SG1: Commentary on Dominion
Oct. 22nd, 2007 05:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tenayaCommentary on "Dominion" by Writer Alan McCullough and Director William Waring.
Since Adria was last seen unconscious heading back to the Ori galaxy, her presence in this episode should be a surprise to our viewers.
In the tavern in the opening shot, just as the camera settles on Vala, you can see the pineapple on a serving tray in the background; it's a drink this time, to the left of the shot.
The actor that was gambling with Vala had read for Stargate parts many times but he wasn't quite right. He finally landed this one and was very good in it. They compliment the props department for the gaming chips. AM and WW giggled over the shot of all the guns pointed at Vala; WW says that was from one of his sketches from early on and it really sells that moment. They feel that was a really nice reveal of Adria coming out of the shadows. WW compliments the wardrobe and mention how everything is made from scratch and is fantastic with amazing detail.
AM isn't sure how many viewers were fooled by Vala's false memories. The gambler took the Sodan cloaking device before he ran out but it was cut from the final version.
The story was by Alex Levine, who is the script coordinator on SG1 and SGA. All year long he was pitching ideas to Rob and Brad but they weren't clicking. He came up with the false memory idea, that Vala was meeting Adria without the sense of guile. AM had pitched the idea to Rob of an Prior getting implanted with a Goa'uld and Rob squished the stories together.
In the briefing scene, they both compliment the graphic of the infinity symbol to find the gate address. WW mentions how SG is shot in 16 x 9, and in this scene, he turned off the TV box lines in the camera allowing the framing of the shot to be opened up. Usually, the 'good bits' are within the tv box lines (the image that will appear on your tv if you are not watching it in letterbox format.) They also did a cross shoot, filming both actresses at the same time. It takes longer to set up the lighting but then you don't have to shoot five pages from one direction and then five pages from the opposite angle.
They compliment the actor that plays Col. Griffin. It's a small part but he brings steam to it so you aren't aware this is a false memory. AM loves how the scene ends with Vala looking to Daniel and his expression and the beautiful musical cue comes up.
The woman guard that let Daniel into Vala's room was a lady that won an auction for a walk on part. She spent the day on the set, about 14 hours. They put her into a lot of costumes and she had a great time. She knew all sorts of detail about the show and WW said she was a delight. They took her to Central Park for where all the dead Jaffa were but then dragged her back to the studio to put her in the hero shot.
In the scene were Vala steals the Sodan bracelet and puts it on, she disappears. In the director's cut, the cabinet doors then shut, but this was actually because the doors were so floppy the effects guys had to hold them open.
The scene where Vala is explaining her exile from Earth to Adria, is cross shot, and beautifully lit. WW feels that Claudia was particularly strong in this scene. AM agrees but also compliments Morena's acting.
The Jaffa that takes Adria away was an actor that they used as a Genii guard in "Common Ground."
AM and WW both compliment Cliff Simon and enjoy what a strong character Ba'al is. WW said Cliff likes to get his shirt off as often as he can as "that boy is ripped."
The compliment Claudia and Michael on the scene where they explain the memory loss ploy. AM giggled and said he loved Michael's "We're rolling!" shout on the tape. Paul did a pass on this script and really tightened up this scene in particular. They mention previous times they've used the memory device, like in Collateral Damage. They like to use the technology they've acquired in previous episodes.
Adria does come back in the Ark of Truth even though she ascends in this episode. We find out what happened to her and the Ori. Cliff and Morena had a lot of fun filming this scene and kept breaking each other up. AM and WW giggle over a line Ba'al said as he was shot fatally later on. He clutches his chest and softly says, "Not again!" as he dies. They loved it but they had to cut it because where the audience would find it funny, this version of Ba'al hasn't died before so it would not make sense for him to say that.
In the next scene, AM and WW laugh over why the team would ever trust Agent Barret again. WW points out that Ben is playing it that Mitchell isn't trusting him.
The next scene as the team on crouching down on a rocky hillock. All those rocks, trees and greens were brought in because they were filming in Central Park and it was pretty much flat. Originally, the Jaffa massacre was on a ship, but it was moved to the park because what else they needed to film there wasn't a whole day so they combined the two. AM feels having this scene be an exterior helps the episode because there are so many interiors in it already.
