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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 May 17, 2007 04:49 PM
