Commentary for Unending
Nov. 12th, 2007 01:18 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tenayaCommentary on Unending by Executive Producer, Writer and Director Robert C. Cooper, Director of Photography Jim Menard and Actor Amanda Tapping.
RCC spoke 98 percent of the time and you can imagine how fun that was.
And I found it more difficult than usual to be consistent in the tenses and perspective. I'm sorry about that.
AT states this is the first time she's seen the episode even though it's already been out on tv. RCC says this is why nerds like him become writers and directors because then they can sit beside beautiful actresses at dvd commentaries. Jim asks if RCC knew this was the last ep when he wrote it and RCC said, yeah, they'd been canceled so that's why they wrote this. They sat around in a bit of a panic and tried to figure out how they were going to end the series; they'd done it successfully so many times before. This season was the first time in 4 or 5 years that they didn't expect it to end. The actors all had deals for season 11 (AT chimes in in agreement) and they were writing the show to end in a big cliffhanger. RCC had a big story he'd worked out for the end of the season and that turned into a big movie they were shooting called the Ark of Truth--which is basically season 11 in 2 hours.
Obviously a huge part of this ep was the decision to kill the Asgard. This resonated in a big way with fans who've already seen it as it has aired in some parts of the world. "Why, why, WHY would we do that?" RCC shouts. First of all, it's hard to believe that people have THAT much of an emotional attachment to this rubber puppet. AT says, "he's a wonderful character, Rob, come on." He is, he agrees. "But isn't it awkward?" he says. "You've had several scenes; you've had to hug the puppet." AT agrees and expands she had to hug the puppet on numerous occasions. RCC says Thor's a prima donna to work with, but isn't it amazing how he's a character. The Asgard are a living, breathing race of people so why, Why, WHY would we kill them? Well, to be honest with you, we wanted this episode to an element of tragedy in it that would reflect how we were all feeling. AT agrees. RCC says, that some people say isn't it enough that the show is ending and we're all sad about that.... AT says, "why kill the Asgard, too, Rob! It's too much!" RCC says to us it was important that there'd be something of tremendous resonance that would get the episode started, that would make the characters feel the weight of what this episode was going to mean. There's a lot of pressure to make this show special, to make it what the fans will expect out of the last show. Ultimately, no script, no 45 minutes of television will do justice to what we were all feeling and the fans were feeling when ten seasons come to an end. You guys were all, 'this is the last day.' AT says, "six more get ups." RCC says that's why we called it Unending. No one wanted to blow up the SGC and have everything come to a grinding halt. For fans and for us, the many adventures of SG1 are still going on. They're still out there doing what they're doing-- Jim adds, "and no one really dies." Who knows, in ten years we may all be reuniting for the reunion episode. AT adds, "can we go to Hawaii like the Brady Bunch did?" RCC says he and Brad have been trying to get Stargate Hawaii off the ground for about seven years now. They want to shoot there so they can live there and mostly golf there.
So here we go, RCC says (the scene is Carter talking to Thor.) Nine years ago I wrote a episode called the Fifth Race that a lot of fans reacted positively to. It was all about the humans becoming part of the fabric of the advanced alien alliance, of the Asgard, the Furlings...I read recently where Furlings is an anagram from Fun Girls. Unintentional, but maybe subliminal, AT adds. It was the Furlings, the Asgard, the Nox and the Ancients, who moved on and ascended. This was an important scene because this is the first time Thor has let us know that we are the Fifth Race. AT adds, that we earned the honor. RCC says this was another milestone that was important to cover before they ended the series. AT says that those puppets were amazing and it was really cool to act against it. RCC says he admires her for it because it feels emotional and believable. AT says it's because of the puppeteers and the puppet is incredible; he has so many moving parts in his face. RCC says he is acting in the scene.
...and acting when the ship is shaking, RCC says (the scene is the ORI ships firing on our ship.) AT says it always feels very Saturday Night Live Star Trek spoof when you have to do that.
The planet explodes and AT says, "Look at that; that's phenomenal." "There they go," RCC says. "The Asgard are dead."
RCC says, the other concept you try to explain to people is that you're acting in little tiny pieces of action that is inserted into these space opera visual effects and it's a challenge to understand, how am I gonna get that level of...energy. Of excitement, AT continues. And that's where your job--, she says to RCC. Talking over each other, they say the actors are trusting the director so they don't look silly, that it will be appropriate when all the special effects are added in. Jim likes to laugh at the actors off camera. Jim says he likes it when they actually scare the actors. AT agrees, like when the actual effects on stage blow up in their faces.
