SG-1: Commentary from Continuum

[tenaya]

Commentary with Executive Producer/Writer Brad Wright and Director Martin Wood.


They introduce themselves. This is the second Stargate movie though they started shooting it first. Martin says making this film was the best experience of his life.

The first shot is one long single shot and it took thirteen tries before they got it, with most of them flawed because of Gary and his ad libs, which changed every time. The last shot was the best of them, the least heinous. Cooper had already shot a scene for his film in the SGC and he went up to Wood and said, "Did you see my shot?" Martin said, "Wait till you get a load of what I'm doing." Then Cooper later said, "Okay, you win. You trump me." Brad says this was the brainstorm, having the camera on Colin (Major Davis) because you think he's going to be in the movie but he's not. Martin said Colin did this as a favor to them; that Martin walked into Brad's office and said we need somebody big to make this transition, somebody the audience will recognize. They'd already shown the general and Siler so they needed a third character and Colin was perfect. Brad said he wanted the beehive energy of the SGC in the shot but then had them dial it back just a little so the appearance of SG-1 would be big.

Brad hates the gun that Vala entered with. He says he was at this daughter's graduation ceremony that day; he was there for every other second of the film but missed this one. Brad wanted to reshoot it but Martin distracted him from that, and now Brad doesn't mind it so much. As soon as Brad quit hating it, Martin started to hate it. They tried to hide it in color correction and editing but that didn't work, so they added emphasis to it instead.

Martin says the film starts out with everything we're familiar with and then goes into everything cool they've ever done. Brad says his first draft opened on the Tok'ra city but then he realized we needed an enormous sense of Stargate Command and what it was and what it represented before we could change the timeline and show something obviously different from that. He wanted Rick's first line to be the first line of the movie. The line was lifted and changed from something Paul Mullie said at lunch one day: Never in the history of hunger has anyone been hungrier than I am right now.

For the shot where they pan past the Tok'ra, Martin said this was what he asked for but what he envisioned was hundreds of people but they didn't have the money for hundreds of people. Now he thinks it's fine because it's "...(2 words unknown).."

It was fun having Rick back especially for this type of script, which was going back to the roots of Stargate. Brad said, Rick has to be in it. Martin said RDA embraced it in a great way and stepped up to it and ad libbed his way through a huge amount of it. Brad corrected him and says Rick didn't ad lib that much. Look at the script. In this sequence he says crooning instead of singing and that was it. The key to writing O'Neill is to make it look that he made it up, and if you don't make it that way, he changes it and makes stuff up.

About when Vala disappears: It was Brad's idea to do it in a camera move instead of an edit and Martin thinks it works well because the audience isn't on their toes at all. There is a sound effect for the disappearance but you don't know that that is what it is for yet.

Martin says they have to talk about how Cliff is animated by computer because no human being has muscles like that. Brad laughs and agrees he's pretty cut. Martin said the first costume for Ba'al had sleeves and Cliff asked if they were necessary. Martin said no and he didn't understand why Cliff had asked until he saw him on set.

They pause to compliment Peter's lighting. On the set that day, it looked very flat though. Martin states that he shoots 360 degrees, which allows the director of photography to put lights nowhere and because of that there is nowhere for the camera to sit where it isn't going to see a light. Directors of photography hate Martin for that. But in this scene it is very textured, very rich. And Martin likes the color that was put into in color correction because it's all golden.

Martin asked Brad why he used Ba'al when he had so many Goa'uld to choose from. Brad says he was the last major villain since Anubis went off to fight with Oma. He had a bunch of Ba'als left so he took a couple of them and made a movie. It wasn't in Brad's original plan to bring the other Goa'uld back. Brad said Continuum started with a desire to do a time travel movie, and then the knowledge they could have a nuclear submarine on the arctic ice. So, we have those elements and go make a movie. It turned into this. It struck him the most vulnerable the Stargate ever was in their history was when it was crossing the Atlantic; that turned into a ship getting lost in the arctic ice and them gating through to it. And honestly, he knew what the beginning was but he had no idea how he was going to end it even though he was writing it but that's the way he writes (giggles) as evident from some of his episodes.

Martin says they had always talked about shooting on a ship but James, their production designer said they couldn't because nothing is going to look like that era. They would have to retrofit a ship, so they built what they needed on a sound stage four. The first shot of the ship is CG. Brad cast a friend of his that he's known for 28 year (the guy that walks into the bridge and talks to the captain.) Martin gets full of praise for the ship and says he didn't direct this film; he did the middle part. Brad created the story. The two of them together sat on the set-a lot of people say the set stuff is the heavy lifting but because Brad was there it wasn't heavy at all. And then, once it was cut, Brad put the bit in his teeth and kept running with it, shepherding it through all the vis effects and the music. This is a co-directing job. Brad says this sort of thing is common in a tv show but in a feature, it's the director that is the shepherd. What Martin and he did is what they are already comfortable doing together which is teamwork.

When the Stargate activates, Brad said he wanted Langford there, and in HD if you freeze frame, you can see his smoking feet still standing. Brad says that's his favorite shot on the ship sequence. "Isn't that great?!" Brad knew that the people really know this show are going to go crazy at that part because they know what's in the box (plus the sound effects make it obvious.) They are going to get the connection because of the Langford name and how it came across the ocean and how the Langford family protected it.

Usually in a feature you have plenty of time to get the coverage you want but for this they had 19 days, which isn't a lot of time. They had to think ahead of how a feature would be shot and Brad added that was the helpful part of him being there because Martin wouldn't have to cover his ass for Brad's sake. In normal production, Brad would be writing the next episode and not be on stage. That was the fun part for him and he added, "I didn't direct anything, by the way." "That's not true," said Martin. For the first time in twelve years, they were able to work side by side. Brad said what it meant though was it made it easier for Martin to move on to the next sequence or simplify a sequence which Brad could do as a writer, to make the day, to make the schedule.

