Almost twenty years have passed since "V" debuted on television screens and found its way into the hearts of millions of fans. Despite the passage of time, love for "V" has not diminished, but strengthened. New converts have joined our ranks and declared themselves fans. Join me as we revisit the "V" phenomena and discover why the flames of "V" still burn brightly.
In 1982, Kenneth Johnson began writing a screenplay. Originally, it was about a fascist regime that had seized control of the United States, called "Storm Warnings." However, studio executives believed people would not related to such a theme. Instead, they suggested that Johnson use the arrival of aliens to show how extraterrestrials could invade and control the planet. Johnson had a twist, though. The aliens, called "Visitors" were reptilian underneath their human disguise. Here to steal our water and to take the humans back to their home world, Sirius IV. as food and as soldiers to fight the Enemy, the Visitors soon controlled the government, newspapers and television broadcasts. A resistance network later formed under the leadership of Julie Parrish, former medical student and Mike Donovan, former cameraman. "V" for victory was born as the resistance worked to undermine Visitor activity. Using themes from Nazi Germany, Johnson's "V" was a success and the network wanted more.
Production for V the Final Battle soon followed. Johnson, however, left the minieseries over creative differences. The six hour continuation boasted more action and more special effects, and veered away from the Nazi allegory. The character of Ham Tyler was also introduced. Fans were awed by the birth of the starchild. The sequel was an even bigger hit as far as ratings go than its predecessor, and NBC gave the go ahead for a weekly series to pick up where The Final Battle ended.
V The Series started strongly, entertaining fans with the rivalry between Diana and Lydia. However, after five major characters left the show, V lost its appeal. No longer the darling of the network, the show was canceled without the final cliffhanger ever being resolved. Through the years, there has been talk of V's return, but nothing concrete ever materialized.
That doesn't stop fans from dreaming, however, and hasn't diminished their enthusiasm for the science fiction show. Years after V was shown in the United States, the show came to South Africa. The government hoped citizens would see whites and blacks working together for a common cause. However, South Africans saw it for what it was: Ordinary people fighting an oppressive regime. V enthralled people of all races, genders, social classes, religions, ages and ethnicities. European fans were also swept up in V. When an episode of the series was shown out of order in Sweden, thousands and thousands of fans called to complain. The problem was corrected. If you want to see a fans eyes light up, just ask them about V and be sure you have time to spare. I asked these questions on a number of online clubs and received a variety of responses.
Read on...
What does "V" mean to you? Why does it appeal to you after all this time?
"V" is a fantastic creative playground, and that is why it still appeals to me after all this time." Joe Dionisio, California
"V" to me is just S0 amazing. With all the wars happening on Earth, it's amazing to see how everyone on Earth joins together to fight the aliens. It appeals to me still, after all this time, because "V" brings out things that are so precious to life and death-and they all still apply." Ilana Rapp, New Jersey
"V" tells us 'remember the events of the Second World War. It could happen again and no one's sheltered from being hunted.' "V" is also a great lesson of solidarity between people whatever their race, religion, and social class." Ludi, France
"It was the most original 'alien invasion' concept around at the time, not the 'enemy within' type or the 'technologically overwhelming' type either. The invasion mechanism played on our personal fears and inhibitions about getting involved. The aliens take over because our natural tendency is to look the other way when we see something we don't like happen." Jon Farley, United Kingdom
"1 saw "V" during my developing adolescent years so it had a really big impact on me. I learned a lot about the human spirit during difficult times." Brian Tosko Bello, Washington, D.C.
What is your favorite-the first or second miniseries? "Second miniseries." Sabine Friedrich, Germany
"'V: The Final Battle' all the way! {sorry Kenny) I am a sucker for a great romance."
Tamie Kwist, Indiana
"The first one." Ludi, France
"From a theme perspective, the original miniseries. From a storytelling STYLE ppint of view, 'The Final Battle.'" Joe Dionisio, California
What are your views on the series?
"I think the hiring of 'new' writers and the depletion of the budget resulted in the loss of 'V: The Series.'" Ilana Rapp, New Jersey
"Looking back I must say that I have a love/hate relationship for it. There are a lot of obvious flaws of course 'v' as a series should've been more focused on the original main characters like Mike" Julie, and Diana." Tamie Kwist, Indiana
"It was half-hearted because of the lack of budget thrown at it by the studio. If they'd had more budget, it could have been brilliant." Jon Farley, United Kingdom
In the end, who would have triumphed-the Visitors or the Resistance? Why?
