Avalon pts. 1 & 2 episode DVD commentary

[Formerhost]

Now THAT'S what I'm talking about!

This part was much better because they talked about what was going on on the screen. Great stuff!

Are you going to continue within this thread? I'm going to have to subscribe, so I don't miss anything good...

THANK YOU!!!

You're welcome

I think part 3 will be the last part of this commentary and I'll start the new thread with Avalon pt. 2 commentary. Or would you prefer if I continued it here? I'm open to suggestions.

[ChillinTheMost]

Whatever works best for you!

I've subscribed to this thread and if you continue in another thread, I'll just move it over to there. You may just want to put a little note so I, and others, know where to go to next! Thanks again!

[Formerhost]

Part 3

AM: You know, so there wasn’t sort of conscious effort to necessarily try to shoot things any differently. And I don’t know even now looking at it again or even if you feel this way, if it actually does have a different aesthetic or a different feel than any of the other…

RC: I do. I think… I think that when we started broadcasting in letterbox and I know I had said it numerous times that I felt like the show was too claustrophobic, that we were too tight. That it was very much about close-ups too much. And that this was an action show and that people were essentially buying bigger TVs now. We could afford to loosen up a little bit and create a more cinematic experience.

AM: And certainly some of those notes were… You know, I was definitely cognizant to those things, close-ups were a lot looser than I would normally do them. Or historically that we would do. They weren’t top of eyebrows to the bottom of the chin that I definitely loosened up. More of these groupings of three-shots and such, just so you could actually…

RC: Because on a big enough screen you can still get the nuance of performance and the emotion or the humour, or any of the expressions that actors are doing.

AM: For sure, for sure. And the Dakara walk-and-talk scene, you know, that was another one where… I mean, that posed – There were some other issues.

RC: Yeah, we had once one tiny little hallway that you multiplied out into…

AM: Yeah.

RC: … a great big long almost unrealistically long stretch of the interior of the mountain.

AM: Yeah. And again in hindsight it sort of was. But again, I kind of… you know, some of your words kind of reverberated there and I just thought: “Okay, I’m not gonna sweat so much over getting some of the conventional coverage we would normally get in this kind of the situation.” And you know, so if anything it provided a little bit of liberation and didn’t make me feel as though I had to sort of stay tied to some of the conventions that we were really used to.

RC: No, because I think it’s important that we mention is that despite the fact that we internally had decided we were making a pilot, the studio hadn’t really, you know, supported us financially to that effect.

AM: Right.

RC: Pilots often get, you know, far more money thrown at them in order to make them big and splashy. And of course, we were shooting these shows on our normal everyday, you know, budget. Which is nothing to sneeze at, but at the same time it wasn’t – I think that we, at the script stage had created something that was more ambitious than what we were used to doing or used to trying to pull off. So in some cases, we put a lot of pressure on you guys to, you know, operate at speed that was maybe unrealistic. And so you would have to adapt to the way you were covering things. That moment, by the way (in Daniel’s room, after his Myrddin/Merlin discovery on Ancient database), that we –

AM: This one.

RC: Yeah. “That’s what I’m talking about!” and the point was… It was of the first moments where I sort of said: “That’s Mitchell.”

AM: That’s Mitchell, exactly.

RC: There’s the guy that we’re gonna love and, you know, have a great time.

AM: And again, to Ben’s credit, he was the one that made sure of his own. He didn’t require any direction to make sure he really hit that point. I mean, he really, really carefully plotted his course throughout the course of those first three hours. And made very, very definitive decisions ahead of time that, of course, being one of them. Well, every scene that he was in. I mean, he was, I know, struggling to a certain extent with, you know, just having to find his character so quickly, but those moments were…

RC: Yeah. I mean, but, if you… Sorry, I’m just being distracted by the beauty of Claudia Black. I was actually just thinking as I was looking at it, did you consciously light her differently in this scene (in the conference room, when Daniel explains Merlin-Arthur’s legend to Landry, Vala, Mitchell and Teal’c) to make her kind of…

AM: Little bit.

RC: Everybody is little darker. Everybody’s got this little sort of shadowy thing, and then you cut to her and it’s like: “There’s Vala, isn’t she gorgeous?” But it’s a…

AM: Yes, is the short answer. We sort of put her underneath one of the top table lights and added a special to her just to…

RC: Because I think besides the fact that her character from a dialogue point of view tends to pop out, because she has the edgy humour sort of lying in the scene.

AM: Right.

RC: She seems to visually pop out and, you know, for obvious reasons.

AM: Right.

RC: I think Claudia was the one who said: “It’s a miracle. You’ve made me look like I have breasts.”

AM: No, it was kind of by… To a certain extent by design, but again, it’s the costume, it’s her presence that, you know, that do it. I think we had to re-shoot…

RC: Yeah, that particular shot was re-shot, it was out of focus. We had a number of slightly out of focus shots in that first little while. We were also dealing with HD.

AM: Was that our first season? Didn’t we do the year before in HD as well?

RC: Yeah.

AM: We did, but there was still a lot of issues, we did have some –

RC: There were hiccups. I mean, we had done a season, we thought: “Oh, isn’t this going swimmingly?” And then we ended up coming back and a lot of the problems – I think that the cameras were a year older. There were other things that we were lucky to miss the first season around – ended up jumping up and biting us on the ass. We had some back focus issues.