Carter gets out of an elevator with a tech wearing glasses and AT says, "contest winner! He was great." RCC says back in S3 or 4, there was a scene were they were all looking at something in the distance with a deadpanned expression. Chris said, "Dude! Why didn't you tell us how big that ship was going to be!" We did, RCC said. AT said it was a huge lesson to them all because the ship was so massive. RCC adds that their expressions were so understated. AT explains that when they did the reaction to the Tok'ra tunnels they were all, MY GOD! and the effect wasn't as spectacular as they had thought. So they were all, well, we're not going to go over the top again and of course they totally got hooped with the big ship.
RCC talks about screen direction with space travel and making the outside of the ship move in the same direction as the inside of the ship and preplanning your sfx.
RCC says people have mixed feelings about ship shows. AT adds since it was the last ep, was it right we did it on a ship, but it is right because the relationships were more heightened. RCC says, "the idea was to do Grace with the team. Everybody always loves the team episodes. My goal was the team, you want the team? Fine. There's the team and they have to live together for fifty years! It was a chance to live with you guys, as actors and as characters for a prolonged period of time and hopefully give the audience a chance to spend time with you before they had to say goodbye. That was the spirit of what we were trying to achieve. As a concept I think it was the right thing to do."
RCC says this scene is his least favorite. It's were all six of them are in the shot and they are trying to decide what to do with the ship, destroy it and the Asgard knowledge? He didn't like it because they all needed coverage but it is hard to do that since it is a small room and there are six of them. Daniel's coverage is awkward because he is looking in two different directions as he pleads to save the Asgard knowledge. RCC had to shoot them in a line.
The next scene they get rid of the crew and they make a point of giving Chris something to do so that when they replay that scene at the end, you can tell he is missing and things have changed and it's a new time line, so to speak.
Another huge deal for people is the Odyssey now has lasers. People went nuts over it; finally the Odyssey has lasers! AT compliments the music. RCC points out that this shot is his favorite shot and was in his mind ever since the conception of the show (it's where the energy beam is stopped just before it hits the Odyssey.) It's how we try to say that the ship is frozen in time. AT adds, "and then the silence...how very cool." RCC says, "I think that kind of shot is one of my stylistic signatures of a director. I particularly love having the foreground character big in the frame and other characters deep in the frame." (he is referring to the shot where Mitchell is in the foreground as they all realize the energy beam is frozen.)
RCC says to AT, you have a tremendous amount of technobabble here. She says it was fitting after ten years to end it the way they started it. He compliments her that she seems as if she knows what she is saying. She laughs and says she does know. Jim adds in a deep voice, "indeed." AT laughs at that.
RCC says as interesting as it was to show the team together for this length of time, a lot of dark tension develops between them. You often see the team working together in a positive manner but here, like Carter and Mitchell have a lot of tension between them. We talked about how much to play...this was important to me to get the silence and solitude in the almost ghost ship feeling and the vastness of it. We used a lot of wide angle lenses on this, abnormally so. In a shot of Mitchell running down a long corridor, RCC says this is a visual effects shot obviously as they don't have a hallway that long. It was important to create that sense of space (he talks about specific lenses and how they created an unnatural feeling.) Also, the lighting style changed through out the course of the episode, starting with bright, normal lighting. Then the lighting got more darker to hint that the power on the ship was declining. As they aged, the ship got darker and darker as they despaired of being on the ship for so long.
They did shots that were disconnected from how you would do things in a normal episode. We see Carter making a cello. Why would she do that? Ultimately, that plays into things later on.
The fuzzy handcuffs were Claud's idea. AT chuckles and says, "really? That's so weird." She laughs even more at Daniel's expression as he shuts the door in Vala's face.
For the scene where Mitchell and Teal'c spare, they were showing the darkness closing in, the despair on Mitchell's face. He's the one that goes the darkest. RCC loves how the sfx shot turned out where Daniel is reading the Asgard info base. It's very cool.
