Serenity

[chuck colburn]

I'm house sitting for some friends right now. They have a TV set that is hooked up to a cable service (whole shit load of stations not much content) anyhow there is one channel called scfi and there is a show on right now called Serenity. Kinda like cowboys in space. I'm wondering if it's shot on RED cameras as it has that pastel yet sharp look to it. If anybody knows do you also know what lenses are being used.

[jbeale]

If you're talking about Joss Whedon's movie Serenity, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0379786/ it was released in 2005 so it could not have used Red cameras. I assume it was shot on film.

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Serenity is pretty cool. Like the Firefly series it spawned from, it's largely underrated.

[chuck colburn]

Thanks jbeale....
Yeah it was the 2005 movie. Had a nice look to it. So they made a a film out of the TV series huh Jeff? Kinda backwards from how it use to work.

[Jeremy Neish]

If you even remotely enjoyed Serenity, you have to buy Firefly (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?tag=fireflymoviec-20&path=tg/detail/-/B0000AQS0F/qid%3D1074499570/sr%3D1-1), the TV show it was based on.

Then again, I'm a bit biased since I'm in the movie for a few seconds!

I'm also the writer/director of a documentary about the history of how a TV show canceled in its first season managed to become a major motion picture, and the big part fans of the TV show played in that happening. The documentary is called: Done The Impossible: The Fans' Tale of Firefly and Serenity.

Visit www.DoneTheImpossible.com (http://www.donetheimpossible.com) for more info. We released it under creative commons, and we sold nearly 20,000 copies of the DVD.

Since I was there for a day, I can safely say that Serenity was shot on film. And we shot our documentary on Sony and JVC HD cameras.

[chuck colburn]

Hi Jeremy,

I see they have a couple episodes at the imbd site. Might give them a viewing here at the house I'm at. So far as buying a DVD it would not do me much good as I don't have a player or a set to watch it on. Thanks for the info though.

[Justin O'Neill]

Firefly was absolutely fantastic. As usual FOX quickly canceled one of it's best shows.

[GlennChan]

Firefly was a good show... I'm sad to see it canceled. :(

[Zac C]

Speaking of Firefly, Amazon was having a sale, and now all my friend have a copy of the rudely interrupted First season...

I personally know Joss, he's a great guy, and he stil has his firefly love, all the castmembers do

[Benni Diez]

The cancelling of Firefly was one more reason to hate Fox for lifetime!
I still hope one day the show gets picked up again, or they do a 2nd movie. Unlikely, however.

[Joel Kaye]

A friend told me to see Serenity and I like the ideas but thought the movie was kinda contrived.

Then I saw the Firefly TV episodes and totally loved it.

Every episode is great - I felt the writing was better than the movie. Then I went back and watched Serenity again to see if my opinion changed. Nope... the movie just isn't as good as the TV shows IMHO.

[chuck colburn]

A friend told me to see Serenity and I like the ideas but thought the movie was kinda contrived.

Then I saw the Firefly TV episodes and totally loved it.

Every episode is great - I felt the writing was better than the movie. Then I went back and watched Serenity again to see if my opinion changed. Nope... the movie just isn't as good as the TV shows IMHO.

Yeah as I said "cowboys in space". But I was entertained well enough. I did very much like the look though. But then again I've been knowned to set thru some crummy plots just because the camera was so good. lol

[Paul Leeming]

DEFINITELY watch Firefly however you can (they just released the Blu-Ray box set if you are thinking of upgrading).

And actually the choice of camera angles, "mis-frames" etc is a deliberate stylistic choice, going so far as to make the special effects fit that style as well. Lends the series a kind of raw immediacy which worked well for it.... how I miss that show! I was a member of the Serenity Fan Club back in Oz.... :)

Would love to do a fan episode one day using our Red cameras....

[Benni Diez]

If I'm ever insanely rich, I'll go to Joss Whedon and say: Here's the money, go ahead and make me some more Firefly seasons and a few more movies.
Also unlikely...

But according to boxoffixemojo Serenity made pretty much its budget with all the theatrical money. So with all the ongoing DVD sales they must have made some profit in the end, right?

Whedon should just do some of this the Dr. Horrible way. I'll animate him some space ships for free! Who's with me?

[PatrickW]

I would love to see Firefly come back, either as a TV show, webcast, mini-series or feature films, because I really want to know the Shepards backstory.

[Zac C]

If I'm ever insanely rich, I'll go to Joss Whedon and say: Here's the money, go ahead and make me some more Firefly seasons and a few more movies.




I think like this everynight.... lol:bleh:

[Jeremy Neish]

If I'm ever insanely rich, I'll go to Joss Whedon and say: Here's the money, go ahead and make me some more Firefly seasons and a few more movies.

There's been a couple of attempts at this already. One guy claimed he had raised $10 million to restart the show. Here is his website:
http://www.fireflyseason2.com/

Unfortunately, Joss didn't bite, and much of the fan community called it a scam. I met the guy and don't believe it was a scam.

A couple of years before that, I put up a "Direct-to-DVD / Web" idea and submission form on my fan site. And received tens of thousands of replies from interested parties.
http://www.fireflydvd.com/wp

In fact I sat down with Joss, Tim Minear and Chris Buchanan of Mutant Enemy less than 1 month after the show was canceled, when the sets were still standing and proposed a Direct-To-DVD option. They were intrigued, but in a separate meeting with Fox, I couldn't generate any interest, and the idea was dropped. This was in 2003 and I just don't think people were ready to think so far outside the box.

