beccaelizabeth's dreamwidth journal

I've been reading fic set in Tanya Huff's Smoke series, which is wizards and demons and ghosts and vampires on the set of Canada's best rated syndicated vampire detective show, Darkest Night.

... if you're thinking Angel you're way, way more upmarket than they are. Forever Knight if they're doing great. And there's versions of all your favourites there, like Lee Nicholas, better actor than he ever gets the roles to show.

So I dreamed that particular subset of chaos, and that they'd got the rights to do a TV adaptation of Lord of the Rings.

The dream started when the new to Canada series boss had blown through a majority of the budget already and had basically only filmed interiors in one kingdom. He was looking increasingly grey and acting disconnected from reality, which seemed pretty normal given he'd have to explain the budget thing to CB, so it took us a while to realise the latest round of supernatural nasty was hiding out in the sets treating extras as takeout. So then the action plot kicked off, Henry the royal vampire turned up, it was all very excite.

... I got stuck with that thing I dream where my mouth is full of chewing gum and trying to get it out pulls my teeth out, so I was mostly tangential to that part, until I did a hostage exchange to try and talk the bads into surrendering before Henry got all territorial on them.

Didn't work.

But, plot resolved, that still left CB Productions with rights to Tolkien's work, an announced mini series of Lord of the Rings, and less than half the already miniscule budget they started with.

So drawing on my extensive experience of fanfiction, transformative works, and having watched Slings and Arrows that one time, I saved the day and said: treat it like Hamlet. Like any Shakespeare. There are people that already revere the text, and every change you make will be scrutinised, but, your job here is to translate it for your specific audience. To give it your angle. To make the text your own.

We can't be Peter Jackson. So we're here to make it as cheap Canadians.

... as rallying cries it lacks something, especially in my English accent, but.

If we're trying to convey the feeling of Lord of the Rings, of a distant Shadow that wants to eat the world, of basically peaceful people who never even heard of the players before, let alone stirred up the trouble of so much as one battle of this war?

Where do we start?

( Read more... )


So I checked a wiki for references, wandered off for too long, and ran out of steam on generating ideas. I wouldn't call Tolkien one of my fandoms, though I've watched and read. I'm sure others have had many better ideas.

But I just woke up from brainstorming how to salvage this terrible overbudget cliche of a production, and it seemed to me the trick was to demolish it.

And you couldn't afford to cover the whole Lord of the Rings in the budget we've got left for a mini series, plus every change to the original focus of the text is going to wind fans up, so, open it right up, make this the first season of a much bigger story, tell the stories off the edges of the page, go and focus on the little people again for real.

And make the story your own.


LORD OF THE RINGS: RETRANSLATED


Way more fun.

So I've been thinking on connotation, and how just a few tweaks in the setting can give you an entirely different experience. 48 seats is a lot. You could fit the whole cast of even quite large TV shows into 48 seats, with room for redshirts to spare. So why do Our Heroes never ride the bus?

Think about it. Battlestar Galactica? Could be redone on a bus. ( Read more... )

Like Babylon 5. Again, tin can, people. ( Read more... )

Firefly? Practically *was* a bus. I mean, they trundle around, bits falling off all over, just trying to make enough money to keep on moving. You do that with horses, its a western. On a spaceship, SF. Either way has a certain set of connotations, adventure and romance and all that.
Make it a bus? The romance is gone. ( Read more... )

Andromeda would be tricky. Their coach would have to be a relic of a bygone era of better engineering. Probably have to be foreign. Also, extra shiny and able to repair itself by eating rocks. And everyone would want to steal it.

Same with the Liberator. Except theirs was from a highly futuristic society all obsessed with computers. So, Japanese, with cruise control and a dashboard that talks to you in koans.
Blakes 7 has the glowing ship too, but theirs was like a limo. You can get limousine coaches. They seat about 15. I figure they're for rock stars or something.
oh *dear*, now I have the AU bunny where B7 are a band...

Farscape-on-a-bus: the whole living ship thing would be an issue. ( Read more... )

And then there's Star Trek. ( Read more... )

I saw a LJ icon once said 'Margate SG1'. That's much funnier if you've been there.
SG1 has no bus.
SG1 needs no bus.



You know, the more I think on this, the more British it seems. ( Read more... )



SeaQuest... would not be a bus show. Unless someone ignored the signs somewhere with a causeway or a really high tide.
*glug*
*glug*
*glug*


Angel would have problems with light proofing. Probably have to travel in the suitcase section.

And Buffy?
It's canon.
Everyone saves the world, and what saves them?
The bus.

Buffy can make anything cool.