Back from LA with Honorverse move news

namelessfly wrote:They certainly proved the concept of combat at realistic range in the movie Battleship.

Hutch wrote:

Orangesky wrote: 2. In most scifi movies the battles are fought 10 metres apart between ships. This is done to get them in one frame and show the sparkling action.

This is also not necessary. If you look at submarine movies, such as Hunt for Red October and in my opinion the best one Das Boot, they do not usually show the opposing ship in one frame.

Tension and action can be generated without the ships being in viewing distance of each other and works very well. They show the actions of one ship and then the effect of these actions on the other. Personally, I believe that such submarine movie style action would be appropriate for the Honorverse.

No disagreement here, I'm sure they'll have to find a method of shortening the minutes it takes the missiles to reach detonation range, but that's for the script writers to worry about.

This style lends itself well to the type of weapons the Honorverse has:

Missiles are visible and can be shown when fired and when they impact. The rest of the time they are shown on a plot, which the characters look at on the bridge.

Not impossible, but I'd be willing to bet a dirham or two that you see the missiles in transist, see them getting blowed up by counter-missiles (which we also see) and seeing them detonate--if you're going to grab an audience that by and large haven't read the books (and whose grasp of physics is shaky at best), you need them to visually see the things, not just dots on a tac board.

Lasers, Grasers etc. are invisible in vacuum. A firing sequence can be shown as a glowing point on the hull. The beam itself would be invisible. Then the enemy ship is shown. When the beam passes through its side walls, it can become visible (just the end of it where it passes through them) and the impact.

You are undoubtedly correct. And I would be willing to wager another dirham that the beams will be visible and accompanied by sound effects--again, sacrificing physical realities to tell the story in a dramatic, visual way.

And I find that I am ok with that.

Good first post, please continue. We seem to have added a number of new posters here recently. Enjoy yourselves and keep bringing new ideas up.

Taurus2 wrote:RFC, is there anything you can tell us about how the various nation's ships will look and be differentiated? Or is that tightly under wraps?

Spacekiwi wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:Edit: I wonder if they're somehow going to make the Grayson ships look 'old fashioned' while still being identifiable as destroyers or cruisers.

Steam funnels? ......

jchilds wrote:Has there been any work done on getting a composer yet or are we too early in the whole process for that? It'd be a shame to get an otherwise great movie with a relatively bland, mostly forgettable, formulaic soundtrack that doesn't do the material justice.

For that matter, a good composer can probably help provide some of the recognition cues for the ships without totally butchering the existing visual aesthetic.

Anybody have suggestions/preferences?

Relax wrote:Movie better be longer than RFC's stated 90min or its a guaranteed flop or at best mediocre. Name one good movie that is this short? One that isn't a cartoon anyways.

61Cygni wrote:First of all, the Honorverse is fantasy space opera, not hard SF or a realistic take on the genre, so I don't mind the usual space opera movie conventions being used e.g. plenty of loud explosions, visibile beam weapons, etc.. It's called artistic or dramatic license.

61Cygni wrote:With that in mind, something will have to be done with the long ranges involved with missile combat, as the many minutes being the launching of missiles and their reaching a target simply can NOT be shown in real-time, and you also can't show people standing around watching a display plot for lengthy periods of time in a movie. Sure, smart editing can help with the problem, but I still see either the combat ranges being decreased or missile speed being greatly increased or probably both.

clancy688 wrote:

namelessfly wrote:They certainly proved the concept of combat at realistic range in the movie Battleship.

rdt wrote:But you are correct as far as HoQ is concerned. It should be at least 120 - 150 minutes. Oh, my sore butt...

namelessfly wrote:They certainly proved the concept of combat at realistic range in the movie Battleship.

I loved Wrath of Khan but it set a horrible precedent for the Star Trek genre.