AM: Yeah. Back focus was the problem there. It appears that the shot is in focus until you see it after the fact.

RC: There’s a detail within a camera that can fool you.

AM: Every now and again, you have to just stop everything and recalibrate the camera until that doesn’t happen.

RC: How does tape change the floor from film? I mean…

AM: Oh, it’s incredible. I mean, there are certain habits that you can’t help but hang on to it. Like once the camera’s rolling, it’s just panic city because you know that at, you know, 65 cents a foot going through the camera there’s no time to mess around, because you can spend a lot of money in a very short time. So you still sort of feel that anxiety when the camera’s rolling but with HD you got essentially a 45-minute cassette tape that costs $120, instead of the usual, you know, several thousand dollars a day that you would spend on film. So it’s, again, tremendously liberating as a director because you’re not forcing yourself into cutting and being careful with the amount of footage you’re using. If you need to do multiple takes that’s fine, go ahead and do it. If you want to reset everybody back to the beginning of the scene without cutting. Because the moment you say “cut” on set, everything comes to a stop. All of a sudden, the makeup people come running in, costume people. Everyone’s going in to fix their thing. And nobody would ever notice any of the adjustments that are made. So it’s kind of waste of time.

RC: And people don’t realize that a couple of minutes – You know, what’s the big deal? Let’s get it right. Blah, blah, blah. But at the end of every take, if you do – On average, we tend to do between 25 and 30 setups on a good day. And if you do several takes within those you know, you’re adding up to 60 or 70 of those types of shots. You have two or three minutes at the end of every one of those. Suddenly you’ve lost more than an hour out of your day.

AM: Absolutely.

RC: And it’s very, very, you know, prohibitive to have to work with that.

AM: Oh, for sure. And you know, Peter DeLuise, you know, was able to get so much more – Stuff – so much more in the course of the day just because of the…

RC: Just keep the camera rolling.

AM: Keep it rolling forever. He would be calling audibles from behind the camera and changing lenses. It makes it difficult for the editors.

RC: And the actors. Let’s face it.

AM: And the actors.

RC: They have to be incredibly professional to be able to say: “Okay, go back to the third line in this scene, and this time say it while you’re squinting and – “ You know, it’s… “And you’ve just eaten a tuna sandwich, okay, go.”

AM: Yeah. I have a tendency not to do that much.

RC: You want at to least be able to have a conversation and say I wanna do it again because of this or let’s correct this. There’s a little more of a… you know, a sense of developing a dialogue with the actors in order to get that.

AM: And everybody on the set. It’s just nice to see it through all the way because there’s gonna be…

RC: So you’re a better director than Peter?

AM: No, no.

RC: Is that what you’re trying to say?

AM (whispering): Peter, you’re not watching, are you?

RC: Nobody from the show ever watches these. You can say anything you want.
AM: Does anybody? Yeah, that’s true. This is kind of fun, I can’t tell you how many times when Ben was trying to pull this sword it did in fact just pop right out and we would come to a halt and –

RC: There’s… There’s our Merlin wearing the Sorting Hat. Hats are always an issue for some reasons.

AM: Hats are big.

RC: They are the bane of this show.

AM: I don’t know why it’s such a big deal. There’s only been I think, one episode and I’m not even gonna mention which one it was. It was back, I think, season one or season two that the hats for me were an issue. But… Honestly, they’ve never bothered me.

RC: No, it’s a fine hat.

AM: I think it’s a wonderful hat.

RC: Yeah.

AM: Turban, I think, is more…

RC: It does exactly what it’s supposed to do and that is cover his head.

AM: But there has been a bit of fixation on hats and glasses.

RC: Yeah.

AM: How do you feel about that? Hats and glasses issue?

RC: Well, I’ve always sort of wondered why people didn’t notice that Daniel’s glasses were completely flat. And would have absolutely no actual impact on his vision.

AM: And crooked. They’re always crooked.

RC: But hats, I really don’t have an issue with. You know, they’re just issues that you, I guess, check your brain about. Why doesn’t the elite military team from the SGC wear helmets when they’re going out on dangerous missions?

AM: Well, they did in season one.

RC: Very briefly. Very briefly until Richard Dean Anderson decided he didn’t like the way he looked in a helmet.
These scenes here (in the caves on the way to the rooms with puzzles) were hotly debated as we were watching dailies as to whether they were too dark.

AM: Yeah, I remember that well. One of the toughest things to do is to create believable total darkness. I remember the conversation we had in preproduction and you wanted dark.

RC: Yeah, where’s the light coming from? Where’s this magic light? And we still need to see the image but, you know, it’s a challenge.

AM: It is tough.

RC: You want to see textures on the walls and of course you guys see the full glory of the HD monitors on set. And then that gets transferred and output from a machine that compresses the resolution to a horrible, you know, muddy degree. And we never quite see it the way it’s shot and intended to look until it’s finished. The colour timing at the end of the postproduction process, so it’s really difficult. There’s a lot of faith involved.

[Formerhost]

Part 3 1/2

AM: Yeah, there is. And it was, again, part of the learning curve of HD and we hadn’t been in a situation quite like this before and we’re dealing with this kind of darkness. But I can remember the very first time we used HD, it was on “New Order”, beginning of season eight. I can remember so well, we were shooting out at a farm out in Langley and we had this incredible sunrise. And, you know, there were horses and all this steam rising and it was absolutely phenomenal, but the video technician said: “No, you absolutely can’t shoot that. We’re going off the charts.”

