Moonlightaholics

I've really enjoyed the discussion comparing the two photoshoots. I agree, it's very likely that much less thought and effort went into the pilot photoshoot (no point unless the series is picked up!), but the dynamics between the characters as posed are really interesting. It's hard to judge whether it was intentional or not, but if it was, I think the biggest thing it shows is the change in the dynamic of the Mick-Josef relationship. Josef goes from a paternal figure with his hand on the knowledge, so to speak, to a modern, sophisticated, fashionable person (who happens to be really old).

I can't find the thread where to discuss the Moonlight pilot. I've finally watched it all.
One thing that I found is that in the scene where Beth looks up Mick's credentials, she finds his adress. It's 704 Gansevoort St. in New York. Which, according to Google Earth, is a dock with a warehouse. Either he had his office in a warehouse at the docks, or they applied the same kind of Moonlight logic like when Drexel Ave. ended up on Pershing Square.

francis wrote:I can't find the thread where to discuss the Moonlight pilot. I've finally watched it all.
One thing that I found is that in the scene where Beth looks up Mick's credentials, she finds his adress. It's 704 Gansevoort St. in New York. Which, according to Google Earth, is a dock with a warehouse. Either he had his office in a warehouse at the docks, or they applied the same kind of Moonlight logic like when Drexel Ave. ended up on Pershing Square.

You can find Mick's non-existent PI office in a warehouse on the docks in NYC, but you cannot find the ML Pilot thread here...

That's adorable, dear francis...

A kind soul moved the post for me.

I've watched this quite a few times now, while making a video for it, and interestingly some of my views on it have changed. Mostly about Beth's role ... I wasn't that impressed at first, but I like Shannon Lucio's take on it better every time I watch. I think her Beth had real chemistry with Mick, just not in the same way that Sophia's Beth did. And there were things about the way this Beth was written that I really responded to. I liked how she was written as daring and reckless, but in a much quieter way than the Beth we know. And I liked her relationship with Carl here -- he really seemed to respect her, instead of just being annoyed with her.

Loved the little girl (or girls) who played little Beth too; she was incredibly expressive. I agree that it's pretty implausible for her to have helped Mick that way, but I still just loved the way she pushed the gun to him and helped him in the fight.

There were some scenes I really wish they'd kept. Like, of course, Mick playing the trumpet at a jazz club .... so much cooler than what we got ....
and the whole scene of Beth and Mick both looking up at the moon from different parts of the city. Wish they'd recreated all of that shot with our Beth, instead of just using the half with Mick! I liked the way Beth realized and remembered so much more when she woke up, which in a way makes more sense .... and it makes the embrace at the end even more special, with more meaning attached to it. And I really preferred the way Mick's voice-overs gave us the vampire lore along the way, at the pertinent moments, rather than having the interview at the beginning.

Here, Josef seems more like he's a father figure to Mick than a best friend. I'm extremely glad they made the change to a younger-looking character with hidden depths! I didn't care for this Coraline, though it's hard to tell about her as she's written so one-dimensionally here and is vamped out most of the time. But I did like the turning scene better here. I really liked the way Mick's eyes flashed with the infrared vision, and though it's hard to see how it would really work story-wise for the vampires to have this hypnotic ability, I adored the scene where Mick couldn't bring himself to make Beth forget him.

I didn't like the vampire makeup -- it looked more like they were turning to stone. And though I generally liked the darker tone, it went overboard for me in a couple of places. And the end, with Josef and Coraline, really seemed to detract from the wonderfully emotional scene with Mick and Beth.

But all in all what's really struck me is how MUCH is in here. This thing is only 25 minutes long, yet it covers the entire plotline of the first episode, plus Mick meeting Coraline from the the seventh, the turning scene from the third, Beth's discovery of Mick's secret from the second, and her finding out he's been with her all her life - from the eighth!

There are so many beautiful scenes ... and so many gorgeous new shots of Mick .... that I couldn't resist making a video. (Plus I had to see if I could condense that whole storyline down from 25 minutes to music-video length!) It's here if anyone would like to see it.
http://moonlightaholics.com/viewtopic.p ... f320b552df

AWESOME AWESOME AWESOME VIDEO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And I love your analysis of the pilot...
But I REALLY love that vid!!!!!!

Shadow, your video is better than the pilot presentation, I swear.

I agree about Shannon Lucio. Although I love Sophia's portrayal of Beth, I like the fact that Beth in the pilot presentation was a more seasoned reporter. She'd had time to develop relationships, and people took her more seriously. I love Sophia's Beth and would never want to trade her, but if we'd never known her, I could have grown to really like this Beth.

I agree with you, Shadow, that there's just an amazing amount of information crammed into this short piece. I don't think it would be reasonable to put so much into one episode of a running series, but this presentation did a bang-up job of putting across the stories of Mick and Beth, including a generous amount of backstory for Mick, in an amazingly short period of time.

