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**sgeureka** · 01 May 2005, 09:49 PM

803 Lockdown Audio Commentary (Will Waring, Jim Menard):

They talked a lot about their experiences with shooting with HD. I am interested in such stuff but I know I've read a lot about other people's experiences online, so you better do a Google search if you're interested in HD.

- (0min) The original scripted teaser would have cost US$100,000 for visual effects, with Anubis in the space ship.
- (1min) Lockdown was the first SG-1 episode to be shot in HD instead of on 35mm film.
- (4min) The audio commentaries are recorded in a large theater [Sharpe Sound] with a screen 40 or 50 feet across.
- (5min) Two days prior to the shooting of this episode, CJ still had a pony tail, but the producers wouldn't let him keep it.
- (6min) Since no-one was used to filming in HD, they had to get a new HD crew and lost about an hour per day.
- (8min) When Will Waring started doing Stargate, it took 7.5 days to shoot an episode. Now it only takes 6 days, which means a lot of planning.
- (9min) WW likes doing story-boarding in his scripts (which you will see if you buy those off eBay

).
- (10min) They had several steady cam operators in this episode since Nathaniel Massey, the usual steady cam operator, was doing Atlantis.
- (13min) No pinapples in this episode because it was covered behind a door and WW couldn't go back and film it again.

- (14min) The guy playing Vaselov is a South African actor and ex-military. WW: "The fun part was in the casting. We had a bunch of real Russians coming in, or Russian speaking people, to cast for the astronauts in the beginning, and this one fellow was an ex-pilot and told a half-hour story how this Alien space ship followed them when they were flying their airplane."

- (16min) The scene where the doctor talks to Sam and Teal'c was the first scene shot. They had difficulties filming the doctor because she had very bright skin.
- (22min) The Stargate crew get all kinds of crew gifts: blankets, VCRs, TVs, down jackets, vests, backpack,...

- (23min) The scene where Vaselov talks to Daniel. JM: "Another HD thing... but in the background you'll notice the hallways are green. And some of the florenscence is green. That was a bit of a surprise. We had to do a $15,000 rebuilt of the entire base to put color-corrected florescence in. That was a surprise to. We just found it out on this episode. We actually had a film package prepped to shoot four days before we went to camera and Atlantis was HD and they started shooting before us. And they liked it, so at the last minute we changed packages."

- (24min) JM: "Will was the A-camera operator on the last five years of the show and has started directing in about his second year of the show and is now becoming one of the main directors. This year [2005] he'll be doing three or four."

- (24min) The pineapple would have been at the end of the scene where Lt. Evans drops her tray.

- (27min) JM: "All the carpets are replaced. We thought we were cancelled actually, so we kind of let it run down. But now it's all brand new. The floor is actually a little too clean. There're all painted, all clear(?) lines are new."

- (28min) Scene where Carter and Daniel explain the lockdown. WW: "Michael [Shanks] was pretty savvy in the beginning of this. He picked up his script sides, placed them on the clip board and held them right in front of him."

- (29min) Same scene. WW: "And that vis effect [of Cheyenne Mountain interior] is a tricky one because you want to see the base layered, divided, brought into the different zones. But you dont want to see too much detail that draw attention to the fact that even we don't know what's in there before. Because the floors are kind of there based on what the scripts need."

- (30min) WW: "These are fun, the little montage of [blast] doors coming down. There's really only three that actually come down on the set, and only two are really shootable because one goes into the control room."

- (30min) WW gets the script around two weeks before they start shooting.

- (38min) JM: "We had a lot of fun with the Anubis lines. - 'Anubis left me for someone else.' - 'Anubis was in me.'"

- (38min) Scene where Carter overides the computer. WW: "Now, for the discerning viewer. How did one console turn that off? It's supposed to be two." JM: "Override." WW: "She's smart." JM: "She's a hacker."

- (39min) Scene between O'Neill/Anubis and Vaselov. WW: "It's funny. In my cut, I had a couple more beats between the two guys, eyeball to eyeball, which gave a little more depth and drama. It looked fabulous, but it cost too much to put the puddle in there for two more shots." JM: "Yeah, well, you should have done the close ups-on the fake screen." WW: "If we had had the time." JM: "Probably not."

----------
804 Zero Hour (Peter Woeste, John Lenic)

They talked a lot about what was typical for RDA. This is John Lenic's first audio commentary, and I think he did a fine job with it. I know I would be all nervous about it, but he seemed fine.

- (0min) This episode was shot in 7 days over 4 weeks.
- (5min) This is the last episode which features CRT monitors in the briefing room. They have flat screen monitors now.
- (7min) They not only had to schedule around RDA in this episode, but also around Bill Down, who plays Dr. Lee. Bill Dow was in a play in Vancouver during that time.
- (8min) This episode was shot as seventh episode in the season.
- (9min) The painting of Saturn you see in the Amarans' cell is usually hanging on a wall in the production office.
- (10min) Originally, they wanted to buy new furniture for General O'Neill's office but they couldn't due to budget restrains.
- (11min) Whenever they want to use a brand (like Krispy Krems) they have to get clearance, which can get difficult at the end of the shooting day.
- (12min) All off-world scenes were shot second unit by Andy Mikita in Tynehead Park.
- (14min) They used real plants because you can't burn plastic plants.

- (21min) JL: "[The Air Force advisors] don't censor anything, they just want to be... because the writers don't let them. I mean it's more about being accurate about rank and saluting indoors, protocols and procedures is the biggest thing. [...] As long as they get protocols and procedures down, as long as it is referenced properly and you have the right ribbons on, you know when they're in the Air Force full dress or in this case you have the single general's star on RDA. On them that is the biggest thing. There was an episode a number of years back called Memento that had an Air Force personel member on the Prometheus with long hair, and that, we learned, was a huge no-no. And they actually wanted us to cut around or re-shoot the scene. Unfortunately we couldn't due to schedule but it became a big deal. So now we know that. We know our lesson."