RC: I think you can probably, even on the best television or projector, see some of the issues in the flame.

AM: Yeah, you can’t. It’s…

RC: You will see the flame kind of becomes an almost uniform yellow-white colour.

AM: Yep.

RC: You’re not getting nearly as much contrast as you would if the room were a much brighter room.

AM: Yeah. And a part of that is film. Like film would be able to handle that. It can handle that latitude so much easier than HD can. Although now, it supposedly can do it much better than even…

RC: Now, these problems (Vala and Daniel debating which pot to open) were a great source of consternation for me. First of all, what were the tests going to be? And then once we came up with the tests we ended up with – I don’t know, if you remember – the problem we had where Michael came up and said: “I think you got this backwards. I’m not sure this actually works.”

AM: Yeah, the riddle was…

RC: The riddle was actually written on the stones. It was switched. And so… Boy, my head nearly exploded from trying to kind of figure out which was the – It reminded me of that old Danny Kaye movie, you know, the pestles and the –

AM: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, right, exactly.

RC: It just becomes comedic at some point, the conversations you have about these issues. And then, you just wonder how much –

AM: Does it really matter?

RC: I mean, the truth is, that puzzle… The puzzle that Mitchell’s working on right now is a fairly difficult puzzle. This one (the coin in one of pots) is pretty simplistic. It’s a 50-50 shot.

AM: Right. It’s the consequence.

RC: But of course, it’s not really about whether they get it right, it’s about whether their truth of spirit is at issue. And that’s the wrinkle, that’s the added level. Is she gonna take the coin, which of course… You know, of course Vala’s gonna take the coin.

AM: That was fun stuff to shoot.

RC: Yeah, I mean, here we have a ceiling that is being descended by our special effects guy, Wray Douglas, he’s jus off the set here, holding a cable. Slowly lowering this thing. Very nonchalantly. Reassuring in his way to the actors. Saying: “Oh, no, sure. It is much heavier than it looks. But I promise, it will not fall on your head and crush you.” So some of the fear that the actors are portraying here is quite real.

AM: Oh, it’s quite legitimate. Yeah, there was very little in the way of an the escape hatch, because it was basically a three-walled set and in many cases, we actually put the fourth wall back in and put the camera right inside the room. Obviously, what we do, like in shots like this we physically remove the entire wall and then it’s not so bad. They know that there’s a way to dive out, but… Some of the scenes, some of the shots we actually had all the walls in place because we were shooting with multiple cameras and it was legitimately claustrophobic.

RC: Oh, and you’ve got smoke. And you’ve got fire in the room.

AM: It was very hot, very uncomfortable.

RC: Well, thank you for this. And thank you for listening.

AM: Yeah.

RC: Hopefully you’ll join us for part two, which we’re about to roll into.

AM: And it’s gonna be even better.

RC: Even more exciting than the scintillating commentary for “Avalon, pt. 1”. Hopefully it was somewhat insightful.

AM: Thanks for joining us. See you.

[valaCB]

“There’s Vala, isn’t she gorgeous?”

Yes she is!

[jonno]

Lol - i wasn't even away any DVD's were out yet!

Very insightful ... thanks a lot FH. Have some green.

EDIT ... as for where to carry on with Pt2 ... well it's all one story, so it could be all one thread. Whatevers, i'm subsribing to this one.

[Zelda]

Formerhost -- thanks so much for taking the time to transcribe and post this. I truly enjoyed reading the remarks, especially those concerning Ben and Claudia's addition to the Stargate cast which give some insight into how the new Mitchell/Vala characters have been introduced into the Stargate universe. It is really an eye-opener to read the concept of how the PTB wanted the characters to be portrayed. I hope you don't mind that I have posted a link to this article at TerraFirma.

[Formerhost]

Formerhost -- thanks so much for taking the time to transcribe and post this. I truly enjoyed reading the remarks, especially those concerning Ben and Claudia's addition to the Stargate cast which give some insight into how the new Mitchell/Vala characters have been introduced into the Stargate universe. It is really an eye-opener to read the concept of how the PTB wanted the characters to be portrayed. I hope you don't mind that I have posted a link to this article at TerraFirma.

Thanks Feel free to post it anywhere you want.

[ChillinTheMost]

Oops, I inadvertently unsubscribed to this thread, so I have to post to subscribe again...

and it wouldn't hurt to repeat...

THANKS, FORMERHOST!

[Formerhost]

Avalon pt. 2 DVD commentary

Part 1



AM: Hi there, I’m Andy Mikita.

RC: And I’m Robert Cooper.

AM: And welcome to “Avalon pt. 2”.

RC: This is… If you enjoyed our commentary for part one, you will know this is... was a big event for us. Almost a pilot-like experience in season nine of, you know, Stargate SG-1.

AM: The introduction of new characters. Trying to…

RC: A whole new villain. You know, I started out by writing what was supposed to be a two-parter and this turned into, you know, a three-parter and so the middle part became a bit odd. I mean I know you were put in an awkward position. In some ways you were directing the first two acts of a movie, and you didn’t get to direct the payoff.

