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May 31, 2007

What? Another Script? CAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARL!

If he isn’t putting out outline after outline, that Carl Binder is just writing script after script after script. And when I bring them into the other producers’ offices they whine… oh boy do they whine… Because Carl just keeps on writing… But you know, while Carl has been doing all of this writing, he’s been falling behind on his other tasks as co-executive producer. For example, he hasn’t finished reading War and Peace (still on his desk, unread, a gift from an adoring assistant). And he still hasn’t calculated the show’s carbon footprint, a job he was charged to do earlier in the season. Maybe he should just relax on the script-writing and get to work saving our environment for goodness sake!

Okay, enough nonsense. Shooting for the second Stargate movie, “Continuum”, began this week and it’s going strong. Martin Wood is directing this one, and Brad Wright has been on set almost everyday making sure everything is just how he likes it. Also Peter Woeste is the DOP (he was also the DOP for “The Ark of Truth”) and this guy is truly a talented photographer. We watched some dailies and I have to say, shooting those movies on film is going to make them look incredibly cool. Now I’m a film purist – ever since film school. I love the depth of field film creates, the contrasts between light and dark, and how forgiving film is in making the actors look… well, wunderbar… But no one can deny that HD is now the dominant medium for television. We’ve been shooting Stargate and Atlantis on HD for the last couple years, and the results have been great.

Friday night you’ll get to see two great episodes… “Talion” on SG-1 and “Sunday” on Atlantis.

Back when Damian Kindler turned in his first draft of the outline for “Talion,” he was worried nobody would understand the title so he included a definition. “Talion. Def. A punishment identical to the offense, as the death penalty for murder.” And it’s a good title, and it stuck, but some of the other writers had a good laugh over it. Joe Mallozzi flipped open the dictionary, picked a word at random and entitled his next outline: “Futtock. Def. One of a ship’s middle timbers between floor and top timbers.” But this is a great episode, which digs into Teal’c’s backstory and a dangerous old enemy named Arkad. I recall Rob and the gang calling it Teal’c’s “Sateda.” It’s the closest Stargate ever gets to an “arena” episode. And who doesn’t love arena episodes?

On the Atlantis side, “Sunday” is a story Martin Gero had been pitching for a long time about a “day off” on Atlantis. Well they finally found the right time for it last season. One of the influences for this script, which in my opinion is one of Martin’s best, was the feature film “Elephant” by Gus Van Sant. Okay, so by now, if you’re a film fan or an Atlantis fan at all, you probably know that this is a show in which one of the characters dies. No I’m not going to tell you which, and even if you know already, “Sunday” is an excellent episode and well worth watching…

So enjoy the episodes.

ATL

Posted by Alex Levine at 09:57 PM

May 17, 2007

The good old days.

Today I was in the office at the crack of dawn. Okay, 7:00 am – which is, actually, much later than a lot of people get here. Heck, our shooting call on Atlantis was 7:30 am today, so that means the locations production assistants (those poor kids just starting out in the business) were actually here at the crack of dawn. I did that job back in the day. It’s not a lot of fun. You wear a reflective vest and guard parking or prevent people from walking into the set. Every once in a while a hardened veteran, like the 2nd Assistant Director, will walk by. You’ll smile at him because you haven’t seen a human being in 2 hours, and he’ll look at you as if you were a panhandler and say, “What’s up, dork?” Those were the days.

Anyways, the reason I was here was because a scheduling conflict came up and Sam Carter had to be taken out of some scenes in an upcoming episode called “Be All My Sins Remember’d.” So I came in before the concept meeting to publish the changes Martin Gero made. And I got to collect my $20 because Blake made it into the final two on Idol last night. Martin underestimated Blake’s allure among the Idol’s biggest voting demographic: 6-13 year old girls. Sucker.

I also got to talk to Martin about Friday night’s SG-1 episode, “Bad Guys”, which he penned. Actually, Ben Browder shared the story credit because it was his original concept. Ben pitched a show where we go through the gate and end up in a museum on an alien planet, where their gate is on display. This alien civilization has never seen the gate work, and they think we’re terrorists. It’s a pretty great concept, and it turned into a great show. Coincidentally, we shot that episode just after the feature “Night at the Museum” finished filming in Vancouver, so all of the display cases you see are from that movie.