The way they made people disappear was easy. They said freeze and stepped out of the way. In post they realized that O'Neill's death needed a bit of help so they added the growing blood stain in CG. Brad says at this point he knows a lot fans were writing letters to him for killing O'Neill. Martin says they'll stop in three scenes.

Martin said he had a lot of trouble maneuvering around the ship because it isn't that big. They gave thanks to James for designing the ship because it looks so good. When one of the crewmen is shot and falls on the wet deck, you can see a red puddle come from him. Martin wants us all to go out and buy a HD tv to see this effect.

Martin says you see in your head how you want a shot but occasionally it doesn't really work. The whole idea of creating the puddle effect has plagued them for years and years. There are many ways to do it, but this shot gave them a huge amount of grief (where Ba'al steps back into the Stargate to leave the ship.) The interactive light that they have to build physically sometimes doesn't work. Ba'al's entrance was worse; it was a nightmare. It's because there are things that reflect the light and cause a flash across the frame. In the end, they embraced the flare and it worked great. Martin says if you knew what it took to make that shimmer, you'd ask "why haven't they made it easier on themselves over these twelve years?" Brad says twelve years ago, it cost $5,000 per person to step into the Stargate-and now it cost $5,000. The shot of the captain throwing the bomb overboard, and the ship moves past so we can see the explosion was one of the hardest shots in the film because of where the camera ends up. The scale of the explosion isn't quite right but it's beautiful all the same. And then Brad complemented the musical cue as they go back to the Tok'ra planet. They said they had a whole orchestra down in Seattle and they doubled up the violins for this cue and it was so fun to watch Joel crank on a fabulous score.

Martin notices that when Daniel, Mitchell and Carter run up to the DHD, the lighting doesn't look like they are really outside, but they did shoot them outside. The trouble was that the planet they were on didn't actually have natural sunlight so they would have been better off shooting that in a studio. (yes, he did say that-S.)

When the team exits the Stargate onto the ship, it's the same set but a week later. They had to redress the set with flocking. This is a refrigerated set and it was also built to tilt to 18 degrees so they could shake it and move it to make the ship look like it was going through something. The effect didn't work well on the ocean because the movement was too subtle.

Brad loves Amanda here, she's very strong...because O'Neill's dead and she playing it brilliantly (this is the moment when Mitchell asks Carter to focus.)

They mention how well you can see their breaths in this scene. Martin says they did this backwards. They shot the stuff up north first. The good thing was they knew what it was like to be in this kind of cold. Amanda and Ben certainly brought that into playing this. You really need to make the studio cold. This is the third time they've done it; they did it in Solitudes, in Frozen and here. And it's partly because of the breath, it adds realism to it and truthfully, the big reason you're doing it is so the actors are cold. Brad adds that they were, they all were freezing for two days. Martin says the reason you need them cold is that their mouths don't work the same way when it's cold. And when you get THAT cold, your mouth almost stops working. All the actors here, none of them have extra clothing on-they wanted to be cold, as cold as they would be in someplace like this. None of them had on triple layers or a wetsuit to keep them warm. Brad laughs and says that outside it was such a warm beautiful day, too. Martin said, yeah, they had the crew outside getting warm while the actors were freezing up in there. As to why the captain isn't in the shot, they have the door ajar where he tried to make it to the bridge. Brad had written the body into the scene but then decided that was just gross.

Martin likes the scene where Daniel finds the life jacket with the Achilles name on it. That's real ice that Daniel brushes off, and the 'steam' that is coming off of it is the actor's breath reflecting back. When Ben shoots the ice wall, he's really shooting a hunk of ice because nothing will replicate that accurately. This scene is also lit almost entirely by the flashlights they were holding. Martin and Peter each had one too, that they were flashing around. Martin hopes no one ever counts the beams because there are always two extra.

So, Ben shoots the ice and that's the only piece of ice on the set. Martin compliments how beautiful the set was and how the art dept was showing them ice samples three and a half months before they started shooting.

The next part here was how to get Daniel's foot wet. There was an hour discussion about where in the hold the water would start to get in once the ship started to tilt. Brad said they were debating whether they were even going to freeze his leg as they also thought to drop something on it--they didn't know what they were going to do. They just knew that because Michael wasn't available to shoot in the arctic Brad had to strand him somehow. So, in this sequence, Brad had to create the circumstance that Daniel couldn't go any further. The tilting of the set is noticeable here and it allows everything to sway in unison; otherwise with grips swaying things it would have taken twice as long. Martin states in the original script, Michael was at the North Pole. Brad says, of course he was. He had a version with him in it, him out of it-that's a great shot, by the way (when Daniel's foot goes into the water.) Brad says the energy of this sequence is so much fun. Martin says they switched to hand held cameras here and that really adds to the motion effect because they are swaying, are effected by the motion, too.

When they are crawling out the ship with the ship in the background, that is a vis effect; it was the last one they completed because it was so hard. They realized that building a slope of ice would work nicely for a couple of the shots. Martin says what is interesting is that people can't tell which shots were shot at the North Pole and which weren't. People figure the close-ups were from the arctic but the wide shots weren't, so okay, that's what they wanted them to believe. Martin says it's difficult to get the wind right in the arctic because it comes at you from every direction. The shot behind Mitchell and Carter's heads is an animated still shot that Martin took with his camera, projected behind the actors. Martin said they had wanted to shoot a sunrise up there, but they never got a good one. This is a very powerful scene here for all the actors (where Daniel tells them to leave him) and Michael at the end here just surprised them all. Brad adds, "Ah, no kidding! That blew me away." Martin says that when they were shooting this, they were sitting 15-20 feet away, out of the wind. There are two gigantic fans blowing on the actors and they are watching through a monitor. Martin remembers when Michael said his last line, he and Brad looked at each other and said, "ooh! That MAKES this scene" and all three of them do this incredible job. Do you see the white on Ben's nose there? That's actually the sawdust they are blowing at them. They point out that Amanda has a tear coming down her face through it but it looks like frost. Brad says, "this is it, this is the moment. Let's just give it a moment and let's just watch. I like that, too. Groaning," he adds as the Achilles slips beneath the ice. (In the film, Daniel looks around in despair and says "oh shit.") Brad says "I love that." "Very powerful. Really cool," adds Martin. Brad says the scene went on a ways after that but there was no way he could do that.