Next up is the Daniel and Vala scene and RCC gives a big sigh. He says, this scene took about six hours to shoot, a simple dialogue scene but obviously a lot of emotional depth to it but, but-- Jim says it was a little tricky for him because RCC wanted to do the wide and the coverage with the same lighting so we had to prepare it that way. RCC said, "because I wanted the performance as fresh as possible because I knew the more we did it, in fact it was frustrating because we rehearsed it and went through it so many different ways before we even got into shooting it and I was really nervous about it losing its freshness and edge and so I came to Jim and said--" Jim said, "we had three cameras on it working on all different angles on it." RCC said--"just to capture most of the spontaneity of the performance that we possibly could. It's not the scene I originally wrote. Michael and Claud came to me and basically pitched this version of the scene to me. And then I wrote it and watched what they were doing with it and it's very interesting and I still question whether Michael goes too far. He's very, very edging, and almost mean. He really wanted to do that. He felt that her character had tormented him for two years." Jim says, "and to make her cry." RCC said, "he had to be a son of a bitch. And it was motivated, I don't think it was.... And it's coming from a place that had ten years of resonance. He spent ten years getting over his wife and now he'd finally found someone he sort of, maybe, could have, possibly had feelings for and he just didn't know where he stood. And I love that angle; that was the third camera we popped in at the last moment. It seemed rather Woody Allenish with him walking in and out of the frame and not quite on line with his performance, it separated him, made him feel disconnected from her and I kinda like that." Jim says Daniel's just afraid he'll get hurt. RCC says, That's really just what it is. We've done this scene before, last year. She flirts with him and he's not sure what to do and that dynamic we've sort of established. I think both Claud and Michael felt that this needed to be an escalation of that and to take it to the next step. And I absolutely loved the performance on the backside, as we came around the other axis on their backs. I think he's reaction to her is wonderful. Again, these are scenes and moments you won't see in a normal episode of Stargate SG1. The wonderful thing I loved about the concept was the opportunity to do things you wouldn't normally do.... That was the only take in which he said that particular line (you better not be messing with me.) And I loved that particular version of his reaction." Jim and AT laughs at Vala as she leaves Daniel's quarters and is seen by Mitchell. RCC says they had talked a lot about whether to include that moment in the show after the fact. He says he likes to follow up a scene that heavy with a bit of a laugh.
Beau really loves his business. He likes to have something to do, something to play with. When RCC tried to figure out what Landry would become obsessed with in this journey, it needed to be something that was the antithesis of the technology on the ship. AT adds, something organic and simple. RCC says so Landry gets progressively more plants in his room.
And then they shot these reoccurring motifs of Landry looking out the window as much to pay off later on when he's not with us and we dissolve on the older version of Mitchell in the same place.
So now were going to get to the first montage. AT says the montages were fun to shoot. RCC says the montage can be such a cliché. Jim adds that they can be really bad. RCC asks AT if she knew about the CCR song they had here. She says she did, she read about it on the internet. She says it's cool they got the song. RCC says the song haunted him as he was doing the show. When they are all around the table laughing, AT says it was because Beau told a really dirty joke. RCC said they set the cameras up to roll back and forth and told them to do something, laugh, tell jokes and make it look natural. AT said the same with the Christmas scene. "There's something the audience might not notice that Christopher and I, because there's an obvious relationship between between Daniel and Vala, Christopher and I tried to make a Carter/Teal'c relationship but without making it really obvious. It was fun for us to find little stolen moments, looks--a touch to the shoulder--in the montages. We could have played it up more but we wanted it where some people would notice it and others would not." RCC points out that scene where Daniel holds Vala as she cries, in his mind, it was that she'd gotten pregnant and lost the baby. When Mitchell wrecks his room, RCC says some people didn't like this scene. AT says she thinks it's awesome, absolutely fitting and perfect. RCC says Ben loved doing that scene, that it was important to him to show that level of frustration. People said, he's the hero, how can you show that? AT says that's what a hero is when you show their flaws, that's what makes them truly heroic.
RCC says, why the pop song, a classic rock song? He wanted to have a familiar touchstone for people, plus, now we're getting into another montage and I wanted there to be such a difference between them. Two starkly different montages in terms of tone. One classic rock and one cello. This was very difficult for Joel because on the day we had this really wonderful girl playing the cello and she played a particularly piece of music we had on the set and her hand and finger movements were about that piece of music and he had to make the actual piece of music he wrote be believable with the actress playing it. He thinks the shots of Carter playing the cello are some of the most beautiful shots in the show in terms of the lighting and the cinematography, the blue and the rich flesh tones in the foreground.
The in between makeup was the most successful. RCC felt that really old makeup had gone too far. Jim said that Robert said in the meetings that they always go too far with the old make up and then on set, there it was! AT said the characters were in an artificial environment with no pollutants and eating properly; we all should have aged really well under those conditions.
