Updating Babylon 5‘s VFX for Direct-to-DVD Lost Tales
Atmosphere Visual Effects Brings Old Models Up to Date
by Bryant Frazier | Film & Video | August 3, 2007
It’s one thing to do groundbreaking VFX work on a show like Battlestar Galactica, which dramatically reinvented the look of the original 1970s TV series for a contemporary audience. But it’s quite another to start working on an upgrade of a not-so-long-in-the-tooth program like Babylon 5, which aired from 1994-1998. Babylon 5 helped usher in the era of CG VFX for television — while its effects are more primitive than today’s state of the art, they’re not a completely different animal. That means that, when Atmosphere Visual Effects started work on the new direct-to-video release Babylon 5: The Lost Tales, it had to lift the CG to match today’s standards without making any alterations that would alienate the susbtantial fan base.
VFX Supervisor Andrew Carr talked to us about updating 10-year-old spaceship models, plotting out camera angles and lighting in advance, and destroying a futuristic New York City.
Link: Updating Babylon 5‘s VFX for Direct-to-DVD Lost Tales (paid membership required to read full article)