AM: Yeah, that was… That hurt. That was a tough pill to swallow I must confess, although…

RC: But, you know, I think that this episode still had its, you know, its epic events. Certainly…

AM: Yeah, it did. And it did have also a certain kind of a finality to it anyway that felt like a closure, like the show was…

RC: It’s hard to complain about an episode of television that includes the sword fight that we ended up doing. And then the burning sequence that is the, you know, the climax of the movie. So –

AM: Yeah, very little to complain about.

RC: But, you know, the real meat of the story starts to evolve in this episode. I mean, it’s almost funny you’re doing an introduction of what is many new elements to this series and you really don’t get going until about halfway through the second episode, as far as what the actual story is going to be.

AM: Yeah, exactly. Before we even meet anybody, it’s the end of the show. And I remember at the discussion that we had in your office, Michelle Comens from Visual Effects was there and you had described this season nine as being the year of the crusade. And that was an exciting moment actually. That was pretty cool. Because it – The connotation of that was far-reaching.

RC: We really wanted to take the bad… The elements of Stargate to another level. I always felt that, I mean… the show has always been about religion to a certain extent. We’ve always gone out and try to convince societies that believe in the Goa’ulds as gods that their gods were false. And that they’re not really gods. We don’t really tell them what God is, we’re not dictating those things. But we’re trying to point out the misuse of religion to enslave people and to, you know, take advantage of them. And, you know, it just seemed like a natural progression to take that to another level. Atlantis was all about where the Ancients went when they left our galaxy. And I felt like the story that was waiting to be told is: Where did they come from? Maybe they didn’t originate in our galaxy. And if they came from somewhere, did they leave anyone behind? And what if, you know, all that wonderful power, that the Ancients seem to handle very well, as ascended beings… What if there was a bunch of people that didn’t handle it quite the same way?

AM: Right.

RC: And wouldn’t that be a scary villain? And, you know, there was a lot of conversations in the writers’ room about where we were taking the, you know, the icons of the show. What were we going to say about religion? I mean, I know there was a lot of response from the, from fans initially.

AM: For sure.

RC: And I know there was a lot of concern and we talked a lot about it, you know, in two respects. How far were we gonna take some of the more adult aspects of this episode? And also, you know, how are we going to portray some of the, you know, the religious imagery and have it have a resonance and something people can relate to, but without offending anyone. We obviously… I mean, I don’t know. How did you feel having read the scripts and knowing that you were gonna participate in it, how did you feel personally and also how did you think the fans were gonna react to it?

AM: I had… It’s not that I had misgivings. I had… Personally it was exciting. Because it was… It just, you know, broadened the horizon so much. But I did have concerns that it was gonna be something that might have been a bit difficult for…

RC: You thought we would offend people –

AM: I thought we could have gotten to the point where it was offensive, especially when I read, you know, the burning scene and the implied graphic nature of it.

RC: It was more than just the violence though. It’s the idea that the Ori and Origin represented a particular religion that maybe we as creative people were trying to criticize or put our opinion out there as to – Or even just religion as a whole. That maybe what we’re saying is religion’s bad. Which I don’t think is what we were saying.

AM: No, not at all. And I didn’t feel that at all. I never at one point ever thought that it was going to be offensive from a religious standpoint.

RC: Because essentially what we are doing is creating a group of people in the followers of the Ori that are seemingly ignorant, because they believe. And have such fervent blind faith. Well, in fact, in the Ori’s case it’s not blind faith. They’re given proof of God. Which separates the Ori from other situations but –

AM: Pretty solid evidence.
RC: But nevertheless, I think what we didn’t want to do was make it look as though people who believe in religion are misguided. I mean that’s not - That wasn’t the intention.

AM: No, and I don’t think that - I certainly didn’t get that implication from it. And I don’t think that the episode would make that implication.

RC: What I also feel is that the Ori were meant to be a kind of an amalgamation of all of the bad things that religion in many ways, had led humans to do over the years throughout history. And not any one religion but sort of all of them. And not the religion itself, but rather humans, people who are put in the position of potentially using other people’s beliefs to manipulate them that have led us to do some pretty horrible things throughout history. And so by embodying those things in an amalgamation, you’ve created a villain that is essentially using a religion to do something, that’s wrong, which is, essentially, kill people for not believing in what you want them to believe in. Anyway, this was quite a – As we were pontificating there, philosophy and religion we were missing talking about one of the best action sequences that we’ve ever shot (Mitchell’s sword fight with the Black Knight). And I remember we were in the writers’ room – What we do oftentimes is someone, when we’re talking about a story we’ll get together and we’ll board it, is what we call it. We basically write all the beats of the story up on a board as a group. And we were talking about, you know, well, they’re in a cave and under Glastonbury, and they’ve left these tests. And, you know, and there’s gonna be some puzzles, and then they have to get by of course, these big… This one big test in order to get the gold and the treasure to show up. And everybody sort of looked at me and goes: “Well, what could possibly be exciting enough to warrant that?” And I said: “Sword fight.”

AM: Bigass sword fight.

RC: Sword fight. You know, you’ve got a knight in shining armour, and Mitchell’s gonna sword-fight him, which is very easy to say when you’re sitting in a nice, well-lit, warm room, eating snacks. But executing that – And Ben –

AM: Took a couple of hours.

RC: Ben really sold out on that one, didn’t he?

AM: He completely went to town on that. There is not a single shot in that sequence that involves a stunt double. He did it all.

