I'd like to point out that as far as people living on other planets are concerned, a story set on Earth is set in space. 
good excuse for a film to be in space?
- Thread starter MadaBidyoni
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You can set that one in Buenos Aires.
you saw "Lockout"?
its just another "jail break" film. its just that the jail is in space... big f*&ing deal
Okay, I have to ask, do you have something against stories being set in space?
i don't have anything against them.
the contrary - i love them.
and why i love them? because they take you where no man has gone before...
you want them to be unique as possible & not "same same new name".
Hi
most of the space films & tv shows don't have a good excuse to be in space.
i mean, they could be easily be set in sea for example. Instead of "sailing" with a space ship - sail with a normal ship etc...
do you know about a good "excuse" for a story to be set in space?
Space itself is an embodiment of desolation. Try lying alone on a mountaintop during a new moon, while imagining that the Earth isn't beneath you. Instead try to picture it is one of the stars on the sky. If you convince yourself, you'd never feel as alone. The endless ocean isn't a good match for that. Films rarely make a good use of that metaphor, but still being in space alone can be enough to change your perception of the story.
The places you can reach from space are far more disconnected and independent from anything you've ever witnessed on Earth. When you sail with a ship, the place you reach will be filled with life, will be able to keep you alive and provide you with sustenance. You will only run into plants, animals that you're familiar with, and human cultures that you share something common with. In space, none of this is true, and if you ever bump into something that you're familiar – that is a surprise.
As for the mention of Pandora above, forget about all the hype about “visual splendour”. Try to think about it as a place that looks and feels like home in some many ways, yet it is nearly as deadly as outer space. Try to think how hostile it is. That has to be worth something on its own.
To be fair, most of spaceship battles in films aren't set up in space, but in an alternative environment with distinct properties and physical laws that only resembles space. Now, some shows (like nuBSG) tried to make the physics a bit more realistic, and I feel that added a layer of awesome to it.
^Right. A truly realistic space battle would be all but unwatchable, since it would just be distant points of light occasionally darting past at incomprehensible speeds -- if even that, since the ships would probably be stealthed and trying to avoid visual detection as much as possible. Explosions would be split-second flashes of blinding light and then nothing -- no roiling fireballs, since those only happen in atmosphere and only from the kind of low-energy liquid-fuel explosions that FX artists favor because they're visually impressive and relatively harmless.
The only way to film a realistic space battle would be something like Fail-Safe -- focus on the people inside the ships, watching their monitors, trying to detect the enemy, taut with suspense as they're keenly aware that if the enemy detects them first, they're goners. If anything, TOS episodes like "Balance of Terror," which approached space combat like a submarine movie, were more realistic than modern Star Wars-style space battles, because you never saw the opposing ships in the same shot.
The only way to film a realistic space battle would be something like Fail-Safe -- focus on the people inside the ships, watching their monitors, trying to detect the enemy, taut with suspense as they're keenly aware that if the enemy detects them first, they're goners. If anything, TOS episodes like "Balance of Terror," which approached space combat like a submarine movie, were more realistic than modern Star Wars-style space battles, because you never saw the opposing ships in the same shot.
I've always liked this completely plausible and canonical idea of combat in the Star Trek universe, but one that we never get to see occur. From Arena [http://www.chakoteya.net/StarTrek/19.htm]:
Before the attack can happen, Enterprise is caught by the Metrons.
Oh, right, good point. Realistically, the events in a space combat (once the long waiting periods end and the actual shooting happens) would happen at such high speeds that only computers could carry out the decision-making.
in other words - if they're making a space film, they better make a space film. & not just use space as a general environment (but really "sell" us some normal earth like scene).
Meh.
Many so called down-to-Earth films are completely unrealistic. For instance, ever see Speed? What about Rambo III? How about The Adventures of Robin Hood? Or Romeo and Juliet?
Exclude films with crucial elements that are unrealistic or implausible, and you exclude almost all film. Why must films set in space be held to a higher standard of plausibility than films set elsewhere?
Many so called down-to-Earth films are completely unrealistic. For instance, ever see Speed? What about Rambo III? How about The Adventures of Robin Hood? Or Romeo and Juliet?