AT said the next scene was hard for her. She's sitting at Landry's deathbed. Note the dark lighting. When she goes to Teal'c, in one take he rips off his tear away pants and is wearing a red thong. But here is one of those Carter/Teal'c moments they put in. Those two are holding hands at the table later on.d
Now we see Mitchell looking out the window (or Gary Busey.) RCC says he was going to have another montage here with the old versions but that dinner scene said it all with Mitchell being forgetful and everyone moving slower and having the same dinner conversations. So the actual moment when the problem is solved, it's more about the character's reactions than the watching Carter figure it out on some machine. Brad was the one that said the power in the beam they've been staring out for so long has to be the solution and RCC thought it brilliant.
Mitchell takes Sam's hand to show her the answer but there's a little couple's glance between Teal'c and Carter. RCC says there is no sound in space but the whoosh sells the effect.
The shot of the ship exploding is different than what RCC wanted. He wanted it to be about the heroism of Teal'c but when he talked to Craig, the guy who did some of these sfx on his computer at home, RCC wanted it to be tracking the explosion in 3-D around the ship as it exploded and then froze, then came back together. Craig looked at him and said, "do you know how hard that is?" RCC said, "yeah, but you'll figure it out," and he did. It's an amazing shot. Jim says they always say it's impossible before they give you the price. Everyone chuckles.
RCC says it's probably better that they did all this in 45 minutes instead of dragging it out over two hours. It makes it more special.
RCC wanted there to be two things in the last shot. One, the team going through the gate. Two, he wanted an emotional layer to that scene and having Teal'c have those 50 years of memories gave everyone a reason to be so emotional. And Chris really was. There's some behind the scenes footage of Chris barely holding it together, stop rolling and taking a moment. AT says she and Michael couldn't even look at each other. We kept catching each other's eyes and looking away. RCC said it was hard; you guys really felt it.
That was a tough day, they were really behind and it was late at night, about 1 am. AT says how cool the shot is of the ship exploding. RCC compliments the guys that do outstanding work on their vis-effects. Deciding to shoot this and make the shot about Teal'c was a stylistic choice he made. Unfortunately, he put the skunk strip on the wrong side of Teal'c's head. They referred to him as Pepe Le Pew.
RCC said, there was never a doubt in his mind that they had to make a huge deal out of dialing the gate and they hadn't done that in a very long time.
AT said it was very smart of him to film this last shot on the last day of shooting; it made so much sense to do this at the very end and it was perfect. What also made it cool was that so many people stayed, like the office people. RCC said it was 2am, a lot people went home, put their kids to bed and came back. He said they were racing the clock and had huge issues as the day was going. Chris could barely hold it together and RCC purposefully shot it with him in the foreground as he is the center of the emotion of that scene. There was a camera shadow and they should have shot it again, but RCC said no one will see the shadow and besides everyone has tears in their eyes.
And of course, the tribute to "indeed." Everyone gets to say "indeed" at the end. AT said the cast came up with that on the day of it. AT says it's hard to watch this (and her voice is catching and you can hear the sniffles) and the cool thing about this that Michael, Chris and her stole away at the end and climbed the stairs and went up to the briefing room to stare down at the gate, exactly like they had back in 1997 when they had first started the series. It was a moment the three of them took and she'll never, ever forget it, it was just really pure. Jim said, it will live on in movie form. She agreed, but said people were still milling around drinking champagne and the three of them went up there and said, wow, that happened. Cooper agreed they had been through a lot and unfortunately he doesn't think one could ever do justice to what went on behind the scenes.
RCC spoke 98 percent of the time and you can imagine how fun that was.
And I found it more difficult than usual to be consistent in the tenses and perspective. I'm sorry about that.
AT states this is the first time she's seen the episode even though it's already been out on tv. RCC says this is why nerds like him become writers and directors because then they can sit beside beautiful actresses at dvd commentaries. Jim asks if RCC knew this was the last ep when he wrote it and RCC said, yeah, they'd been canceled so that's why they wrote this. They sat around in a bit of a panic and tried to figure out how they were going to end the series; they'd done it successfully so many times before. This season was the first time in 4 or 5 years that they didn't expect it to end. The actors all had deals for season 11 (AT chimes in in agreement) and they were writing the show to end in a big cliffhanger. RCC had a big story he'd worked out for the end of the season and that turned into a big movie they were shooting called the Ark of Truth--which is basically season 11 in 2 hours.