RC: And you know, I think I felt like that was the day that Ben chose to show everyone in the cast and the crew…

AM: The level of commitment that he had.

RC: Well, that, “Hey, I’m the guy who you can rely on in the foxhole.” You know, we’re all gonna go to war for the next year. And not to belittle, not to make light of war, but you know, producing a television show for a year can be quite a trying tumultuous experience. And having a lead actor who is helping the process is obviously a great advantage. Having someone who is kind of going against the grain can be just a living nightmare. I think that day was the day that Ben chose to show everybody that: “Hey, I’m the guy who you guys can all – I will do anything to make this show good. This is how important it is to me.”

AM: No question. Yeah. No, absolutely right. No question about it. He worked so hard at that and it was very carefully choreographed. James Bamford and Dan Shea and the gentleman wearing the suit spent a lot of time working on it. And the toughest thing with a fight like that is making it look like it hasn’t been choreographed. And selling the fact that these are big, heavy swords that they’re wielding. And most of the time, they were using big, heavy swords so it would feel like –

RC: Yeah, I know. I lifted one of those things and these were… I couldn’t imagine having a…

AM: Oh, yeah. This was a fun scene (Vala lying on the gold with this big cup in her hands).

RC: Yeah, yeah. I just absolutely love the little touch of her pouring that gold all over herself. It was…

AM: It was great. And during the set-ups she would just be in there, you know, when we’re not rolling and she’s just burying herself in the stuff, and the lot of them are chocolates, so she –

RC: She’s also, I mean, an incredibly meticulous actor, who is…

AM: She is. Yeah.

RC: … you know, almost to a fault consumed with fictional world in which her character is living in. So that she needs to understand why everything is happening in order to make it work in her head.

AM: There was the one moment when we were shooting in the village, when – I can’t remember the scene, but… That was an issue, that – Oh, it’s in part two, we’ll see it in a little while. I’ll bring it to your attention. But there was an issue I remember that she had a difficult time understanding it and I had a hard time trying to articulate it as well. Fortunately, you came in to the rescue and helped clarify.

RC: Oh, that was with the sign, wasn’t it? Wasn’t that around…? In and around in the…

AM: I think it was in… Was it in the house when…?

RC: Yeah, it was in the house scene.

AM: But I can’t remember what- There was a particular passage of her dialogue that was giving her a bit of a bump in the road but fortunately, it got smoothed out and everything was fine.

[FallenAngelII]

What they said about religion in the commentary for Part 2 is essentially the manifesto of my faith, HAS:

"Humans are stupid" - Join today, get a cookie.

[Formerhost]

Part 2

AM: But this was a fun scene to shoot and kudos to the Art Department again for…

RC: And Sec Dec I mean, they just, you know… Did we not? Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t we have to put that stuff in there, take it out and then put it back?

AM: And then put it back in for the shot, when…

RC: When it all appears.

AM: When Ben actually revealed – Yeah.

RC: I don’t know why, but Chris’s choices in this scene always make me laugh. The fact that he chose to bend down and put both hands on the device that way, and just sort of stare at it.

AM: This is so phallic.

RC: Now, this is a case of where we… You know, and as a writer, you know, the trick they teach you is to always start a scene as late as possible in the scene without making it confusing. And there was actually an entire leg of that walk-and-talk that got cut. There was an entire piece that’s off the beginning. It’s the beginning of that scene.

AM: No, it was after that first –

RC: No, it was the very first piece. We started late. There’s one right at the beginning and what happened was just you realize if you cut the beginning off, you’re sort of in the middle of conversation. You still follow what’s happening even without a build-up.

AM: I thought the second leg that was cut.

RC: No, it was the first one. But – Walk-and-talks are – Oners like that are so tough, because everybody’s gotta hit all their moments, the timing’s gotta be right, the actors have to know their stuff. And, you know…

AM: Most of them like doing it though. I mean…

RC: It’s incredible, it’s like watching, you know, magic happen when it works properly.

AM: And they’re always so keen to try to make it work. “Okay, okay, I know it.” Like if it just… If you just make it to the end mark with a half of line too soon, then – “Okay, I got it, I know what I’m gonna do.” Especially Beau. He’s terrific for it because he loves doing things on the move.

RC: The first few weeks, almost months with Beau I was concerned actually because I had no conversations with him that weren’t directly related to his character or his dialogue or the scenes and I thought I may never have a relationship with this man. I may never get to know him because he is so focused on what he’s doing that you just don’t wanna take him out of that. And eventually we got to know each other and, you know, talked on a more personal level. But it was a little disconcerting how incredibly focused he is.

AM: He stays on the set all the time too. He’s got this really cool, special very comfortable-looking reclining chair that he keeps off the edge of the set and will just find a nice quiet spot among all the chaos. Will lie down.

RC: He was very also involved, I don’t know if you knew this, in the sort of the genesis of his character. I mean, he sort of asked me: “What do you see as…? Who is General Landry?” And again we kind of got into writing process as we were writing it and everything was going quickly, as we got picked up for season nine so late that I actually said: “I don’t know, what do you want General Landry to be?” So he took that ball and he ran with it…

AM: That’s great. That was probably the perfect thing to say.

