How Do You Adapt Outsider Space Battles To Film/TV?

[Bamax]

This is arguably easier to do than sanzai.

The obvious solution is do close ups and zooming in and out camera shots for a sense of scale.

Probably the coolest sight would be the Loroi blaster beams widening out at light second distance where they do less damage.

That said, I think it would be cool to have scene that shows what a 30g accellerating warship would look like for a sense of pure speed to the viewer.

As an example, just showing a ship fly near the surface of a moon at 30g would show the moon surface zoom by so fast it may start to blur a bit.

Another cool thing that would show the raw speed is some indication of how many seconds till impact from a given weapon even at long range after firing or launching it.

From what I have seen in the comic, Outsider is like Babylon 5 and Star Trek had a baby together with regard to technology.

Since Outsider vessels fly newtonian, but pack uber weapons on a level of star trek with defense screens as well.

[Demarquis]

Not sure if you meant the battles in "Outsider" specifically, or space battles in general. Epic space battles seem to have gone out of style. The reason, I heard somewhere, is that they all look alike--it's apparently hard to make any one epic space battle appear unique.

[Arioch]

When you can move and zoom the camera, it's much easier to imply motion and give a better sense of scale than it is in static comic panels, without relying on Homeworld-style drive trails the way the comic does. Even when there are no nearby objects to the subject in motion, you can give the impression of movement by panning the camera so that the starfield slides past in the direction of motion, etc. And it would be relatively quick and easy to show a spacecraft braking by rotating and firing its engines in the direction of motion, whereas in the comic that would take an entire page of panels.

[Bamax]

When you can move and zoom the camera, it's much easier to imply motion and give a better sense of scale than it is in static comic panels, without relying on Homeworld-style drive trails the way the comic does. Even when there are no nearby objects to the subject in motion, you can give the impression of movement by panning the camera so that the starfield slides past in the direction of motion, etc. And it would be relatively quick and easy to show a spacecraft braking by rotating and firing its engines in the direction of motion, whereas in the comic that would take an entire page of panels.

I agree with all you said except one thing.

Although moving the star field in the opposite direction of travel is an often used method of illustrating speed in scifi... especially in Star Trek, the truth in reality is a bit... both dull and weird.


Stars are so far away that you would have to go either extremely fast to see the star field move OR be rotating or orbiting around really close around an object you are tethered to.


During fast travel at best you may see stars slowly move in the opposite direction if looking out the side window, but you would hardly notice any movement if at all up ahead or behind you.

Even at extreme speeds... like warp speed this hardly changes much... and by warp speed I do mean Star Trek warp speed.

People have already done the math and it checks out below in these quotes from another forum made months ago.




What bothers me more than lack of blueshift in ST is that stars are depicted to clearly move much faster than they should.

Voyager, one of the fastest ships in ST, at its max speed of 9,975 (not counting Threshold, since that should be erased from canon), travels at about 2700 c, according to Memory Alpha, which is about 7,5 ly per day.

In Milky Way, average distance between star is about 5 ly, yet we see stars whisking by one after another. From that visualization, one would assume the ship is travelling at about 10 ly per second.
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RCgothic
RCgothic
Posted January 17

I believe the "official" explanation is that the streaks are interstellar dust interacting with the deflector and warp fields.

Warp 9.99 is roughly 10,000 times faster than light. At that speed it'd still take nearly 3.5h to reach Alpha Centauri from earth. 1 star every 3.5h does not a blizzard of warp streaks make.

Warp 9.99 is supposed to be *fast* in universe. The Enterprise D cannot acheive warp 9.9 under its own power.


Me: So even at warp speeds beyond what normal Trek spaceships can actually manage without scifi plot trick of the week artificial boosting you would only see stars SLOWLY crawl past the screen every 3.5 hours lol.


If you want the classic warp star dash effect you either need to be using a fast rotating frame of reference or be traveling at ridiculous warp speed (A lightyear per second lol).

[Arioch]

Although moving the star field in the opposite direction of travel is an often used method of illustrating speed in scifi... especially in Star Trek, the truth in reality is a bit... both dull and weird.
Stars are so far away that you would have to go either extremely fast to see the star field move OR be rotating or orbiting around really close around an object you are tethered to.

You misunderstand. I'm talking about rotating the camera around the ship so that the background has the illusion of movement. The stars don't actually move relative to the ship.