- (24min) The scene with O'Neill sleeping in the base was filmed last.
- (25min) Cliff Simon (Baal) was shot against green screen in the gate room, and he was done within a day or half.

- (32min) JM: "In coming years, you'll see in the military, they're changing to more digitized (???) look. It actually looks like digitized camou. And they're using that more because on large satellites surveillance pictures they are very hard to detect, because it is more digitized. So they actually blend in more." PW: "So you would see that not only on uniforms but for instance trucks." JL: "Creatively, it doesn't look that good. It looks kind of ugly, if you will, but that's what they're changing to, and you'll see it in I believe Atlantis, the digitzed uniforms, the Army uniforms. In season 9 of SG-1 you'll start to see digized marine uniforms. The Air Force hasn't switched to the digitized camou yet but I believe that's coming in the next years."

- (33min) When Col. Reynolds is giving his speach about that every man and woman is behind O'Neill, they didn't have any female extras when they shot it, so they had to shoot several pick-up shots with females afterwards.
- (34min) Scene where O'Neill is changing his clothes (read the names on the locker). "B. Prochaska" is Stargate's publicist, "M. Davidson" is a set decorator of the show.

**osirisi** · 11 May 2005, 11:30 AM

Are the commentaries the original commentary being translated into german or are they still in english on the DVDs?

**sgeureka** · 11 May 2005, 08:02 PM

They are in English, like you would expect.

**sgeureka** · 05 August 2005, 03:02 AM

811 Audio Commentary "Gemini" by Will Waring (WW, Director) and Jim Menard (JM, Director of Photography)

This commentary was recorded two days before work for the first episode of Season 9 began (JM said so). The commentary for "Lockdown" was recorded shortly before (by the same two guys). With Will Waring being one of the main camera operators on the show, they talked a lot from a visual perspective, especially what it was like to film two characters with only one actress.

(4min - MALP showing RepliCarter and Opening Credits)
WW: "This was difficult because we shot this using the actual video cameras, what was that? It was InfraRed."
JM: "[...] We actually had it a lot better than this. She [RepliCarter] almost sort of appeared, but we did a really neat InfraRed thing, where she came in and they had to search for her through the different modes of the MALP. It was much more mysterious, as she walked forward."
WW: "Nice little pushes-in. So, two people, Amanda playing herself, Amanda playing the Replicator - in a situation like that, you're doing a prerecorded... We preshot Amanda as a Replicator and Amanda as Carter just watching it. That's your classic way of doing it. We'll do that a bunch more in this."
JM: "If you've got money and time, we do what's called 'Motion-control', where you can actually do a pass with your camera, and it's recorded and it's on a geared head that will repeat the motion. And then you can put two people in the same shot on different passes."
WW: "In a situation like this, we have to be very judicious how we use that kind of technology because it takes so much time."
JM: "And it used to be even more expensive but a company from California called 'Hot Gears' has invented remote motors that fit on a regular fitted head, that you can run the head remotely, and also repeat up to 50 seconds, I believe, of move, and that's growing all the time."

(6min)
WW: "This was such a hard episode for Amanda because she's got to play the two parts, it's the same person, she's got to give it enough of an edge to difference. And flip forward and back between them *many* times of the day."
JM: "You could cast a schizophrenic."

(8min - Briefing Room)
JM: "Our new general, Beau Bridges, wants to do a little bit more movement things in the briefing room, so we'll see how that ends up."
WW: "You can only walk around the table so many times."

(10min - Carter and RepliCarter meat for the first time, via video camera)
JM: "There's a great shot coming up, which we went to great pains. Right here. This is a complete 180 [degrees] in the room, which we do, and as we come around, we'll see a camera on the wall, and then we pan back, and then we actually ended up *over* the camera, and it got cut out."
WW: "It worked but it just extended things too much."
JM: "See? Still one shot. We pan over, see the camera. As we pan off, that wall is opening right now, and we got behind it right over the camera... but they cut to this point of view [Carter seeing RepliCarter on a screen] instead."
WW: "It was a better cut."
JM: "You should have seen it. It was great [...] And this is the continuation of that same shot. It continued right into the sitting position."

(14min - Carter is talking to O'Neill via vid cam)
WW: "There is our rear screen puddle..."
JM: "And that's actually a rear-screen screen stuck in the gate with an LCD projector projecting the puddle. First year we were able to do that. The price of them came down enough and they got bright enough to be able to do it."
WW: "I believe this was a live feed as well."
JM: "Yeah, it's the best. We actually have the actor in another room..."
WW: "When you got two actors of this caliber talking to each other, you don't want them working off at artificial timing about playback, you want two actors act to each other."
JM: "Yeah."
WW: "But because of time constraints, sometimes you got to do the playback, but whenever possible, the live feedbacks."

(16min - Carter confronting RepliCarter)
WW: "Now here, we're doing overs [of the two Carters]. You can see the jawline, and we use Cindy Peters, who has a perfect jawline for the overs, yet we use Sherri standing off-camera for the dialogue, because she has the timings. You see, Cindy's jawline is so perfect, you can do that."

(17min - RepliCarter meets O'Neill in the base and is ordered to shoot him in her vision)
Warning for ship-annoyed people

Spoiler:

(21min - Carter and RepliCarter talking to each other in a room full of computers)
WW: "So on each of these sides, Amanda will be acting to her stand in, Sherri Knowl(sp?)."
JM: "[...] And there is the split screen."
WW: "Well, that's right. We didn't do the pan over. That was a different shot."
JM: "We used a split screen for this. Er, the camera is locked off. It's when the camera moves, that you start incuring costs. [...] Yeah, split screen is pretty easy. It's pretty seemless these days too, so you can't really tell where the screen is split."