RC: … and you know, spiked it in the end zone. He sent me a long, long history of who he thought… He had researched and cobbled together various generals’ histories. In fact told me that his friend who is in the military read it and laughed at him. Because some of it was incredibly inaccurate and unrealistic. He had sort of culled from different wrong points and in fact created a history that was completely improbable. But eventually, you know, got it right and then included a bunch of quotes that I don’t know he even intended for me to use, just had researched himself as things that other generals had said that his character would respect. So I just used them. You don’t provide a writer with that kind of research without expecting him to take advantage of it. Free research.

AM: So this is the roundy-round scene we talked a bit about in part one (in med lab with Dr Lee, Mitchell, Daniel, Vala and the device they found in the Glastonbury), a scene that involved a single Steadicam shot. Well, this one that inspired or I shouldn’t say inspired. But created a bit of controversy. It’s a little bit unusual, at least on Stargate, historically, to do – To keep a camera moving around continuously in a circular fashion for essentially five minutes.

RC: Yeah.

AM: And, you know, I knew it was a calculated risk and it wasn’t something that… When we were rehearsing the scene for the first time I had only originally intended on moving the camera for the beginning until they settled into their marks. I was gonna do a sort of reasonably conventional coverage. But as we got going it just seemed to be kind of cool and it started to work.

RC: Because if it doesn’t work, A, it makes your audience nauseous…

AM: Completely.

RC: … and two, makes – You’re so distracted by the movement that you’re not listening to what’s going on. And, you know, often directors don’t really care. They’re more interested in what the camera’s doing and what the visual is and they don’t care if you understand the words – Especially in a scene like this (Dr Lee, Daniel, Vala and Mitchell discussing device and stones), I mean, it’s very…

AM: But this is such a –

RC: Important scene to make people understand what’s about to happen. We’re setting up all of the sci-fi elements that are gonna make the story work.

AM: And I was acutely aware of that fact. And it was almost because of the fact that I thought if we do keep it moving and we use the – The idea was to keep the device alive and as a center point throughout every single shot in the scene. It was always alive in the scene as a character per se. And the first – Once we actually shot it I started feeling really comfortable about it, because watching it, you know, as we were shooting it from the audience perspective, ‘cause obviously, when you’re in the director’s chair that’s all you’re thinking about. I was convinced it was gonna work.

RC: Well, in the first edit we saw, it didn’t work. Which is another example of how editing can really take footage that will work if you cut it together right. And then, you know, you nearly had a heart attack when I came down to set and said: “The roundy-round scene’s a problem.” And we both looked at it and you realized: “Yeah, it is.” But then you looked at the material and looked at how it could be re-cut and said: “I think it’s gonna be okay.”

AM: Although we did have a back-up plan in effect to do some coverage, but thank you for not going back –

RC: Oh, it works great. At the end of the day it gives the scene a lot of energy. This particular bit that we just talked over (Daniel and Vala transferred to Harrid and Sallis’ house and bodies), you know, with the point-of-views was always a… Required a lot of conversation on issues because we didn’t, you know, want to confuse people. But at the same time, we wanted to give the audience the impression that Daniel and Vala were not actually there, but, you know, just linked to these people. And of course we weren’t gonna do a story, in which Claudia Black and Michael Shanks were not on-screen for the whole episode. It’s much more interesting to be seeing them. But to establish it, we came up with these little tricks of just using POV’s. So while you’re in a POV – But of course, we talked a lot about: What’s the eyeline? What is the person- ? Is it an exact POV? Is he looking into the camera or 1 inch off the frame? How do you convey the idea that this is a direct point of view?

AM: And I wasn’t completely convinced ahead of time.

RC: You did it both ways.

AM: I shot it both ways because I was initially convinced that the only way you could really make it work in that context was to have the people look directly into the lens on all accounts. I was looking at you during the scene so I can’t remember what we did but I think it worked. I think we did use the in-the-lens versions too.

RC: It’s very close to – I think we used the very-close-to. But it’s… At the end of the day I think it works. I mean, you just see it, you understand that they are those people and we continue to –

AM: Yeah, you keep reminding.

RC: You favour it, remind them in the mirror. And we know, we know that –

AM: But, yeah, I know that it did elicit a lot of conversation and throughout the course of the actual – The episode we were discussing whether we should be finding other points to remind people that from outside perspectives.

RC: And this is the reveal of the village, the big set that we built for the beginning of season nine. Here we’re making a little television show with 100 extras. I think this was very much felt like we were on a feature-quality level set.

AM: I laboured a lot of that one, by the way, because it was – You wanted to reveal the set and hold that reveal as much as possible yet because by virtue of the fact they’re going to walk out of a house and they’re facing it you want to try to hold what they’re seeing as much as you possibly could without cutting back to them, to see the two of them because you won’t see the scope of the town. So again, it was trying to hold that moving shot and I was labouring: “Are we holding on too long? Is it distracting having a moving shot?” But I don’t think so in hindsight.

RC: No, I think you’re saving it for the end of the scene.

AM: Yeah, the big reveal became here (the view of the whole main street). And again, it’s all set with a skyline cyc a curtain on the back wall. It actually, basically surrounds the entire studio. Wonderful set to shoot in.

RC: And Bridges must go feed ducks.

AM: And Bridges must go feed ducks. Exactly.

