Oh, man, I have MORE TO SAY but I've got to get some work done
Work schmerk!!!! Oh, wait, food & rent are good. Carry on!
so I'm not going to be able to do this justice until tonight or tomorrow morning -- until then lemme just reply to this one -- YES. Have you seen Carlyle in Once Upon a Time? I got to SGU by way of him because his portrayal of Gold/Rumpel is so intense. And the amazing thing about Rush is that they may have the same face and the same Scottish accent, but the portrayal is so very different that it took me surprisingly little time to respond to Rush as an entirely different character.
Oooo I love that kind of plasticity in an actor :D Never heard of it! I will *definitely* follow a fantastic actor or writer or director into a previously untested genre or whatever....so, I'll look it up....
And yes, interview!Carlyle is a THIRD character entirely, someone very different! (And, as far as I've heard, really very nice, which is totally funny given the characters he plays. Perhaps he gets all his negative emotions out in his acting?)
LOL!! He wouldn't be the first :D Yes, he comes across as (and is regarded by his fellows as) a very genuine person.
I found the directing excellent. The cinematography... I thought evolved. (The ubiquituous montages, for example, in first season, I could have done without. Thankfully those went away in second season.)
LOL - I *think* we're saying the same thing :P In my brain 'cinematography' covers lighting, lens choices, camera angles and movement....directing & editing cover things like the montages (which became endearing to me even though they are pure schmaltz....), pacing, blocking/actor directing choices etc. (thinking about it, I bet the directive came down from on high to LIGHTEN IT UP and thus the montages, which let them have light moments without disturbing the arc or even changing those episodes very much.....)
The look of the show was well established from the start - the palette, the colors, the aggressive use of almost completely black blacks, willingness to put the actors into a totally dark room with partial lighting for the face only....really beautiful use of dark. As if Firefly was shot with a less saturated, cooler palette and a less sympathtic lighting esthetic :D
The large-scale writing in both first and part of second season frustrated me -- I thought there was entirely too much of telling instead of showing, telling us we were supposed to care about relationships and actions when they didn't give us enough background to do so (like in one scene Eli is supposed to be all cut up over Riley's death, and yeah, "Riley" is just code for "Ginn," but still -- I think we saw Eli and Riley talk ONCE. Maybe TWICE. It just didn't gel for me)
Yeah, they cast around a bit, trying to juggle such a huge ensemble cast, a huge arc and so many different settings (both on the ship and on Earth), and it showed in the writing short-cuts. Knowing the pressure that's on writing teams to put a show on the screen that a completely naive audience can waltz right into and understand, I'm sympathetic to the kind of mistakes you're writing about. They jar me, but I'm willing to overlook them in the first season into the second. And true to good arc-TV form, they finally got all the "tell" outta the way by early season 2 and were well into the SHOW :D There was very little throw away and really no fluff episodes, which really differentiated SGU from SGA and SG1....and that's undoubtedly where they lost the SG fandom. The SG fandom really hated SGU - and I understand why, because it's a show in an entirely different mold. Mah favorite mold :P
That stuff with Eli and Riley was so, 'huh?' that I have to wonder if there's a scene or three on the cutting room floor that filled out that grief beyond 'Ginn-surrogate.' I know that they cut a LOT from this show - can't wait to get my hands on the DVDs :D
-- but the small-scale character writing, THAT was always brilliant -- like how (in the same episode) Rush is just consistently, ever since the pilot, The Most Terrible at Saying Comforting Things Ever. HEE.
I've been rewatching the show with my oldest (who hasn't seen it at all) and I'd forgotten how dreadful Rush is at that stuff right from the start LOL! They did an exceptional job with character consistency right from the beginning. Scifi as a genre has *finally* learned its lessons about internal consistency - scifi fans remember eeeeverything! So don't fuck around or you'll piss your audience off! At the same time, there's nothing we scifi geeks love so much as a seamless retcon, so with some clever writing you can re-cast your show, character etc. and we'll all praise you for it :D I wonder if Telford was always intended to be a brainwashed spy or if that was a beautiful retcon to bring his character into better balance between Rush and Young?
That's very interesting, about the voices. I do think they did a FANTASTIC job with casting, and ALL THE ACTORS ROCKED so hard.
YES. Character was god, on this show. They maximized every chance to show backstory, relationship, conflict, quiet moments....within the purview of scifi/action-y genre, they gave us all the character they could. And the actors never missed a chance to give us non-verbal character stuff either! I loved that :D If they were on camera, they were telling the story, whether they had dialog or action or not.
