I never saw Firefly during its network run, but was aware of it. A few years later, I got the Serenity feature film, and had no idea what was going on or who the characters were. It made no sense to me because I knew nothing of the backstory. So I was not impressed. But earlier in February I did get a used dvd box set of the series, and have watched each episode a few times along with the commentaries and special features. I'm still getting used to the style, since I grew up during early 50s and 60s sci-fi before Star Trek existed. I like the storylines and performances, but I'm not fully decided on the production design and space western concept. I'm not a big fan of sci-fi comedies. I've just watched "Our Mrs. Reynolds" again, and there's a few things about Saffron's scheme I didn't understand. The colony apparently is legitimate since its marriage customs are in Simon's encyclopedia. Is anyone in town aware of what she's doing? All of them? The Elder who gives Jayne the rain stick? If not, how long was she in the town in order to establish her presence before she was able to hook Mal? If this trick has been pulled several times (as she's apparently done this before with the ship scrappers), shouldn't there have been rumors about it? If the whole town's in on it, where do they find the volunteers to be killed by the duped strangers during the river bandits scenario? Does she just go to different planets with a different method of finding a mark? I assume everything she tells Mal aboard the ship is a lie, even the suggestion that the Elder is involved. If there's an Easter Egg of Adam Baldwin singing "The Ballad of Jayne" on the dvd (as Wikipedia says for the dvd set issued years ago), where is it found and how is it accessed on a dvd player? I had to buy one recently after the computer I watched dvds on died.
She's an opportunist who is adept at infiltrating an insinuating herself very quickly. Given the way she generally operates, that deal with the scrappers was probably a one time thing to get her off that backwater moon, where she'd probably been stuck since some other job went south. There's no reason to assume the villagers had any clue what she was about. Try google. There's plenty of sites out there that have instructions for DVD easter eggs. Failing that I'm sure the whole thing is on youtube.
1. Insert Disc 4. 2. From the main menu, select Special Features. 3. Select More. 4. Highlight, but do not select, "Joss Sings the Firefly Theme". 5. Press Left-Arrow, highlighting the ornament above. 6. Press SELECT.
PsychoPere, thanks, that worked. More noob questions-- I know there were two separate sets representing the interior of Serenity. Are examples of how those sets were laid out available? I'm interested in the actual stage blueprints, not the kind that treat it as if it were a real spacecraft. Was there only one shuttle set, which they could redress for Inara's quarters? Or did they build a fancy set and plain set? Sometimes I like to try and reconstruct stage plans in 3d modeling software.
If I remember correctly when rebuilding the sets for Serenity they used a ton of stills from the show as reference. Not sure if that means that there were no original blueprints left or if it means that they used the stills for detailing. In other words, I'm probably not much help.
I don't know about blueprints, but the ship's two decks were built separately on different sound stages as full contiguous sets. You can read more about that here and here.
I'll have to see if the computer I'm using now (8 years old) can read the dvd special features. It doesn't play as smoothly as my recently crashed machine did. But if I can, I might be able to get screenshots of some diagrams that appear during them.