The next scene is Carter and Mitchell walking with the sun at their back. Martin says this is the very first thing they shot in the arctic and it was minus 56 at that time. The crew is made up of seven people. That is Amanda and Ben walking in the shot but you can't tell it yet. This is the first night they were there. This is 7:30 at night; the sun is actually going down, not up. He saw this great shot looking back here. Can you see where it looks like there is steam rising up? That's actually were the ice has separated into something called a lead and the water is warmer than the air. The water is 29 degrees. Brad points out the wind swirling at their feet, that Martin was talking about. Martin says a lot of people don't realize that those two are walking on about four and half feet of ice and 12,000 feet of water. Brad adds that that depth is over your head unless you're really tall. Martin says the interesting thing here is that we're hearing the actual sound they shot out there. Brad corrects him and says that was actually ADR.

Next is the helicopter shot from the next day. It was minus 48 and Peter was hanging out of the helicopter. That is Amanda and Ben walking through what they called the Museum of Ice. There was a man with a rifle beside Martin on polar bear watch which was a very real threat. Brad said he changed the script here for Joel. He wrote a glorious piece of music for this sequence, and coming up here was a line of dialogue about polar bears and Joel said, "Your polar bear line is killing my music." So Brad watched this cut again and he said, "you know what? I love this piece of music. I'm gonna let the music carry this moment. That's all that is necessary. The line was meaningless so I recut the scene."

When you get to the where Carter and Mitchell fill the screen and Carter wants to stop, Martin says that this was three days later. They shot a number of scenes in between, but this was the day that Brad was supposed to show up and Richard Dean Anderson did arrive. You'll notice there is ice piled up on either side of the actors. They are in a lead where the ice broke apart and then came back together. They had to be there because the wind was so cold they couldn't stand to be in it and the lead sheltered them from the wind. They were out for 11.5 hours that day; it was minus 40 but with the wind chill it was minus 50. (Next, you can see the two actors with wind stirring up the snow around them,) and that was Peter West who noticed that effect and said, "Get them out there! Get them out there!" Brad says that's one of his favorite shots in the whole movie. The two actors are Rick and Evil Kenny, the props master who was Martin's assistant up there. Martin comes in from the right, as they had to be there own extras up there. Brad says this could have been the only scene Rick was in up there as it was all they asked him to do. It just didn't seem right. Brad also doesn't know why he made Carter an astronaut. Martin says it was brilliant, but Brad says it doesn't drive the story forward but it was fun. Martin says it immediately tells us she is not who she was. Brad says someone had to recognize one of them for it to be real.

There's a huge amount of story Martin can't tell here. They shot the submarine coming up through the ice three times but missed it twice through no fault of their own. The sub missed the X once and it came up early the other time. "Here it comes!" said Brad. A real Los Angeles class submarine coming up through the ice. The first time its been done for a movie. Martin praises Captain Bernacchi and his crew as they were unbelievable to them. They tried three times, and they had been there for four hours and when the sub finally hit it just right, they could hear the Capt. over the hydrophone, "That was for Hollywood." Martin just gushes about the sub: that's an actually 375 foot, 5,500 ton submarine that came up through the ice, for us. The ice station and sub only go up to the arctic every two years. The guy without a hat on the conning tower is Barry Campbell; he's the man who got them there. Barry approached them at a convention and asked if they'd like to go to the North Pole, so they took it to Brad and he said yes. The man who is looking through the periscope is the real captain of the ship and that's the real control room of the sub, and the men standing around in uniforms are the actual crew. Martin says he kept telling the Chief of the Boat to cue the periscope to come up. Later, the Chief of the Boat came up to him and said, "You realize that no one has ever said "raise the periscope" except for the captain on this ship." So, then Martin let the captain say "Cut" and "Action" in another scene so he was happy about that. The shot of the sub under water was a real shot with a submerged camera, but it was sped up significantly and it took a bit of time to get that shot. Martin says the thing about getting a submarine to go down is that it doesn't do anything on cue and even though they said they going down, they actually went up. Well the bow went up because it didn't disgorge its air and the rest of the ship went down. The bow went up and they were twelve feet away from it. Also, that shot of the conning tower coming up through the ice from the 180 perspective was a CG shot.

The next scene is where they meet up with Daniel again. Brad points out the exact moment that Ben sneaks a look directly at the camera. This room is a mock up of the Officer's Mess on the Alexandria and it's pretty close to the real one but they have more room to shoot. The Officer's Mess is the second largest room in the sub. They had to shoot this scene in the studio because Michael wasn't in the arctic, but they wouldn't have been able to do it anyway on the sub because it was a six page scene.

The picture behind Rick is a copy of the one on the Alexandria's Wardroom. They contacted the artist and asked him to recreate the submarine. The satellite photo of the Stargate active on the ice bound ship is vis effects and was created before they went up to the arctic.

Martin says he really likes the way Rick is playing this scene, like he doesn't know them. It's the most serious he's seen Rick in years. He knows he can't be the O'Neill we've already met in this film because he hasn't gone though all those experiences yet. Well, some it shows through. Brad cut two lines out that really would have shown through. Brad chuckles over a pained look from Michael just before Jack says, "that's pretty much how I had it figured." Martin says that line is very much O'Neill.