"I think the Resistance. No one could ever defeat an idea." Joe Bratko, Illinois
"However, if it were real life, I think the aliens would have eventually taken over."' Ilana Rapp, New Jersey
"But who said things have to end permanently, right?” ~ Joe Dionisio, California
How should "V" continue?
"Honestly, I think 'V' should continue and end in the form of a final four-hour miniseries.H Tamie Kwist, Indiana
"V" should pick up in present-day-time with children of the Resistance carrying on the fight. If Jane Badler and June Chadwick don't come back maybe there could be some
reference to them being retired in the Homeworld or some nearby resort planet." Brian Tosko Bello, Washington, D.C.
"I think 'V: The Next Whatever' should be like the book 'East Coast Crisis' where we have a New York-based Resistance with people the ages of the original 'V' shows. But, 'I think it should take place in current time. And they can speak with our old characters to find out how things were handled 'back then.'" Ilana Rapp, New Jersey
"Why not go one step further, it is one hundred years on, we are technologically superior, and it's time for us to visit them." Jon Farley, United Kingdom
Regardless of what miniseries you like, how you think "V" should continue, or whose side you were on, may you always feel passion for "V." And may peace be yours always.
Preta-na-ma!
Showing posts with label V miniseries. Show all posts
Showing posts with label V miniseries. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Kenneth Johnson talks to Tamie Kwist about Directing, Producing and More...
Tamie: Can you please cover these three areas for me... directing, writing and producing for television? It is the "producing" that I am most unclear about, but would like to learn as much as possible about all three! And if you feel like throwing in camera operation/filming, I would be happy to learn about that too.
Kenneth Johnson: In television the producer is the one who shapes the overall project. He or she hires the director, hires the writer, and supervises the whole production from the beginning, middle, to the end. The producer is there before everybody else and after everybody else. So, the buck stops there. Most creative television producers are also writers and a few of them are directors as well. (In the case of a television series…) the person who creates the show generally becomes the executive producer and is the highest ranked person on the show. Underneath him/her will work a number of other producers who are generally writers as well. In my experience, on various TV series, such as Alien Nation and The Incredible Hulk, I have created, written and directed the pilot movie. And then once it goes to series, I become the executive producer and hire the rest of the team to help me shape it. The producers would help to work out what the various storylines would be. And then the scripts would be assigned to either themselves, or to staff writers, or, in some cases, to outside writers. Once the story is written to everyone’s satisfaction, then the writer goes on and writes a first draft of the script which everyone gives notes on to the executive producer, the studio, and/or the network, depending on those involved. It’s important for the producer, or the producers to fight for the things that they feel are important. And often you find yourself at odds with the studio or the network because either they don’t “get it”, or have other agendas that they’re dealing with, and it’s very important to hold onto the main vision that you started out with. I’ve run into that in most every project I have done. Sometimes their ideas are good and sometimes they’re not. And it becomes an exercise in creative diplomacy to try to hang onto what you feel is important, and what you feel is going to make the show successful versus the needs and desires of the network and the studio who are generally more interested in the bottom line (such as): Is it getting ratings? Is it making money? It’s a constant fight against art versus commerce. Once the script is approved for production, then the director becomes involved, and it’s his/her responsibility to take the script and realize it on the screen, ideally building organically from the strengths of the script and bringing the director’s own talents in order to enhance and mine all of the best stuff that’s in the script and find the best way to present it on the screen. That includes rehearsing the actors, getting them to understand what the points are that must be made in each scene/act of the story, and then deciding where to put the camera to best make the point of the scene. That’s the thing that I’m always asking myself, and other people that I’m working with… What’s the point of the scene? What are we trying to get across? Because everything that we do has to serve the play, as Shakespeare described to us in Hamlet’s Advice To The Players, before they presented the play, in Hamlet . The director is also responsible for getting the picture shot on time and efficiently. In episodic television, one has eight days, generally, in which to film forty-five minutes or so of story. That makes for an incredibly tense working environment where the director has to be completely prepared everyday, as he/she goes in, and know exactly what he/she wants and exactly what he/she has to get in order to accomplish getting the script translated to the screen. I formulate a very, very careful shot list which describes exactly what every shot will be, and in exactly what direction I am looking. And if there are multiple cameras involved, what each of them are shooting, in some cases, down to the specific lens. This shot list forms a basis from me to work from everyday and a checkpoint from where I can go back and say, “Am I going fast enough and getting the shots that I need?” It also gives me the flexibility on the set knowing what sort of the backbone my work is to be, but still giving me the flexibility and the opportunity to make those little inspirational discoveries that happen all the time when you suddenly discover a more interesting way to do it than what you had envisioned when you were just sitting in a room, and trying to figure it all out. A lot of things change when you are out there on the set. The director has to marshal his entire team and make sure they are all moving in the right direction as quickly and succinctly as possible. The director always needs to know what the next setup is going to be ahead of everybody asking him/her. To help you with that you have an assistant director, a couple of other directors, as well as the director of photography and the rest of the team. I always try to use their creative ideas and solicit ideas from them because they may think of things that I haven’t thought of that are better than the things that I’ve thought of, and the picture only ends up looking better that way. Once the film is shot and in the can, the editor has been working on it and presents the director with a rough cut which the director has to then go through and say, “No, you used the wrong take here. There’s a better performance in another scene (or) in another camera angle, (or) in another take.” And you sort of have to go through it literally, shot by shot and make sure that the editor is using all of the best material that is going to match the vision the director has had in trying to bring the writer’s vision to the screen. After the director makes his pass at the editing then, in series television, the executive producer or the producer would take the next shot at it. In some cases we would say, “It’s fine. Let’s leave it alone and move into post-production.” In other cases, you’ll re-edit the piece entirely, or just make a minute change here and there, to better enhance it, to get it down to the time it needs to be.
