Commentary for The Quest Part 1
Sep. 4th, 2007 04:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tenayaCommentary for The Quest Part 1 by Joseph Mallozzi and Andy Mikita
This ep was the one that nearly killed AM. It's a classic fantasy adventure, and of course JM has had a lot of background in that given that he used to play a lot of Dungeons and Dragons as a kid--my 12th level goblin (unknown word.) He thought it would be a lot of fun to write but he realized that once the team is set to their quest, they are together in every scene. It became such a pain in the butt to give everyone something to do or say in every scene. Rob predicted Andy would hate him for that. In hindsight, AM says it was a lot of fun. The problem was that with all those people there, there had to be a lot of coverage (filming each character) which takes time and SG--or any episodic tv show for that matter--doesn't have a lot of time to film. AM admits this ep brought him closer to a nervous breakdown than any other ep has done, plus this was only part one of two parts. Parts one and two were shot as one. They were prepped at the same time, and it was a big 2 hour ep. JM thought this ep really worked, except for that first frontal shot of the dragon with it's little legs. AM thought it was going to be bigger and more imposing, too.
Re the open credits, the bit at the end where Vala runs up to the team and goes through the wormhole with them. Rob wanted to add that in once she had become part of the team. The pass through was shot during The Shroud and RDA was actually sitting next to AM at the monitor when they were filming it. He had a little tear in his eye and said that should be me. AM almost convinced him to be visible in the control room in the background for the shot but he decided against it.
The village scene. Ben hadn't seen his family in a couple of weeks and was anxious to get home to see one of his boys in a football game. So, they established him off away from the rest of the group, and shot his closeups first so as to allow him to run to catch his flight.
The old guy with the library, he was asking if it was possible to be on SGA, too. JM says the buzz from their guest stars is that they all have a great time on the show due to how well run it is, professional and relaxed (when it can be) and everyone gets along and the thing runs itself.
Re the five virtues. JM did a lot of research on them, made up fun riddles that rhymed, and then Rob pointed out that they would be in Ancient and wouldn't rhyme in English so JM had to un-rhyme them.
The tavern. The lady tavern owner was originally a man but he just 'lay there on the page' for JM. So, he changed it to a woman. He liked what the actress did but they still had to cut one of her scenes. Check that out on the deleted scenes part of this dvd.
When the Ori soldiers come, a young villager rushes them and gets shot with an energy weapon and he does a back flip. AM said there was no talking the guy out of that as he and Dan Shea had carefully choreographed that. AM thought that seemed like too much but was convinced to go with it and so takes full responsibility for it. JM: and you were reportedly docked in pay for it, too. AM: I was, yeah, yeah. ((they talk over each other here but they sound like they aren't exaggerating.))
Book burning scene: These books don't actually burn. There's a big pile of concrete under them and a few treated books were treated not to burn. Lighter fluid was poured on a couple and propane tank jets produced flames in certain areas of the pile. They didn't burn it as much as they wanted because they were afraid burning pages might drift up into the ceiling and start a fire.
In the shootout in the library with the Ori soldiers, the two in the background are two guys that AM plays hockey with on a team called the Predators, Mike Carpenter and Brad Turner. JM wanted the team to have to exit the building by crawling through a secret passageway.
The time dilation field. They decided against sfx and went with mimes...professional mimes. Also, because they were afraid it would be raining when they filmed this, they wrote in a line about illusion of movement. They called the day of and said, 'it's not raining,' but the AM countered with 'it's snowing' because there were cottenwood fluff that was floating about.
JM had more virtues originally and he wanted each character to convey a virtue. This one was Carter's, prudence, at this point--to show her ingenuity. The actor said wouldn't it have been better to just throw up a hand full of sand to create a tunnel. and he said, yeah but the sfx would have blown the budget. JM compliments the actors for coming up to the writers during prep if they have a concern and not waiting for the shooting day to hold up production. In the first two or three seasons, they actually did read throughs were everyone sat in a meeting while everyone read the script. That fell by the wayside because Rick was a joker and not much work would get done. They are going to reintroduce that into SGA next year. The cast, especially David had requested it and they thought, why not?