When they exit the Mess, that's really the Alexandria again. The Officier's Mess scene is film, but the stuff shot on the actual sub is video. It was a mixing nightmare but they gave the video a film treatment and the film a video treatment and then they stabilized the video.

This is a very pivotal scene in the audience understanding what's going on. Where Carter leaps ahead and says she understands what's gong on here. She understands that the timeline is going to be different and it catches the rest of the audience up that hasn't gotten to that point yet. This is actually the lynchpin for the entire rest of the show. Brad says the coming scene with Landry does that, too.

When O'Neill leaves the room, that's back on the sub and it's the scene where the captain said action and cut. The first time they did this, after the captain said "cut" he also said to Rick, "Anderson, get back here and do it like you mean it." Brad and Martin both laugh. Brad says, "By the way, that's the one that we used. But he said 'cut' too soon there and Rick stopped walking. I wanted him to keep walking all the way to the end."

In the scene where Daniel's being pushed down a hallway in a wheelchair, Brad enthusiastically points out Charlie Cohen, the executive vice president of MGM, a big fan of the show and the reason why they are all here.

Brad gets excited about the next sequence (the montage of the interrogation.) "It was written to be this way." Martin gushes that this is exactly what Brad wanted on film. Brad says it's unscored because it has its own score; it ramps up and actually Martin had them ad lib just a little bit because they didn't have enough for the overlaps they wanted to do. Some of the stories they're tell just go on and trail off. The reason they did it this way was because they had done this scene before in Stargate and as much as it was ground they had walked on in the series, they had to do this scene for the film for those that had never seen Stargate before. Martin says what is really interesting for his is that you have all three of your heroes on screen at the same time, all talking about different things and giving you this incredible backstory in a couple of minutes. Brad says it ramps and ramps and ramps; and Martin says finishes on a perfect grace note here with Landry coming in. Martin says he wants to watch the film as an audience member who has not seen it before or seen any spoilers for it. He would like the "ahh" moment of recognizing characters when they show up (in this case, Landry.) He did watch this with someone who hadn't seen it before but was a huge fan and they kept getting big reactions when someone would show up or something cool would happen. Brad said that's what they were hoping for, and the biggest reveal is yet to come.

Brad says this scene is odd (the hanger scene with the characters sitting at the table.) He wrote this scene to take place in a hanger because he knew by the schedule it would have to be filmed at an airport. But he really liked how it turned out; he liked the isolation. The feeling that Brad was going after was "raisins in a football field." When Martin first read this scene, he thought it was a dawleg (?) scene and he'd shoot it as a dawleg scene. But when they actually started to shoot and he saw what the actors were bringing in to it, they ended up using more film than on any other day of shooting on the schedule. Brad said Beau gave a master class that day; he had nothing but words and if he hadn't known them and owned them and drived them forward this scene would have died on its feet and they would have had to cut it way back. Martin says they came in, they rehearsed it and he immediately thought, "Oh! I've under planned what I need to do in here." Brad laughs and said they brought in another camera. Martin said he started to shoot it, to cover it in a different way and that was interesting as a director to see that happening because usually you have to be ahead of that. But in this case, he saw the performance that was coming from all of these guys and he didn't want to miss a second of any sort of nuance that was coming out of it. You have to build it with cameras because you can't ask them to do the same thing over and over again and to remind them "Oh, you did this on one take that I didn't get it. So you want to cover it, and he blocked it a slightly different way so he didn't have someone's back to him and was able to shoot it three cameras all the time. Brad says Brad Ryans (?) did a great job cutting it, too. Martin says he loves all four of the characters in this and all the performances he gets out of all of them here. It's his favorite scene in the movie so far. Brad says it's so funny because, let's be honest, it's a dialogue scene in the middle of an action movie, and it's the second long dialogue scene. But the reason he kept it and the reason he feels good about it is because Landry is right and his argument is very compelling. Martin says it's the whole reason the audience is going to get behind the whole plan that they have; you have to send them out. In an intelligent show, you would have to immediately take them and put them into a way to save it, and you don't have the luxury of doing that on a 44 minute TV show. Here, you have the luxury of saying there's an interim period when we don't need them. Brad says that's the movie moment, that's all the stuff coming up with her shopping and Daniel in a book store. These are things that on a television schedule would be the first thing that fell out of the script and off the board-- just because it's tight. That represented a whole day of shooting. Martin says he liked that line right there (Landry says about Ba'al, if this was all apart of some plan, where is he?) He likes when you do that internally, in a scene. There are Jim Menard moments when Jim would pick apart scripts and find holes, and in a dialogue scene like this, you can answer those questions ahead of time, because people are going to point out the time lag with Ba'al. So it's good to answer all those questions in this dialogue scene. Very well done. "Good writing," praises Martin. Brad laughs and responds with, "Good directing!"

Martin says, and here comes the part where Beau surprised them all. Brad said he wasn't surprised, he knew Beau would do this; he had to, he got exactly where he had to go. Martin said he thought he'd do it earlier. (Beau raises his voice to yell at Daniel.) Brad says the reaction is perfect. Martin says having the explanation there is brilliant. Brad says he never uses tunnel cuts but that is a particularly good use of one (Landry is yelling and they cut to Carter who looks traumatized. Martin notices that they stretched that moment out and gave it breadth (the camera cuts to Mitchell and an upset Daniel before resuming on Landry who now is appearing more reasonable.) Brad and Martin edited it together and they remembered that moment and it took a long time to find it amongst all the other footage. Brad chuckles and notes that you still can't see the leg (Daniel's leg) and that there is a good use of $25 million dollar prop outside of that window (a jet.) Well, it is an airbase; it adds to it, says Martin. And that's where we're going to go in the second half. Landry says "it was a pleasure meeting all of you." And Mitchell looks at his two teammates and says "yeah, it truly was." and they agree that that is a great tag line for this. And if you were reading the script, you missed that; the actors absolutely found it.