Exclude films with crucial elements that are unrealistic or implausible, and you exclude almost all film. Why must films set in space be held to a higher standard of plausibility than films set elsewhere?
I don't think BSG had any more realistic physics than Star Trek. They're all equally preposterous if you engage your credulity for any length of time. The space transportation in Avatar looked as realistic as anything I've seen, with the exception of the plucked-out-of-nowhere 4-year journey, which wouldn't get you very far in the real universe.
not necessarily...the ships got atmosphere inside them. oxygen tanks too... it will not explode as on earth but you will see more than a split-second flashes of blinding light.
they also have futuristic weapons onboard that might explode diffrently.
you could see internal ship shots of fire in zero-G...
That's a popular misconception, but it's completely wrong. First off, if you vent a ship's atmosphere into vacuum, it will dissipate almost instantly -- it won't be dense enough to sustain combustion for any length of time. Second, as I said, the kind of fireball explosions favored in TV and movies are used because they're very low-energy explosions (deflagrations rather than detonations) -- which not only means they're less dangerous for film crews to work with, but that they last longer and therefore look more interesting. The more powerful an explosion is, the faster it either burns up or blows apart its reactants, and thus the faster the fireball disappears. Watching Mythbusters over the years, I've seen plenty of real explosions of varying levels of power, and in the really powerful ones using C4 and other high explosives, the fireball is burned out in less than the blink of an eye. Even in super-slow-motion playback, the flash of light only lasts for maybe a couple of frames -- at hundreds of frames per second! After that it's just dust and shrapnel. Any explosion powerful enough to tear a spaceship apart would have to be a high-energy explosion, and thus it wouldn't have a fireball for any significant length of time.
And if you're talking about a nuclear weapon, or an antimatter warhead like a photon torpedo, then the explosion would be over even faster. The effects we see associated with nuclear explosions here on Earth -- the huge expanding fireballs, the big, slowly rising mushroom clouds, the powerful, devastating shock wave, the fallout -- are mostly caused by the compression and heating of the atmosphere around the bomb, and by the debris thrown up by the explosion. A nuclear or antimatter explosion in vacuum, without an atmosphere to intensify the effects, would be much briefer, a millisecond flash. On film or video, it would be over within much less than a single frame.
But they would not look like the kind of fireballs that we're used to seeing, because that type of fireball is specifically the result of the low-energy combustion of liquid fuel in aerosolized or vapor form, expanding turbulently into a surrounding gaseous medium. It would be impossible for any spaceship-sized explosion in vacuum to have that kind of roiling, cloudy appearance; at most it would be a tenuous expanding sphere of gases. And again, it would dissipate so quickly in vacuum that you'd need to capture it in extreme slow motion to be able to see it clearly.
Not really. Again, if the ship is open to vacuum, the atmosphere would blow out instantly. All that stuff you see in movies and TV where decompression is this lengthy hurricane-like wind that can go on for minutes is just as fanciful and wrong as the explosions. It would be more like a balloon bursting -- over in a split-second.
Not to mention that fire burns differently in microgravity because there's no convection. It doesn't look like the kind of flames we're used to, or the kind we see in TV and movies. Here's an article and video about it.
who said the ship is open to vacuum?
they got hit
the artificial gravity is off
but there are a lot of rooms in the ship that are sealed to space... they just have no gravity now.
well, great! then they should use that unique thing
The topic of conversation had been about the depiction of exploding ships in space shows. You didn't make it clear that you were changing the topic to something different.
the main idea here is as i first posted
"do you know about a good "excuse" for a story to be set in space?"
things that are unique to space.
"do you know about a good "excuse" for a story to be set in space?"
things that are unique to space.
I know what you asked, but you've persistently refused to listen to the answers, so I don't know why you bother.
It case these points haven't been touched on before:the main idea here is as i first posted
"do you know about a good "excuse" for a story to be set in space?"
things that are unique to space.
1. To seek out new lifeforms and new civilizations.
2. Atlantis doesn't exist.
3. /Thread.
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