I think it all boils down to the rights, Fox still owns the TV rights and they aren't too interested in helping anybody create anything else from it. (At least they let Joss do the movie through Universal, thanks in part to pressure from the fans.)

But its always great to hear from new fans.

Here's a list of all the things I did in the name of Firefly fandom:
http://fireflydvd.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=775&start=21
(That only goes up to 2005, since then I released our documentary and organized a Firefly fan Cruise: www.browncoatcruise.com ). Yup, I'm slightly insane for this show.

A bit of trivia, the Firefly DVD box set remained in Amazon's top 50 for longer than any other DVD in Amazon's history, over 3 years. In fact there were times when every single other DVD in Amazon's Top 50 were no older than 90 days old, and Firefly had been out for three years.

I like it when my two worlds collide, Red and Firefly. :) I'd happily donate my camera and my Red experience to anything related to Firefly should such a thing manage to happen.

I do think that as the years have gone by more and more folks are discovering the show and movie and are falling in love with it. I do think there's enough pent up demand that a re-birth in some form would be financially viable...

[Clint Johnson]

Joss is the reason that I feel television is now a better medium than film. With film, they get to agonize over every word and every frame... so on a superficial level is looks and sounds prettier. This is all surface and can't reach the depth that a hundred or more hours of character development can attain.

Hell, film can't reach the depth that the truncated thirteen hours of Firefly achieved.

In a month we get to see if Joss still has the touch, tune in to Dollhouse on (Flying Spaghetti Monster help us) Friday the 13th of February.

He also has a knack for finding great people to work with as well. I have a series idea I'm developing myself (and yes, I know I'm more likely to win the lottery). This hour drama is set today and centres around a billionaire (there are several actually investing their money into a civilian space race) who has put together a crewed mission to nudge a nickel-iron asteroid into lunar orbit – a multi-trillion dollar lump of metal that could serve as the material for large space based solar power arrays, space stations and massive interplanetary ships... the very foundations for the colonization of our solar system.

If I won $120 million in the lottery I'd be hiring Tim Minear to executive produce it. Joss may have a slight edge in character development but I think he is too much of a lefty to see the billionaire businessman as the bid damn hero and I feel that Tim would make the better showrunner for this particular project.

Now excuse me while I go by a few lottery tickets.

[Jeremy Neish]

I actually agree with you. I think Joss is the best for concept and story/character arcs, but that Tim is a bit better writer/director.

Good luck with that, sounds interesting. Did you read the article in Parade Magazine from Carl Sagan just before he died about building the technology to move celestial objects. His argument is that we should never develop that technology because in the wrong hands they could take what would be a near miss (which is much more common than a hit) and aim it into the earth for nefarious purposes. And even though that would be unlikely, because it would be so off the scale disastrous, it's not worth the risk.

Jeremy

[Bob Gruen]

Jeremy,

My understanding is that the geniuses at Fox skipped the Firefly pilot and opened with "The Train Job". This threw a lot of potential viewers as character development from the pilot was just missing. How valid is this?

Bob

[Jeremy Neish]

Yes, kind of, but it was a little more complicated than that. But yes, they didn't like the original version of the pilot so they requested some changes. More action, a less dark Mal, more funny. So Joss dutifully reshot a bunch of scenes and gave them a new version. They then didn't even watch the updated version, instead they demanded a new 1 hour pilot with more action. And that it needed to start filming on Monday (this was the Friday before). So Joss and Tim wrote the Train Job replacement pilot in 2 days. So technically the show had two pilots Serenity and The Train Job. And both were written as so. Though obviously Serenity was a much more detailed and interesting one. The original pilot: Serenity was actually the last episode Fox aired, about a week after word had come down about it's cancellation.

You can listen to Tim Minear talking about this in detail on our documentary:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZhaiSnt7DQ#t=8m00s (hit refresh right after this link loads to get Youtube to jump to the correct spot 8 minutes in).

Many other episodes were played out of order originally as well.

So it really wasn't a surprise the show got at best fair ratings. Fox treated it like crap. Frankly I'm excited to see Dollhouse, but I think Fox would have been smarter to re-light Firefly as it already has a large and growing fan base.

[Steven M. Bailey]

After the whole firefly debacle I had a hard time getting into a tv series. Why get interested if they are just going to change up the time slots until it gets canceled

Firefly is still my favorite series and Joss should be proud. Also many execs at the network should be ashamed for not having the foresight of a common piss-ant. Browncoats have no power but at least they're loyal. I almost have the swearing in Chinese down. Had there been a full season I would have nailed it.

Good luck trying to revive the show. After serenity it would take a miracle

[Jeff Kilgroe]

If I'm ever insanely rich, I'll go to Joss Whedon and say: Here's the money, go ahead and make me some more Firefly seasons and a few more movies.
Also unlikely...

I would too. Seriously, it has a big enough cult following. I see no reason why the series could not be resurrected and become a profitable franchise if handled properly. If I were looking to produce a TV series, <hint to any would-be producers reading this> take a look at Firefly instead of gambling on some re-hash of the latest British comedy, Survivor rip-off or the next SexInTheCityDesperateLipstickDipstickHousewives show.


Whedon should just do some of this the Dr. Horrible way. I'll animate him some space ships for free! Who's with me?

You get Joss on board and secure any rights to Firefly that FOX and others may still be holding on to, and I'm in. :)

[Zac C]

You get Joss on board and secure any rights to Firefly that FOX and others may still be holding on to, and I'm in. :)


Almost everyone who was on that show, the main cast and almost all the guest stars always comment on how they would jump back on the bandwagon right then and there, if firefly started up again