When the C-130 takes off, they mention that was a shot from seven years ago, as was the establishing shot. During the shot of Mitchell on the bus, Brad says here was a case during the original mix where there was a lot of traffic noise. Also, he loves this music cue; it's his favorite musical cue in the whole movie: "Their other lives" I think Joel called it. And look at her, that was a great response there (off of Carter.) It's a gorgeous piece of music, quite stylized. It's music and a little bit of sound effects. Martin says it's interesting how this comes together because the actors didn't know how the other ones were playing it, they didn't discuss it. About Daniel's taxi driver, he's a security guard on Atlantis.

Martin says the second he read this scene (Daniel leaving the taxi cab) he knew exactly how he wanted to shoot it. They wanted to hold the reveal and use the cab to extend the moment before you get to see Daniel with his missing leg. It's a green sock shot. Very effective. Off of Carter leaving her cab, they said they wanted to show how the characters were at different ends of the country. Brad wanted one of them to be night but they were shooting in May and the days are so long then. Martin said they named the cabs and that's how you can tell where they all are.

Brad states he debated dropping the kiron (??) but Martin likes it. (perhaps they are referring to the "One Year Later" shot?)

Where Mitchell is working on a car, they point out the sign that says "The Hendersons." Martin wonders how many people will catch that before they listen to the commentary, because someone asks who used to live here and the answer was The Hendersons. And the reason why the sign was up there is because that belongs to the people that really live there. It looks like the planned it, but Brad thinks it would have been a mistake if they had meant to do that.

The bird sign for the bookstore is the real sign for the bookstore, even though they both think it looks fake. Brad likes that they shot Daniel walking down the bookstore in natural light and in silhouette. Brad thinks this is a funny moment: imagine you're this guy who's been on all these adventures and you find a book written by the alternate you-the you that didn't go on all those adventures you were on for the past twelve years. This is the guy you would have been in this time line and he's off in Egypt somewhere and you will never see him and he'll never be back...and that's what he looks like. They both laugh heartily. Martin says he loves how Michael played this, and Brad says it's a great performance. But it's also a great music cue. Martin says they had a lot of pictures of Michael looking slightly crazed and Brad picked that one.

The next scene is where Carter is shopping. Originally, it was a bigger scene with a woman stopping her and asking, "aren't you...?" but Cooper pointed out this is a movie and he should let the images tell the story; that's all that needed to be said.

When Mitchell drives up to the farm, Martin says he hopes all the fans that are familiar with SG-1 will recognize this house from Bounty, this is Mitchell's parent's house. Brad says it was a perfect day for shooting there, that they got really lucky with the weather. They had cold, sunny days in the arctic, with ice on the ground when the wanted it. Martin decided they could do this farmhouse scene as one shot as they didn't have a lot of time that day. Brad says Harry and Lauren are his parents; his mom and dad are gonna love that. He felt having the last name as Wright would be too obvious. Martin observes that it would then be Harry and the Hendersons. Brad laughs and says he didn't think of that. Martin says when you do something like this in one shot and the performances are all there it's a great time for music but Joel decided not to score it because it didn't need it.

Of the shot of Daniel phoning his alternate self, that didn't need music either. This was the 'ol' fake mattress with Daniel's leg sticking through' trick. Daniel is supposed to be living in New York but that room is actually in Mitchell's house. Martin says they talked about taking this scene out. Brad says it is out in the TV version, because he had to cut two minutes out of the TV version because they have a finite amount of time because of commercials. Brad aimed for that amount of time when they made the movie but he overshot by two minutes. Martin says it was a much longer scene because they started it with Daniel finishing the book. They had Michael take a few moments to get to the phone and because Martin was shooting it in a single shot. Brad said there was also a pan through a pyramid in an aquarium and when Martin asked him about it, Brad said it was okay but he was going to cut it out anyway. Brad says it's a poignant moment in the film; Daniel is trying to give himself advice...the bipedal version. Martin says, let me ask you something: he gets through to a guy in a hotel by dialing a single number? Brad replies it was a direct line. Then says they should reshoot it.

Now the scene is back with Mitchell in his parent's house as he looks at the photos on the mantel. This scene gave them both a lot of trouble because when Martin originally shot it, he was struggling over that shot there (the close up of Mitchell's grandfather.) Brad cuts him off, "Listen. There's a whoosh there." Martin remarks it's the time machine, then he goes back to say originally in the sepia toned shot, they were going to have a young boy Mitchell's hand reaching for the grandfather photo but it was a bit creepy.
But they both thought the audience would get it.

Next is the scene where Carter sees the Goa'uld ship. They say it was a hard shot for Craig because Carter's eye line moves so quickly, if the ship were any further away it would be moving too fast.

When Mitchell is watching the news on the TV, Brad says he wrote the narration for that the day before they shot it as he'd forgotten to do that. Martin says of the TV footage that that is actually from an old SG-1 episode, the Mitchell episode with an F-16.

Martin says what he likes about the whole discovery of 'here they come' and how they get in there, is it's very truncated. It's here and suddenly we're in the middle of it. There's no build up to it, a maybe they are coming. They're instantly here. And you jump into another direction.

Of the massive Goa'uld fleet, Brad says this is the first time you find out who is coming.

Martin says the first time he read this scene he went to Brad's office and said, this is what I'd like to do with this scene. There are so many surprises in this scene. There's the reveal of Teal'c, Apophis and Qetesh and Ba'al. Martin wanted to make it look like A) Teal'c was the prisoner. Brad points out the great music cue here as Teal'c reaches Ba'al. Then Teal'c steps back and with a very 1940's music cue, Apophis is revealed. Joel was nervous about it but Brad loved it. "Come on, we have fires going on in a pyramid shaped ship; we can get away with that." Martin says thoughtfully, it doesn't pose the danger you'd think it might. Martin notes unless the viewer notes that Teal'c is wearing a different tattoo right off the bat...Brad interrupts to say it was the same sort of shape as his original tattoo.

