Back from LA with Honorverse move news

rdt wrote:

The E wrote:The cheapest one would probably be Short Victorious War. Very little on-location shooting, lots of sets that are somewhat permanent, very little heavy effects scenes (Yes, there are quite a few space battles. These are easier to do than Stilty ground assaults), a somewhat reduced cast...

Again, I refer to Europa Report for a low budget but very well done SF film.

Thinking about it some more, HoTQ probably could be done for a relatively low budget like that of Europa Report. The characters would have to be pared down and/or consolidated, and the same would have to be done with the various battles. Get away from Star Trek-style spectacle, and go with a more character-driven plot. Honorverse space battles, with the focus on long-range missile duels and people just watching holo plots, actually are good candidates for a minimalist presentation style. The minor actions can consolidatd into the larger ones or just eliminated completely with after-action reports. One of the larger ones might have to be cut out as well. For the Blackbird Base raid, the focus can be more on the post-action scenes, with the actual battle conveyed through following a small squad of marines. Might have to do away with the power armor, unless it can be done convincingly and cheaply enough with CGI.

Something else to keep in mind that the smaller the budget, the better chance the movie will be a financial sucess if it ends up being a modest breakout hit, and that means more Honorverse movies.

NeverendingWar wrote:

The E wrote:Still was a good movie, most movies have Plot holes. But the visuals and music was quite good (especially visuals) and the story better than the Hollywood standard imo.

I found Elysiums story too black and white, there where no middle ground and no difficult choices or moral ambiguity for the protagonist to ponder. Other than that it was a pretty good movie and the SFX wasn't the "in your face" type like most SciFi movies do.

Agreed. there is plenty of gray area material in the HH series, that should not be removed. a purely black and white story would lack depth.

Shooting someone with a laser or any other high energy weapon is probably going to be messy. People are mostly made of water. An energy weapon that can burn through steel is going to transfer a LOT of energy to at least the water part of the body around the would- which will make a mess when that which does not "burn" away flashes to a meat/water steam explosion.

The Blasters in StarWars didn't do that. Even Guido (spelling) in the Cantina seems to have a hole blown through him (we didn't see it) though we don't know what behind him rrelative to where Han was sitting and what collateral damage happened. I suspect at least a hole or a big pock mark when the depleated bolt spalled off wall rather than going thorugh it.

This is why you are supposed to always know what is behind your target. One would think that the bartender would have been much more upset (not to mention the companions of any secondary death or wounding by Han's shot) if another patron or employee were hit.

We all know that coherent beam weapons are invisible unless they're pointing into your eyes and are in a visible part of the spectrum, however, from the point of view of a movie, if the amount of interplanetary dust is increased (most battles are fought near stars and planets), and the beam width is increase from the hair's width as described in a recent Honorverse book to, say, the thickness of a 44 gallon drum, the beam would be visible as a blue-white (black-body radiation at very high temperatures) trail of incandescing and disintegrating particles.

The distances in a movie could be emphasized by the actors describing beams as lightspeed weapons, then in a wide shot, seeing the hairline trail of incandescent particles in the beam's path crawling across the screen, and in a close shot, seeing the beams as on/off as if they were a torch being turned on and off in your house at night. In Star Wars, even at close range, you could see the coloured "beams" moving, which would only make sense for plasma weapons

The time missile salvos are taking to travel can be handled simply by a weapons officer announcing: "Missiles launched! 10 minutes 23 seconds to detonation!". At that point, the audience should understand that after cutaways to the missiles and "Countermissiles launching, one minute to detonation!", that an uneventful period of time has been skipped.

In the movie, I would expect that from a PoV outside the ships (and in a decompressed compartment), all would be silent in battle, but inside, in atmosphere, there would be all sorts of electronic, high-energy-component and impact noise.

If the movie must have sound in space, at the end (even after the credits), the camera could pull back from a noisy space battle to show RMN cadets in a theatre and an instructor explaining that the computers add sound to draw human attention to important events.

Monty wrote:If the movie must have sound in space, at the end (even after the credits), the camera could pull back from a noisy space battle to show RMN cadets in a theatre and an instructor explaining that the computers add sound to draw human attention to important events.

This is a concept that has lingered around SF for a while. Problem is, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense if you think about it.

If you're going to use sounds to provide battlefield information to a pilot (and you should, because information is vital), why would you go for startling noises that don't carry a lot of information beyond "there was an explosion here"? Why not go for a more sophisticated, more useful way of representing information?

It's a question of verisimilitude, really, and astonishingly enough, JJ Abrams' first Star Trek film did have a very good balance between realism and the need to provide spectacle in this regard.

With a movie in the offing I was moved to reread both On Basilisk Station and The honor of the Queen. Having now refreshed my memory and waded through 28 pages of posts, I have a comment on an aspect no one has yet mentioned.

There has been a lot of discussion about ensuring that the different cultures (Manticore, Haven, Grayson, and so on) are easily distinguishable -- in terms of warship design, uniforms (and civilian dress?), ethnic make-up, and prolong effects. But nobody has mentioned speech, or to be more precise, accents. Some quotations are in order:

(Haven) Yu's foreign accent, with its longer vowels and sharper consonants, still fell strangely on Simonds' ear.

(Manticore versus Grayson) The crisp accent sounded odd -- Grayson's long isolation had produced one which was much softer and slower paced -- but its very oddness was somehow right and fitting.