Obviously a huge part of this ep was the decision to kill the Asgard. This resonated in a big way with fans who've already seen it as it has aired in some parts of the world. "Why, why, WHY would we do that?" RCC shouts. First of all, it's hard to believe that people have THAT much of an emotional attachment to this rubber puppet. AT says, "he's a wonderful character, Rob, come on." He is, he agrees. "But isn't it awkward?" he says. "You've had several scenes; you've had to hug the puppet." AT agrees and expands she had to hug the puppet on numerous occasions. RCC says Thor's a prima donna to work with, but isn't it amazing how he's a character. The Asgard are a living, breathing race of people so why, Why, WHY would we kill them? Well, to be honest with you, we wanted this episode to an element of tragedy in it that would reflect how we were all feeling. AT agrees. RCC says, that some people say isn't it enough that the show is ending and we're all sad about that.... AT says, "why kill the Asgard, too, Rob! It's too much!" RCC says to us it was important that there'd be something of tremendous resonance that would get the episode started, that would make the characters feel the weight of what this episode was going to mean. There's a lot of pressure to make this show special, to make it what the fans will expect out of the last show. Ultimately, no script, no 45 minutes of television will do justice to what we were all feeling and the fans were feeling when ten seasons come to an end. You guys were all, 'this is the last day.' AT says, "six more get ups." RCC says that's why we called it Unending. No one wanted to blow up the SGC and have everything come to a grinding halt. For fans and for us, the many adventures of SG1 are still going on. They're still out there doing what they're doing-- Jim adds, "and no one really dies." Who knows, in ten years we may all be reuniting for the reunion episode. AT adds, "can we go to Hawaii like the Brady Bunch did?" RCC says he and Brad have been trying to get Stargate Hawaii off the ground for about seven years now. They want to shoot there so they can live there and mostly golf there.
So here we go, RCC says (the scene is Carter talking to Thor.) Nine years ago I wrote a episode called the Fifth Race that a lot of fans reacted positively to. It was all about the humans becoming part of the fabric of the advanced alien alliance, of the Asgard, the Furlings...I read recently where Furlings is an anagram from Fun Girls. Unintentional, but maybe subliminal, AT adds. It was the Furlings, the Asgard, the Nox and the Ancients, who moved on and ascended. This was an important scene because this is the first time Thor has let us know that we are the Fifth Race. AT adds, that we earned the honor. RCC says this was another milestone that was important to cover before they ended the series. AT says that those puppets were amazing and it was really cool to act against it. RCC says he admires her for it because it feels emotional and believable. AT says it's because of the puppeteers and the puppet is incredible; he has so many moving parts in his face. RCC says he is acting in the scene.
...and acting when the ship is shaking, RCC says (the scene is the ORI ships firing on our ship.) AT says it always feels very Saturday Night Live Star Trek spoof when you have to do that.
The planet explodes and AT says, "Look at that; that's phenomenal." "There they go," RCC says. "The Asgard are dead."
RCC says, the other concept you try to explain to people is that you're acting in little tiny pieces of action that is inserted into these space opera visual effects and it's a challenge to understand, how am I gonna get that level of...energy. Of excitement, AT continues. And that's where your job--, she says to RCC. Talking over each other, they say the actors are trusting the director so they don't look silly, that it will be appropriate when all the special effects are added in. Jim likes to laugh at the actors off camera. Jim says he likes it when they actually scare the actors. AT agrees, like when the actual effects on stage blow up in their faces.
Carter gets out of an elevator with a tech wearing glasses and AT says, "contest winner! He was great." RCC says back in S3 or 4, there was a scene were they were all looking at something in the distance with a deadpanned expression. Chris said, "Dude! Why didn't you tell us how big that ship was going to be!" We did, RCC said. AT said it was a huge lesson to them all because the ship was so massive. RCC adds that their expressions were so understated. AT explains that when they did the reaction to the Tok'ra tunnels they were all, MY GOD! and the effect wasn't as spectacular as they had thought. So they were all, well, we're not going to go over the top again and of course they totally got hooped with the big ship.
RCC talks about screen direction with space travel and making the outside of the ship move in the same direction as the inside of the ship and preplanning your sfx.
RCC says people have mixed feelings about ship shows. AT adds since it was the last ep, was it right we did it on a ship, but it is right because the relationships were more heightened. RCC says, "the idea was to do Grace with the team. Everybody always loves the team episodes. My goal was the team, you want the team? Fine. There's the team and they have to live together for fifty years! It was a chance to live with you guys, as actors and as characters for a prolonged period of time and hopefully give the audience a chance to spend time with you before they had to say goodbye. That was the spirit of what we were trying to achieve. As a concept I think it was the right thing to do."
RCC says this scene is his least favorite. It's were all six of them are in the shot and they are trying to decide what to do with the ship, destroy it and the Asgard knowledge? He didn't like it because they all needed coverage but it is hard to do that since it is a small room and there are six of them. Daniel's coverage is awkward because he is looking in two different directions as he pleads to save the Asgard knowledge. RCC had to shoot them in a line.
