DVD Extras: Off The Grid
Here's what I gleaned from watching the DVD commentary from Off the Grid, IIRC (it's been a few days since I watched it).
Writer McCullough and Dir. of Photography Jim Menard did the commentary for this episode. McC still had a bit of newbie jitters in "reliving" some of his early works, heh. But he did good in providing the cool details I enjoy and his style was self-deprecating, so the commentary was nice.
Originally, kassa was envisioned to be a banana-like plant. However, preproduction, it was pointed out that banana "farms" are hard to find in Vancouver, but corn should be easy to come across. Thus kassa=space corn.
Worrel's camp was actually the set of a Bollywood movie that the production had left there after filming. They really liked that set.
It was Cooper's idea to do the repeat shot of the race to the Gate as a storytelling device to get involved in the story...which can work if not overdone.
McC snarked at the same thing I did. If the farmer has a cart full of corn, why did he pull one off the stalk to eat?
McC loved the little alpha-male fight Mitchell and Daniel had about who was more believable as an undercover drug buyer. However, he could not take credit for the Mary Poppins line. That was Cooper, and he understood it was a fan favorite.
As scripted, when Mitchell was surrounded by Worrel's men, they were supposed to show how he got out of the mess a bit...but then, there was only supposed to be two men. When it turned out half Worrel's camp had guns trained on Mitchell, that was a bit unbelievable. McC wondered if it ended up working with the cut, but basically it is what it is. [Personally, I thought them cutting out the unbelievable escape kinda worked BECAUSE it's SG-1; it was funny.]
The commentators snarked at the whole torture scene. It's a family show, so all they did was tie them up and show a bit of blood on the face from smacking around. (Though the makeup people did a good job at making it look like blood). Didn't seem to be real tough torture to him. Also, SG-1 is pretty "androgynous", so the fact that all these rough and ready guys had some blond chick in their midst was also passed by. Though there were jokes on set (did I mention PdL was director? Heh).
The writers wrote the beam out thing once for a situation in one ep, and now they're stuck with it. They have to use it, or come up with convoluded scenarios as to why they can't use it.
The Nerus/Landry Area 51 scene--there was actually another horizontal bar on the jail cell, but it cut across Nerus's face from the camera angle, so they had to get rid of it...and those were real metal bars. If you look closely, you can still see the marks where the horizontal bar met the vertical ones.
The post-production were disappointed in the "food" scene, finding that PdL had gone WAY over the top in the sloppiness (I remember sharing my own disgust with others about the stuff smeared everywhere). The editors tried to do as many close ups and different angles as possible to not show so much of the food mess, but it was unavoidable, and Maury had already left so not able to redo the scenes. Oh well.
McC had always meant Nerus to have "eaten" the cupcake that tracked him. He thought the implication was obvious, but learned some fans were in a dispute on whether he ate the cupcake or just traveled with it in his case. [Personally, it's really a distinction without a difference to me, but I assumed he ate it.]
In the editor's room, JoeM snarked on what he called Teal'c's crucifix pose (where Teal'c has each arm extended holding a P-90). He does it twice in that fighting sequence. [Personally, I thought it was a cool shot. You can see it in my icon above.]
Somebody didn't want Nerus killed off. They were trying to figure out a way to save him. The writer pled "but he's so interesting!" So that line ended up working its way into the script, and they cut out Ba'al pulling the trigger, but the ship DID explode into itsy bits. So it's likely Nerus is gone (even though noone ever dies in sci fi).
How would Ba'al react to having a broken ship and threats of attack? He'd bluff of course. That's what McC wrote and he thought it worked. (He also really liked Ba'al stepping over the broken door).
They didn't think Mitchell diving away from an explosion worked well. Mitchell was fine, but the two Jaffa behind him also looked far enough away to be alive, yet they've disappeared. He wondered if it was believable that they were dead now.
I'm not sure if McC wrote the tag scene at the end or if it was Cooper on his pass through it. But they thought it was a nice character moment for the team.