This was the ep where Michael had the new glasses. They mentioned the beard of S9. MS showed up at the start of the season and AM asked if he'd mind leaving the beard on as it looked great. JM mentioned there was this whole online controversy about to loose or to keep the beard, more discussion about that then any other plot point.
Ba'al is JM's fav Goa'uld. This was the first time that AM worked with Cliff and really liked him. JM said that Cliff was a Mr. New Zealand or something...Mr. South African? AM says Cliff is one heck of a dancer. JM says he is certainly fit because he is very slim (JM gotten Ba'al's costume to wear at a fan con--kinda tight.) After shooting this scene, Cliff, Chris and perhaps Michael went out and overindulged. Chris was late to work the next morning and was not in the best of moods. AM switched gears on that morning and made sure there was a lot of running and shooting of guns, and that straightened him up a little bit.
About the stuff they all have to put in the box to show their charity, it was Claudia's idea about what she pulled out of her pack. A hair dryer, a curling iron, a stuff giraffe that she kissed on the head and put back in her pack. They cut it down to just the hair dryer. It was a fun scene to do, took over a half a day to do.
They mention how Ba'al has his insignia on his belt buckle and it remains them of last season where all the Ba'al clones are introduced. One is in a golfing shirt and it has the insignia on it, too. Paul Mullie, a big golfer, thought that was great and JM went to costuming and had them make one up for him.
JM mentions a couple of Ba'al lines ("I'll just get out of your line of fire" and later when the kid is behind bars, he suggests that he's so little they could just squeeze him though. Carl, an SGA writer said, "That is so Joe. Joe is channeling himself through Ba'al." And JM laughs and says he guess those lines are a little mean.
Adria has natural eye color because the contacts were bothering her so much.
They talk for a while about why some details bring everything to a halt or merit a reshoot, while other things are just waved on through. "It's the process." And they decided it just means they care about their jobs. And you can always blame the writer.
They talk about the cave set and how it was repainted more glossy with red stalactites. They said it was painted black for Morpheus and the actors had to repel down a wall. Ben was doing his own stunt and accidently put his foot through the styrofoam surface on camera. Luckily, he was not hurt, and that's why they have Dan or other stuntmen do the stunts so that they can get hurt. They mentioned 'he' knocked himself out during a stunt and they realized it when he lay there and his foot twitched. But then he got up and was okay. ((it was hard to know if they were talking about Ben or Dan but I'd guess it was Dan.))
They put an Image Shaker on the front of the camera on the lens and can dial in the amount of shake you want. But here there were multiple light sources with the flashlight and the glass of the lights would get duplicated on the film. So, they did some of the shaking in post production. They have a lot of dust being tossed down on the actors and it was here that they had to take the contact lens out of Morena because the dust was just too thick.
They both compliment the cool wall of fire effect, and how great that warm light looks on the actors. JM wasn't sure where they were going to take the Ba'al Adria relationship and he had Carter say, "why don't you go get a room?" to hint that they might ally themselves later on.
Vala calling Teal'c "muscles" is an adlib.
JM wanted the chamber to look like the one on Crystal Skull. They talk about how challenging this was to shoot (stuff I didn't quite understand.) JM mentions how Daniel was afraid of heights in Season 1 but has over come that by S10. AM disagrees and says that for Daniel to ascend he had to overcome his fears therefore losing his fear of heights is a by product of ascension.
The sangraal isn't quite what they imagined it would be. They told them what they wanted and the day of the shoot, props said this is what you get.
They like the over the shoulder shot of dragon, but not so much the frontal shot.
=====
Okay, this one was fairly interesting to listen to.
