J.J. Abram’s Latest brings Feature Level Effects, Filmmaking, and Sci-Fi to the Small Screen

by Josh Roth @ 9:13 pm September 14th, 2008

J.J. Abrams is one of the biggest name in sci-fi and all media (movies, TV, and even comics) at the moment, and frankly he deserves quit a bit of the praise. Lost was his first work that caught my attention. It’s brilliant use of science fiction concepts but with real life consequences and down to earth, epic, cinematic filmmaking quickly made it a work of television genius. Lost set a new high for TV shows, the scope of the show was enormous, with epic effects and more epic storytelling; which series like Heroes quickly followed. Fringe takes what Lost started and brings it to the next level. Abrams’ latest foray into TV is much more liberal with it’s use of sci-fi, but the trademark Abrams storytelling and filmmaking elements are still there in spades, making Fringe another milestone in television history alongside Lost and Heroes.

Fox invested around $10 million into making the Fringe pilot, and it being a J.J. Abrams property success was pretty much guaranteed, the question was could Abrams live up to something like Lost?? The answer so far: not quite, but damn promising. The impact of the pilot isn’t as monumental as when Lost crash landed into our paths. When I first saw Lost I knew that the line between the world of cinema and small screens was beginning to seriously blur. Fringe is the next logical step from there, the $10 million may sound absurd, but the quality really does show. I’m interested to see if the show can possibly keep up this level of quality, doing so would make Fringe a serious TV achievement.

I am a stickler for visual effects, especially in TV shows. One of my only complaints about The Middleman’s first season was the effects, which could be chalked up to it’s low budget. Effects on Fringe are simply perfect. Most of the budget for the pilot must have gone into the cinematography and VFX. The premise of the pilot revolves around an invisible skin airborne toxin that melts people’s flesh. Beyond being a totally awesome concept, the first scene of the pilot is full of people’s skin melting and jaws falling off. It’s on the level of a mainstream feature, but it’s a TV show! Later in the episode one of the characters becomes infected and his skin slowly becomes transparent. This effect is simply stunning, every time we see him he’s a little more transparent. Best of all the camera isn’t pinned down like it usually is in a major TV effects shot. Thanks to it’s enormous budget the pilot isn’t restricted by effects.

Story wise the pilot is a little weak, but it sets up some major arcs for upcoming episodes over the season. The character’s aren’t particularly deep or interesting, least not nearly as much as they were in the Lost pilot. Some of them are, Walter (the mad scientist father pictured at right in the middle) is fascinated and hillarious in his own right. But I have hope for the future, because the thing about this particular pilot is that it’s mainly a proof of concept that a show can bridge crime drama and sci-fi and not become rediculous and cheesy (no offense X-Files fan but the show doesn’t take it self as seriously as Fringe does). Even though it does take itself fairly seriously, Fringe has a definite sense of humor, along the lines of Lost. Characters faced with unreal sci-fi concepts don’t take them at face value, they react like real people would, which is one of the reasons that J.J. Abrams’ version of sci-fi works so well in the mainstream.

So stayed tuned, the pilot is impressive and rather stunning visually. This show is shaping up to be another landmark TV show from Abrams and crew. If they can keep up the quality of the effects and filmmaking and bump up the story telling it could really step things up.