(22min - Carter is talking to O'Neill via vid cam)
WW: "Here's a playback they're acting to... Definately a different look to the video, playback versus live feed. Live feed is too clean."

(28min - RepliCarter is downloading the cipher from the subspace link)
WW: "I'm just remembering what a weird time it was blocking these scenes, because you got to block both sides there with Amanda playing against her stand-in. And then pick the side that gives you the least amount of wardrobe changes to start shooting. So your blocking were always twice as long as it normally would be."

(31min - Carter, RepliCarter and Teal'c after Teal'c has flown the F-302)
WW: "Nice cheat there. That's the photo double walking there behind."
JM: "That was a good motion-control shot. The next half of it here I thought was the best part where you brought... That's nice. When they cross each other, that's where you start getting into some...
WW: "Eyelines are good. This was such a big deal to set up. We had spent an hour one night setting it up to shoot it the first thing in the morning. Because it takes *so* *freaking* *long* to do this."
JM: "The next piece when we take the two Carters on either side of Chris... it's coming up in a second..."
WW: "You should see the outtakes for that."
JM: "And we actually had a problem with the geared head. It had a bump in it."
WW: "That was in the previous shot. We already saw the bump. It's actually pretty subtle with all the sound and everything..."
JM: "Here it is..."
WW: "That's a couple of cuts away."
JM: "Here we go... two people moving at once and following into frame."
WW: "That's so great."
JM: "That was good. They had to go into a TV frame, which made it even trickier."
WW: "Yeah, it took a bit of time... Yeah, and then here you just have Amanda on either side with the double body's shoulder, if you see it..."

(35min - Carter and RepliCarter talking to each other in RepliCarter's mind)
JM: "How many days did it take to shoot this episode?"
WW: "I think... seven?"
JM: "I think you had a little extra because in every scene you had to change them."
WW: "In this particular episode I went long every day. Typically, you shoot 12, 12 and a half hours. And I know I was pushing 13, 13 and a half, every day."
JM: "I must have been grumpy."
WW: "A lot of people were grumpy during this. But the producers were right giving me extra time. It was needed on this, and there was lots of second units."

(36min - RepliCarter is wreaking havoc on the Alpha site)
WW: "In the next fight sequence, we actually had a wire rig set up because I wanted to do a Matrix-style vertical jump to kick one of the guys. We just ran out of time."

(37min - RepliCarter is still wreaking havoc on the Alpha site)
WW: "Special Effects had a lot of interactive bulbs going of, or flashes, on Amanda."
JM: "And we'd actually got a lot of the guns."
WW: "Well, you couldn't fire the guns at Amanda, though. Or in any proximities. They had these garbage can lids filled with flash powder."

(40min)
JM: "Well, we were pretty sure that year 8 was it. We were pretty sure that year 5 was it. It's like Robert Cooper says, 'We've been ending the show for three years.' Now we have to start again. With new foes, new enemies coming up, new stories... Amanda is about to have a baby. It was pretty sure it was the last year. We won't see her until about May."

**sgeureka** · 05 August 2005, 03:06 AM

814 Audio Commentary "Full Alert" by Andy Mikita (AM, Director) and Paul Mullie (PM, Executive Producer and Writer) Part 1

This commentary was recorded on an early Saturday morning, but both commentators seem to be pretty much awake.

They talked a *lot* very fast, so I'm jumping to the *really* interesting bits.

(1min - O'Neill finds Kinsey drinking his Scotch in his apartment and Opening Credits)
PM: "That chair, by the way, that Ronny's sitting in is usually in the writing department, isn't it, that chair?"
AM: "I think we did take it out of the..."
PM: "They steal our furniture(!) to dress the set."
AM: "Well, we do it every week, or we wouldn't have any money to do the show, so basically, we just take things from wherever we can. This was actually a fun scene to do. It's always great having Ronny come up to town for a while, and when it's a nice long head-to-head dialog scene between Rick and Ronny, the two of them really get into it and have a lot of fun with it."
PM: "I love that shot where he pulls the cell phone out of his pocket. [...] We were actually speaking of long, long talky scenes. We were actually quite concerned. I mean, this was broken up because it's the teaser and it goes to commercial, and then it comes right back, and they continue to talk. On the script, it was, I think 4 or 5 pages, which is *really* rare for us to have a scene that goes for that long, that's just dialogue between two people, particularly with Rick - we were concerned."
AM: "Everybody was concerned. Rick was concerned. Ronny was concerned. We've been spending a lot of time with this scene, and we had started our day over a different location, which was the Russian prison cell set, and we started our day there, and there was a considerable amount of dialogue with Ronny and Mike Shanks. So it was sort of half of the day that's been sort of intentionally scheduled a good half of a day to do that scene knwoing that it was probably going to be a little bit of a bumpy ride for him, because he had an awful lot to do in the course of that day, and he had an access of close to ten pages of dialogue to do. But it worked out really well. He was really well prepared and it was good."

(4min - scene continues)
AM: "And you can see by watching, there was not a lot of coverage just because there was (a) not much point because we just needed it to be..."
PM: "A simple scene..."
AM: "And also for the sake of them, not having to continuously do it all over."
PM: "Of course, when Andy says 'not much coverage', it usually means twice as much coverage as any other director."
AM: "Is that right?"
PM: "Yes."
AM: "No kidding?"
PM: "When we watch dailies, we're like, 'Oh, how many ways can they shoot this scene?' And then we just start fast-forwarding. 'Who directed this?!' - 'Oh, it's Andy. Of course.' [...] I don't know, it's usually a lot of coverage."
AM: "I like having the choices when cut-and-edit. It sort of drives me nuts to just sort of continuously back and forward to the same shot over and over and over. And if there's an opportunity to run a second camera, if you're setting an over, then absolutely set the second camera because it's free. Especially now that we're shooting in HD and it doesn't cost us anymore to shoot additional material."
PM: "We can just roll. It's good for Peter [DeLuise]."
AM: "Yeah absolutely."
PM: "He never cuts."
AM: "Ever. It drives the script supervisor crazy."
PM: "Save a lot of money on film. Well, the tapes cost money, I guess. Do we re-use them?"
AM: "No, once they're used..."
PM: "We put them in the library?"
AM: "But I mean they cost maybe 45 bucks or something per tape as opposed to, you know we were shooting 7000 feet of film a day. I mean, that would have cost, um..., God, I can't even... possibly a million Dollars a year of film, so..."

