'FARSCAPE STANDARDS'

[Sunderflame]

While steaming over the thought of no Farscape in the mail today. I would like to know what everyone think's are our Farscape Standards.
Most of us are so spoiled by our beloved show, that I know I compare most movies to the show. I'm talking Motion pictures.
To me Farscape is like nothing else. It's even filmed like a motion picture...
I'm feeling frelled so I'd like some others to just jump in with their thoughts on the subject.

[JadedLegend3]

This probably does not really go with what you're saying, but I consider each ep of Farscape to be a little feature film! They're all just so amazing, even the ones that I found mediocre! Everything about this show is amazing.

I can't think of anything specific, but I know there have been times when someone on some show/movie has said something and I've thought "Farscape!!!" when they say it....I'll let you know the next time it happens! LOL


Jacqui :love:

[Sunderflame]

You got it!:kitty: :whip:

[darius]

I'm watching Relativity as I write this, and I can honestly say I have never been able to watch a show like I watch Farscape( which is over, and over..). There are a couple movies that I can watch like that too, but Farscape has everything a great movie has to me as well; great acting, action, story and great quotable lines.

[JrMissToughChick]

Bingo I think Darius Got it!

~JrMTC~

[TajaKayScaper]

Frell YES!!! It's all SOOO true!:)

[vandalrobert]

I try not to compare things...It's not fair to the rest of the world. To the individual minds who bring these things intot the public.

But sometimes...I will think...this would have been a great episode of enterprise if it was FARSCAPE.
Except I am in love with Hoshi and tpol.

Imagined Love triangle....

But, I'm still sane....
*cough*

[JrMissToughChick]

I saw a few epis of Enterprise and thought, "they did this on Farscape and it worked better."

~JrMTC~

[AflamingEye]

I agree we have been spoiled by Farscape, only because of its extreme quality..you can tell the people that make the show possible care about their work and know what theyre doing. I think Farscape has created its own little niche, and its hard to compare things to it as most do not approach that same level of quality

[Clarsax]

It's nearly impossible to compare Farscape's standards to anything on television because it is so much better than any other show and many movies that I've seen. Farscape stands on its own, and there isn't much out there that can quite match up to its quality.

[MediaSavant]

Farscape spoiled other space shows for me. I barely watch Enterprise and quit Andromeda long ago. Once upon a time, I watched everything.

There are so many things that one can point to, but back in '99 when I was just growing to like it, one thing I noticed was its pacing. It seemed that so much more happened in an hour of Farscape than other shows. There was another show that summer--Crusade, the B5 spin-off--that I could compare it to.

To test my theory, I took out a stop watch and counted the number of edits in an average minute of Farscape to an average minute of Crusade. I found that Farscape had three times the number of edits.

It's a technical thing, but quick editing like that (and lots of coverage in the filming process) really make a visceral difference in the viewing experience.

I knew then that behind the scenes these people--the directors, the editors, and writers--were striving for a 'look and feel' that was different from those other shows.

(How geeky am I?)

[JrMissToughChick]

Originally posted by MediaSavant
Farscape spoiled other space shows for me. I barely watch Enterprise and quit Andromeda long ago. Once upon a time, I watched everything.

There are so many things that one can point to, but back in '99 when I was just growing to like it, one thing I noticed was its pacing. It seemed that so much more happened in an hour of Farscape than other shows. There was another show that summer--Crusade, the B5 spin-off--that I could compare it to.

To test my theory, I took out a stop watch and counted the number of edits in an average minute of Farscape to an average minute of Crusade. I found that Farscape had three times the number of edits.

It's a technical thing, but quick editing like that (and lots of coverage in the filming process) really make a visceral difference in the viewing experience.

I knew then that behind the scenes these people--the directors, the editors, and writers--were striving for a 'look and feel' that was different from those other shows.

(How geeky am I?)

How can you tell it's an edit?

I'm geeky too thats why I want to know ;)

Much Love,
~JrMTC~

[justanotherFSlvr]

Originally posted by JrMissToughChick
How can you tell it's an edit?

I'm geeky too thats why I want to know ;)

Much Love,
~JrMTC~

I'm sure MediaSavant is referring the number of times in a scene the view cuts from one angle to another. For instance, in another show, a conversation between two individuals might be shown with the camera view showing both individuals during the conversation. Farscape might show that view at first, then cut in and continuously cut between individual shots of each person speaking.

I think this extends to the way the camera moves, too. So many television programs plant the camera in one place and go. If you really pay attention to these things, you'll notice the camera moving up and down, in and out and circling around the action in Farscape, building tension, focusing attention, revealing details that just don't happen when the camera sits there and just records the image.

I think the editing and camera movement are absolutely first rate in Farscape--it's one of my favorite things about the way it's made. These two things, plus the very careful and detailed lighting, are to me what give Farscape its "cinematic" look. This is also expensive to do because it's time consuming, and takes precise planning so everything and everyone comes together just right as the camera moves, and sometimes extra takes to get the same action from different angles to make the extra cuts. If it were made in the US, it problably couldn't be done within a realistic budget.

[JrMissToughChick]

yeah I noticed that I geuss I just didn't know what she ment by edit

~JrMTC~

[DRD1810]

Thank you for pointing that out. I didn't give that much thought. I will have to pay attention to that next time I watch Farscape.

[SweetpeaAeryn]

Farscape is different becuase it takes risks....