In Landry’s room (talk with Dr Lam about the desk)

RC: And this aspect of the story also came very much from Beau. I think he felt like he needed to know who Landry was, not just professionally, but personally. He needed him to have three dimensions. He felt like for people to like him as a character – Not necessarily even that he was likable. But that they got to know his character and would embrace him. He needed to have a story, to be more than just the guy who sends everybody off on missions. He needed to have dimensions to his character that added layers. And, you know, making Lam his daughter – A lot of people actually – In this scene (Lam and Landry talking about her taking this job and Jack not telling her that Landry is going to be her boss) you don’t know that she’s his daughter. And it was sort of written and played in a slightly ambiguous way so that you weren’t quite sure whether… Maybe he’s had relationship with this younger person or…

AM: That was very clever approach. We actually did several… We spent a lot of time on that scene, actually, because it was Lexa’s first scene in the show. Character introduction, we spent a lot of time playing with it…

RC: Yeah, I mentioned it in the “Origin” commentary that she auditioned for the part, despite being Michael Shanks’ wife. Because she really wanted to be judged on her merits rather than her, you know, relationship to Michael.

Back in the village – beginning of the prostration.

This is actually a visual-effect shot. One of the visual-effect shots that, I’m happy to say, doesn’t look like a visual-effect shot. I think they’re always the most successful shots. Where you don’t know – Oh, it’s not a CG alien ship that’s obvious. It’s just what we call a duplication shot.

AM: Now we’re not gonna tell people what it is. Let’s leave it a mystery.

[esoap524]

Thanks so much, FH, for taking the time to do this. It's a lot of work but I know we appreciate it.

I wish there was some way I could let Cooper and Mikita know that I loved the "roundy-rounds". I haven't watched a ton of SG1 prior to season 9 but the few I'd seen seemed rather stagnant filming wise. I was really surprised by the moving camera and really liked it.

[nyxlily]

Hey, thanks for the transcripts! I love commentaries as I always learn something new about the show.. now I don't have to wait. Thanks for taking the time to do them.

Anyone else noticed RC use 'you know' a tad too much? Maybe it's not as noticable when you're just listening.. but reading it, it got a bit annoying! : )

[Formerhost]

Part 3


RC: This man (village’s administrator kneeling in front of the fire with the Book of Origin in his hands) is actually a complete creation of a computer.

AM: There’s the visual-effect shot (the whole crowd of people at prostration).

RC: So there’s what, 30, 50 people or so?

AM: We actually had, I think, about 75 people. It was such a huge space to fill and…

RC: Really? That’s why we were over budget.

AM: Yeah, exactly. No, on some of them, on that first day I think we had over 100.

RC: And so you just shoot the scene with them in one place and then you cut, you move them over into the next space and then you cut and move them to the next space. And then the wizards of Visual Effects put those shots all together.

AM: Fairly easy to do. The big issue is just making sure the people don’t actually overlap one another. Again, as usually is the case, we’re in a bit of hurry to – One of the things when you have big groups of people like that is you’re trying to get them off the clock very soon, because it’s a lot of people to keep on payroll so you’re trying to do the shots that involve those people very quickly. And, you know, originally we wanted to have everybody down and in the sort of prostration pose.

RC: That particular little sequence that we just went through right there (Daniel and Vala back in the house after prostration, going up stairs and Daniel starts searching). A lot of fans just probably take that sort of stuff totally for granted. They see it all the time in television and movies but they don’t realize how unique it is for a show like us to build a set that has two floors.

AM: Two levels. Yeah.

RC: I mean, it’s literally…

AM: It’s true.

RC: You, you know, jump up and down and click your heels when you have the opportunity to go from a lower level to an upper level. And it adds a realistic texture. You feel like you’re in an actual living place. But it’s so rare for us because it’s so expensive.

AM: Exactly. As a director, as soon as you see an actual practical, real staircase going between those two levels, it’s the first thing you do, is you design a shot around that staircase, to tie those two levels together.

RC: And it looks great.

AM: It worked really, really well. And in fact had we chosen to do so, we could have also had one of those characters go to the back door and walk them right back outside into the village as well. So that we had the luxury of being tied in at interior, exterior and main floor at the second floor.

RC: This scene (Vala discovering the book with stones inside in the bed), I remember you calling me. We had a long conversation over the phone about this. The way things work you read the scrip, you have an interpretation of that. Then you get on the floor and you do something called blocking where you sort of figure out how the actors are gonna stand, how the action’s gonna take place.

AM: That’s right.

RC: A lot of times it goes without a hitch. But there’s often times, situations in which something unexpected sort of comes up or something that’s written doesn’t take for granted the 3-D world and you get into the situation and say: “Wait a minute. How is this actually going to happen?” And while it comes off beautifully and smooth on camera now because it took many, many, you know, conversations to get there the idea that: “Oh, she’s gonna run over and jump on the bed and feel the box underneath, and just pull it out” is – It was an issue. I mean, you would think…

AM: Yeah, it was.

RC: “Hey, these things just happen.” But they don’t.

AM: The way it was scripted, was there was quite an elaborate search and they went all throughout the room looking in every drawer, every cupboard and every closet until they ultimately came across it. So it was a little bit of a different take on it, for sure. But I think it worked.

RC: It works great. And in fact, in a more simple way that helps the story move along without creating what we thought was a bump. Right?

AM: Yeah.

