TV Series instead of Films

dreamrider wrote:I hope you know that that intro demo sequence at Honorcon was, according to the speaker, thrown together from largely stock assets in something like ~1 week. I'm not sure there was even any mocap in it.

Evergreen is one of the shops that other production companies in the industry come to in order to make their animation/cgi sequences (admittedly, especially the backgrounds) look right.

dreamrider

They weren't stock assets per se, but assets we had been building out for the Honorverse - and yes they were motion captured but not with a high end system you would use for a feature film with a myriad of cameras and points but rather a suit based joint system. All in all using the assets we had already it took about 10 days IIRC.

We actually don't do CGi, not movie level CGi. The CGi for WWD was done by Animal Logic in Australia (the same people who did The Lego Movie). We have proprietary tools for prototyping scenes which includes the ability to supply outside CGi teams with actual data for camera, lighting, etc, in order to reduce iteration time.

Evergreen Studios wrote:We actually don't do CGi, not movie level CGi. The CGi for WWD was done by Animal Logic in Australia (the same people who did The Lego Movie). We have proprietary tools for prototyping scenes which includes the ability to supply outside CGi teams with actual data for camera, lighting, etc, in order to reduce iteration time.

The Lego Movie people? Wow!
When they did TLM, they carefully built their sets out of individual virtual bricks rather than doing the quicker slap-a-texture-on-a-plain technique that most would have settled for.
That meant that whenever a set got "destroyed", the bricks arcing down were the bricks used to build the set rather than random shapes, meaning you could pause the movie and actually track the individual bricks.
That level of attention to detail on a kids movie is a good omen for the Honorverse film.

I think that based on Game of Thrones, the market is there. GOT started with a 3.5 million (or so) audience and has doubled. Not all were readers, and I think that there is a backlogged demand for "good" sci fi. Just as there was a backlogged demand for "good" fantasy. I am only into Season 2 of GOT and it is interesting and the dwarf guy is great. I guess he sticks around as well when it seems everyone else gets killed off. The biggest problem has, and always will be, the short sighted, unoriginal goobers who think that the 4th remake of a movie is bound to be a hit. Marvel is starting to see some of the luster wear off their material. I think we will see a new Star Trek series if not this year than next, Tim Russ is prototyping a new series through Kickstarter that looks good, and go check out "Prelude to Axanar" on YouTube, they are getting ready to start production of a full length movie on less than $1million. It can be done folks, you do not need $100 million to make a movie.

nickursis wrote:The biggest problem has, and always will be, the short sighted, unoriginal goobers who think that the 4th remake of a movie is bound to be a hit.

Agreed. It's a common failing somewhat akin to Sequelitus and often lurches into the area known as Zombie Franchise.

For a good (or bad) example of remake fail, check out the Spider-Man trilogy and compare it to the reboot duology.
Yeah, no contest. Trilogy for the win (well, the first two films of it, anyway. The third showed evidence of Sequelitus...)

kinda of off topic but for evidence of what can be done in the form of good SF on a limited budget look up star trek axanar.

they've released a short 20 min pseudo documentary and are in the process of filming the main feature.

funded by fans via kickstarter and a lot of free/almost nothing time from a lot of professionals. it'd probably cost 3/4 mil if everyone was being paid to appropriate levels. still its an impressive indication of what can be done for (relatively) almost no money.

nickursis wrote:I think that based on Game of Thrones, the market is there. GOT started with a 3.5 million (or so) audience and has doubled. Not all were readers, and I think that there is a backlogged demand for "good" sci fi. Just as there was a backlogged demand for "good" fantasy. I am only into Season 2 of GOT and it is interesting and the dwarf guy is great. I guess he sticks around as well when it seems everyone else gets killed off. The biggest problem has, and always will be, the short sighted, unoriginal goobers who think that the 4th remake of a movie is bound to be a hit. Marvel is starting to see some of the luster wear off their material. I think we will see a new Star Trek series if not this year than next, Tim Russ is prototyping a new series through Kickstarter that looks good, and go check out "Prelude to Axanar" on YouTube, they are getting ready to start production of a full length movie on less than $1million. It can be done folks, you do not need $100 million to make a movie.

I have some doubts that the success of A Song of Ice and Fire / Game of Thrones would translate into a similar success for Honor Harrington.

That's because the series are very different from each other.

And I don't mean the difference between Fantasy and SciFi. If it were just that then I would not be worried.

The difference I mean is between a nearly Shakespearean drama on the one hand and a relatively straightforward military campaign story on the other.

A Song of Ice and Fire is a primarily character-driven, complex (perhaps too complex ) multi-faceted story, in which 'the human heart in conflict with itself' as GRRM puts it plays the major role.
That's the reason so many people - all across genre borders - can relate to it I think. The fantasy stuff really is just window dressing.*
The real story is the drama about people in all their fallability.***

The Honorverse on the other hand is primarily and mostly plot-driven military fiction.

Characters and their weaknesses do play some role in DW's world too of course but to a much lesser extent.
The main issues really are military and political strategy, tactics, lots and lots of tech details and of course battles.**
That's something for a very special brand of nerds - us.

I doubt the majority of potential movie-viewers shares our interests. My wife for instance would just look at me like I'm not entirely sane and then yawn. Whereeas she absolutely devours A Song and Ice and Fire. And that when she really has no affinity to fantasy at all.

*
EDIT: Upon secondary consideration I have to withdraw my conclusion that the fantasy elements are 'just' window dressing. In fact GRRM does awesome things with the fantasy side. It is probably more true to say that the fantasy element is but one among several layers of the story each of which appeal to different fan groups but the conflicts of the human heart being the central theme.