Sue
This ep was the one that nearly killed AM. It's a classic fantasy adventure, and of course JM has had a lot of background in that given that he used to play a lot of Dungeons and Dragons as a kid--my 12th level goblin (unknown word.) He thought it would be a lot of fun to write but he realized that once the team is set to their quest, they are together in every scene. It became such a pain in the butt to give everyone something to do or say in every scene. Rob predicted Andy would hate him for that. In hindsight, AM says it was a lot of fun. The problem was that with all those people there, there had to be a lot of coverage (filming each character) which takes time and SG--or any episodic tv show for that matter--doesn't have a lot of time to film. AM admits this ep brought him closer to a nervous breakdown than any other ep has done, plus this was only part one of two parts. Parts one and two were shot as one. They were prepped at the same time, and it was a big 2 hour ep. JM thought this ep really worked, except for that first frontal shot of the dragon with it's little legs. AM thought it was going to be bigger and more imposing, too.
Re the open credits, the bit at the end where Vala runs up to the team and goes through the wormhole with them. Rob wanted to add that in once she had become part of the team. The pass through was shot during The Shroud and RDA was actually sitting next to AM at the monitor when they were filming it. He had a little tear in his eye and said that should be me. AM almost convinced him to be visible in the control room in the background for the shot but he decided against it.
The village scene. Ben hadn't seen his family in a couple of weeks and was anxious to get home to see one of his boys in a football game. So, they established him off away from the rest of the group, and shot his closeups first so as to allow him to run to catch his flight.
The old guy with the library, he was asking if it was possible to be on SGA, too. JM says the buzz from their guest stars is that they all have a great time on the show due to how well run it is, professional and relaxed (when it can be) and everyone gets along and the thing runs itself.
Re the five virtues. JM did a lot of research on them, made up fun riddles that rhymed, and then Rob pointed out that they would be in Ancient and wouldn't rhyme in English so JM had to un-rhyme them.
The tavern. The lady tavern owner was originally a man but he just 'lay there on the page' for JM. So, he changed it to a woman. He liked what the actress did but they still had to cut one of her scenes. Check that out on the deleted scenes part of this dvd.
When the Ori soldiers come, a young villager rushes them and gets shot with an energy weapon and he does a back flip. AM said there was no talking the guy out of that as he and Dan Shea had carefully choreographed that. AM thought that seemed like too much but was convinced to go with it and so takes full responsibility for it. JM: and you were reportedly docked in pay for it, too. AM: I was, yeah, yeah. ((they talk over each other here but they sound like they aren't exaggerating.))
Book burning scene: These books don't actually burn. There's a big pile of concrete under them and a few treated books were treated not to burn. Lighter fluid was poured on a couple and propane tank jets produced flames in certain areas of the pile. They didn't burn it as much as they wanted because they were afraid burning pages might drift up into the ceiling and start a fire.
In the shootout in the library with the Ori soldiers, the two in the background are two guys that AM plays hockey with on a team called the Predators, Mike Carpenter and Brad Turner. JM wanted the team to have to exit the building by crawling through a secret passageway.
The time dilation field. They decided against sfx and went with mimes...professional mimes. Also, because they were afraid it would be raining when they filmed this, they wrote in a line about illusion of movement. They called the day of and said, 'it's not raining,' but the AM countered with 'it's snowing' because there were cottenwood fluff that was floating about.
JM had more virtues originally and he wanted each character to convey a virtue. This one was Carter's, prudence, at this point--to show her ingenuity. The actor said wouldn't it have been better to just throw up a hand full of sand to create a tunnel. and he said, yeah but the sfx would have blown the budget. JM compliments the actors for coming up to the writers during prep if they have a concern and not waiting for the shooting day to hold up production. In the first two or three seasons, they actually did read throughs were everyone sat in a meeting while everyone read the script. That fell by the wayside because Rick was a joker and not much work would get done. They are going to reintroduce that into SGA next year. The cast, especially David had requested it and they thought, why not?