About that panning shot where you see all the dead Ba'als: WW said "usually they would use a wide (angle lens) with a camera lock off or maybe two stitched together but it would be too far away to see Cliff. So having worked on Elf where they did a lot of forced perspective work and nodle pan work (spelling) they set the camera up on a nodle pan which is a lot of technical gumble jumble but it allows you to pan without shifting foreground and background and that way we can stitch four panels together there and have closer shots of Cliff throughout that. And it stitched together nice." AM said when he wondered what WW was going to do when he was editing because it was just flash, flash, flash.
Ben says, we're off world, I'm taking the G-35, which is that big gun that folds out. They all prefer it because of the size of it and it makes a lot of noise. When they go on Ba'al's ship, Amanda has the gun. WW told her this was her last chance to fire the big gun and she said, "It's up to you" wink, wink.
AM says once they stitched all the plot together for this episode, he thought it was gonna be hard to write with all those location changes; he feared it would be 80 pages. But it turned out this was the easiest, cleanest SG episode he had ever wrote. It was a joy to write. In his first draft, he had Adria's death being more emotional for Vala, but Rob wanted it more that Vala didn't care, she never had, she wasn't her daughter. WW says it's cool how the rewrites get better. AM says a lot of that comes from the guy above him. Clean and tightening, clean and tightening. They both say what a nice moment it is between Mitchell and Vala where they discuss Vala's emotions for Adria.
For the scene where they go onto the Goa'uld ship, they had run out of time and had to use some scenes from previous eps. They used one for the outside shot of the Goa'uld ship, and another one when Carter shoots two Jaffa running towards her (Sue: I believe that's from Serpent's Lair, where Daniel shoots the two Jaffa before he is fatally wounded.) They both like this one shot before all the gunfire starts where the camera pans over the corridor and the viewer gets to see the position off all our heroes and it's done without cutting back and forth.
Adria is confined to the chair that Michael spent so much time on in "The Shroud."
When AM originally pitched the Goa'uld in the Prior, it was more of a monster hunt. He mentions how the plot changed in increments to what they filmed. Ba'al will be in Brad's film.
They mention that the video monitor in that room where Adria is imprisoned makes no sense as it basically allows her to look at herself. AM compliments WW on the great cut. AM did not swap things out, only cut for time. They both laugh at how much fun Morena is having playing Ba'al.
The Tok'ra doctor is Jonathan Walker, a friend of AM. He was in town shooting something else and tried out for this and got cast. He's a bit of a Sci Fi buff and was probably familiar with the show. WW says a lot of time he doesn't get to talk to the actors until the day of shooting and while the Tok'ra are stiff, they aren't robots. He started to explain to Jonathan and JW said, "yeah, yeah, I get it" and he did a great job.
How many days did they shoot in the ship? Many, because a lot of the rooms were doing double duty. The operating room is also the recovery room. The room with the Shroud chair is also the mess hall and the conference room.
When Vala leaves the room where they are watching Adria's surgery, AM had written a line where Daniel says to Mitchell, "I'll go after her." He can't remember where it got taken out, but many times it is so much better with just a look from these guys. It's just easier and stronger. They both compliment Claudia and Michael in this scene and their great chemistry. WW says they can joke around like crazy right up until the slate goes and then they are just completely in it.
They worry that maybe should not have mentioned that Ba'al is in Continuum.
WW frets how to make Adria look sick when Morena is just so beautiful. They put a little pale makeup on her.
When the Tok'ra doctor gets ratcheted against the wall, that is actually Dan Shea. He was unconscious for five seconds and twitching. It was very scary at the time.
That door that Mitchell torched through is actually 1/4 inch plywood.
In the scene were the coolant is pouring down on Daniel, WW is doing the camera work and he is wearing welder's gloves because the CO2 is so cold, but Michael is just standing in the middle of it and it's so freezing.
They talked about how Adria does the choking thing on Vala. WW would have liked to use a wider shot, but they were already into overtime and it would have been another hour and a half to set it up. Vala is just standing on an apple box.
Morena had never died before and was anxious about that but they couldn't shoot that or her ascending due to time constraints.
The marching orders for this ep, being how it was number 19, was wrap up Adria's story, wrap up Ba'al, leave everything open for down the road so that Adria, the Ori and Ba'al could come back.
WW says he likes those wrap up scenes at the end. Usually they shoot closeups/singles in the briefing room but he made a point of having most shots have two people in them, to tie each one to someone else-- to emphasize that they are a team. And then they have that nice shot from outside the briefing room window to end it on.
