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Firefly: A Special Feature
Philip B. Gaines writes "Philip B. Gaines announces the completion of an independent multimedia commentary project, "Firefly: A Special Feature", a DVD based on the FOX television series created by Joss Whedon. A free examination copy of the project is available for those willing to provide feedback about this media experiment. "Firefly: A Special Feature" is a 3.5 hour multi-module review of Whedon's innovative space western series. The interactive review features a variety of interpretive and analytical components--all intended to further discussion of this seriously underappreciated show. The bottom line of the project is dialogue, not promotion. If you have seen "Firefly" before and found it intriguing--or even if you haven't--this project will make you think, argue, and perhaps even learn a bit. For "Firefly: A Special Feature", I have acted as writer, video/sound editor, and media producer, working with complete independence from the producers of the show or anyone else whose influence might bias the analysis. Plans are underway to do this kind of project again, so I would appreciate feedback on all levels. See the website for a formal description of the project Email pbgaines@pbgaines.com for a copy of the DVD."
Congrats on working with a great series that should have had a bit longer time on the air for people to get used to it.
;-P
And congrats on the free ad space
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
I liked it too and don't even recall what replaced it . It wasn't a perfect show but I thought it had potential. A shame it was shot down after just a few shows. :-(
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How many angry readers will you censor by modding them down until you realized that you placed a disguised advert as an article?
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I liked Firefly a lot, and was pretty pissed off at the mental midgets at FOX for replacing it with that vacuous teen cop show.
You apparently haven't been wathcing Fox for that long then. These are the same folks who canceled Married With Children (probably the best satire of the American family ever on TV) becuase it wasn't "family-friendly" but who think that 7th Heaven and similar shows reflect actual American families.
As long as there is a Second Amendment, there will always be a First Amendment.
There were actually 13 episodes. The first 10 were aired in the states, while the last 3 were in the UK. Fox has to be blamed for its low Neilsen ratings since it aired the episodes out of order which probably confused the audience.
This is a test. This is a test of the emergency sig system. This has been only a test.
Oh, come on. Some fan-fictions are actually quite good. Consider, if you will, that every single Star Wars book is a 'fan-fiction'. The entire Thrawn cycle, all of the New Republic books, Shadows Of The Empire, ALL OF IT. The only official Star Wars stories are the ones that George Lucas puts out.
Now, as for 'fan-documentaries', I haven't seen this yet, but it wouldn't surprise me if it was quite a good documentary. Who better to write about a show than one of the people who loved it?
The commentary lasts longer than the actual television series! I thought Firefly was actually an OK show. Not great, but not trash either. It's definately better than "The OC" though. What a crock of shit. .2 * "The Family Guy".
I don't get why all you geeks ejaculate for Firefly. I'll admit it was an interesting show, but not nearly as good as you all make it out to be. Personally, I think Andy Richter's show was 100 times better. On a scale of "The OC" to "The Family Guy", I would give Firefly about
By the way, the scale is logarithmic, so "Andy Richter Controls The Universe" != 20 * "The Family Guy".
As seen with family guy, if a cancled series released on DVD gets a high volume of sales, producers start to catch on that they made a mistake .
I know I'll be purchasing my copy when it becomes available! It really was an interesting show, a departure from the typical StarTrek/Babylon5 mushy sci-fi.
Call me crazy, but I felt the whole space cowboy theme was a little much. I watched it, but I don't feel the angst that so many fellow slashdotters feel for its removal. What I do share is the angst of what they replaced it with. They went from mediocre to just plain crap.
Now when they pulled Greg The Bunny, that really pissed me off!
A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over. -Benjamin Franklin
I'm a huge Firefly fan, and was pretty eager to see what this project would be like. Sadly, if the "What is Firefly" multimedia project that's available on the website is any indication, the project is going to be little more than a revisiting of a fan's favourite clips along with a voiceover filled with harsh invective and "woe is the world for the cancellation of Firefly!" mopings.
