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February 24, 2006
When the rubber hits the road...
It has begun. We are nearly through our first week of shooting. Connor Trinneer is up here as a guest star. Chris Judge’s hair is a little different. Jason is over his flu. The cameras are rolling. Actors are auditioning down at the trailer. The writers just took a long pitch meeting/conference call. And I’m working on my short game. As if! I’m not working on my short game at all! Although I was playing with the practice wedge Cooper keeps in his office. Boy do I need lessons!
No, no… I’m reading and proofing scripts, negotiating product placements, and gossiping (see paragraph above). Sorry, nothing terribly juicy to report. There’s been a rush paint job on the village set, and lots of scheduling snags and changes, but with this expert group of producers and production managers, it’s going to be smooth sailing – I almost, nearly guarantee it! And one of these days I’m going to get down there and check it out. Maybe next week. Depends on if these guys stop writing ever… Will they ever stop?
I was talking to Carl the other day, and he was telling me that once the production season starts you have to feed the beast. Which means the production is chewing up pages and they have to write more to keep up with the beast! He learned that slang when he was working on a Disney film some of you might have seen, called Pocahontas.
Anyways, I know what you’re thinking… enough yammering! This week on SG-1 it’s Arthur’s Mantle and on Atlantis it’s one of my favourite episodes, Michael.
· Alan McCullough talked to me a little about the original pitch idea for Arthur’s Mantle. He pitched an Ancient device that was a combination storage device and trap. The way it was supposed to work was that it contained vitally important information (still part of the show – don’t wanna spoil it, wouldn’t do that to you) that had to be delivered to specific people. The way the device ensured the information was getting to the right recipients was by transferring them to an alternate dimension and putting them through some tests to determine if they were the right people, otherwise it would kill them. See, but that’s not the story of Arthur’s Mantle… HAH! It changed a lot and you’ll get to see what the results are tonight. That’s how I cleverly get around not spoiling it for you.
· Look for an as-yet relatively unknown actor in there. It’s Darren Giblin, ladies and gentlemen! Darren is famous – to us at Stargate at least! An aspiring actor, he worked in the production office for a couple of years and is a great guy. Hopefully his character is recurring, and doesn’t die. Darren plays Conway – an SO who takes gunfire on the Sodan Planet.
· Michael is Carl Binder’s favourite script that he wrote last year. The show started as a notion of Brad Wright’s – it’s basically the third part of the retrovirus plot line. And I could say all sorts of interesting stuff about the story but I don’t want to give it away. Suffice it to say that the story idea wasn’t working until Joe Mallozzi came up with a brilliant way to spin the story on it’s head and turn it into more of a mystery. I think you’ll realize what I’m talking about when you watch the episode.
ATL
Posted by Alex Levine at February 24, 2006 09:10 PM