(6min - scene continues)
PM: "It's funny. This scene is typical for a drama. This is par on the course. This is two guys talking in a room, but for us it actually makes us nervous to do this. 'Why is no-one shooting anything? And nothing is blowing up, and there is no LASERs. Oh, the audience is going to get bored.' But when you got two actors like this... it works."

(7min - scene continues)
PM: "How many times have we been in this house before?"
AM: "We've been in this house probably a hundred times."
PM: "No, really? Has it always been his house? Season 1?"
AM: "Since season 1, yeah. We've always used this house, and I think over the years we've been sort of trying to look for alternatives but we just continuously go back to this place. But it's always a big disruption to the people who live there."
PM: "Has it been the same owners the whole time?"
AM: "The same owners the whole time. A really nice couple. i can't remember their names off-hand, but they're really nice and really accomodating, although it's usually a big event whenever we call them. It's always like, 'Oh God, sorry, we have to come back to the house again. Do you mind?' It's always a bit of an event."
PM: "I'm sure it must be, to take their house over for a couple of days."
AM: Yeah, and it's a very small house as well. We have a pretty big impact when we're coming there."

(9min - SG-1 and Kinsey in the surveillance van)
AM: "This was a tricky little scene to shoot because we actually shot it *inside* the surveillance van. You'll see the outside of it in a minute. And we shot it inside and it's very very difficult and very cramped of course."
PM: "Did we have a set that looked like the inside of the van or you just practically used the inside of the van?"
AM: "We used the practical van."
PM: "Becuase we've done it both ways before, right?"
AM: "Yeah, we have. This was a whole different vehicle becuase we had blown up the previous vehicle. [...]"
PM: "Did we literally blow it up? Oh, that was in Chimera."

(10min - Kinsey gets taken by the men in black and SG-1 follows)
AM: "Now this is a particular set of roads out here at the Boundary Airport, and you can tell in the actual travelling shot that it looks like a closed-off set of roads. [...] But all these roads, all of them were done in the same spot, and the reason we did that was it allowed us to do it without police escorts and all the rest of the difficulties that come of blocking the traffic. We had the whole run of the place here. Again, because of the quantity we have done, we thought it might make sense to do it. And all the stuff that's shot inside the van of course is done is what's called 'poor man's process', where we have guys moving and grips shaking the truck to make it look like it was travelling. It worked out pretty well."

(13min - the house)
AM: "But one of the things having when you're on location, like when you're going to a place for the first time, you don't know how the decorators actually have the place dressed. Of course, that effects directly how you're gonna stage the actors. So, whever I have a little bit of dance in the morning, becuase I had sort of in my mind's eye a number of different furniture items dressed in patricular places and was gonna place the actors accordlingly. And when I showed the next morning of, 'OMG that looks totaly different that what we've talked about. I'll just scramble a little bit of where I was gonna stage everybody.'"
PM: "This seems to happen a lot. You get there..."
AM: "Pretty much everyday."
PM: "'Well, this isn't what we've talked about...(!)"
AM: "*But*, to the credit of the art department, it's usually a lot better than we awaited it to be. That's just the nature of the game."
PM: "It's always more complicated, right? Like you always think in terms of, and we do as well when we're writing, in terms of very simple stuff. When the art department gets their hand on it and gets *much* more elaborate, and visually that's what you want. You want it to be interesting looking, and we always imagine kind of a simple version, and they always take it and go crazy. Which is, you know, good for the show but makes it harder for you, I think, as a director."
AM: "It does make it a little more difficult because often, like in the case of this room, you know, I wasn't anticipating that center circular table and chairs so all of a sudden that was gonna be kind of the main staging area. But still, it all worked out fine."

(15min - the briefing room)
PM: "Peter [DeLuise] doesn't even cut, like we said before. He's just like, 'Now is the next scene. Keep talking. You're still in the chair. You've left and come back."
AM: "It's tough. [...] My mind doesn't work that way. I have to do things much more slower and more methodical."
PM: "It's difficult for the editors. Because they can't tell what scene they're in. There is no slates. Peter doesn't cut, so it's just like *one* long roll of tape. Four different scenes shot on it. We always have to search and find it."

(...continued in the next post)

**sgeureka** · 05 August 2005, 03:09 AM

(...continued from the last post)

(17min - Daniel meets the female Russian officer)
PM: "Then of course you have to hire some actors who can do Russian accents."
AM: "In this case, Francoise Robertson, who we hired locally out of Vancouver, did a *great* Russian accent, and very convincing. I thought she did a terrific job."
PM: "Yeah, she was fabulous."
AM: "She just had a baby recently. As soon as we would cut and run to a new set-up, she'd be running downstairs to deal with her baby. Her husband is Martin Commins(sp?) of 'Poltergeist'. He was one of the regular actors on that show. It was nice to see him. He came by. He's been on our show, yeah, in some other episode... Forsaken."
PM: "Forsaken. That's right. We've cast a lot of Russian people, like Russian parts played by local Vancouver actors over the years. [...] And it's tough. Like Vancouver, it's not a huge pool of talents. It's not a very big city. There aren't that many actors living and working here, so to find people who can do viable Russian accents or can actually *speak* Russian, which we often require them to do, is not easy."