So, that's my starting to be hazy memory of Off The Grid scoop.[/lj-cut]
Writer McCullough and Dir. of Photography Jim Menard did the commentary for this episode. McC still had a bit of newbie jitters in "reliving" some of his early works, heh. But he did good in providing the cool details I enjoy and his style was self-deprecating, so the commentary was nice.
Originally, kassa was envisioned to be a banana-like plant. However, preproduction, it was pointed out that banana "farms" are hard to find in Vancouver, but corn should be easy to come across. Thus kassa=space corn.
Worrel's camp was actually the set of a Bollywood movie that the production had left there after filming. They really liked that set.
It was Cooper's idea to do the repeat shot of the race to the Gate as a storytelling device to get involved in the story...which can work if not overdone.
McC snarked at the same thing I did. If the farmer has a cart full of corn, why did he pull one off the stalk to eat?
McC loved the little alpha-male fight Mitchell and Daniel had about who was more believable as an undercover drug buyer. However, he could not take credit for the Mary Poppins line. That was Cooper, and he understood it was a fan favorite.
As scripted, when Mitchell was surrounded by Worrel's men, they were supposed to show how he got out of the mess a bit...but then, there was only supposed to be two men. When it turned out half Worrel's camp had guns trained on Mitchell, that was a bit unbelievable. McC wondered if it ended up working with the cut, but basically it is what it is. [Personally, I thought them cutting out the unbelievable escape kinda worked BECAUSE it's SG-1; it was funny.]
The commentators snarked at the whole torture scene. It's a family show, so all they did was tie them up and show a bit of blood on the face from smacking around. (Though the makeup people did a good job at making it look like blood). Didn't seem to be real tough torture to him. Also, SG-1 is pretty "androgynous", so the fact that all these rough and ready guys had some blond chick in their midst was also passed by. Though there were jokes on set (did I mention PdL was director? Heh).
The writers wrote the beam out thing once for a situation in one ep, and now they're stuck with it. They have to use it, or come up with convoluded scenarios as to why they can't use it.
The Nerus/Landry Area 51 scene--there was actually another horizontal bar on the jail cell, but it cut across Nerus's face from the camera angle, so they had to get rid of it...and those were real metal bars. If you look closely, you can still see the marks where the horizontal bar met the vertical ones.
The post-production were disappointed in the "food" scene, finding that PdL had gone WAY over the top in the sloppiness (I remember sharing my own disgust with others about the stuff smeared everywhere). The editors tried to do as many close ups and different angles as possible to not show so much of the food mess, but it was unavoidable, and Maury had already left so not able to redo the scenes. Oh well.
McC had always meant Nerus to have "eaten" the cupcake that tracked him. He thought the implication was obvious, but learned some fans were in a dispute on whether he ate the cupcake or just traveled with it in his case. [Personally, it's really a distinction without a difference to me, but I assumed he ate it.]
In the editor's room, JoeM snarked on what he called Teal'c's crucifix pose (where Teal'c has each arm extended holding a P-90). He does it twice in that fighting sequence. [Personally, I thought it was a cool shot. You can see it in my icon above.]
Somebody didn't want Nerus killed off. They were trying to figure out a way to save him. The writer pled "but he's so interesting!" So that line ended up working its way into the script, and they cut out Ba'al pulling the trigger, but the ship DID explode into itsy bits. So it's likely Nerus is gone (even though noone ever dies in sci fi).
How would Ba'al react to having a broken ship and threats of attack? He'd bluff of course. That's what McC wrote and he thought it worked. (He also really liked Ba'al stepping over the broken door).
They didn't think Mitchell diving away from an explosion worked well. Mitchell was fine, but the two Jaffa behind him also looked far enough away to be alive, yet they've disappeared. He wondered if it was believable that they were dead now.
I'm not sure if McC wrote the tag scene at the end or if it was Cooper on his pass through it. But they thought it was a nice character moment for the team.
So, that's my starting to be hazy memory of Off The Grid scoop.[/lj-cut]