V: "Unholy Alliance - Feb. 1 on ABC - Grading & Discussion

[startrekwatcher]

I swore off this show but I'm snowed in and there is nothing on tv so I thought I'd see how far into the depths of crap this show could sink and it truly outdid itself tonite.

The VFX were awful, the visit to the Vatican was a mess, Tyler is as annoying as ever, what is the point of Diana again? and these little subplots every week where Erica and the FBI go investigating another case that might be linked to the Vs are so pointless and stupid. The writers have done an awful job of fleshing out and defining the Vs as a race and exploring their motivations which at this point is so all over the map I don't know what to make of it.

I'm surprised they didn't trim another 3 or 4 episodes off their initial offerings because it is just spinning its wheels as far as I can tell until they can reach the last few episodes of the season.

POOR! Oh how I miss good television.

 

[Aragorn]

The writing on this show isn't very subtle, is it? All it would take is footage of Anna's multiple overt strong-arming offenses to get people to see them for what they are.

But alas, the writing is just as good as the special effects.

 

[Jack Bauer]

It's as dumb as ever. Subtle ain't it's strong suit. It's as subtle as Star Trek's "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" episode with the half black/half white faced dudes. At least I'm finding it more lively than last season. Last year it was a struggle to get through it. At least now it's got cheesy stuff like Diana riping that's priest's throat out and talking to Anna with blood all over her face.

When will Tyler die? He's a whiny little douchebag. He's so emo and shit. He makes Anakin look macho. The only thing he seems to be good for is getting Laura Vandervoort to strip down to her undies.

 

[Alex1939]

Well for "V" I thought this was excellent and for my TV watching in general I enjoyed the hour I watched this so it was at least a good overall to me.


(Spoilers)

I enjoy how they've brought up the conflict within the Vs about souls. It sets up an interesting internal problem for Anna.

I actually liked how Tyler was annoying and naive, but even more so reckless and violent, in this episode. I think they are growing him into the villain for the show. I mean, they must realize everyone that watches the show hates him, right? So perfect to spin him off into a villain.

I liked the reveal that the priest has past experience killing people in combat.

I liked the new FBI partner, and that's he's working behind the good FBI chick's back (can you tell I'm bad with names?).

I liked the priest character that was a V and I thought Decker (the news reporter) did well this episode.


Overall, a very entertaining episode that is moving the show in a better direction.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

I thought this was pretty good. Written by Rockne O'Bannon, interesting. He certainly brings more of a feeling of life to the show. It no longer feels artificial and unconvincing. He's even almost selling the blather about souls. I fear there's no way to ever make that idea really work, but at least he's being ambitious.

But wow is Erica the world's worst FBI agent or what? Contaminates a crime scene for personal reasons and forgets the FBI can access traffic cameras. She should have known to come up with a cover story for visiting Father Jack. They're having an affair!

When will Tyler die? He's a whiny little douchebag. He's so emo and shit. He makes Anakin look macho.

I've been thinking for a while that Tyler needed to be evil. There's nothing else you can do with that actor, since he repulses us anyway. I hope he becomes an evil pawn of Anna and a traitor to his species!!!

Back to the soul stuff. Not sure they've thought it through at all, but let's say that there was a way of scientifically proving that souls exist, and somehow manipulating the "stuff" that makes up a soul, even transferring it from one person to another. Let's say not all sentient species have souls, and that humans do have them while V's do not.

There's your conflict. The V's are literally after our souls, which after all, confer immortality!

That would have the advantage of being something I don't recall ever having seen before. Aliens invading because they want our planet, our water, to use us as breeding fodder, to use us as hosts or to eat us - old hat! Cool to see something new!

 

[Sindatur]

I'm still not convinced we are supposed to accept that the soul is someone you can locate, I'm still thinking it's a reflection of how Alien the Visitors are, that they are actually trying to locate it.

 

[The Habs Fan]

I was planning on not watching this episode for a few days, but now that I hear Dutch Wagenbach is in this episode, and it was written by Rockne S. O'Bannon... I'm probably going to watch this tonight.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

I'm still not convinced we are supposed to accept that the soul is someone you can locate, I'm still thinking it's a reflection of how Alien the Visitors are, that they are actually trying to locate it.

Now that O'Bannon is on board, the V's will soon have a Soul Extraction Machine, probably very similar to the magic-fingers contraption from a couple weeks ago.

Isn't it confusing that both the V's and the Fifth Column are using similar symbols (the letter V and the Roman numeral V). That's going to result in a comically embarrassing mix-up one of these days!

 

[Sindatur]

I'm still not convinced we are supposed to accept that the soul is someone you can locate, I'm still thinking it's a reflection of how Alien the Visitors are, that they are actually trying to locate it.

Now that O'Bannon is on board, the V's will soon have a Soul Extraction Machine, probably very similar to the magic-fingers contraption from a couple weeks ago.

Isn't it confusing that both the V's and the Fifth Column are using similar symbols (the letter V and the Roman numeral V). That's going to result in a comically embarrassing mix-up one of these days!

HEHE, yea, I was watching Tyler last night, thinking "what an idiot. Doesn't he realize "V" is for Victory (against the visitors)

I'm still bummed John May arc was cut down so quickly. It would've been great if Michael Trucco had been around for awhile

 

[Pingfah]

Wow, the whole scene in Vatican City was one of the worst green screen effects i've seen in mainstream TV like this. Terrible.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

I know, it was pretty hilarious. But I can't think of too many green-screen uses in TV - Lost used to do bad SFX too - so maybe it's just the TV budget?

 

[Gepard]

^TV budget and terrible methodology, with poor material to work from. It was a weeks-long struggle with multiple revisions to get the Vatican stuff to look even that good.

For example, during production, inclement weather forced the crew to film the main actors inside, on a greenscreen stage, rather than outside with natural sunlight. Later, they did film background extras and filler material outdoors. So right off the bat, the lighting never matched between different elements, which made integrating the live-action footage difficult – and, of course, the actors never looked like they were outside, either. Second, there was no "real" background footage of the Vatican that showed all the angles and camera moves the way they needed it. All Zoic had to work from was a bunch of (poorly shot) stills of the area taken by somebody at the production company who didn't know anything about visual effects; they then had to stitch reasonable backgrounds for the shots together from the wonky photos, filling in with all-CG elements as needed. (The cobblestone ground is entirely CGI the entire time, because even that looked better than the photos). There were a bunch of other technical issues, too, related to the quality of the Vatican images and greenscreen footage, but suffice to say, it was a nightmare to work on. Some of the early comps had the actors with purple skin and clothing turned pink.

 

[Pingfah]

^ I didn't expect someone who worked on it to reply

Thanks for the info, that was interesting.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

That reminds me of the stuff we do at work. WTF, why is this pink!?!

I sympathize with no budget/no time to get it right...so familiar...

 

[Snaploud]

Some of the early comps had the actors with purple skin and clothing turned pink.

I bet somebody suggested leaving it that way. Sci-fi fans can rationalize anything.

"It's all part of a V plot!"

 

[TheSeeker]

Is Laura Vandervoort in her underwear in this ep? If not...I won't bother.

No, but we did get a few nice shots of her in jeans. Boy, can she ever fill them in nicely.

 

[Gepard]

^ I didn't expect someone who worked on it to reply

Thanks for the info, that was interesting.

Always happy to show off.

Fun fact: some of the far background extras in the Vatican shots were Zoic employees, which they filmed one day out in the parking lot with some greenscreen. I was one of the guys out there who did a bunch of standing, walking and other idle activities to help fill out the crowd scenes. Early on in the process, the comp guys tried to slip us in in the most obvious places; there was a time where I was really prominent in one of the shots. Alas, the VFX supervisor asked to have all the obvious cameos stuff taken out for being too distracting, but I'll admit when I watched the episode, I spent less time paying attention to the story and more time staring at the people to see if I was still in there somewhere.

Incidentally, my involvement with V has been limited (and I've moved on to different work within Zoic), and I'm not a compositor, so I didn't deal directly with much of the Vatican issue, but I was lucky enough to be doing some 3D work for that episode at the same time as they were trying to make it work; so I got to sit in on dailies while the VFX guys were reviewing the day's work and trying to figure out how to fix the broken shit. Pretty entertaining stuff.

I should say, for the record, that I know a lot of people take the piss out of V's effects work – and I can't really blame when when all you see is the result – but the folks who work on the VFX for the show are some of the hardest working and most dedicated folks I've ever met. People there think nothing of spending 12 or 14 hour days, 7 days a week sometimes, working on this stuff. And they all care about quality, and know when it falls short of what we'd like to see, as it often does. As far as I'm concerned, the fault for V's dodgy FX work falls squarely on the shoulders of the producers, writers and production company, because they're the ones asking for unreasonable numbers of shots on all-greenscreen stages, delivered on a TV budget and schedule. As an example, the "light" episode of season 2 was 150 visual effects shots. The heaviest – which has yet to air – was over 350.

Think about that – 350+ VFX shots in a 42 minute episode. That's more than some feature films. The offline for that episode – "offline" being an in-house edit of just the shots that need FX work – was 27 minutes long. 27 minutes. 64% of an episode involved compositing, greenscreen or some form of CGI. And it has to be done in a matter of a few weeks. It's insane, but I'm pretty proud to have been part of a group that can pull it off anyway.

 

[Level 2 Diagnostic]

No offense intended to anybody who worked on the effects for this show, but I find it amazing how the original V, despite being made 28 years ago, has better special effects than the new version. Though I think most of that was how they actually built real sets for the mothership. And they were operating on a miniseries budget, which I assume is higher than a weekly series.

 

[Aragorn]

^ The original V made cuts to their budget via getting rid of the actors, which is why "regulars" on the series seemed to either die or leave every other episode.

 

[Pingfah]

^ I didn't expect someone who worked on it to reply

Thanks for the info, that was interesting.

Always happy to show off.

Fun fact: some of the far background extras in the Vatican shots were Zoic employees, which they filmed one day out in the parking lot with some greenscreen. I was one of the guys out there who did a bunch of standing, walking and other idle activities to help fill out the crowd scenes. Early on in the process, the comp guys tried to slip us in in the most obvious places; there was a time where I was really prominent in one of the shots. Alas, the VFX supervisor asked to have all the obvious cameos stuff taken out for being too distracting, but I'll admit when I watched the episode, I spent less time paying attention to the story and more time staring at the people to see if I was still in there somewhere.

Incidentally, my involvement with V has been limited (and I've moved on to different work within Zoic), and I'm not a compositor, so I didn't deal directly with much of the Vatican issue, but I was lucky enough to be doing some 3D work for that episode at the same time as they were trying to make it work; so I got to sit in on dailies while the VFX guys were reviewing the day's work and trying to figure out how to fix the broken shit. Pretty entertaining stuff.

I should say, for the record, that I know a lot of people take the piss out of V's effects work – and I can't really blame when when all you see is the result – but the folks who work on the VFX for the show are some of the hardest working and most dedicated folks I've ever met. People there think nothing of spending 12 or 14 hour days, 7 days a week sometimes, working on this stuff. And they all care about quality, and know when it falls short of what we'd like to see, as it often does. As far as I'm concerned, the fault for V's dodgy FX work falls squarely on the shoulders of the producers, writers and production company, because they're the ones asking for unreasonable numbers of shots on all-greenscreen stages, delivered on a TV budget and schedule. As an example, the "light" episode of season 2 was 150 visual effects shots. The heaviest – which has yet to air – was over 350.

Think about that – 350+ VFX shots in a 42 minute episode. That's more than some feature films. The offline for that episode – "offline" being an in-house edit of just the shots that need FX work – was 27 minutes long. 27 minutes. 64% of an episode involved compositing, greenscreen or some form of CGI. And it has to be done in a matter of a few weeks. It's insane, but I'm pretty proud to have been part of a group that can pull it off anyway.

That is pretty crazy yes.

I don't think the VFX are a complete disaster, that one stood out to me particularly though. I was just watching the showreel on their website, I recognised a lot of the stuff, some of it really good. Think I saw some BSG and Fringe in there?