(19min - the Russian officer and Daniel are in a car in Russia)
AM: "So here we're back on the same set of roads that we saw Ronny Cox in..."
PM: "Except that we're now in Russia. It looks completely different."
AM: "Actually, when we were scouting this, we did try to make a concerted effort..."
PM: "To make it look different?"
AM: "You can see on Francoise's coverage, the travelling stuff, we tried to avoid trees and use more of the field look. But it didn't really work."

(20min - Chekov comes to O'Neill's office)
PM: "Who did the Russian?"
AM: "We did hire a fellow..."
PM: "Who translated the script, and then what? Gave the actors a sort of phonetic pronunctiation?"
AM: "He stayed on set at any time we had to speak Russian, and he also played the extra. You'll see him in the background of this scene, where Garry Chalk, who plays, the Russian Colonel Chekov... His aid is the...
PM: "Is your sort of Russian technical advisor."
AM: "That's right. You see him in the background."
PM: "There he is."
AM: "He is a little bit awkward on camera. He was more comfortable in the role of interpretor as opposed to..."
PM: "Oh, it was good that you got him on camera, though."
AM: "Yeah. He had a great look but you can see he looks a little bit... uneasy."
PM: "I shouldn't make fun of him. I have never been on camera, and I'll never be because I would be even worse. Everyone else of the writing department has been on camera at one point or another. And the only one who hasn't and people keep trying to get me to and I just think I would be so scared and nervous that I would can't even stay in the background... wearing a lab coat. Damian has done that. Robert has been... actually, Robert has got dialogue. Brad had dialogue. Joe had dialogue. They were all in 'Wormhole X-Treme.' I was the only one who wasn't in it."
AM: "I was even in it. I got head-butted by Michael DeLuise."

(26min - Daniel visits Kinsey in the Russian prison cell)
AM: "This was the sequence I was talking about earlier, that we shot before going over to the O'Neill house. This was just a small little prison cell set that we put up in the music class room of the elementary school where we park all of our trucks when we're shooting at O'Neill's house."

(28min)
PM: "One of the problems of this episode, and one of our concerns from the very beginning was that we were telling a story about a big military build-up and a potential confrontation was happening all over the world. And we didn't have the ability to show that. I mean, that's one of the reasons why we needed those screens we we're talking about, to sell that point of an impending military conflict on a global scale. I mean, if it was film, they'd be coming to stock shots of jets landing of air carriers, and missile silos opening and stuff like that. But we just didn't have the ressources to get those kinds of shots. And it was a concern. I remember, we talked about it in various stages, but even before went to shoot this episode and while we were shooting and so, and even while we're cutting it, there was some talk of just finding stock shots, trying to cut them in, and we just didn't think it was gonna work. We couldn't do it well enough. It was either do-it-all-the-way or don't-do-it-at-all. We didn't have the ressources to do it all the way, so we just decided to try and let it sell, trying to let it sell those beats from this room [with all the screens], playing it with the tension on the actor's faces and things like that... I think it worked. There were times in a story like this here you wish you could get a little more scope but you know it's episodic television. We have our budget and we do what we can within it. It's fun to try to tell stories like this but it's obviously a challenge."

(31min - Kinsey is on board the Prometheus)
AM: "Prometheus is a fun set to shoot in. There's lots of layers and textures and flashing lights and..."
PM: "The Prometheus going back was our answer to the Goa'uld ships. We wanted to build something that was exactly the opposite of Goa'uld ships, which are basically big empty rooms. You know, we were always complaining becuase we were flying those Goa'uld ships and there's nowhere to sit, there was no screens, no buttons to press. So when we came up with the idea of the Prometheus back in whatever season that was, season 5 or whatever, Brad was like, 'I want buttons! I want switches! Lots of buttons and switches and flashing lights!' I think the original sort of concept was like an air craft carrier. it's supposed to look like an air craft carrier. And it does! God, it's so much fun to go in there. I love, like you said, the texture of it."

(33min - Kinsey shoots the security guys)
AM: "The last scene you just saw, where Ronny's character, where Kinsey disarms the two guards... That was one scene we sort of discussed. How can we convincingly get him to disarm these two guys? I think it worked pretty good."
PM: "It's always a problem for us when we're writing stories what we call 'escape beats'. Because when, you know, you have done a hundred and some fifty whatever seventy episodes of television like we have, you've pretty much run through the gamit(?) of ways to escape. A guy, you know, who's had his hands cuffed and armed guards on him, how can he get out of it? We came up of the idea to actually having that moment coincide with the attack, so that the ship shaking would provide the distraction necessary to give the Kinsey character the jump on the guards, right? That's always tough. It comes up every other script. Somebody is held captive by somebody else and needs to escape. How can we do it in a way that's not lame, because you know we've done so many of them before and we always have to try to come up with a new one."

**Caro** · 05 August 2005, 04:23 AM

Thank you so much for taking time to summarize the commentaries for us, that's very kind of you !!

I definitly have to listen to these audio commentaries, they are pretty interesting and funny

**Emily** · 05 August 2005, 06:27 AM

Thank you!! that's great!!

Really interesting!! Some of these commentaries are pretty funny, as Caro said!

**Coley** · 12 August 2005, 10:04 AM

Many thanks for posting these!!

**NowIWillDestroyAbydos** · 12 August 2005, 10:46 AM

Someone sould post a list

:
For Example: Episode #, Episode Name, People who did it.

**Kalliope** · 12 August 2005, 10:49 AM

Here you can find a transcript of "Prometheus Unbound" commentary http://terrafirmascapers.com/index.php?topic=2209.0

**sgeureka** · 12 August 2005, 10:45 PM

Originally posted by NowIWillDestroyAbydos

Someone sould post a list

:
For Example: Episode #, Episode Name, People who did it.