The next scene they get rid of the crew and they make a point of giving Chris something to do so that when they replay that scene at the end, you can tell he is missing and things have changed and it's a new time line, so to speak.
Another huge deal for people is the Odyssey now has lasers. People went nuts over it; finally the Odyssey has lasers! AT compliments the music. RCC points out that this shot is his favorite shot and was in his mind ever since the conception of the show (it's where the energy beam is stopped just before it hits the Odyssey.) It's how we try to say that the ship is frozen in time. AT adds, "and then the silence...how very cool." RCC says, "I think that kind of shot is one of my stylistic signatures of a director. I particularly love having the foreground character big in the frame and other characters deep in the frame." (he is referring to the shot where Mitchell is in the foreground as they all realize the energy beam is frozen.)
RCC says to AT, you have a tremendous amount of technobabble here. She says it was fitting after ten years to end it the way they started it. He compliments her that she seems as if she knows what she is saying. She laughs and says she does know. Jim adds in a deep voice, "indeed." AT laughs at that.
RCC says as interesting as it was to show the team together for this length of time, a lot of dark tension develops between them. You often see the team working together in a positive manner but here, like Carter and Mitchell have a lot of tension between them. We talked about how much to play...this was important to me to get the silence and solitude in the almost ghost ship feeling and the vastness of it. We used a lot of wide angle lenses on this, abnormally so. In a shot of Mitchell running down a long corridor, RCC says this is a visual effects shot obviously as they don't have a hallway that long. It was important to create that sense of space (he talks about specific lenses and how they created an unnatural feeling.) Also, the lighting style changed through out the course of the episode, starting with bright, normal lighting. Then the lighting got more darker to hint that the power on the ship was declining. As they aged, the ship got darker and darker as they despaired of being on the ship for so long.
They did shots that were disconnected from how you would do things in a normal episode. We see Carter making a cello. Why would she do that? Ultimately, that plays into things later on.
The fuzzy handcuffs were Claud's idea. AT chuckles and says, "really? That's so weird." She laughs even more at Daniel's expression as he shuts the door in Vala's face.
For the scene where Mitchell and Teal'c spare, they were showing the darkness closing in, the despair on Mitchell's face. He's the one that goes the darkest. RCC loves how the sfx shot turned out where Daniel is reading the Asgard info base. It's very cool.
Next up is the Daniel and Vala scene and RCC gives a big sigh. He says, this scene took about six hours to shoot, a simple dialogue scene but obviously a lot of emotional depth to it but, but-- Jim says it was a little tricky for him because RCC wanted to do the wide and the coverage with the same lighting so we had to prepare it that way. RCC said, "because I wanted the performance as fresh as possible because I knew the more we did it, in fact it was frustrating because we rehearsed it and went through it so many different ways before we even got into shooting it and I was really nervous about it losing its freshness and edge and so I came to Jim and said--" Jim said, "we had three cameras on it working on all different angles on it." RCC said--"just to capture most of the spontaneity of the performance that we possibly could. It's not the scene I originally wrote. Michael and Claud came to me and basically pitched this version of the scene to me. And then I wrote it and watched what they were doing with it and it's very interesting and I still question whether Michael goes too far. He's very, very edging, and almost mean. He really wanted to do that. He felt that her character had tormented him for two years." Jim says, "and to make her cry." RCC said, "he had to be a son of a bitch. And it was motivated, I don't think it was.... And it's coming from a place that had ten years of resonance. He spent ten years getting over his wife and now he'd finally found someone he sort of, maybe, could have, possibly had feelings for and he just didn't know where he stood. And I love that angle; that was the third camera we popped in at the last moment. It seemed rather Woody Allenish with him walking in and out of the frame and not quite on line with his performance, it separated him, made him feel disconnected from her and I kinda like that." Jim says Daniel's just afraid he'll get hurt. RCC says, That's really just what it is. We've done this scene before, last year. She flirts with him and he's not sure what to do and that dynamic we've sort of established. I think both Claud and Michael felt that this needed to be an escalation of that and to take it to the next step. And I absolutely loved the performance on the backside, as we came around the other axis on their backs. I think he's reaction to her is wonderful. Again, these are scenes and moments you won't see in a normal episode of Stargate SG1. The wonderful thing I loved about the concept was the opportunity to do things you wouldn't normally do.... That was the only take in which he said that particular line (you better not be messing with me.) And I loved that particular version of his reaction." Jim and AT laughs at Vala as she leaves Daniel's quarters and is seen by Mitchell. RCC says they had talked a lot about whether to include that moment in the show after the fact. He says he likes to follow up a scene that heavy with a bit of a laugh.