Okay, must go get ready to sell a cello....I hope! :D
no subject
Work schmerk!!!! Oh, wait, food & rent are good. Carry on!
so I'm not going to be able to do this justice until tonight or tomorrow morning -- until then lemme just reply to this one -- YES. Have you seen Carlyle in Once Upon a Time? I got to SGU by way of him because his portrayal of Gold/Rumpel is so intense. And the amazing thing about Rush is that they may have the same face and the same Scottish accent, but the portrayal is so very different that it took me surprisingly little time to respond to Rush as an entirely different character.
Oooo I love that kind of plasticity in an actor :D Never heard of it! I will *definitely* follow a fantastic actor or writer or director into a previously untested genre or whatever....so, I'll look it up....
And yes, interview!Carlyle is a THIRD character entirely, someone very different! (And, as far as I've heard, really very nice, which is totally funny given the characters he plays. Perhaps he gets all his negative emotions out in his acting?)
LOL!! He wouldn't be the first :D Yes, he comes across as (and is regarded by his fellows as) a very genuine person.
I found the directing excellent. The cinematography... I thought evolved. (The ubiquituous montages, for example, in first season, I could have done without. Thankfully those went away in second season.)
LOL - I *think* we're saying the same thing :P In my brain 'cinematography' covers lighting, lens choices, camera angles and movement....directing & editing cover things like the montages (which became endearing to me even though they are pure schmaltz....), pacing, blocking/actor directing choices etc. (thinking about it, I bet the directive came down from on high to LIGHTEN IT UP and thus the montages, which let them have light moments without disturbing the arc or even changing those episodes very much.....)
The look of the show was well established from the start - the palette, the colors, the aggressive use of almost completely black blacks, willingness to put the actors into a totally dark room with partial lighting for the face only....really beautiful use of dark. As if Firefly was shot with a less saturated, cooler palette and a less sympathtic lighting esthetic :D
The large-scale writing in both first and part of second season frustrated me -- I thought there was entirely too much of telling instead of showing, telling us we were supposed to care about relationships and actions when they didn't give us enough background to do so (like in one scene Eli is supposed to be all cut up over Riley's death, and yeah, "Riley" is just code for "Ginn," but still -- I think we saw Eli and Riley talk ONCE. Maybe TWICE. It just didn't gel for me)
Yeah, they cast around a bit, trying to juggle such a huge ensemble cast, a huge arc and so many different settings (both on the ship and on Earth), and it showed in the writing short-cuts. Knowing the pressure that's on writing teams to put a show on the screen that a completely naive audience can waltz right into and understand, I'm sympathetic to the kind of mistakes you're writing about. They jar me, but I'm willing to overlook them in the first season into the second. And true to good arc-TV form, they finally got all the "tell" outta the way by early season 2 and were well into the SHOW :D There was very little throw away and really no fluff episodes, which really differentiated SGU from SGA and SG1....and that's undoubtedly where they lost the SG fandom. The SG fandom really hated SGU - and I understand why, because it's a show in an entirely different mold. Mah favorite mold :P
That stuff with Eli and Riley was so, 'huh?' that I have to wonder if there's a scene or three on the cutting room floor that filled out that grief beyond 'Ginn-surrogate.' I know that they cut a LOT from this show - can't wait to get my hands on the DVDs :D
-- but the small-scale character writing, THAT was always brilliant -- like how (in the same episode) Rush is just consistently, ever since the pilot, The Most Terrible at Saying Comforting Things Ever. HEE.
I've been rewatching the show with my oldest (who hasn't seen it at all) and I'd forgotten how dreadful Rush is at that stuff right from the start LOL! They did an exceptional job with character consistency right from the beginning. Scifi as a genre has *finally* learned its lessons about internal consistency - scifi fans remember eeeeverything! So don't fuck around or you'll piss your audience off! At the same time, there's nothing we scifi geeks love so much as a seamless retcon, so with some clever writing you can re-cast your show, character etc. and we'll all praise you for it :D I wonder if Telford was always intended to be a brainwashed spy or if that was a beautiful retcon to bring his character into better balance between Rush and Young?
That's very interesting, about the voices. I do think they did a FANTASTIC job with casting, and ALL THE ACTORS ROCKED so hard.
YES. Character was god, on this show. They maximized every chance to show backstory, relationship, conflict, quiet moments....within the purview of scifi/action-y genre, they gave us all the character they could. And the actors never missed a chance to give us non-verbal character stuff either! I loved that :D If they were on camera, they were telling the story, whether they had dialog or action or not.
Okay, must go get ready to sell a cello....I hope! :D