apparently it's been so long since I watched it that I've forgotten nearly all the details now.)

[sovay]

One thing I remember specifically - no idea which book it's in, but I can get the whole thing for you when I find it again - is that the space battle scenes were scored by dropping out each beat of music that happened to hit on the beat of a space battle effect, so the f/x noises and the music coexist together without muddying each other.

That's incredibly cool. I feel like we used to have some of the soundtrack CDs in the house, but I am not confident of their current whereabouts. (They would have been my father's in any case.)

[foxmoth]

:D Only if it's no trouble! Also, as TV opinions go, one of those uni friends was the one who accidentally set me up for Firefly frustration by pitching it to me as "Asian space opera," which is LAUGHABLE. I still remember assholes on LJ trying to tell me that the actors for River and Simon looked like they were MORALLY Asian so it really was "Asian space opera" and "Asian representation" and what the actual fuck, I liked the actors and characters fine, but no, this is bad pretzel fake logic???? I will see about a rewatch in between Blake's 7 - rewatches are inherently easier on my brain and, well, it's four seasons before (B4, har har) S5 of Babylon-5. :3

the space battle scenes were scored by dropping out each beat of music that happened to hit on the beat of a space battle effect, so the f/x noises and the music coexist together without muddying each other. I don't know if this is how it's commonly done, or if the show pioneered it, but I thought that was a very interesting bit of trivia

That's very cool and was likely already an existing technique although I'd have to check. :D So, this was deffo possible "manually" IF the composer gets SFX locked ahead of time [1] and can plan around it (or, you know, guess while "spotting" the locked picture + dialogue that there's gonna be SFX at explodey bit :D), but by the time Babylon-5 was made this would also have been pretty doable in mixing/mastering postproduction. (I've been reading Bobby Owsinski on the history of mixing alongside the actual how-to, super interesting stuff.)

There are modern digital techniques that do stuff like this, if you've run across the mixing/audio engineering terms "ducking" or "side-chaining." Setup can be a PITA depending on your DAW (software) but the idea is simple! It's basically sort of a "computer code" program running through your DAW, pseudocode-ish like this:

Say you have three audio tracks (simplified example)
- Intermittent Explodey Noises Track
- Dialogue Talky Track
- Music Track

and that by default they're all at "100% volume." (I am eliding SO MUCH about "loudness," which is a surprisingly vexed topic - I can get into psychoacoustics and audio if anyone cares, but... /o\ )

So, you can have a setup like:

IF Dialogue Talky Track is running
THEN reduce Explodey Noises and Music
SO THAT the total volume is 100%

or

IF Explodey Noises play in the track over a certain loudness threshold (i.e. A Loud Noise vs. whatever random room tone if any)
THEN drop music to 10% (or whatever) during that duration and ramp music back to 100% when Explodey Noise drops down below a certain loudness threshold (since sounds exist in time, so you'll usually have some kind of attack/beginning vs. decay/ending situation even with a short sharp Explodey Noise)

(The hard part is getting the settings right so that everything "sounds right.")

According to Kevin Manthei in one-to-one (I wanted to discuss 2D animation workflow since he scores for a lot of animation!) (he scored for INVADER ZIM, PANZER COMMANDER 3 videogame from SSI, JUSTICE LEAGUE: THE NEW FRONTIER, ROBOT CHICKEN, STAR TREK ONLINE...), generally in Hollywood the composer is a freelancer and sound design is a sound design studio, and they work separately (LEAGUE OF LEGENDS has sound design and the two in-house composers WORKING IN TANDEM, which - both having full-time in-house composers AND having them coordinate with the in-house sound design team is UNICORN RARE in professional videogames), and then the director/producer head honcho hears both separately, and then they sit in with the composer and sound designer (and whoever's in charge of the final mix, which is NOT the composer because now we also have the dialogue too) and play the whole thing composited together to picture and go over the whole thing and the composer and sound designer (it sounds like) sometimes duke it out over "no but the music should be audible here" vs. "no but the fancy ASPLODE sound should take priority here" and then the director makes the decision as to Who Gets To Be Loudest. :p

[muccamukk]

I think if we're at the point of reading your comments on script books, everyone's familiar with the canon to not need it to be in any kind of order. Totally enjoying whatever catches your interest.

[sholio]

Ahahaha, that is a good point. And let's face it, that's probably how it's going to end up happening anyway. (Also, a bit belatedly: thank you!)