Beau really loves his business. He likes to have something to do, something to play with. When RCC tried to figure out what Landry would become obsessed with in this journey, it needed to be something that was the antithesis of the technology on the ship. AT adds, something organic and simple. RCC says so Landry gets progressively more plants in his room.
And then they shot these reoccurring motifs of Landry looking out the window as much to pay off later on when he's not with us and we dissolve on the older version of Mitchell in the same place.
So now were going to get to the first montage. AT says the montages were fun to shoot. RCC says the montage can be such a cliché. Jim adds that they can be really bad. RCC asks AT if she knew about the CCR song they had here. She says she did, she read about it on the internet. She says it's cool they got the song. RCC says the song haunted him as he was doing the show. When they are all around the table laughing, AT says it was because Beau told a really dirty joke. RCC said they set the cameras up to roll back and forth and told them to do something, laugh, tell jokes and make it look natural. AT said the same with the Christmas scene. "There's something the audience might not notice that Christopher and I, because there's an obvious relationship between between Daniel and Vala, Christopher and I tried to make a Carter/Teal'c relationship but without making it really obvious. It was fun for us to find little stolen moments, looks--a touch to the shoulder--in the montages. We could have played it up more but we wanted it where some people would notice it and others would not." RCC points out that scene where Daniel holds Vala as she cries, in his mind, it was that she'd gotten pregnant and lost the baby. When Mitchell wrecks his room, RCC says some people didn't like this scene. AT says she thinks it's awesome, absolutely fitting and perfect. RCC says Ben loved doing that scene, that it was important to him to show that level of frustration. People said, he's the hero, how can you show that? AT says that's what a hero is when you show their flaws, that's what makes them truly heroic.
RCC says, why the pop song, a classic rock song? He wanted to have a familiar touchstone for people, plus, now we're getting into another montage and I wanted there to be such a difference between them. Two starkly different montages in terms of tone. One classic rock and one cello. This was very difficult for Joel because on the day we had this really wonderful girl playing the cello and she played a particularly piece of music we had on the set and her hand and finger movements were about that piece of music and he had to make the actual piece of music he wrote be believable with the actress playing it. He thinks the shots of Carter playing the cello are some of the most beautiful shots in the show in terms of the lighting and the cinematography, the blue and the rich flesh tones in the foreground.
The in between makeup was the most successful. RCC felt that really old makeup had gone too far. Jim said that Robert said in the meetings that they always go too far with the old make up and then on set, there it was! AT said the characters were in an artificial environment with no pollutants and eating properly; we all should have aged really well under those conditions.
AT said the next scene was hard for her. She's sitting at Landry's deathbed. Note the dark lighting. When she goes to Teal'c, in one take he rips off his tear away pants and is wearing a red thong. But here is one of those Carter/Teal'c moments they put in. Those two are holding hands at the table later on.d
Now we see Mitchell looking out the window (or Gary Busey.) RCC says he was going to have another montage here with the old versions but that dinner scene said it all with Mitchell being forgetful and everyone moving slower and having the same dinner conversations. So the actual moment when the problem is solved, it's more about the character's reactions than the watching Carter figure it out on some machine. Brad was the one that said the power in the beam they've been staring out for so long has to be the solution and RCC thought it brilliant.
Mitchell takes Sam's hand to show her the answer but there's a little couple's glance between Teal'c and Carter. RCC says there is no sound in space but the whoosh sells the effect.
The shot of the ship exploding is different than what RCC wanted. He wanted it to be about the heroism of Teal'c but when he talked to Craig, the guy who did some of these sfx on his computer at home, RCC wanted it to be tracking the explosion in 3-D around the ship as it exploded and then froze, then came back together. Craig looked at him and said, "do you know how hard that is?" RCC said, "yeah, but you'll figure it out," and he did. It's an amazing shot. Jim says they always say it's impossible before they give you the price. Everyone chuckles.
RCC says it's probably better that they did all this in 45 minutes instead of dragging it out over two hours. It makes it more special.
RCC wanted there to be two things in the last shot. One, the team going through the gate. Two, he wanted an emotional layer to that scene and having Teal'c have those 50 years of memories gave everyone a reason to be so emotional. And Chris really was. There's some behind the scenes footage of Chris barely holding it together, stop rolling and taking a moment. AT says she and Michael couldn't even look at each other. We kept catching each other's eyes and looking away. RCC said it was hard; you guys really felt it.