401 - Small Victories - MW, JMe, JT
402 - The Other Side - PDL, JT
403 - Upgrades - MW, JMe, JT
404 - Crossroads - PDL, JT
405 - Divide And Conquer - MW, JMe, JT
406 - Window Of Opportunity - PDL, JT
407 - Watergate - MW, JMe, JT
408 - The First Ones - PDL
409 - Scorched Earth - MW, JMe, JT
410 - Beneath the Surface - PDL, JT
411 - Point Of No Return - WG, JMe, JM, PM
412 - Tangent - PDL, JT
413 - The Curse - AM, JT, PW
414 - The Serpent's Venom - MW, JMe, JT
415 - Chain Reaction - MW, JMe, JT
416 - 2010 - AM, PW, JT
417 - Absolute Power - PDL, RCC
418 - The Light - AM, PW, JT
419 - Prodigy - PDL, JM, PM
420 - Entity - AL, JT
421 - Double Jeopardy - MS, JT
422 - Exodus - JM, JMe, JT
501 - Enemies - MW, JT
502 - Treshold - PDL, CJ, JT
503 - Ascension - MW, AT, JT
504 - The Fifth Man - PDL, JM, PM
505 - Red Sky - MW, AT, JT
506 - The Rite Of Passage - PDL, JT
507 - Beast Of Burden - MW, JMe, JT
508 - The Tomb - PDL, JM, PM
509 - Between Two Fires - WG, JMe, JT
510 - 2001 - PDL, JM, JT
511 - Desperate Messures - WG, JMe, JT
512 - Wormhole X-Treme! - PDL, JM, JT
513 - Proving Ground - AM, PM, JMe, JT
514 - 48 Hours - PW, AW
515 - Summit - MW, JM, JT
516 - Last Stand - MW, RCC, JT
517 - Fail Safe - AM, PM, JMe, JT
518 - The Warrior - PDL, DS
519 - Menace - MW, JT
520 - The Sentinel - PDL, GJ
521 - Meridian - WW, JMe
522 - Revelations - MW, JM, PM, JT
601 - Redemption, Part 1 - MW, JT
602 - Redemption, Part 2 - MW, JT
603 - Descent - PDL, PW, GJ
604 - Frozen - MW, JT
605 - Nightwalkers - PDL, PW
606 - Abyss - MW, CJ, JT
607 - Shadow Play - PDL, PW
608 - The Other Guys - MW, CJ, JT
609 - Allegiance - PDL, GJ, JT
610 - Cure - AM, DK, JMe
611 - Prometheus - PW, AW, RD
612 - Unnatural Selection - AM, JMe
613 - Sight Unseen - PW, AW, RD
614 - Smoke And Mirrors - PDL, GJ, JT
615 - Paradise Lost - MGr, RCC
616 - Metamorphosis - PDL, JT
617 - Disclosure - DSD, JM, PM
618 - Forsaken - AM, DK
619 - The Changeling - MW, CJ
620 - Memento - PDL, DK
621 - Prophecy - WW, PW, RD
622 - Full Circle - MW, JMe
701 - Fallen - MW, MS, JMe
702 - Homecoming - MW, MS, JMe
703 - Fragile Balance - PDL, DK
704 - Orpheus - PDL, PW
705 - Revisions - MW, MS, JMe
706 - Lifeboat - PDL, PW
707 - Enemy Mine - PDL, GJ
708 - Space Race - AM, JMe, DK
709 - Avenger 2.0 - MW, AT
710 - Birthright - PW, JMe, MD, RD
711 - Evolution, Part 1 - PDL, GJ
712 - Evolution, Part 2 - PDL, AT
713 - Grace - PW, JMe, WW, MD
714 - Fall-Out - MW, PM, JT
715 - Chimera - WW, PW, DK
716 - Death Knell - PDL, AT
717 - Heroes, Part 1 - AM, AW
718 - Heroes, Part 2 - AM, RCC, AW
719 - Resurrection - AT, WW
720 - Inauguration - PW, MGr
721 - Lost City, Part 1 - MW, AT, RCC
722 - Lost City, Part 2 - MW, AT, RCC
801 - New Order, Part 1 - AM, GJ
802 - New Order, Part 2 - AM, GJ
803 - Lockdown - WW, JMe
804 - Zero Hour - PW, JL
805 - Icon - PW, JL
806 - Avatar - MW, CJ
807 - Affinity - PDL, DS
808 - Covenant - MW, AT
809 - Sacrifices - AM, DK
810 - Endgame - PDL, DS
811 - Gemini - WW, JMe
812 - Prometheus Unbound - AM, DK, CBl
813 - It's Good To Be King - PM, JMe
814 - Full Alert - AM, PM
815 - Citizen Joe - AM, DK
816 - Reckoning, Part 1 - PDL, GJ
817 - Reckoning, Part 2 - PDL, GJ
818 - Threads - none
819 - Moebius, Part 1 - PDL, GJ
820 - Moebius, Part 2 - PDL, GJ

101 - Rising, Part 1 - MW, JF
102 - Rising, Part 2 - MW, JF
106 - Childhood's End - MG, RL, RSF
110 - The Storm - MG, MW, DH
111 - The Eye - MG, MW, DH
112 - The Defiant One - MW, DS
113 - Hot Zone - MW, MG, RL, RSF, PMc
118 - The Gift - PDL, GJ
119 - The Siege Part 1 - MG, MW, DH
120 - The Siege Part 2 - MG, MW, JF, DH

Note:
Not all R2 (Europe) S8 DVDs contain all commentaries for SG-1 Season 8. German/French DVDs (R2) do have most of them, as do the R1 USA DVDs (so far). People from the UK can exchange their single DVDs with no commentaries for German DVDs (with English language and all extras).

Some commentaries for Atlantis are only available on R1 (USA) DVDs and the R2 Dutch DVDs (so far).

