Haha, that music is so goofy. Still, they're incredible episodes, of course.

Okay, but that Angel trailer is goosebump-enducing.

Although it doesn't make much sense. But who cares?
It made me realize just how high quality that final season was. Seriously, it looks very expensive for its genre. Sorry, I've been watching the Heroes marathon on SciFi, and witnessing a lot of promos for *ahem* cheap shows.

[ edited by CaptainB on 2007-05-19 16:50 ]

CaptainB | May 19, 19:43 CET

I remember reading a David Fury interview where he said that Angel Season 5 had a budget equal to Buffy Season 1. So considering that it's incredible how well the season looked!

angeliclestat | May 19, 20:14 CET

Sorry, but that's lunacy.

There is no chance in hell that Angel S5's budget was equal to BtVS S1. S1 of BtVS had like, $6, and Angel S5 had Smile Time, slo-mo effects, the army of demons from Not Fade Away, as well as the actor's paychecks which would have been CONSIDERABLY bigger than what the BtVS cast was getting in S1, and a billion other things that year that were no where near close to what BtVS S1's budget was.

Dhoffryn | May 20, 01:39 CET

I'm with Dhoffryn. Not sure what Fury was smoking when he said that.

gossi | May 20, 01:49 CET

I too doubt that the budget was quite THAT small, but it was certainly less than previous seasons of Angel. One reason they built that amazing Wolfram & Hart office set was it allowed them to stick to one set location much of the time.

But whatever the budget was, Season Five was outstanding, and "Not Fade Away" the hands-down most perfect series finale ever.

Haunt | May 20, 02:21 CET

From what I recall (and I could be wrong here), the overall budget for season 5 stayed more or less the same as season 4 but the actors' wages went up by a lot and so in production terms Angel season 5 took a hit. Hence all the filming in the Wolfram and Hart offices.

Simon | May 20, 03:42 CET

Also, the Wolfram and Hart offices became the House sets. Well, in my head -- a lot of the same furniture is used. I'm sure there's a quote from Joss somewhere saying Firefly cost about the same as Angel. If that's true it's around $1.5m or so an episode from memory.

I thought they got away with the budget stuff in season 5 wonderfully, by the way. Illyria's CGI effects (stop time etc) was great, plus the well of forever etc - top stuff.

[ edited by gossi on 2007-05-20 00:48 ]

gossi | May 20, 03:47 CET

I think all of Joss' shows have used their budgets to tremendous effect. Aside from the occasional CGI effect or costume that just didn't quite work in Buffy and Angel, the production values usually looked very impressive, particularly at the time when they were made, and I think a lot of the stuff from season four of Buffy onwards and most of Angel is still excellent by today's TV standards. Every season things got better and better, for example dustings which started off as very basic at the start of Buffy but got more complex over the years.

I think season six of Buffy in particular looks really fantastic, Once More With Feeling being a great example of everything looking brilliant and vivid and the production looking quite expensive due to the care and attention paid to making the show.

I think Angel season five also deserves a mention simply because they managed to continue to improve the visual quality of the show as they did every year, but did so on a reduced budget, whereas I'm assuming every season of Buffy and Angel usually receieved a bigger budget than the last which is partly responsible for the improvement. You really wouldn't guess that they had less money to work with because it was still so well produced, and there were a lot of really impressive effects such as those in Smile Time, the Deeper Well or any involving Illyria. I'm actually watching this part of season five at the minute so I'm appreciating it even more.

Razor | May 20, 23:07 CET