They have killed off, like, everybody.
And when they come back it's totaly believable.
The writing is just beyond description. SInce it is all serialized, I have noticed foreshadowing for Bad Timing in Season 1! (Yup, I'm an English major. ;) )
There's a person who is a plant! I've never seen any other show do that.
It perfectly blends fiction with reality. When John comes back to Earth, it could have been all weird and not made sense, but the reality of it all shines through. JOhn saw how his world had changed becuase of 9-11 and other real contemporary stuff. It made it feel like JOhn could come through a wormhole tomorrow and it would made perfect sense.

That's all I can think of right now... it's still early.

[grapeshot]

I SO agree with MS and justanotherFSlvr. I've noticed that there is MUCH MORE storytelling packed into an episode than what any other tv show has, and as she points out, it's partly due to the fast-paced editing. The writers tell us a LOT in every episode, and they don't waste their time about it. It's not just the writers telling us a lot, either. The costumes, the lighting, the sets, and the props are also all telling us something -- even if we're not consciously aware of it. I remember when episodes were first airing, how I'd often glance at the clock (my typical way of gauging an episode's progress) and being surprised that only 20 minutes had gone by. It always felt to me as though we were getting almost TWO hours worth of story in one hour. (During some of the most intense moments, even the ads seem like a refreshing breather! They're sort of like a chance to take your breath and think about what you just saw.)

And the camera movements are awesome. I have pointed this out before, but that sort of camera work is VERY demanding on the photographer and the assistant -- who has to constantly keep moving the focus. It also makes it imperative that the actors hit their marks exactly. Really, when you consider the short shooting schedule per episode, this must be massive effort in concentration on the part of the cast and crew. What's even more impressive is that the camera movements SERVE the story; they're not there merely to impress us. It's a subtle way to draw us into the story, and many fans don't even notice. Next time you watch a scene, pay attention to how the camera sways a little, or wobbles around. It's just one of the techniques used not just to enhance the mood of the scene, but also to draw us deeper into the scene. That's also one of the reasons why most episodes seem to jerk the viewer around so much. (That's not to take anything away from the wacky zig-zags of the plots.)

Every detail on Farscape is so obviously carefully worked out, and it's a real tribute to the teamwork of the cast and crew, and the passion they bring to every little thing. I think they could easily make a feature film while standing on their heads! (And one that would be FAR better than most of the recent genre movies, too.)

Since becoming a Farscape addict (I can think of no other name for it) almost no other television show is half as satisfying, and very few movies seem at all interesting.

[justanotherFSlvr]

I'm sure there may be a handful of other TV programs that have camerawork, editing and lighting like Farscape, but I certainly can't think of any right now. The Dune mini-series SciFi ran a while back was nicely done, but then I'm sure the budget per ep was much more than a typical Farscape ep.

One just did come to mind: One of my favorite episodes of X Files was the one on board a 1940s ocean liner in the Bermuda Triangle, where time gets twisted so that the derelict, empty ship of today comes alive with a boatload of passengers and invading Nazi soldiers. That was all done handheld with a stedi-cam, and like Hitchcock's film The Rope, was done without any obvious cuts at all--they were all hidden in transitions through dark passageways, so it looked like one long, uncut scene for the entire hour. But they didn't do that for every episode, either!

For Farscape, I think a good example in tonight's Coup by Clam will be the last scene where...


WARNING!
Ep 76 Spoiler to follow
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Scorpius is regurgitating the clams. (This is all from memory, so I hope I remember this right!) Watch how the camera moves in and (if memory serves) down to his level. Then, imagine how the same scene would look with just a stationary establishing shot of the scene, and then maybe a cut to a closer, but still stationary shot of Scorpius, with no movement whatsoever.

There are also some shots of the crew when they're sitting around on Moya "taking the cure". I believe there is some camera movement and good cutting in that scene, too.

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End Spoiler

[MediaSavant]

Originally posted by justanotherFSlvr
I'm sure MediaSavant is referring the number of times in a scene the view cuts from one angle to another. For instance, in another show, a conversation between two individuals might be shown with the camera view showing both individuals during the conversation. Farscape might show that view at first, then cut in and continuously cut between individual shots of each person speaking.

Yep, that's what I meant. To me an "edit" is any time one piece of film is spliced to another. I took an editing class in college and I remember actual sitting in the editing room with a splicer and tape to connect the two pieces of film. Who knows? Maybe they do it all digitally now, but the principle still is the same.

Whether you call them "cuts" or "edits", it's still the same. Farscape has a lot of them.

The constantly moving camera is another aspect of the show, as you pointed out.

[CrystalMoon]

I love the camerawork on the show. I hadn't noticed the number of edits before, but I had noticed the moving camera. I also like the way shots are framed. Sometimes the camera moves behind some bars or some pieces of equipment. Part of the action will be partially obscured as the camera moves and then the action will show up again. Once in a while, the camera stops, and the shot gets framed by whatever was in front of the action. Once I remember the camera stopping in front of a tube, so that you saw John and whoever down the barrel of this tube. And then the camera started moving again.

One other thing I love about the show is the epic nature of it. Not just the long-range eps, but the individual ones too. Take IPIA, for instance. That thing had everything in it. Action, gunfights, romance, political intrique, humor, etc. The stakes were incredibly high -- the Scarrens get wormholes and destroy our heros and the universe or our heros have to destroy the Scarrens. Plus, there's John's whole wormhole knowledge issue, and getting rid of Harvey. And that was just the side story!

Another thing I love is how everything on the show is personal. There are almost never episodes that deal with the "guest of the week" whom our heros try to help with quiet confidence. Where you know they only ones in danger are the guest stars.

On Farscape, every storyline comes directly from the wants and needs of the crew, and what happens to them is so often tragic and awful. They suffer. Over and over. It makes for very compelling drama.