Who's who?
AL - Andy Lee (director, editor)
AM - Andy Mikita (director)
AT - Amanda Tapping ("Carter")
AW - Andy Wilson
BW - Brad Wright (creator)
CBl - Claudia Black ("Vala")
CJ - Christopher Judge ("Teal'c")
RD - Rick Dean (chief lighting technican)
DK - Damian Kindler (writer)
DH - David Hewlett ("McKay")
DS - Dan Shea (stunt coordinator, "Siler")
DSD - Don S. Davis ("Hammond")
GJ - Gary Jones ("Walter Harriman")
JF - Joe Flannigan ("Sheppard")
JL - John G. Lenic (producer)
JM - Joseph Mallozzi (writer)
JMe - Jim Menard (Director of Photography)
JT - James Tichenor (VisFX producer)
MD - Mark Davidson (set decorator)
MGr - Michael Greenburg (producer)
MS - Michael Shanks ("Daniel")
MW - Martin Wood (director)
PDL - Peter DeLuise (director, writer)
PM - Paul Mullie (writer)
PMc - Paul McGillion ("Beckett")
PW - Peter Woeste (director, Director of Photography)
RCC - Robert C. Cooper (writer, producer)
RD - Robert Davidson (set decorator)
RL - Rachel Luttrell ("Teyla")
RSF - Rainbow Sun Francks ("Ford")
WG - William Gereghty (director)
WW - Will Waring (director, camera)

**Agent_Dark** · 17 August 2005, 08:36 PM

Further note: Region 4 Season 8 DVD's only have commentaries for Sacrifices, Endgame, Prometheus Unbound, Gemini and Full Alert.

/me is pissed off

**sgeureka** · 25 August 2005, 06:39 AM

Audio Commentary 816 "Reckoning, Part 1" - Peter DeLuise (PDL, director) and Gary Jones (GJ, Chevron Guy)

Somehow I have the very strong feeling that PDL and GJ couldn't restrain themselves

and were doing unusual amounts of X-rated talk because there were looooong gaps of silence in the first ten minutes of this commentary. I suppose the naughty dialog was edited out but that made it somehow hard getting into the commentary at first. You got those chunks of unrelated information, PDL and GJ being in an incredible good mood shouting "Shaft" in high-pitched voices several times, and I just kept wondering what the first ten minutes of commentary had to do with anything. It got much better from then onwards. They did a running gag of how GJ's name has to share the screen with somebody else after the opening titles and how GJ should contact his agent and so on. They goofed around a lot as usual. The commentary was recorded at the beginning of shooting Season 9.

(12min, Briefing Room, continuing throughout the next scenes)
PDL: "Martin Wood spent a whole weekend there [at Cheyenne Mountain just a while ago], filming *all* different angles, night time, daytime, emergency situations... I guess we've never shot anything else. We've been using the same stock footage the whole time. To Martin's credit - he got a lot of cool different angles."
GJ: "You know what? Actually Martin's the perfect guy to shoot that. He loves that stuff. Like..."
PDL: "The military walking back and forth?"
GJ: "Military, the FA teams... he was almost going like on tours of like hangars and jets..."
PDL: "You know, Martin Wood and Brad Wright were invited by the Air Force to go on a test ride in the trainer jets."
GJ: "Right along?"
PDL: "Exactly. And they jumped at the chance, got their flight suits on, did all the training, put the gravity outfit on - the thing that squeezes you to make sure that the blood stays in your head? [...] Well, Martin goes up - and the plane conks out."
GJ: "What - not in mid-air?!"
PDL: "In mid-air. It conks, and he goes, (with a bored voice) 'Okay, we're going to have to do an emergencey landing, and this is very dangerous, and I hope you understand that this is bad...', and the pilot had to go through his check list. So he actually told Martin, 'Take the stick, stabilize the airplane while I go through my check list."
GJ: "I never heard this. You can't be serious."
PDL: "It's absolutely true. And you know what Martin was doing the whole time? He was video-tapping. He had no fear. (imitating Martin) 'Oh yeah, no problem.' He was video-tapping.
GJ: "You mean with the other hand?"
PDL: "With his other hand. That's how cool [...] Martin was."
GJ: "Yeah, he is."
PDL: "It's the same guy that wears shorts in the dead of winter."
GJ: "It's true, it's true. Yup."
PDL: "He got the legs for it."
GJ: "Yeah, he does."

(14min, after Carter got beamed onto Thor's ship)
PDL: "Now, Michael Shanks does the voice of Thor. You know, I'm gonna be doing the voice of another Asgard character on Atlantis called... (finally remembering) Hermiod. Hermiod is a strange name. It sounds like hemorrhoid, I don't know. Hermiod is a grumbly version of..."
GJ: "Well, when I get hemorrhoids, I wear my Ass-Guard."
PDL: "That's nice to know. [...] I did the voice of Loki before, and then when I was working with Michael... I was recording the voice-overs for the video game, and Michael was doing the voice for Thor in the video game... This is Stargate Alliance that's coming up... that you are part of..."
GJ: "That we worked on..."
PDL: "I saw Michael doing it and I went, 'Okay, I see that you picked up your thing and you adopted this kind of accent as well. It's not just your (talking like Thor) "I'm talking like this", you've adopted some kind of an accent.' When he first did the first voice of Thor, (talking like Thor, *very* slowly) 'He talked really slowly', and he realized... He didn't think that that character was going to come back... But when he realized... 'I have to speed this up. They're not paying me by the hour. I get paid the same whether I finish it in an hour or two.' Right? So he sped up the... Also, he realized how boring it was. Plus, he just has a tendency to get rid of his dialog fast."