Martin says and now we see Peter. Brad says he looks pretty good. Martin says he looks like he did on the first day they shot Stargate. Brad says he's killed Apophis about 57 times and he's about to do it again. He gives a hearty laugh. Ba'al is holding a CG sword, every shot. They praise the sword, "Unbelievable; again, our in-house people." As the blood leaks out of Apophis' head, Brad points out the reflection of the flames in the pool of blood. Martin says that Apophis's gone, and Brad does this a number of times in the next little while. It's people they've concentrated whole years on, and they come and go very quickly. He loves that they become incidental in this. And to be able to put them all together since Summit and The Last Stand, a two parter in season five, Martin loved it. With reference to Ba'al's line about his wet hands, Brad said he took that from a former producer he used to work for. The guy came out of the washroom where there were no towels and he stood in the production office and said, "There's a producer standing here with wet hands."

And then Ba'al walks forward and reveal Qetesh. Robert Cooper thought they should have given this a musical sting but honestly, it's the fifth surprised and you can't hit every one of them. And besides, you kinda know because you've seen her hand. It's just the fulfillment of the expectation at this point. Martin says, besides you set it up with Ba'al telling Teal'c he wanted him for his First Prime and where's his dear Qetesh?

About President Hayes on the TV, they said that was a steal, they had shot it but never used it for Lost City. It gave the illusion that they were in the White House and Oval Office. The only difference is that William Devane's hair is completely white now. Martin says this is the reveal of Don Davis, our General Hammond, and William Devane. Brad says that he loves that you don't see the faces of SG-1 as Hayes goes to meet them. In the TV version, they'd be in close-ups there, but this is a movie and they step into the light. Martin likes that they are now right in the action and they've avoided the whole setup that you'd need to do to get us there and you jump right into them having to save the world again. Martin wanted to show where Hammond was to show that he is not engaged with SG-1 in any way (he's in the background with his back to the action.)

They stop to talk about Bill Devane for a moment, about how wonderful he is in the roll of Henry Hayes. Brad mentions how he didn't even kill Ben for missing his one line at the end of Martin's very long opening shot. Martin laughs and says "that's right!" Brad laughs and says he thought he was going to kill him, that Ben couldn't get the line "ground support bombers" out of his mouth. It took five takes and it was the first day of shooting. Devane asked if he could move from one side of the room to the other. The president walks to them, but then walks away; it speaks to his personal power and to have the freedom to move around his own room. It's a long scene and it also makes a couple of references to Lost City. Brad says that logically, this is the way to save this world. They do have that device (the Antarctic Ancient station) and it's their only hope at this point...and then they have no hope. Martin says they pull it out of the fire and Brad corrects him, "no, this timeline gets pretty much screwed. Let's be honest." Martin says he did his best. Brad says he did give them a chance.

Martin likes the way Bill brings a gravitas to the scene without being serious. He doesn't feel serious when he's doing it, and he's the type of guy you would vote for for president. He has a personality that you really like. Brad says that's part of the reason he's played so many presidents. Honestly, he kind of likes playing presidents and he likes playing this guy with a sense of humor.

There's a reveal of Hammond to the SG-1 and they say the music is cool there. Don asked if he recognized them at all, and when told no, he said watch this and he just totally ignored them. Don laughed and played it up. Martin says he liked that exchange where Hayes asked for advice and Daniel says not to mention them. Brad says he'd like to cut that scene shorter but it has all the information that they need to get out. Martin says, in TV he would have had the team exit toward the camera and a fade out.

Brad says no more talking! Action!

The next scene is the Goa'uld ships arriving at Earth. They compliment Joel's music and a fabulous shot by Craig. Martin says here we are with all our System Lords and we have Lords here that don't say anything. Ra is there in the foreground. Yu is there. And Nirrti who is Jacqueline Samuda who Brad also went to college with. Martin mutters that that is too much nepotism. Brad laughs. Martin loves the fact that all the System Lords are here for one scene. When he read it he thought they HAD to show up for more than that. And they're gone. It's one of those great things you get to do in a movie. You couldn't do this on TV, you couldn't hire all these actors for this. Brad said Steve Bacic volunteered, "I'll do it. I'll be a System Lord." He knew they were doing this, they were bringing the band back together and he wanted to be one of them. "And he's great. Look at that!" Martin says the cool thing about this is he's worked with them all individually and a lot of them hadn't seen each other in Summit. But to get them all together and play it this way with Qetesh there and all those people that we talked about for seven years of this show was great.

About the line of giving half of Australia away, Brad says he almost made that Canada. Martin asked if he felt like he had taken too many shots at Canada and Brad said yes, and well, they are Canadians. Martin says that's true.

In this scene, Claudia wanted to know why she wasn't walking around. They did it this way to show her power, her lording it over them and to set up what happens next. Martin advised her to not take anything away from that, don't show a whole bunch of distain for these guys because of what is coming up next. She'd be tipping the power she's about to show, and besides Claudia plays it brilliantly. It has to be understated because you don't want to foreshadow what's about to happen.

About the scene of Hayes with Hammond asking about the status of SG-1, it was longer but the cut a few things out, like about how long the team was going to be in the air.

About the next scene Brad says this is what happens when the Navy gives you a submarine; you call the Air Force and ask for F-15s. Martin snorts and says they said "Sure. How many do you need?" Martin says it was brilliant having them. Brad says without them he'd have had to write totally different scenes. Martin said they had a fun time shooting this. Brad mentions there are two shots that really sell that they team in flying the F-15s. Martin asks if it was the two scenes with the escort pilot? They both laugh and remark how brilliant he was.