RC: This scene (Fannis visiting Harrid/Daniel and Sallis/Vala), of course, was critical. I mean, to find actors who can really play the… The fantasy. The fact that we’re in a completely science-fiction world, that it’s something completely unrealistic. He’s about to be told something fantastic. And yet, play it with a grounded feeling. And still make you feel as though he’s a guy from another planet. I mean, we’ve sat in so many auditions in which actors have got the dialogue, got the performance, but at the same time can’t separate themselves from being a person from planet Earth. And I think one of the things we’ve found doing the show is that theatre actors tend to be much more, you know, in tune with that vibe.

AM: Yeah, exactly. Very expressive.

RC: And that you have a sort of way of speaking, there’s a formality to it that for some reason just sounds alien. Maybe that’s just us. But I find a lot of times people who are inexperienced with science-fiction, actors who come on, who try an audition for the show tend to always sound a little too…

AM: Shakespearean. In this case.

RC: Well, either they go too far, or they try and be alien and they overemphasize it.

AM: Yeah.

RC: Or they’re too street. You know, they sound very much like they’re from Earth. So finding a person who’s got that, you know, natural balance is very challenging. And you always do back flips in celebration when you find someone who’s as good as it as Paul (Fannis) was.

AM: Oh, he was fabulous and so expressive. I mean, he played quite a lot on his reaction, when he’s not speaking even though he had the lion’s share of dialogue. You cut to him a lot when he wasn’t speaking because he was so believable and expressive. Wonderful actor.

RC: I particularly love this scene (Vala and Daniel talking to Fannis) just because of the texture in all the frame. In every frame there’s just – It feels almost like an old painting. You know, there’s just a lovely sense of colour and light and the set and the set dec and the costumes, all just seem to come together to make really nice images no matter where you turn and look.

AM: And ironically, it was a really easy scene to rehearse. It almost just fell off the truck like that. Everybody, when we rehearsed the scene for the first time, Paul naturally went to one spot. Michael naturally followed. Claudia naturally followed to that. So it wasn’t really by design per se. So it’s great when those things work like that. Also means that you can shoot it very quickly.
This was another scene (on Dakara, Teal’c and Rak’nor talking) that actually our B-camera operator had just sort of set up that side 50-50 just very quickly, because we weren’t gonna shoot two overs at the same time, because I wanted to do a push-in and it was gonna get in the way of the other camera. So I said, “Put it over to the side and see if you can find a nice side-angle shot.” It was great because it was almost, I was wondering if it was even gonna be used in the show. So I’m glad because it was a great shot. It looked terrific.

RC: So coming up, we’re gonna… Approaching the big sequence where Vala gets burned. You know, in retrospect, a lot of fans have sort of accused us of going too far. Other fans seemed to celebrate the whole thing and say: “Wow, Stargate’s finally grown up and done a real scene where there was legitimate jeopardy and shocking moments. We talked about this at great length about how far were we gonna go. Jim was actually relaying a little bit of a story where, you know, he was really pushing you into –

AM: He was.

RC: - shooting the more gruesome aftermath. Saying “Well, it’s there. We gotta shoot it.” And I apparently accused you of being a sick ******* for having gone that far.

AM: Bud didn’t I blame Jim for coercing me into doing it?

RC: I ultimately have to take credit for it. I was the one who dreamed the whole thing up.

AM: Exactly. It’s your fault.

RC: Yeah. I said: “Wait, not only are we gonna burn her, but we’re gonna burn her in this most sadistic, sick way.”

AM: But I think it was paramount to do that. You had to do it, in order to ultimately witness the act of God.

RC: It’s more than the act of God. It was the act of the extent of belief in these people. The lengths they were willing to go and, you know, how strongly they were going to stand up for, you know, what they believed in.

AM: And again, I think it was essential to go to that extent in order to…

RC: You know, in many stories, it’s almost a cliché to see a witch burning. I mean, it’s been done a million times. What we really wanted to do was a twist on it. We wanted to do something different. The “barbecue”, as we called it, was a different way of… You know, we’re not just burning someone at the stake but doing it in a slow, methodical, torturous manner. Michael is absolutely wonderful in this scene. I find that whenever you give him an opportunity to rise to the occasion, he always loves it. He just dives in.

AM: For the whole episode. The whole episode he did. For me it was so great to have the opportunity to do this episode having sort of established that original relationship on “Prometheus Unbound” with those two. Because, I mean, I don’t think anybody was anticipating that the onscreen relationship and the chemistry between them would get to this level, you know. That we could carry it forth to this end. And Greg (village’s administrator) did a fantastic job too.

RC: Yes, the administrator.

AM: Yeah.

RC: His voice is wonderful. So, we… You know, the first version of this went a little farther. We actually cut it back quite a bit.

AM: Well, I mean that’s…

RC: Most of the worst part of it ends up playing on the villagers’ faces. I mean, that’s something that is a bit of a challenge. To, you know, execute elicit a performance from essentially what are a bunch of extras. You know, these are not actors. These are not trained, cast actors. And yet you’re trying to get reactions out of them that are gonna elicit true emotion.

AM: And they were terrific. I mean, they – Fortunately, you know, we shot a lot of these fire elements practical. Like, you know, Claudia right now is literally sitting amongst open flame and it was getting hot and uncomfortable, and she was –

RC: Yeah, Dan Shea, actually in term in trying to get her out at one point he’s supposed to droop a cloth down over the fire to let her walk out.