(21min, Jacob talking to O'Neill in some kind of control room, continuing throughout the next scene)
GJ: "Hey, you know what I'm getting?"
PDL: "What?"
GJ: "Pace card. Yeah, I'm getting a pace card to drive onto the lot. I don't have to stop."
PDL: "A parking space, too?"
GJ: "No parking space."
PDL: "But a pace card. That's a big deal."
GJ: "That's a huge deal."
PDL: "So, for those of you who don't know what we're talking about. If you're watching 'Wormhole X-Teme!', we show the front of the Bridge Studios where we actually shot the real Stargate, the show. And when we actually filmed the kiosk, the guard station, the security hut for 'Wormhole X-Treme!' as a kind of insight into what we're actually going to for real..."
GJ: "And there's two lanes."
PDL: "Yeah, there's two lanes. The left side for the *losers* (laughs) and they have to stop and talk to the guard, 'No, I'm supposed to be here. My name's got to be on the list."
GJ: "And everytime I go, (bored voice) 'Gary Jones, and I'm with SG-1...'
(scene changes to when Baal show up as a hologram)
PDL: "There you are."
GJ: "There I am! [...] Oh, this is where I talk to Baal!"
PDL: "Well, that's the beginning of the next episode."
GJ: "Okay, I got to tell you something. No, I have to tell you something."
PDL: "I just want to finish... You are on the right side now, you got the card, you can just swipe the card and go in."
GJ: "And drive on."
PDL: "And you don't even have to talk to anybody. You don't have to justify your existence."
GJ: "No, but because I've gotten to know the security guard, I'll be like slowing down going, 'Hey! Shelley! Hi! Sorry, I can't... I got to go, got to go on the lot. With my pace card.'"
PDL: "So you still say hi?"
GJ: "Yeah, I still say hi."
PDL: "I do that every days... This is Cliff Simon, who plays Baal."
GJ: "Right. I'm on a message board, where I talk to fans."
PDL: "Internet?"
GJ: "Right. Internet message board. I talk to fans. And *very* recently I was asked by somebody who saw this episode, saw the next episode, where, you know, I come down and talk to Baal? [...] You got me to improvize to just sort of chat him up like it's very uncomfortable because you're waiting for Richard Dean Anderson to show up? The guy actually said on the message board... He actually goes, 'What were you going to ask Baal?' Remember this kind of moment where I go (makes uncomfortable noises)... where I take a breath and go... (makes noices again) [...] And I said, 'Peter DeLuise got me to improvize, and he said, "Treat it like it's like... 'Soooo, nice flight? How was the flight?'"', and I said... but I don't actually ask him that because Richard Dean shows up. But I said we were laughing about that whole moment where it's like, 'Sooooo, have you been waiting long? Did you have a good flight? How was the food? Did you get two sandwiches?'"

(23min, same scene)
GJ: "Tell people about the how-come room. So many people don't know about the how-come room."
PDL: "There's a room called the how-come room, and if you do something that is questionable, you have to go to the room and be asked, 'How come?'
GJ: "Yeah, and you know what's funny? I thought you were the only person to use that term. And when I was on 'Just Shoot Me' with Andy Mikita, and he made references to the scenes we're shooting, and he goes, 'It's got to look this way, it's got to come across this way, because I don't want to spend time in the how-come room.', and I'm thinking, 'Are you serious?', and he goes, 'Oh yeah, it's like a thing.'"
PDL: "Well, Andy Wilson - Andy Wilson was the B camera operator / DP - and Andy Wilson and Andy Mikita, who you just mentioned, used to do all the pick-up shots, all the clean-up stuff of the series. And becuase they're both called Andy, they referred to themselves as A-squared. And Andy Wilson is the first person I've ever heard who coined that phrase how-come room. Because he's so close to Andy Mikita I'm sure he picked up on it, too. But I got to give Andy Wilson credit for the how-come room."
GJ: "It's a funny phrase, man."

(29min, when Jacob and O'Neill are talking to Carter via video)
PDL: "You know what? I got a lot of letters saying, 'Stop commenting on Amanda Tapping's Big Doe(?) Eyes and also stop using the phrase poo-cramps.'"
GJ: "Who said that?"
PDL: "Those were my two directives from the fan mail, well, the people who're listening to commentaries. I guess I'm saying it too much. I guess I said it... Sometimes I do it months and months separated at a time, you know, so I comment, maybe I forget that I said she had big doe eyes, and I mention it again.

(30min, Daniel and RepliCarter posing as Oma in his Daniel's mind)
PDL: "This was a crazy crazy schedule [for Mel Harris AKA Oma] because she had to do our stuff, then she had to be kind of mean at the end, and then she also had to do the episode of 'Threads' where she was in, and you know she's Mel Harris so her time is very short. So she was with us only a couple of days. And she went across the way and did some scenes in the diner. You remember 'Dead Like Me', the series? And they had all those scenes in the diner?"
GJ: "I did an episode *in* that diner."
PDL: "Well, we used that diner for an entire episode of 'Threads' where Daniel Jackson was sort of dealt with by Oma Desala. And she [Mel Harris] was across the way in the 'Dead Like Me' diner, and then she was with us. Her big heavy clothing was *so* hot and there was no ventilation in the room... Between cuts, even though she looked like the Virgin Mary and her dress was down to the floor, she'd pick up her dress and just volt(?) it right up to her waist to expose her legs so she could cool off a little bit. And I thought, 'What a woman!' (the two guys drooling for a few moments) But she was wearing shorts anyway."
GJ: "So wasted story."
PDL: "Yeah..."

(and then they talked for many minutes about cigarettes, chocolate, the craft service and how it inflates you

)

(41min, End Titles)
GJ: "Did you see that name, 'Yu the Great'?"
PDL: "Yes, thank God... Well, let me tell you something. Everytime someone mentions Yu, they go 'You mean me?' And then you go, 'Oh man, that joke just keeps getting *funnier* everytime you say it.' So thank God that character got killed in this episodes. We never have to deal with *that* again."
GJ: "They always go, 'How is my acting?'"
PDL: "Yeah, You the Great."

Announcement

S8 DVD Audio Commentaries (Region 2 German)

S8 DVD Audio Commentaries (Region 2 German)

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