Since Adria was last seen unconscious heading back to the Ori galaxy, her presence in this episode should be a surprise to our viewers.
In the tavern in the opening shot, just as the camera settles on Vala, you can see the pineapple on a serving tray in the background; it's a drink this time, to the left of the shot.
The actor that was gambling with Vala had read for Stargate parts many times but he wasn't quite right. He finally landed this one and was very good in it. They compliment the props department for the gaming chips. AM and WW giggled over the shot of all the guns pointed at Vala; WW says that was from one of his sketches from early on and it really sells that moment. They feel that was a really nice reveal of Adria coming out of the shadows. WW compliments the wardrobe and mention how everything is made from scratch and is fantastic with amazing detail.
AM isn't sure how many viewers were fooled by Vala's false memories. The gambler took the Sodan cloaking device before he ran out but it was cut from the final version.
The story was by Alex Levine, who is the script coordinator on SG1 and SGA. All year long he was pitching ideas to Rob and Brad but they weren't clicking. He came up with the false memory idea, that Vala was meeting Adria without the sense of guile. AM had pitched the idea to Rob of an Prior getting implanted with a Goa'uld and Rob squished the stories together.
In the briefing scene, they both compliment the graphic of the infinity symbol to find the gate address. WW mentions how SG is shot in 16 x 9, and in this scene, he turned off the TV box lines in the camera allowing the framing of the shot to be opened up. Usually, the 'good bits' are within the tv box lines (the image that will appear on your tv if you are not watching it in letterbox format.) They also did a cross shoot, filming both actresses at the same time. It takes longer to set up the lighting but then you don't have to shoot five pages from one direction and then five pages from the opposite angle.
They compliment the actor that plays Col. Griffin. It's a small part but he brings steam to it so you aren't aware this is a false memory. AM loves how the scene ends with Vala looking to Daniel and his expression and the beautiful musical cue comes up.
The woman guard that let Daniel into Vala's room was a lady that won an auction for a walk on part. She spent the day on the set, about 14 hours. They put her into a lot of costumes and she had a great time. She knew all sorts of detail about the show and WW said she was a delight. They took her to Central Park for where all the dead Jaffa were but then dragged her back to the studio to put her in the hero shot.
In the scene were Vala steals the Sodan bracelet and puts it on, she disappears. In the director's cut, the cabinet doors then shut, but this was actually because the doors were so floppy the effects guys had to hold them open.
The scene where Vala is explaining her exile from Earth to Adria, is cross shot, and beautifully lit. WW feels that Claudia was particularly strong in this scene. AM agrees but also compliments Morena's acting.
The Jaffa that takes Adria away was an actor that they used as a Genii guard in "Common Ground."
AM and WW both compliment Cliff Simon and enjoy what a strong character Ba'al is. WW said Cliff likes to get his shirt off as often as he can as "that boy is ripped."
The compliment Claudia and Michael on the scene where they explain the memory loss ploy. AM giggled and said he loved Michael's "We're rolling!" shout on the tape. Paul did a pass on this script and really tightened up this scene in particular. They mention previous times they've used the memory device, like in Collateral Damage. They like to use the technology they've acquired in previous episodes.
Adria does come back in the Ark of Truth even though she ascends in this episode. We find out what happened to her and the Ori. Cliff and Morena had a lot of fun filming this scene and kept breaking each other up. AM and WW giggle over a line Ba'al said as he was shot fatally later on. He clutches his chest and softly says, "Not again!" as he dies. They loved it but they had to cut it because where the audience would find it funny, this version of Ba'al hasn't died before so it would not make sense for him to say that.
In the next scene, AM and WW laugh over why the team would ever trust Agent Barret again. WW points out that Ben is playing it that Mitchell isn't trusting him.
The next scene as the team on crouching down on a rocky hillock. All those rocks, trees and greens were brought in because they were filming in Central Park and it was pretty much flat. Originally, the Jaffa massacre was on a ship, but it was moved to the park because what else they needed to film there wasn't a whole day so they combined the two. AM feels having this scene be an exterior helps the episode because there are so many interiors in it already.