This was the ep where Michael had the new glasses. They mentioned the beard of S9. MS showed up at the start of the season and AM asked if he'd mind leaving the beard on as it looked great. JM mentioned there was this whole online controversy about to loose or to keep the beard, more discussion about that then any other plot point.
Ba'al is JM's fav Goa'uld. This was the first time that AM worked with Cliff and really liked him. JM said that Cliff was a Mr. New Zealand or something...Mr. South African? AM says Cliff is one heck of a dancer. JM says he is certainly fit because he is very slim (JM gotten Ba'al's costume to wear at a fan con--kinda tight.) After shooting this scene, Cliff, Chris and perhaps Michael went out and overindulged. Chris was late to work the next morning and was not in the best of moods. AM switched gears on that morning and made sure there was a lot of running and shooting of guns, and that straightened him up a little bit.
About the stuff they all have to put in the box to show their charity, it was Claudia's idea about what she pulled out of her pack. A hair dryer, a curling iron, a stuff giraffe that she kissed on the head and put back in her pack. They cut it down to just the hair dryer. It was a fun scene to do, took over a half a day to do.
They mention how Ba'al has his insignia on his belt buckle and it remains them of last season where all the Ba'al clones are introduced. One is in a golfing shirt and it has the insignia on it, too. Paul Mullie, a big golfer, thought that was great and JM went to costuming and had them make one up for him.
JM mentions a couple of Ba'al lines ("I'll just get out of your line of fire" and later when the kid is behind bars, he suggests that he's so little they could just squeeze him though. Carl, an SGA writer said, "That is so Joe. Joe is channeling himself through Ba'al." And JM laughs and says he guess those lines are a little mean.
Adria has natural eye color because the contacts were bothering her so much.
They talk for a while about why some details bring everything to a halt or merit a reshoot, while other things are just waved on through. "It's the process." And they decided it just means they care about their jobs. And you can always blame the writer.
They talk about the cave set and how it was repainted more glossy with red stalactites. They said it was painted black for Morpheus and the actors had to repel down a wall. Ben was doing his own stunt and accidently put his foot through the styrofoam surface on camera. Luckily, he was not hurt, and that's why they have Dan or other stuntmen do the stunts so that they can get hurt. They mentioned 'he' knocked himself out during a stunt and they realized it when he lay there and his foot twitched. But then he got up and was okay. ((it was hard to know if they were talking about Ben or Dan but I'd guess it was Dan.))
They put an Image Shaker on the front of the camera on the lens and can dial in the amount of shake you want. But here there were multiple light sources with the flashlight and the glass of the lights would get duplicated on the film. So, they did some of the shaking in post production. They have a lot of dust being tossed down on the actors and it was here that they had to take the contact lens out of Morena because the dust was just too thick.
They both compliment the cool wall of fire effect, and how great that warm light looks on the actors. JM wasn't sure where they were going to take the Ba'al Adria relationship and he had Carter say, "why don't you go get a room?" to hint that they might ally themselves later on.
Vala calling Teal'c "muscles" is an adlib.
JM wanted the chamber to look like the one on Crystal Skull. They talk about how challenging this was to shoot (stuff I didn't quite understand.) JM mentions how Daniel was afraid of heights in Season 1 but has over come that by S10. AM disagrees and says that for Daniel to ascend he had to overcome his fears therefore losing his fear of heights is a by product of ascension.
The sangraal isn't quite what they imagined it would be. They told them what they wanted and the day of the shoot, props said this is what you get.
They like the over the shoulder shot of dragon, but not so much the frontal shot.
=====
Okay, this one was fairly interesting to listen to.
Sue
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-04 03:30 pm (UTC)It's nice to hear that. RDA seemed so distant and removed those last few seasons, I'm glad to hear he DOES still care, at least a little bit.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-08 09:18 am (UTC)