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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 May 4, 2007 12:28 AM