Brad remembers calling Robert and asking if it was weird to have Ba'al phoning Hayes. He wanted him to phone him so he could have him say that line (unclear what line.) Brad thinks it's funny. In other shows they had them appear as a hologram and other things like that. Brad says that the fact that Ba'al has a satellite phone gives Qetesh a clue. Martin says this shot was as planned; you see Qetesh in the background, you don't cut to her. There is a close-up to show that she is listening. Martin wanted her to be seated the entire time because he wanted the first time she stood up to be out of focus in the background. And they planned to not show the sword right away. It's a CG sword. They added a little drip right when you can see the sword. Brad and Martin struggled on how to play this scene. Brad wanted Qetesh more behind Ba'al and speaking into his ear and he admits this works well. Martin was concerned with hiding it all from Teal'c. Martin needs the audience to see it all well, but Teal'c can't see it when he comes in. It's lucky that she is leaning forward and stroking his face, looking affectionate, when Teal'c comes in. They mention how well she played that scene and that she was feeling very ill at that time. Brad says she was a real trooper that day. Martin wanted to show the scene from Teal'c's POV because that way the audience knows he doesn't know what has happened. Poor Ba'al; he had a great plan and it's going wrong whether he has a knife in him or not. Martin likes the way the actors are lined up so you can see everyone's reactions. Brad chuckles on Qetesh's "my sweet" line. "She's pretty evil."

About the F-15 shot. The escort is fake and the two planes in the foreground are real and are sitting on the tarmac. The sky was perfect that day with fluffy clouds; if it had been pure blue or solid grey, it wouldn't have worked. The clouds give the sense of motion as the planes are towed in a wide circle. The towing also gives the planes a bit of movement.

In the scene with Hayes on the phone, Brad said they didn't need for Devane to say "I'm on the phone with the Russian president;" he knew Devane would be able to sell it by just using the name Yuri. Martin likes the whole cascade of the plans falling apart; no McMurdo.

The shot of Qetesh, Ba'al and Teal'c, they thought it would be difficult. Originally, they were going to have Qetesh cut Ba'al the other way. When he falls to the floor, they laugh. When Teal'c jumps out of the way of Qetesh, two Jaffa fling themselves away. One of them really hurt himself as he fell.

The shot of F-15s in formation is a real shot. Brad Wright is the escort pilot in the next shot. Brad said he did it so he could sit in an F-15 for a day.

Again, the praise Craig for the fantastic visual effects of all the ships in space. They said one always worries when you mix computer created footage with real footage. Brad mentioned showing Cooper some shots coming up that are completely computer generated, he said, jokingly, "So what? You filmed a bunch of planes." Martin is glad that these planes look SO real. Inside the planes are little people that move.

Brad loves Craig's shot of all the ships rotating into position, but he also loves all the violins in the score.

Martin says the favorite part of the script is how everything goes awry for everybody. Brad points out the great violins in the music as Hayes talks on the phone as DC is being bombed. They keep pointing out whenever Brad's F-15 is on screen. There are CG clouds in the shot as an F-15 banks. In the one shot of Carter in the plane, that wasn't supposed to be in the film. That was the camera getting into position but they liked the movement. They had Craig paint out the ground. In the shots of the camera looking up at Ben in the cockpit? Ben is holding the camera at himself and isn't too sure he's actually shooting himself right. For the night shots, they are back in the studio, the hanger. The HUD is from vis effects but that is exactly what it looks like.

Brad says the air battle at night is his favorite scene in the whole film. It's really well done, it's dynamic and the effects look great. He also says after sitting in the cockpit all day, it's really hard to project that sense of urgency that these guys do. When they were shooting this, the actual pilots were there that day and the actors were able to ask them how they would do things like look behind them while the plane was pulling some Gs. They would have to hold onto the cockpit and canopy to turn themselves.

Brad made Joel put trumpets in when the Russians show up because they are the cavalry coming to the rescue.

When the covered truck shows up in the warehouse, that was the first shot of the first day on location. Brad was alarmed because it wasn't as dark as he wanted it but Peter said to trust him. The young Russian soldier is a local kid and they were impressed with his accent and asked how he came by it. He said he was doing an impression of Alexander Ovetchka (sp.)

They wanted to shoot in this massive building to show what it would look like if people had a Stargate and they didn't have a clue what it was really for. Everything is attached to it, hoses...maybe this part would make it work.

Brad knew he wanted to bring Teal'c together with the team. Teal'c's arrive was serendipity. It was Robert who helped Brad realized that whether they were allies or not, he and SG-1 had the same goals. In the scene where they confront each other, Chris is in every shot and he had to hold up a zat for a whole day. They had to build something for him to rest his arm on. This shot is arranged for a movie. For TV all the actors would be in a straight line; having them spread out this far would not be fast enough for TV. They said shooting on this day was a very big day. Again, this was very nicely lit. And those moments where you can just wait for a second, you don't get those on television. Martin says if you don't realize how a movie is shot, how a TV show is shot, you don't realize you're watching two different animals. One is word to word; you are very seldom able to play out those beats. Brad adds, or light for that matter; to light a set this deep. You would not be able to pump light that far back.

As Teal'c was walking to the Stargate, Chris asked, "are you gonna stop dropping rocks so I can get up there?!" Brad said, "walk faster." They praise the shots of the force field getting shot up. Brad said, Mike Elliot, their post production supervisor, is very proud of that one little sound as the first shot penetrates. They used a propane cannon to generate that wall of flame, and it almost blew them off their feet.

They like the way the music stops and suddenly we don't know where we are. It's beautifully lit. Brad loves Ben's performance and laughs every time over Ben's line of "Really?"

