Interview: Mike Vejar Sci-fi television is a small world, and nowhere is that better reflected than in the short list of directors who regularly frequent the various genre series. Director Michael Vejar's name is on that short list. Over the past 15 years, Vejar has directed episodes of every Star Trek series from Next Generation on, as well The X-Files, Babylon 5 and Crusade. Some of most noteworthy Babylon 5 episodes are credited to Vejar, including "Comes the Inquisitor" and "War Without End," as well as the TV-movie In the Beginning. We spoke with him a few days before the B5: Rangers premiere. Q: You've worked with Babylon 5 creator Joe Straczynski on numerous episodes since season two. Did do you develop a shorthand communication that helped when doing B5: Rangers? A: Certainly there was a shorthand between Joe and myself. But everything that I do as a director is how I react to what's written on the page. That affects how I approach the project. Q: What was your greatest challenge in the script? A: We had a finite budget, but there were some very spectacular visual effects called for in the show. Trying to figure out a way to do justice to the material, and not have [the film] become incredibly over-budget, was a bit of a challenge. But I knew from working with Joe in the Babylon days that if you approach him with a problem, he always has a solution, and usually the solution turns out to be something better than what was originally there. He did that with the sequence in the gunnery pod. Originally that was written as a chair that was mounted on the bridge. The floor would go away, this chair would take the gunnery officer down into the pod and the chair would rotate 360 degrees. Well, it became incredibly expensive to try pull that off, and so we were trying to figure out a way that we could do it in a budget-sensitive way. And Joe came up with this idea to have her free-floating in air, which became tremendously difficult for the actress [Myriam Sirois] to do, because she was on wires, but I think the three sequences in the picture that we wound up with are twice as good as what we would have done had we had the chair as originally written. Q: Did you have a particular approach in mind for filming? A: Wherever I could, I tried to keep the camera moving in on everything. Camera movement, and the movement of people, always seems to add an element of drama and drive to a picture, and a sense of pace. To me, when the camera is moving in on someone, it's kind of compelling me and drawing me in. Q: By its nature, the Liandra has tight spaces and a compact design. Did this hinder shooting on the bridge, which frequently had multiple people packed into a small space? A: Joe described the ship as having a submarine kind of feel. It was a challenge to light the bridge. I was working with [director of photography] Henry Chan, and I would ask for a shot, and he'd just try his darndest to give me the shot. And I don't think I ever asked for a shot that he couldn't do. We never wanted the ship to look like a nice, sleek, brand-new ship. It had been through the wars, and as we continued through the story, we saw it degraded down to the point where they were almost in darkness towards the end of the picture. So Henry was working in an environment that he couldn't hide any lights in, because the ceiling was so low and it was a permanent ceiling. Also, it's the kind of set that could become boring with as much time as we spent on it. Every scene could start to look the same, and that would drag the story down. But we were constantly changing the lighting effects by using panels that would be blown out at different points of the show. Q: Did having Andreas Katsulas, the only returning cast member, help the new cast find its rhythm more quickly? A: When each one of those characters worked with Andreas, they rose to the occasion. In his presence, you'd better work or you're going to get left behind. They all stepped up to the plate and I thought they did great — especially Dylan. There were a couple of scenes there where I thought he was really good with Andreas; I think he elevated his performance because he was working with somebody of Andreas' quality. Q: Do you get a personal satisfaction out of seeing your vision transformed to reality once the special effects are completed? A: That's what is the most fun, when you visualize something and get an idea of how you can play it. Then in the shooting process you try and point to this visualization that you have in your mind, and then when you see it all in its final edition…! And it's so much better than I imagined.