Special Effects

[caddyman]

It's a long time since I have watched any Babylon 5. We were at a loose end tonight between finishing the meal and the carbs sending Furtle to sleep, so we decided to put a Babylon 5 TV movie on. Furtle has seen the TV series, but none of the made for TV movies. I thought we'd start at the beginning and watch er... In The Beginning, which covers the Earth - Minbari war. The movie was released nine years ago in 1998.

Nine years is a long time in the world of computer graphics. I fondly remember being blown away by the effects on Babylon 5, and thinking how clever they were to use computers to achieve the effects for tens of thousands of dollars that Paramount equalled on Deep Space 9 by using (largely) models costing around a million dollars an episode. Well, it worked out well at the time. In the end, however, I suspect that Paramount have beaten Warner Brothers. The effects on Babylon 5 look dated. They are not exactly hokey yet, but give it another five years... A shot of a ship moving past a planet to dock with a space station looked like the graphics for a superior computer game rather than a TV series. Watchable, but could be better. In a few years they will not be watchable, except with nostalgic eyes. Considering how long stop-motion photography lasted (Good old Harryhausen), it's a shame to see perfectly good entertainment start to lose credibility so quickly because of the march of technology.

I should dig out some DS9 from 1998 and see how that's fared.

Comments

[suitandtieguy.livejournal.com]

and they'd been rendering those graphics for a while. those guys were working the shit out of those Amigas ... and actually were kind of posterboys for the platform and what you could do with it.

remember, they decided to do DS9 because babylon 5 was shopped to paramount and paramount said "OMG that is so dumb!!! LOL" and then copied the concept and put the name "star trek" in front of it.

[mr-h-r-hughes.livejournal.com]

Good effects on good series don't date, I don't see how something would be come unwatchable purely of the effects. If something is that reliant on effects that when they date they ruin the program you have to ask was it much cop in the first place ?