Time for another pre-premiere look inside the workings of VS5. Before I launch into a sneak-peek introduction of one of our new main characters, I’ll bring you up to speed on what the crew have been working on recently.

We actually had a bit of a crisis when one of our staff writers, who was attached to write two episodes of the season, had to pull out of the project to focus on other commitments. That, as you can imagine, had us in a bit of a panic at this stage of production. But does that mean there’s gonna be two less episodes in VS5? (I hear you cry). No, don’t worry, we’re still going to have a full 22-episode order, just like the real thing. Fortunately for us all, one of our writers – Angelo Shrine – has taken on a second assignment (which I’m very pleased about after reading his first draft of Episode 9), and fellow executive producer Tony Black will carry the other one.

As for myself, having finished up work on Episode 10, I’ve turned my eye towards Episode 14, although I admit I’ve been looking further ahead to a big Lucy Butler episode that I’m going to pen late-on in the season. There’s going to be a few other familiar faces cropping up there, so it should be a lot of fun. Coming back to the not-so-distant future, I can now reveal that the title of the second episode is “Chrysalis”, and it’s essentially part two of the premiere story. That will air on Friday, January 12th, the week after “The Begotten”.

Now, as promised, a little bit of advance information on our new lead character, besides Frank Black. Some of you may have seen the image of James Badge Dale on one of the BVC ads, and he’s going to be the face of one Detective Brad Locke. He’s a young but talented guy in the Washington D.C. police department, and has the distinction of being one of Frank’s former students from the FBI Academy at Quanitco. Frank has been lecturing there part-time in the past few years, and Brad was one of the more promising cadets to attend his classes, but he was ultimately washed out by Frank because of his impatience and bull-headedness despite his talent. That’s going to be a source of tension you’re going to see between them as they come into contact again, and we think we’ve managed to create a relationship that you haven’t exactly seen before in the show’s past. You can consider him the second star of the show, with VS5 starring Lance Henriksen and James Badge Dale (although not for real, of course, just in the virtual sense!).

We're less than four weeks away now from our premiere, so it’s time to get down to work. As before, the blog will become a more regular thing when we’ve actually got episodes to talk about on a week-by-week basis, but you might get one more before the grand kick-off if you’re good (even if you’re not ). There are only a couple of questions posted in the forum for me to answer this time around, so if you’ve got any more, be sure to get them in and it will make this whole shebang a lot more interesting I’m sure.

colts45

heres one, it's kind of off the handle, but will you have episode trailers?

We’re looking into this at the moment, and the various options that are open to us. This kind of work will all be done by our art director, JT Vaughn, so we have to take into account his availability and workload. However, I can say that we will definitely have banner ads for every new episode, and possibly a few full-page print ads here and there. What we wont have is video trailers for the episodes, since we don’t have any filmed material to add in. The trailer you saw earlier for VS5 as a whole is probably all you’ll get in terms of video, because it’s just not practical to put out something like that on a regular basis. We are working on our own variation of the main title sequence though, so that might be something to savour in terms of video material.

colts45

this one is in regards to the bvc. how will it be different , or set itself apart from other from other vs sites?

What’s important to realise about BVC is that it’s so much more than what you would normally call “fan fiction”. Everything is treated seriously and as much like real TV production as possible, minus the shooting part. Every show on there has a definitive running length and air day established, so it’s never just people putting out stuff if and when they feel like it in an endless string of fantasy scenarios. Every show is written in a professional format using professional software, and every show has its own virtual “cast” and set of artwork. This isn’t to say that there aren’t any VS sites out there at the moment that cling to these ideals, because there are a number of them. Monster Zero Productions, or MZP, is a well-known one which BVC is closely affiliated with. You can check that out to get a sense of how BVC is going to work.

That’s it for now. I said there weren’t many questions, so get some more rolling in next time. Stay tuned in the coming festive period for more tidbits of casting news and episode titles as they get rationed out, and keep up the chatter in the VS5 forum.