That was a tough day, they were really behind and it was late at night, about 1 am. AT says how cool the shot is of the ship exploding. RCC compliments the guys that do outstanding work on their vis-effects. Deciding to shoot this and make the shot about Teal'c was a stylistic choice he made. Unfortunately, he put the skunk strip on the wrong side of Teal'c's head. They referred to him as Pepe Le Pew.
RCC said, there was never a doubt in his mind that they had to make a huge deal out of dialing the gate and they hadn't done that in a very long time.
AT said it was very smart of him to film this last shot on the last day of shooting; it made so much sense to do this at the very end and it was perfect. What also made it cool was that so many people stayed, like the office people. RCC said it was 2am, a lot people went home, put their kids to bed and came back. He said they were racing the clock and had huge issues as the day was going. Chris could barely hold it together and RCC purposefully shot it with him in the foreground as he is the center of the emotion of that scene. There was a camera shadow and they should have shot it again, but RCC said no one will see the shadow and besides everyone has tears in their eyes.
And of course, the tribute to "indeed." Everyone gets to say "indeed" at the end. AT said the cast came up with that on the day of it. AT says it's hard to watch this (and her voice is catching and you can hear the sniffles) and the cool thing about this that Michael, Chris and her stole away at the end and climbed the stairs and went up to the briefing room to stare down at the gate, exactly like they had back in 1997 when they had first started the series. It was a moment the three of them took and she'll never, ever forget it, it was just really pure. Jim said, it will live on in movie form. She agreed, but said people were still milling around drinking champagne and the three of them went up there and said, wow, that happened. Cooper agreed they had been through a lot and unfortunately he doesn't think one could ever do justice to what went on behind the scenes.
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(no subject)
Date: 2007-11-12 03:04 pm (UTC)In the last year or two (or maybe more) the producers weren't interested in telling a good story anymore. Instead, they were fulfilling their own egos. Killing off the Asgard for the impact, rather than because it fit a storyline is the perfect example. It sounds like RCC knew it was the wrong move, but he did it anyway, because he could.
Thanks for the summary. I got all nostalgic this weekend, and I was thinking of buying seasons 9 and 10 for $37 at BJs. Now, I'll just wait for them to appear in the bargain bin or on ebay for under $20.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-11-12 11:16 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-11-12 04:42 pm (UTC)Gah! My skin is trying to crawl off my body already.
RCC says to us it was important that there'd be something of tremendous resonance that would get the episode started, that would make the characters feel the weight of what this episode was going to mean.
Except for the fact that they got embroiled in a space battle and chase, and the enormity of the death of the Asgard wasn't given a moment to resonate ...
RCC points out that scene where Daniel holds Vala as she cries, in his mind, it was that she'd gotten pregnant and lost the baby.
*headdesk* I cannot imagine Daniel or Vala or any of them thinking that having a baby in their situation would be a good idea. Ack!
Okay, I have to stop. RCC is just one of the skeeviest human beings ever.
Um, Amanda's notes about the moment they took at the very end were very sweet. I wish we'd gotten a Sam-Teal'c-Daniel thing during the actual episode. And yay for Amanda and Chris doing the subtext-y relationship; I loved that during the ep, and totally bought it.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-11-12 11:21 pm (UTC)Yes, I remember seeing the planet explode and thinking, "huh? What was that? Ooooh! That was Thor and all the Asgard dying. That's it?"
At the time, I just thought Vala was freaking because she can't stand being cooped up. The miscarriage is a remote possibility because I don't think either Vala or Daniel would allow that to happen. I think he would have let Carter-who-can-do-anything give him a vasectomy first.
You could skip to the CCR montage and listen from there to hear the S/T stuff and the good stuff at the end.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-11-12 08:47 pm (UTC)Too bad this is the only episode that has any actor commentary. Even AT tells us more interesting things than RCC or Malozzi.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-11-12 11:26 pm (UTC)RCC performed great art and if used the word 'resonance' one more time I was ready to perform great pain on him!
(no subject)
Date: 2007-11-13 12:19 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-11-13 12:43 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-11-13 12:52 am (UTC)I really didn't pay much attention to when Sam was unpacking. Was Jack's pic of him alone, or was it the one at the cabin?
(no subject)
Date: 2007-11-13 01:14 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-11-13 02:09 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-11-26 04:23 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-11-26 05:30 am (UTC)Thanks for letting me know you enjoyed this. :)
BTW, we're currently watching a bit more of The War. I still have 4 more eps to go.