[Bamax]

Ok I see.. kind of like thos wild west rotating shots or how they do in Discovery for crew... but wayyy too much lol.

[bunnyboy]

Make it look more like submarine stories than usual scifi. Space is shown sparily and it is usually boring.

Black space with distant stars
Pilot face
Pilot looking intensively and some proximity sensor noise
Then the hair and some small items are moving by g-forces even with inertia dampeners as pilot is making controlling maneuvers
Space and something goes past way too fast

[Sweforce]

Not sure if you meant the battles in "Outsider" specifically, or space battles in general. Epic space battles seem to have gone out of style. The reason, I heard somewhere, is that they all look alike--it's apparently hard to make any one epic space battle appear unique.

You don't shoot at where the enemy are but where you predict that they will be. It will be a bit of a guess work and beams once fired will follow their given path. Missiles however will home in on their targets. A space battle by nature should be a long range battle and I cam to think of old war movies depicting submarines shooting torpedoes. In a WW1 or WW2 setting torpedoes are not homing so shoot and hope for the best and THAT take a while, the delay between fireing weapons and the knowledge of whatever you hit or not. In a space battle even beam weapons with their light speed nature will have such delays. Now keep in mind that when the statistic of a ship says it have an acceleration of 30 G that is just that, acceleration, not speed. Even the slow accelerating humanity vessels should be able to reach the kind of speed the fastest acceleraing loroi vessels have if then spend enough time and fuel accelerating. But their manuvers are more predictable due to this so they are easier targets.

[Bamax]

One thing that most scifi movies get wrong for dramtic effect is sound in space battles. There is none... aside from those inside the ships.

But exposions in space are totally silent.

I really liked 2001 A Space Odyssey because space was silent as it should be.

I would find it both amusing and interesting that if Outsider ever was made into a movie and it bucked the trope. Like if the space battles were silent apart from the dramatic music and scenes actually on board spaceships.

[Arioch]

I don't agree that this is "wrong." Movies require a certain amount of abstraction; there isn't really a camera floating out in space recording the action, so the fact that a microphone in the same location wouldn't pick up any sound is a somewhat questionable technicality. You could just as easily say that the sound is being heard from inside one of the spacecraft. Indeed, if I remember correctly, many of the space shots in 2001 aren't silent; you hear the sounds of the interior of the character's spacesuit (breathing and the hiss of the air supply).

In 2001 I think this choice works very well for the stark tone of the movie, but I think the same choice would probably not have worked very well for most adventure movies like Star Wars or Star Trek. Note that they didn't make the same choice in the more conventional 2010. Whether it could work for a hypothetical Outsider movie would depend on the tone that the director had chosen.

[Bamax]

I am saying that music or communication could play out during space scenes, or blasts when shown inside ships.

A stark tone, while not conventional, is a novelty.

Ha... only reason space battles SEEM exciting is because of sound effects and flashiness.

[Arioch]

I am saying that music or communication could play out during space scenes, or blasts when shown inside ships.

Music? There's no music in space!

Music is a perfect example of commonly accepted elements of movies that are not at all realistic, but which aid in creating mood and properly telling the story.

[spacewhale]

Who is your preferred composer for space battles?

[Arioch]

Who is your preferred composer for space battles?

It depends on the tone of the movie chosen by the director. Even for a specific genre like space opera, there are many different ways to go. It's hard to go wrong with the traditional classical orchestral John Williams-style soundtrack, but you could also go a more modern synth route similar to Babylon 5 or TRON. One of my favorite anime movies, Crusher Joe, has a sweeping orchestral score that sounds a bit like a classic Western. I could also imagine a sort of retro soundtrack a la Quentin Tarantino... I would love to see him make a science fiction movie. And there are a variety of scifi movies with contemporary pop music soundtracks (especially anime), though I think in many cases that doesn't age well.

My favorite space battle soundtrack, that I can think of, is probably James Horner's score for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.

[spacewhale]

Yesterday's Enterprise (TNG) had one theme that was pretty great, 'Skin of Teeth' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cdy-vIbbeA, for the battle with the alternate timeline Enterprise-D fighting the Klingons. Helps set a different tone than the typical optimistic space explorer vibe of TNG.

[Bamax]

I think this works. It has starkness due to a lack of an orchestra mixed with electronica.




Kind of a mash up of new battlestar galactica with Babylon 5. Would seem a long battle though unless done right though.