griffin
6th June 2009, 02:11 PM
Sunday 1pm.
Panelists - Flint Dille (writer, story editor), Paul Davids (writer), David Wise (writer), Bryce Malek (story editor eps 4-65).
Flint Dille also wrote the 'script' for the 2007 Movie computer game.
Mentioned that they had to buy their own toys to know what the characters even looked like or how they transformed or their gimmicks. Apparently Hasbro (and Marvel) didn't give them much to work with when writing up the episodes.
They didn't even think about how the audience would easily know who was talking when they were in their alt-modes.
David hated Spike - thought he was boring.
They also consider Wheelie to be an embarassment to the franchise...
They plugged a website that has some of their interviews - http://cybertronchronicle.freewebspace.com/cybertronchronicle.html
(they used to be in there somewhere, but you'd have to do a bit of searching, or just google/bing/yahoo it)
They recall that the 1986 Movie was being done at the same time as the first seasons of the Gen1 cartoon, in a nearby building, so was very busy between them both, and there was often some poaching of people by the Movie team.
Nelson Shin (the 1986 Movie Producer) hired Paul over lunch and he started working for him that afternoon.
They were astounded at how many characters they had to write for in the Gen1 cartoon, compared to other cartoons of the time. There were 104 characters in season 1 (in just 16 episodes!), and 120 NEW characters in the 3 part Rebirth (equating to one new character needing to be introduced every 30 seconds!!!).
They mentioned that Hasbro gave them quite a bit of creative freedom (a bit like the comic people).
They talked a bit about the negative reaction Hasbro got for killing off Optimus Prime in the Movie, and after some kid locked himself in his room for 2 weeks over it, Hasbro decided that they needed to bring him back. Unfortunately for Hasbro, there was already an episode in production with 'Zombie Prime' making a brief return, only to die again. So the traumatised kids had to go through a second death of their beloved character, before he would be resurrected properly at Hasbro's request.
Joe Bacal (of Sunbow I think) was apparently the person who thought up the name 'Transformers'.
The existence of a fourth season beyond Rebirth is just a rumour. They new it was the final story before they scripted it, and even though it was cut from a 5 part story to 3 parts, there was never anything planned beyond Rebirth.
The origin of Optimus Prime in Wardawn was David's idea, but wasn't originally planned when scripting the episode, as it was just meant to be an episode to feature the Aerialbots and learning about their morality.
Panelists - Flint Dille (writer, story editor), Paul Davids (writer), David Wise (writer), Bryce Malek (story editor eps 4-65).
Flint Dille also wrote the 'script' for the 2007 Movie computer game.
Mentioned that they had to buy their own toys to know what the characters even looked like or how they transformed or their gimmicks. Apparently Hasbro (and Marvel) didn't give them much to work with when writing up the episodes.
They didn't even think about how the audience would easily know who was talking when they were in their alt-modes.
David hated Spike - thought he was boring.
They also consider Wheelie to be an embarassment to the franchise...
They plugged a website that has some of their interviews - http://cybertronchronicle.freewebspace.com/cybertronchronicle.html
(they used to be in there somewhere, but you'd have to do a bit of searching, or just google/bing/yahoo it)
They recall that the 1986 Movie was being done at the same time as the first seasons of the Gen1 cartoon, in a nearby building, so was very busy between them both, and there was often some poaching of people by the Movie team.
Nelson Shin (the 1986 Movie Producer) hired Paul over lunch and he started working for him that afternoon.
They were astounded at how many characters they had to write for in the Gen1 cartoon, compared to other cartoons of the time. There were 104 characters in season 1 (in just 16 episodes!), and 120 NEW characters in the 3 part Rebirth (equating to one new character needing to be introduced every 30 seconds!!!).
They mentioned that Hasbro gave them quite a bit of creative freedom (a bit like the comic people).
They talked a bit about the negative reaction Hasbro got for killing off Optimus Prime in the Movie, and after some kid locked himself in his room for 2 weeks over it, Hasbro decided that they needed to bring him back. Unfortunately for Hasbro, there was already an episode in production with 'Zombie Prime' making a brief return, only to die again. So the traumatised kids had to go through a second death of their beloved character, before he would be resurrected properly at Hasbro's request.
Joe Bacal (of Sunbow I think) was apparently the person who thought up the name 'Transformers'.
The existence of a fourth season beyond Rebirth is just a rumour. They new it was the final story before they scripted it, and even though it was cut from a 5 part story to 3 parts, there was never anything planned beyond Rebirth.
The origin of Optimus Prime in Wardawn was David's idea, but wasn't originally planned when scripting the episode, as it was just meant to be an episode to feature the Aerialbots and learning about their morality.