Brad says this next set is fun. It's a massive silo. He had no idea where he was going to shoot it. He went up to James, the production designer and drew this triangle on a piece a paper and asked how much would it cost to build this on the floor of the silo and just use the center of the silo as part of the machine? That allowed them to build the ship. Martin said the geometry of this place took him three days to think about how he was going to place people for this scene to make it work for how it needed to work. When you are deciding as a director what to do with shots and how to tell the story, you can't do a lot of extra shots and then decide how to do it in another sweep, not on the schedule that we keep. You need to decide where to put the cameras to get the most bang for the buck. And here, everywhere you looked, it was a SciFi Poster. Brad said they had a couple of scary moments in the visual effects because of the suns. When the stars begin to come down, there weren't that many opportunities. They were pulling their hair out trying to find the ones to do it.

Martin likes the effect of the sun and looking through it, making it incidental and trying to look through it at other things. They need Carter's explanation as that also explains how Ba'al did it. Martin loves how this all plays out. Carter is working on something and everyone else is shooting Jaffa. Brad says exactly. In the Stargate universe, this is a relatively simple time machine. We know if you go through a solar flare in a wormhole you can travel backwards. Brad really loves that shot from up on high when it shows the rings coming down, more Jaffa showing up and the gun battle. He says if Martin hadn't put the camera up there they would have been so screwed. They really needed that geography. Martin likes that there's a bottomless pit off the catwalks. That way the bodies just fall away and don't pile up.

Martin says, so now we need to start getting rid of our guys. They've killed one of the Jaffa. They point out that when the next sun flashes green that was their way to show they had the right candidate. They point out how the green sun was sucked into the console.

When Daniel gets hit, they go, "Ohh!" and note the big music change there. They say Billy put a squib there on Daniel's stomach because it didn't show up on his chest. Martin notes they are killing off all their main characters except for Ben here. They've done it before but not to this extent; you feel like it's a final moment. Brad corrects that they did do this, kill everyone, in 2010. The only thing that made it through was the note. Martin thinks you feel it more here, like you're watching their final moments. Again, they both praise the music cue when Carter dies. Brad says he loves how Ben jumps through the gate; it makes him laugh every time. They mention that their Ben is a pole-vaulter.

When Teal'c dies, Brad laughs and says that was a bit of a finesse. Martin says, "they saved me. You'll never find out what that looked like before unless you pay someone to tell you."

When Qetesh rings down they say that loved that, loved that reveal. What a great moment. Martin thought about shooting her closer but he thought there was a certain majesty in her walking in like that. Brad says, again, you would only do this in a movie; you're not following the hero here (as it closes in on a dying Teal'c.) The hero has gone through the Stargate and we're not with him but we need to finish off this story, close this timeline. Martin notes that at no time during this does he think of Qetesh as being Vala, that Brad gives her so much power and she is evil, all through this. Brad says to give Claudia credit. Martin says that is what he is doing. Martin says when you switch someone over to being this evil, you don't see any hint of Vala. Brad says she enjoys playing it, too. "Surprise," says Brad as the grenade slips out of Teal'c's hand.

Back to the ship in 1939. They used the same footage but used different angles. They cut a little of the dialogue to get through it faster because the audience knows where we are and what we're doing. They want people to know this is a repeat of what happened before. Martin says what most people don't realize is that the gun is no longer in the medicine cabinet. He actually has the gun under the table in this one. It's not the exact same timeline, just a little different. Martin wants to know how many people will know it was Ben playing his own grandfather. Brad says everybody. Martin thought so too, but when he was showing it to people, many didn't know. Brad says that's true. His own mother didn't know he was Scotty in 200.

They decided Mitchell needed to be dressed the same as the crew. The point was that the bosun needed to be tricked into believing in him. No feet this time; that's the difference in that shot. Martin loves that it's one shot to the head to kill off the big bad guy. The mark was always there, they just painted it out. Ba'al is very surprised because he thought it was a very good plan. Brad mentions that Mitchell could have used that bomb to change the course of WWII but he didn't. He would have changed his own future. Brad says the biggest thing people say to him after they've seen this is, "what did Mitchell do for those ten year? And what did he do after that?" He had to lay low. The shot of Mitchell and his grandfather they thought was great. It actually went on a little longer and they looked back at each other, but they cut it because it went on too long.

Martin says of the extraction scene that Brad is finishing so much stuff in this; this gets rid of the last System Lord. When you watch Ark of Truth, that felt like the end of the series, the end of the Ori. While this film feels like a beginning of a new thing; of what the movies can be, all new adventures. But here, you're able to finish off the Goa'uld in this one.

Brad laughs at Mitchell's line, "I guess that was worth seeing." He says that was a commentary of the movie. He figures that is what the fans are saying right now.

Martin asks if Brad made up the moon base line on the day of shooting. Brad said she was suppose to bring up the moon base, but Rick was suppose to say, "Sounds like work to me" but he just couldn't say that line. So then he said, "what moon base" which was pretty funny. Actually, Robert was visiting and heard the line and jokingly said to Brad, "what moon base?" and Brad said, "There's the line."

About the locker room shot, Martin says it was a tough one because of the blocking. It should have been simple but this was probably take 40. It's a single shot. Brad says you can kinda tell from Michael's performance. Martin laughs and said, yeah they were tired of doing the same scene. Martin says the trick was that they would have to close their lockers before they walked away. Mitchell has to close his locker to hide the picture from us and then it has to open to this exact position to reveal the photo to us when the camera is in position. Brad says of the photo, "and there's the changed timeline."

At this point as the credit roll, they thank each other; they said all these people whose names are scrolling by did a great job. They say while they have made two hour pilots, this was their first movie. Martin says, "let's do two more. Let's do five more." Brad says he'll keep making them as long as they will let him. They talk about Brad being in the F-15 again. He thought no one would recognize him because of the visor, but then there was the night shot where the visor came off. And they mention what a great score this was.