Originally posted by Tracy Jane
One of my majors was film as well. And as student after student of the artform has done for year after year, I wrote essays on the subject, read theories during study, watched film after film. The one constant that remained key throughout all of it, was, there is no substitute for telling a good story.
I work in post production these days. I do make my living as part of a special effects team, and yes, I often work on "things that go boom" for a scream. I won't deny that, or belittle the artform because post production and digital effects are an amazing piece of the puzzle and a tremendous asset to the industry overall. As a tool. But not as a substitute for good dramatic narrative.
The sad reality is that that substitution has begun to happen far too often in mainstream television and cinema these days. Most especially since the advances in digital post have become so glamorized. I'm all for those advances, and I'm all for the wonders of digital visual effects, obviously. But I'm completely against the use of special effects for the sole purpose of.... well, special effects. Unless it's some short film or independant production whose entire focus is to showcase what the technology can do (I've seen those before - they have a very definite, very specific purpose and that purpose is DFX).
Frankly, I don't think you'd find any f/x artist who wouldn't agree - to substitute f/x for good drama is no better than to make a film for the sole purpose of having a certain actor in it, before you even know what story you want to tell (or whether you even have a story to begin with). It's completely backward thinking. Ideally, we work to bring stories to life, not to supercede them with overwhelming or superfluous spectacle.
Actors, directors, camera operators, post-production artists, misc., crew, everyone involved is part of a production team; an ensemble whose primary function is to breathe vitality into a story. The narrative itself is (or should be) the paramount consideration of the endeavor. It is the message. Not the artist who gets top billing or the astronomical number of dollars spent on post. The moment we lose that story, we lose the entire essence of what the artistic medium is about. And none of the artists involved are ever happy in that scenario.
Lately - and sadly - Stargate has done just that. No matter how talented the individual artists may be (Amanda, Chris, Michael, Ben, Claudia, the crew, the post team), the moment that story began to be compromised by cheapened plot devices and shallow narrative, not a one of them would have been able to pull it back out of the fire on their own. And they didn't - as we saw with Season nine - it wasn't possible (even for talent like Amanda), to make things 'appear' as though nothing had changed.
Good stories are about people. No matter how much science and fiction may be involved, truly great drama is, at its core, about human issues; human emotion, desire, challenge, angst, happiness, whatever the case may be. A good story is a human story. And there is no stand-in for telling a good story. There is no special effect that can compete, no actor that can rise above it. At the end of the day, now and forever, that drama; that narrative will always be king (or queen, as the case may be).
Maybe someday, SG-1 will recapture it's story. I'm hoping so, at least.
Until that time ............... well, Amanda Tapping can make us smile. That's HER gift. And we can certainly choose to appreciate that, regardless.
mini(the slightly melancholy)geek
I wish that was the case, and we could all be pleasantly surprised come August, but I'm thinking this is it. Everything they've been saying over the past few months has been because of this renewed sense of vigor with Cameron. 
Don't worry.
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