**
EDIT 2: DW also deals in emotions - and he can convey them very well in fact - but he mostly does it in the context of duty and doing one's best even under severely adverse circumstances (or not doing it). That is an important topic - but a limited one.

GRRM routinely works with a much wider range of human characteristics than that. Which makes his characters more interesting to a broader base of fans I think. Also GRRM's characters usually are a wild mix of bad and good characteristics which means they can be a bad factor in one scene and a good one in the next, depending on circumstances.

***
EDIT 3: Another difference in characterization is that DW's characters - whether heroes or villains - usually have pretty balanced, believable 'mental attributes'. As reader I see them act and think 'yeah, that makes sense in the context.' The important term here being balanced.
This goes well with DW's more plot-driven storylines where characters' inner conflicts aren't the main driver of the action and characters need to have a certain amount of predictability in order to not suddenly derail the story. It also has the advantage of feeling realistic.

GRRM on the other hand has no qualms to enhance a characters' single mental characteristic - good or bad - over the usually 'normal' level - and then explore what happens. Uncovering both sides - advantages and drawbacks - of this characteristic. This leads to extremely interesting situations, unpredictable twists and turns and makes the character-driven story possible in the first place. Honor can be good - but can have serious negative repercussions when overdone, ruthlessness can often be bad - but its absence can be worse, love can be great - but can also lead to some very questionable decisions, scheming may be undesirable - but necessary for success - and so on.

George J. Smith wrote:

dreamrider wrote:Snip

...but I am shocked, shocked and saddened, that you have never heard of:
Stargate: SG1
Stargate: Atlantis
Stargate: Universe
Firefly, or
(the best parallel) Battlestar Galctica (redux)

Mmmm...

SG1 10 Seasons
Atlantis 5 Seasons
Universe 2 Seasons
Firefly 1 Season

is there a pattern developing here?

I don't think so. Star Trek is enduring, and the Battle Star Galactica to Television Sci Fi to a whole new level.

Firefly was okay, more fun and Mad Maxish.

Personally at the risk of blasphemy I would much rather see Honor Harrington as a mini series. There are no guarantees with a movie that a sequel will be produced just the same with a television series.

However a mini-series at least allows for natural character development as well as a rational understanding of the mythology.

The series just has too much detail to make it into a one shot movie. I see HH being just as difficult to produce as Dune.

More than likely the fans would tear it apart. Get the production team from Battlestar and produce a 12 hour mini-series. Then the show can go into movie production.

That's my opinion anyway. Look at it this way. Who wants to wait 3 years for movie sequels. And being the pessimist that I am quite likely the film will tank.

For what its worth, DW said at Manticon that Evergreen has pretty clearly shifted its planning to a limited series/mini-series a la GoT for Honor of the Queen.

Not set in stone, in the sense that no series plan/outline or early episode screenplays have been shown to him yet, but all recent conversations he's had with Evergreen contacts have been oriented that way.

BTW, since Evergreen sees this as a multi-media IP, the introduction of Honor to a screen audience in an HotQ mini-series DOES NOT cut out the possibility of a later book (or books) being produced as a theatrical film. In fact, Evergreen apparently believes that the potential audience for an eventual theatrical film might be 'primed' by an initial mini-series production.

The problem would remain: what Honor book, or logical portion of one of the books, could be crammed into a 114 min screenplay?

Any of you guys want to take a shot at that one?

Can SVW be tightened down into a 2-hour film? My opinion: maybe, because it is one of the purest 'military adventure & battle' titles in the series.

What about FoD? My Op: Probably, but the plot would probably be presented better by something like a British style short series, with the episode breaks building tension. I have my doubts that you could make a good 10-11 part series out of it, however. More like about 6 episodes.

FiE takes us back to a book that almost certainly would be handled best in the full mini-series format, especially considering the shift in timeframe, locale, culture, bad guys, etc.

What say you folks?

dreamrider

...It could be possible to do In Enemy Hands as two films set in parallel.
Film One, "Avenging Honor", starts off with the staged execution scene and has the Star Kingdom striking at the Peeps for their murder of Honor. This film will be heavy on the action and explosions, with Honor making her appearance in the stinger.
Film two, "Honor Ascending", all of the Hades scenes with Honor setting up the entire escape attempt and seeing it through. More character driven and at the end, the same scene will play out as in AH, but with the cameras on Honor's side of the viewscreen, thus letting us see White Haven's shock in delicious Hi Def.

The problem is the sheer size and complexity of the Mad Wizard's books.
Mini-series has my thumbs up and I'll be buying it as soon as it comes out on Blu-ray!

Miniseries is probably a good idea for most of the mainline/trifurcation books. Or British run-length series for the most of them, with a few of them potentially encroaching on the lower end of American length series.

For a 114 minute script, I think we need to look at the anthologies: "Ms. Midshipwoman Harrington" & "Let's Dance" would both make sense lengthwise.
I would go with "Let's Dance" to introduce the character to a new audience, with the middie cruise held back for a 'prequel movie' if interest in the 'verse blossoms to a sufficient degree.

dreamrider wrote:For what its worth, DW said at Manticon that Evergreen has pretty clearly shifted its planning to a limited series/mini-series a la GoT for Honor of the Queen.

[snip]

The problem would remain: what Honor book, or logical portion of one of the books, could be crammed into a 114 min screenplay?

Any of you guys want to take a shot at that one?

Can SVW be tightened down into a 2-hour film? My opinion: maybe, because it is one of the purest 'military adventure & battle' titles in the series.

[snip]
dreamrider