The show was, IMHO, very unique. It took me a while to get around the mix of high and low tech, and I think it took the writers a while to work it through, too, but by the end of its run, it had done an admirable job of building a believable future society where frontiersmen had to do what was "right" without benefit of the law's judgement. I wish that the voiceover focused more on how the show espoused classic Libretarian ideals in an easily consumable medium instead of simply whining about how it was "the best show on television" and "too ahead of its time for FOX executives." The latter gripes are subjective and weaken any analysis of what actually made the show worth watching in the first place.
Philip was kind enough to send me a copy of his DVD project a week and a half ago, and while I have yet to finish watching what is unarguably a massive project, everything I've watched so far is fantastic commentary. He exhibits extremely strong character analysis (essential for any discussion of Firefly) and is acutely aware of a plethora of layered subtleties in the show that I somehow completely missed, even having rewatched the episodes time and time again. Pay (if he's asking for money at all) whatever he's asking for material and/or S&H, because the project is well worth it. What I've watched of the DVD I've walked away from having an even greater appreciation for Firefly, and I didn't think that was possible.
Hopefully someone "up there" (that is to say, Whedon) will notice Philip's exemplary work and integrate it into the mythos somehow, because it deserves nothing less. Highly recommended.
Like it or don't like it, thats for each person to decide. Firefly hooked me with the first episode aired in the us. Can you imagine anyone at starfleet running the badguy through a warp engine on purpose? The actors were settled in thier roles much better than any other first season show I know of. The characters backgrounds and motivations were hinted at just enough to make you want to know more about all of them. And when you found out more, it just made you want to find out even more. I actually don't watch shows much, and I certainly don't watch to reward 'innovation'. When I watch, I want entertainment. Sometimes that comes from novelty, sometimes familiarity. Sometimes lots of different things at the same time. The only thing I think sucked about firefly was its getting canned.
No matter how subtle the wizard, a knife between the shoulder blades will seriously cramp his style.
For me what made it different, worlds different, than any other TV science fiction is that it actually had decent writing, well developed characters and something more humanly interesting to do than 'save the universe from the forces of darkness'. This was different because it was about an unheralded struggle to get by, something a little closer to home for most of us than the epic space opera we usually see. Not that epic space opera is bad, I'm just talking about what's different with Firefly, and what makes it special for so many of us.
Actually you've touched on exactly what I liked most about Firefly. The story of Serenity was about 'real' people. They weren't super-heroes in elastic suits fighting rubber suited aliens bent on human genocide. The stories didn't feature bigger and bigger weapons followed by bigger and bigger explosions.... (yawn).. How much of those do we need anyway. Firefly sustained and incredible hour of television drama on the simply premise of a minor engine malfuntion. That's drama. Admittedly, this draws a different audience than than the boom-boom action adventure stuff, and if anything, that's what Fox didn't get. They tried to sell it as some kind of kiddie show when it is just so much more than that. Look at the message boards. Firefly draws people of all ages, heck even girls like it! Just because this broke the mold on the epic 'splosions that you like doesn't mean it wasn't great, quite the contrary.
Star Trek's format has always been very episodic.. The Original Series, Next Generation, and the earlier years of Deep Space 9.. were all characterized by NOTHING ACTUALLY CHANGING. At the end of every episode (or perhaps multi-parter), things are invariably the same as when they started.
Like think about TNG... at the end of the series, what has changed since the first episode? I mean REAL widespread changes? A few minor crew position changes.. Picard has his Borg memories to drag up every once in a while... Data has a centuries old head.. oooOOOOooo... but REALLY... it's still the exact same show. You could take virtually any episode plot from any season, and plop it into any other season, and few if any changes would have to be made.
Babylon 5 shattered all this. A 5 year storyline was planned out from the beginning, including an outline for every single episode. Furthermore, JM Straczynski wrote somewhere in the vicinity of 80% of the episodes entirely himself... the depth, scope, complexity, and CONSISTENCY is simply breathtaking in the later seasons. Star Trek, and nearly all television shows, are essentially anthologies with the same characters and setting. Babylon 5 is a full-blown novel, with each season representing Introduction, Rising Action, Complications, Climax, and Denouement.
Anyway, in the later seasons, DS9 started trying to tell a more continuous story, with the prophecies, wormhole and war against the Dominion and such. It did add more weight to the series' conclusion, but was a pale shadow of B5's galaxy spanning saga, IMHO.
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson