Science Fiction Television Production Process and Methods
The need to portray imaginary settings or characters with properties and abilities beyond the reach of current reality obliges producers to make extensive use of specialized techniques of television production.
Through most of the 20th century, many of these techniques were expensive and involved a small number of dedicated craft practitioners, while the reusability of props, models, effects, or animation techniques made it easier to keep using them. The combination of high initial cost and lower maintenance cost pushed producers into building these techniques into the basic concept of a series, influencing all the artistic choices. By the late 1990s, improved technology and more training and cross-training within the industry made all of these techniques easier to use, so that directors of individual episodes could make decisions to use one or more methods, so such artistic choices no longer needed to be baked into the series concept.
Read more about this topic: Science Fiction On Television
Famous quotes containing the words science, fiction, television, production, process and/or methods:
“Man lives for science as well as bread.”
—William James (1842–1910)
“I write fiction and I’m told it’s autobiography, I write autobiography and I’m told it’s fiction, so since I’m so dim and they’re so smart, let them decide what it is or it isn’t.”
—Philip Roth (b. 1933)
“So by all means let’s have a television show quick and long, even if the commercial has to be delivered by a man in a white coat with a stethoscope hanging around his neck, selling ergot pills. After all the public is entitled to what it wants, isn’t it? The Romans knew that and even they lasted four hundred years after they started to putrefy.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)
“The myth of unlimited production brings war in its train as inevitably as clouds announce a storm.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“I’m not suggesting that all men are beautiful, vulnerable boys, but we all started out that way. What happened to us? How did we become monsters of feminist nightmares? The answer, of course, is that we underwent a careful and deliberate process of gender training, sometimes brutal, always dehumanizing, cutting away large chunks of ourselves. Little girls went through something similarly crippling. If the gender training was successful, we each ended up being half a person.”
—Frank Pittman (20th century)
“How can you tell if you discipline effectively? Ask yourself if your disciplinary methods generally produce lasting results in a manner you find acceptable. Whether your philosophy is democratic or autocratic, whatever techniques you use—reasoning, a “star” chart, time-outs, or spanking—if it doesn’t work, it’s not effective.”
—Stanley Turecki (20th century)