(San Martin) Ramirez's accent differed from most of the Manticorans Matthews had heard, with liquid consonants that were oddly musical in such a massive man.

This is just as it should be. One expects each culture to have a distinct national accent with minor local variations. So, if in the movie all the actors speak with an American accent, it would be plain silly and I'd be bitterly disappointed. It would greatly detract from the overall quality of the film. Moreover, how can one adequately portray the cultural gulf between Manticore and Grayson if both peoples have the same accent? Different accents would really help accentuate the differences between the two. The same goes for Haven and the other cultures.

Given the origin of the Graysons in Idaho, it is obvious they should have American accents. As for the other cultures, I have no preferences as long as they are not American and are different from one another. This does not preclude the employment of American actors for roles as Havenites or Manticorans. Any actor worth his or her salt should be able to master a strange accent. (I lament the loss of "actress". How can one possibly do justice to that old joke about the bishop and the actress if one substitutes "actor" for "actress"? Rats!)

Digby wrote:With a movie in the offing I was moved to reread both On Basilisk Station and The honor of the Queen. Having now refreshed my memory and waded through 28 pages of posts, I have a comment on an aspect no one has yet mentioned.

There has been a lot of discussion about ensuring that the different cultures (Manticore, Haven, Grayson, and so on) are easily distinguishable -- in terms of warship design, uniforms (and civilian dress?), ethnic make-up, and prolong effects. But nobody has mentioned speech, or to be more precise, accents.

--SNIP--

Given the origin of the Graysons in Idaho, it is obvious they should have American accents. As for the other cultures, I have no preferences as long as they are not American and are different from one another. This does not preclude the employment of American actors for roles as Havenites or Manticorans. Any actor worth his or her salt should be able to master a strange accent. (I lament the loss of "actress". How can one possibly do justice to that old joke about the bishop and the actress if one substitutes "actor" for "actress"? Rats!)

Wahoo! This may be a film where an english accent belongs to someone who is neither the butler nor the bad guy!

Digby wrote:With a movie in the offing I was moved to reread both On Basilisk Station and The honor of the Queen. Having now refreshed my memory and waded through 28 pages of posts, I have a comment on an aspect no one has yet mentioned.

There has been a lot of discussion about ensuring that the different cultures (Manticore, Haven, Grayson, and so on) are easily distinguishable -- in terms of warship design, uniforms (and civilian dress?), ethnic make-up, and prolong effects. But nobody has mentioned speech, or to be more precise, accents. Some quotations are in order:

(Haven) Yu's foreign accent, with its longer vowels and sharper consonants, still fell strangely on Simonds' ear.

(Manticore versus Grayson) The crisp accent sounded odd -- Grayson's long isolation had produced one which was much softer and slower paced -- but its very oddness was somehow right and fitting.

(San Martin) Ramirez's accent differed from most of the Manticorans Matthews had heard, with liquid consonants that were oddly musical in such a massive man.

This is just as it should be. One expects each culture to have a distinct national accent with minor local variations. So, if in the movie all the actors speak with an American accent, it would be plain silly and I'd be bitterly disappointed. It would greatly detract from the overall quality of the film. Moreover, how can one adequately portray the cultural gulf between Manticore and Grayson if both peoples have the same accent? Different accents would really help accentuate the differences between the two. The same goes for Haven and the other cultures.

Given the origin of the Graysons in Idaho, it is obvious they should have American accents. As for the other cultures, I have no preferences as long as they are not American and are different from one another. This does not preclude the employment of American actors for roles as Havenites or Manticorans. Any actor worth his or her salt should be able to master a strange accent. (I lament the loss of "actress". How can one possibly do justice to that old joke about the bishop and the actress if one substitutes "actor" for "actress"? Rats!)

Hire Australian and New Zealand actors, have them speak in their native accents...and provide sub-titles? Hire Canadian actors, English actors, etc. This is not rocket science. But it is, I think, a rather minor (but valid) point and it won't kill the film whatever is done accent-wise. So why DOES Maria Sharapova sound like she was born and raised in the San Fernando Valley?

I found Elysiums story too black and white, there where no middle ground and no difficult choices or moral ambiguity for the protagonist to ponder. Other than that it was a pretty good movie and the SFX wasn't the "in your face" type like most SciFi movies do.[/quote]


The introduction describing the background of overpopulation and resource depletion reminded me very much of the opening premiss of Oblivion. By the end of Oblivion you realize that the character's understanding of the situation has been carefully fabricated. Because I am such a technological optimist, the main premiss of Elysium seemed ludicrous to me. Given the fact that birth rates almost everywhere on the planet are imploding, the prospect of overpopulation in the future is not plausible. Resource depletion is even more implausible in context of the routine operation of single stage to orbit shuttles depicted in the movie. If you have the technology to build those things, then you have the technology to tap the resources of the moon, asteroids and other bodies in the solar system to build solar power satellites, heavy manufactured goods, space habitats and even beanstalks. Given this technological opportunity, the dysutopia portrayed is not at all plausible unless some political elite living in the orbital habitat has imposed poverty on most of the human race for ideological
reasons.

The simplistic ending where the rebooted computer begins delivering medical care seems like a commercial for Obama care until you realize that the people of Earth already had Obama care with it's rationing and death panels while the people in orbit were getting the exception recently granted to Congress and staff. It seems logical to me that once the computer is compelled to enable prosperity for the entire population, that too can and will happen.

I came away from the movie wondering if the original script and production portrayed my interpretation but was altered to be Politically Correct.