In motion pictures, as opposed to television, the director is still involved all the way through the whole process. And the director functions much more like the executive producer or the producer does in television and has much greater overall responsibility. Indeed, the title Executive Producer in film is generally a smaller, lesser credit than producer and is generally delegated to those people who are owed some type of credit because they helped get some of the money together or something like that. In film the producer is the stronger title. But ultimately it is the director who makes the motion picture. The director in film would also follow the production all the way through then post-production and dubbing process when the soundtrack is added to it and would even be present at the final answer print when it comes out of the lab. It is called an answer print because that is where you get the answers, if everything turned out all right. More often than not, in television now a days there is no answer print. It is done on video, as opposed to film. But when you are delivering on film you actually sit and look at the film with the color timer and the people at the lab to look at the film to make sure that it looks the way it is supposed to look.
Tamie: I am also an admirer of Steven Spielberg and Peter Weir’s works. Who are some of your favorite film directors?
Kenneth Johnson: I too enjoy Peter Weir’s work a great deal. I suppose my favorite director, if one has to characterize it that way, would be Akira Kurosawa, the great Japanese master, who created such extraordinary motion pictures. Probably my favorite film is The Seven Samurai which is his great epic about the samurai warriors. It’s a humanist piece that contains just about every kind of film making and emotional exploration there can be from action/adventure, to drama, to love story to true epic, all done with a sense of humor. If you have never seen it, you certainly should. In contemporary directors I think Steven Soderbergh’s work is quite interesting. Particularly the work that he did in Traffik. There was a wonderful sense of combining the important with the fanciful. And I always find his work to be very clever. Although I have only seen pieces of it at this point, I understand that Peter Jackson’s work in Lord of The Rings is also quite astonishing. And I am a great fan of François Truffaut, the French new wave director as well.
Kenneth Johnson: In television the producer is the one who shapes the overall project. He or she hires the director, hires the writer, and supervises the whole production from the beginning, middle, to the end. The producer is there before everybody else and after everybody else. So, the buck stops there. Most creative television producers are also writers and a few of them are directors as well. (In the case of a television series…) the person who creates the show generally becomes the executive producer and is the highest ranked person on the show. Underneath him/her will work a number of other producers who are generally writers as well. In my experience, on various TV series, such as Alien Nation and The Incredible Hulk, I have created, written and directed the pilot movie. And then once it goes to series, I become the executive producer and hire the rest of the team to help me shape it. The producers would help to work out what the various storylines would be. And then the scripts would be assigned to either themselves, or to staff writers, or, in some cases, to outside writers. Once the story is written to everyone’s satisfaction, then the writer goes on and writes a first draft of the script which everyone gives notes on to the executive producer, the studio, and/or the network, depending on those involved. It’s important for the producer, or the producers to fight for the things that they feel are important. And often you find yourself at odds with the studio or the network because either they don’t “get it”, or have other agendas that they’re dealing with, and it’s very important to hold onto the main vision that you started out with. I’ve run into that in most every project I have done. Sometimes their ideas are good and sometimes they’re not. And it becomes an exercise in creative diplomacy to try to hang onto what you feel is important, and what you feel is going to make the show successful versus the needs and desires of the network and the studio who are generally more interested in the bottom line (such as): Is it getting ratings? Is it making money? It’s a constant fight against art versus commerce. Once the script is approved for production, then the director becomes involved, and it’s his/her responsibility to take the script and realize it on the screen, ideally building organically from the strengths of the script and bringing the director’s own talents in order to enhance and mine all of the best stuff that’s in the script and find the best way to present it on the screen. That includes rehearsing the actors, getting them to understand what the points are that must be made in each scene/act of the story, and then deciding where to put the camera to best make the point of the scene. That’s the thing that I’m always asking myself, and other people that I’m working with… What’s the point of the scene? What are we trying to get across? Because everything that we do has to serve the play, as Shakespeare described to us in Hamlet’s Advice