Now, Martin has always been an Atlantis staff writer, but because Atlantis was so far ahead on scripts last year, Martin was idle so Rob Cooper asked him to write Bad Guys. Martin also mentioned it was directed loosely, meaning the rough cut was very long (12 minutes over) and there was a lot taken out to cut it to time. And lastly, Martin wrote most of Bad Guys traveling through Europe during last year’s summer hiatus. Talk about industrious.

On the Atlantis side you’ll see “The Ark.” This story was developed from a pitch made by a freelance writer, Scott Nimerfro. Scott pitched a story where a rogue traveled around with a modified version of the Wraith culling beam, storing consciousnesses that he then sold to the Wraith (or something like that). The story was interesting but not as interesting as the one Brad Wright and Ken Cuperus spun it into. Keep an eye open for the sets – it was an expensive build. And I also recall it took superhuman effort for Ken to cut the script down to 50-something pages.

Martin Wood’s fondest memory from The Ark was the footage he shot using a handheld camera during the “shuttle sequence” (you’ll know it when you see it). There was no room for crew and camera – it was just Martin holding a handheld camera inches from Joe Flanigan’s face physically shaking him and screaming directions like “Look over here!” Afterwards Joe told Martin it was the strangest acting experience of his life. Look for some of that footage at the top of the show, before we flashback to tell the whole story.

And let’s not forget about the legendary Snickers bar that was left on a console in the ark by a member of the shooting crew that made it onto camera. It proved too expensive to remove with visual effects – apparently Snickers has a production plant in the Pegasus galaxy. Hilarious.

Cheers and enjoy the episodes.

ATL

Posted by Alex Levine at 04:49 PM

May 11, 2007

Chained to my desk...

I went to go talk to Rob Cooper about tomorrow night’s Stargate SG-1 episode “Bounty”, but he’s on his last day of directing “The Ark of Truth” and they’re out at the Norco set in the Hall of Fire. The Norco set is a bit of a drive from the Studio, and I’m chained to my desk, so I couldn’t really chase down Rob. But I can tell you that, among the exciting plot points to be shot today on “The Ark of Truth” (as detailed on the call sheet), are “Daniel yanked across room” and “Coverage against green screen.” Actually, there were some much more interesting descriptions but they were spoilers so I steered wide clear. Now, I don’t know how many of you saw “Sateda,” but I’ve seen the dailies of “The Ark of Truth”, and it’s going to be another action-packed Rob Cooper extravaganza.

So all I can tell you about Bounty is what I know. First of all, it’s a fun episode that shares some elements with that John Cusack movie Grosse Point Blank. In this one, Mitchell goes to his high school reunion just as a hit is put out on SG-1 by the Lucian Alliance. One interesting thing is that Mitchell’s old high-school crush is played by none other than Anne Marie DeLuise – yup, Director Peter DeLuise’s wife. Anyways, like I said, fun episode. Vala gets to wear all sorts of country costumes (Mitchell is from Kansas) and ham it up. And we get to see more of Mitchell’s backstory to add to what we learned in “Collateral Damage”.

Meanwhile, the Atlantis guys are all in a read-through – except Carl Binder, so I sat Carl down in my office and forced him to wax poetic about “The Game.” And you know what, Carl must have not enjoyed the fatty duck we had for our Chinese lunch buffet today, because he was irascible, to put it mildly. He insulted my Cambodian guardian statuette that I brought back from Angkor Wat and told me I was poisoning the entire building with my evil idolatry. But over the years I’ve learned that Carl actually only means about 1/8th of what comes out of his mouth, so I let it slide.

The story for “The Game” was pitched by freelance co-writers Don Whitehead and Holly Henderson. The story is about a SIMS style computer game found on Atlantis; in fact, the show was actually called “SIMS” for a long time. But the story changed considerably from what was originally pitched due to a number of reasons. Firstly, the original outline was prohibitively expensive (we’re talking the cost of a mid-sized motion picture). Also, the initial pitch focused on McKay and there had already been a number of McKay-focused episodes in Season 3. So it was decided that Sheppard and McKay should find the game together and compete against each other. These guys have good chemistry, so this episode keys on their competitive rivalry and their characters’ differences, and it worked out great.