About that panning shot where you see all the dead Ba'als: WW said "usually they would use a wide (angle lens) with a camera lock off or maybe two stitched together but it would be too far away to see Cliff. So having worked on Elf where they did a lot of forced perspective work and nodle pan work (spelling) they set the camera up on a nodle pan which is a lot of technical gumble jumble but it allows you to pan without shifting foreground and background and that way we can stitch four panels together there and have closer shots of Cliff throughout that. And it stitched together nice." AM said when he wondered what WW was going to do when he was editing because it was just flash, flash, flash.
Ben says, we're off world, I'm taking the G-35, which is that big gun that folds out. They all prefer it because of the size of it and it makes a lot of noise. When they go on Ba'al's ship, Amanda has the gun. WW told her this was her last chance to fire the big gun and she said, "It's up to you" wink, wink.
AM says once they stitched all the plot together for this episode, he thought it was gonna be hard to write with all those location changes; he feared it would be 80 pages. But it turned out this was the easiest, cleanest SG episode he had ever wrote. It was a joy to write. In his first draft, he had Adria's death being more emotional for Vala, but Rob wanted it more that Vala didn't care, she never had, she wasn't her daughter. WW says it's cool how the rewrites get better. AM says a lot of that comes from the guy above him. Clean and tightening, clean and tightening. They both say what a nice moment it is between Mitchell and Vala where they discuss Vala's emotions for Adria.
For the scene where they go onto the Goa'uld ship, they had run out of time and had to use some scenes from previous eps. They used one for the outside shot of the Goa'uld ship, and another one when Carter shoots two Jaffa running towards her (Sue: I believe that's from Serpent's Lair, where Daniel shoots the two Jaffa before he is fatally wounded.) They both like this one shot before all the gunfire starts where the camera pans over the corridor and the viewer gets to see the position off all our heroes and it's done without cutting back and forth.
Adria is confined to the chair that Michael spent so much time on in "The Shroud."
When AM originally pitched the Goa'uld in the Prior, it was more of a monster hunt. He mentions how the plot changed in increments to what they filmed. Ba'al will be in Brad's film.
They mention that the video monitor in that room where Adria is imprisoned makes no sense as it basically allows her to look at herself. AM compliments WW on the great cut. AM did not swap things out, only cut for time. They both laugh at how much fun Morena is having playing Ba'al.
The Tok'ra doctor is Jonathan Walker, a friend of AM. He was in town shooting something else and tried out for this and got cast. He's a bit of a Sci Fi buff and was probably familiar with the show. WW says a lot of time he doesn't get to talk to the actors until the day of shooting and while the Tok'ra are stiff, they aren't robots. He started to explain to Jonathan and JW said, "yeah, yeah, I get it" and he did a great job.
How many days did they shoot in the ship? Many, because a lot of the rooms were doing double duty. The operating room is also the recovery room. The room with the Shroud chair is also the mess hall and the conference room.
When Vala leaves the room where they are watching Adria's surgery, AM had written a line where Daniel says to Mitchell, "I'll go after her." He can't remember where it got taken out, but many times it is so much better with just a look from these guys. It's just easier and stronger. They both compliment Claudia and Michael in this scene and their great chemistry. WW says they can joke around like crazy right up until the slate goes and then they are just completely in it.
They worry that maybe should not have mentioned that Ba'al is in Continuum.
WW frets how to make Adria look sick when Morena is just so beautiful. They put a little pale makeup on her.
When the Tok'ra doctor gets ratcheted against the wall, that is actually Dan Shea. He was unconscious for five seconds and twitching. It was very scary at the time.
That door that Mitchell torched through is actually 1/4 inch plywood.
In the scene were the coolant is pouring down on Daniel, WW is doing the camera work and he is wearing welder's gloves because the CO2 is so cold, but Michael is just standing in the middle of it and it's so freezing.
They talked about how Adria does the choking thing on Vala. WW would have liked to use a wider shot, but they were already into overtime and it would have been another hour and a half to set it up. Vala is just standing on an apple box.
Morena had never died before and was anxious about that but they couldn't shoot that or her ascending due to time constraints.
The marching orders for this ep, being how it was number 19, was wrap up Adria's story, wrap up Ba'al, leave everything open for down the road so that Adria, the Ori and Ba'al could come back.
WW says he likes those wrap up scenes at the end. Usually they shoot closeups/singles in the briefing room but he made a point of having most shots have two people in them, to tie each one to someone else-- to emphasize that they are a team. And then they have that nice shot from outside the briefing room window to end it on.