To The Players, before they presented the play, in Hamlet . The director is also responsible for getting the picture shot on time and efficiently. In episodic television, one has eight days, generally, in which to film forty-five minutes or so of story. That makes for an incredibly tense working environment where the director has to be completely prepared everyday, as he/she goes in, and know exactly what he/she wants and exactly what he/she has to get in order to accomplish getting the script translated to the screen. I formulate a very, very careful shot list which describes exactly what every shot will be, and in exactly what direction I am looking. And if there are multiple cameras involved, what each of them are shooting, in some cases, down to the specific lens. This shot list forms a basis from me to work from everyday and a checkpoint from where I can go back and say, “Am I going fast enough and getting the shots that I need?” It also gives me the flexibility on the set knowing what sort of the backbone my work is to be, but still giving me the flexibility and the opportunity to make those little inspirational discoveries that happen all the time when you suddenly discover a more interesting way to do it than what you had envisioned when you were just sitting in a room, and trying to figure it all out. A lot of things change when you are out there on the set. The director has to marshal his entire team and make sure they are all moving in the right direction as quickly and succinctly as possible. The director always needs to know what the next setup is going to be ahead of everybody asking him/her. To help you with that you have an assistant director, a couple of other directors, as well as the director of photography and the rest of the team. I always try to use their creative ideas and solicit ideas from them because they may think of things that I haven’t thought of that are better than the things that I’ve thought of, and the picture only ends up looking better that way. Once the film is shot and in the can, the editor has been working on it and presents the director with a rough cut which the director has to then go through and say, “No, you used the wrong take here. There’s a better performance in another scene (or) in another camera angle, (or) in another take.” And you sort of have to go through it literally, shot by shot and make sure that the editor is using all of the best material that is going to match the vision the director has had in trying to bring the writer’s vision to the screen. After the director makes his pass at the editing then, in series television, the executive producer or the producer would take the next shot at it. In some cases we would say, “It’s fine. Let’s leave it alone and move into post-production.” In other cases, you’ll re-edit the piece entirely, or just make a minute change here and there, to better enhance it, to get it down to the time it needs to be.
In motion pictures, as opposed to television, the director is still involved all the way through the whole process. And the director functions much more like the executive producer or the producer does in television and has much greater overall responsibility. Indeed, the title Executive Producer in film is generally a smaller, lesser credit than producer and is generally delegated to those people who are owed some type of credit because they helped get some of the money together or something like that. In film the producer is the stronger title. But ultimately it is the director who makes the motion picture. The director in film would also follow the production all the way through then post-production and dubbing process when the soundtrack is added to it and would even be present at the final answer print when it comes out of the lab. It is called an answer print because that is where you get the answers, if everything turned out all right. More often than not, in television now a days there is no answer print. It is done on video, as opposed to film. But when you are delivering on film you actually sit and look at the film with the color timer and the people at the lab to look at the film to make sure that it looks the way it is supposed to look.
Tamie: I am also an admirer of Steven Spielberg and Peter Weir’s works. Who are some of your favorite film directors?
Kenneth Johnson: I too enjoy Peter Weir’s work a great deal. I suppose my favorite director, if one has to characterize it that way, would be Akira Kurosawa, the great Japanese master, who created such extraordinary motion pictures. Probably my favorite film is The Seven Samurai which is his great epic about the samurai warriors. It’s a humanist piece that contains just about every kind of film making and emotional exploration there can be from action/adventure, to drama, to love story to true epic, all done with a sense of humor. If you have never seen it, you certainly should. In contemporary directors I think Steven Soderbergh’s work is quite interesting. Particularly the work that he did in Traffik. There was a wonderful sense of combining the important with the fanciful. And I always find his work to be very clever. Although I have only seen pieces of it at this point, I understand that Peter Jackson’s work in Lord of The Rings is also quite astonishing. And I am a great fan of François Truffaut, the French new wave director as well.
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