Mick as a trumpet player in a smoky jazz club worked on so many levels. I'm sorry they made 50's, guitar-playing Mick so dorky. And the turning scene in the pilot presentation was so much sexier--that's what you'd have expected from Mick and Coraline, with their sizzling chemistry. On the other hand, I liked Mick's next-morning reaction to the turning much better in the series... although Mick's fury at Coraline helped explain the cold-hearted way he dumped her in the fireplace when he rescued Little Beth. They seemed to want to indicate that Mick's love for Coraline died on their wedding night. (But then why would they have stayed together for 30-odd years?)

How wonderful. Thanks so much for the link, Grace. It's lovely to discover new ML sites after all this time.

I have only seen parts of this pilot before and what a difference seeing the whole thing made. I would totally have fallen in love with this version too. There was certainly a lot to like - more than the bits I didn't like for sure. I was very intrigued with the character of Beth. She was completely different to the Beth I adore but I liked her. She is certainly harder than Sophia but I really enjoyed watching her in the context of this pilot which I didn't expect.

What I liked:
I loved Mick's look. His shorter, curly hair made me swoon just as much as the version we ended up with.

Mick's attitude rocked. I love how 'in your face' he seemed and I really loved how open he seemed to be with Beth. He didn't really seem to want to hide from her and I liked that.

I would loved to have seen more of the heat vision and the mind control.

Carl made a really good impression. I can't figure out why they would have changed him.

Much more of a noir feel about it. Darker in tone to the eventual series and it would have been nice to see that side of ML remain.

What I didn't like:
Coraline was awful. Not a single redeeming feature about her and that wasn't good for a character that meant so much to Mick. So pleased they replaced her with Shannyn.

The vamp look was dreadful. Not impressed with the vamp make up at all. I couldn't have looked at that every episode and I certainly wouldn't have swooned over vamp Mick as much.

Not sure I would have clicked with the Mick & Josef relationship with this pairing. It just seemed odd to me.

coco wrote:Carl made a really good impression. I can't figure out why they would have changed him.

I know a lot of times, the actors who played a certain character either get a different job or just aren't able to commit to the rest of the series, but perhaps they really wanted to just start over and keep only Alex. I dunno.

I'm so glad you liked the video, Grace! After spending so much time trying to make our familiar old scenes look new, it was really fun actually having new ML scenes to work with!

Alle, thanks so much .... you can see of course that I only put the parts I loved into the video ....
and the things I didn't like just sort of disappeared ....

I felt the same way about the scene after the turning; it was a lot better the way they did it in the real show. And the image that Mick saw in the mirror here was really bizarre. It wasn't even their vamp faces, which is what I would have expected from something like that. I'm glad that part got left behind! And I wonder about how they were planning to use Coraline. It does seem like they were trying to show that Mick's love for her died completely when he was turned, so perhaps in this incarnation they weren't going to be on-and-off for the next thirty years. Wonder if Coraline would have ended up being just a villain if they'd gone this way, instead of the complex character she became.

Coco, I think I agree with about everything .... I was surprised how much I liked Mick's look -- I hadn't thought I would like the shorter hair, but he looked fabulous here! And I too thought the actor playing Carl was very good. I think one of Wondergirl's theories must be correct on that.....

I recently got hold of a DVD of the unaired ML pilot episode. It's already up on Youtube, of course, but in case anyone would like a clean copy to keep, I've made a download link for it. This is all in one part, and there aren't any logos on it.

Download link:
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=OTPDDROL

I've discovered that the file won't play on every video player (It doesn't seem to work on Windows Media Player, for instance) but it plays beautifully on VLC Media Player and SMPlayer.

If it doesn't work on your current player, here are links to free downloads of VLC and SMPlayer.
VLC: http://www.videolan.org/vlc/
SMPlayer: http://smplayer.en.softonic.com/

Shadow a big kiss from me to you. Since I watched this on Youtube I've so been wishing there was a way to get it unto my own computer and then I see you put a download link for it here for all of us. Thank you so much. I've downloaded it and already have watched it. It looks beautiful and all in one piece. I wasn't sure if it would play after you said there was some problems with it not playing in WMP but I have Cyberlink Media Suite and it played beautifully with that. So thank you, thank you for allowing me to get this on my computer.

Thank you so much, Shadow! This is much better than the YT version!

For me it plays well with Dvix Plus player.

Shadow, how thoughtful of you!

Shadow - I saw your video of the original pilot today. It was excellent and even though I prefer Sophia as Beth, it brings back all kinds of Moonlight memories. Seeing a new Moonlight video is always a way to help keep Moonlight alive. Thank you for making and posting the link.