Lastly, Carl explained the reason why he was drawn to the story. He said it was because it felt so topical. Carl sees similarities in “The Game” to how modern warfare is waged – by people hiding behind computer screens who’ve never actually been on a real battlefield and who don’t actually have to deal with the results of their actions…

That Carl Binder sure is one upbeat fellow.
Cheers and enjoy the episodes.

ATL

Posted by Alex Levine at 12:41 AM

May 04, 2007

Super powers all around.

I went down to set today to speak with Rob Cooper about Friday’s shows. Rob would have been a good guy to talk to, because he was heavily involved the script for “Tao of Rodney” and because he wrote “The Shroud”. But when I went down to set – surprise, surprise, he was busy directing. They were setting up a shot in the Odyssey and working with the dolly to determine the lowest possible camera angle (“is that your basement?”). Anyways there were a lot of questions being thrown at him and… well I kind of got lost in the shuffle. I did get to meet Currie Graham, who plays Marrick in The Ark of Truth, which was fun because I’m a big Boston Legal fan and he plays a D.A. on that show.

So I went back to the production office and I was lucky enough to find both directors of Friday’s episodes, Andy Mikita and Martin Wood. They are in the office this week prepping for their next shows. Martin will be directing Brad Wright’s movie “Continuum” and Andy is prepping the next Atlantis episode, “The Seer”. These directors are awesome to talk to – intense, incredibly skilled at their jobs and psyched about the show in general. And they always have good behind the scenes stories.

Andy spoke to me about “The Shroud.” And as I said, Andy’s kind of an intense guy. He rattled off some info in sort of a verbal point-form barrage: Michael in make-up; bad contacts; Rick was a blast; Rick and Michael just stand back and watch; Michael always wants to be in make-up; three hours of prosthetics; Woolsey was so scared he pissed himself; apple juice. So there you go. Pretty awesome, eh? Alright, alright, let me break it down for you, hopefully without spoiling any significant plot points. Okay, wait… If you don’t want to know ANY SPOILERS at all, stop reading here.

In “The Shroud”, Michael comes back as a Prior, so he had to be in make up for… oh about three hours every day. And he had lots of problems with the cosmetic contacts (that make one appear like one is blind) so he was only able to wear those in close ups. Look for it and see if you can spot the difference. So when Andy said “Michael always wants to be in make up” well that was sarcastic. As for Rick and Michael, in this episode Richard Dean Anderson comes back and he and Michael have a terrific scene together. Andy said it was awesome to sit back and watch those guys. Great chemistry, great actors.

Now, as for the Woolsey was so scared part – there’s a scene where Michael as a prior lifts Woolsey off the ground telekinetically, so they did a cool gag. They poured apple juice down Robert Picardo’s pant leg to make it look like he’d peed himself because he was so scared. Alas, that didn’t make in the final cut because of those “assassins” (Andy’s word for TPTB and their editing decisions) but apparently it would have been pretty cool. I’m going to go out on a limb here and side with the assassins on this one.

I chatted with Martin Wood just briefly about “Tao of Rodney”. He said it’s a great episode; it’s the one where Rodney gets superpowers. Among the superpowers was, again, telekinesis. And after some discussion, David Hewlett and Martin decided that Rodney would be the kind of guy to do a totally gratuitous “Dr. Strange” style hand gesture when he was using his telekinetic powers.

Martin’s favourite gags were the flying donut gags. Originally these were intended as visual effects, but they ran out of money in the budget, so they did them as “practicals”. For the first one, a donut is simply hovering (held up by a fishing line) and Beckett grabs it out of the air. But the second one is neater. In this one McKay makes a donut fly across the room into his hand. The way they did this without visual effects was as follows: the shot starts on McKay, who does his Dr. Strange style hand gesture. The camera pans to the donut, which gets whipped off screen by fishing line. But all the time McKay has another donut in his other hand off camera, and while the camera is off him he switches it to his gesturing hand. So when the camera whips back late, you don’t see the other donut fly off camera, all you see is a donut in McKay’s hand. SWEET. That’s called a Cowboy Switch (off camera switching of props or actors during one take). And that’s movie magic at its best.

Enjoy the episodes, and if you want a whole other behind the scenes perspective (with pictures!) check out Joe Mallozzi's blog at http://josephmallozzi.blogspot.com/.

ATL

Posted by Alex Levine at 12:28 AM