DVD Comm: Small Victories
Small Victories commentary is by Martin Wood (director), James Tichenor (visual effects supervisor), and Jim Menard (director of photographer/cinematographer). I may have gotten JT and JM's voices confused sometimes, but I hope not.
The commentary is relatively technical, but the three have a great camaraderie.
They start out talking about "Nemesis" and the "set up for the bugs." Tichenor partly thinks that Robert Cooper enjoyed giving Tichenor something to squirm about with all the f/x. Heh.
The water shot in the opening is CG (computer generated), and there was some discussion of how to get the "bug" into the sub. The sub itself is a real Russian Foxtrot submarine (and "real Russians" as the crew members).
Jim and Martin chuckle how the sub was so small they could fit three people and two tiny "pepper lights" to film, and then another set was created to mimic the sub that could give them "more room" in other scenes.
Most of the Russian spoken is typical lines for the characters in this situation. But there is one "meta" moment when the launch tube is opened.
One Russian asks: "What is it?"
The other responds: "Maybe it's those bugs from the other episode."
That's why there's no subtitles for this sequence. You can actually hear the guy say "episode" if you listen closely. [Personal note: a friend of mine is friends with one of these "Russian actors", and her buddy confirmed the inside joke. Heh!]
Martin Wood actually filmed the shot from the "bug POV" inside the torpedo tube...and that's when he discovered he was claustrophobic. [Poor Martin!]
The "acid shot": the actor sprayed himself and it was hard to coordinate with the CGI bug, and there was a long explanation of the backwards engineering of that shot.
MW then discussed how the exec. producers first talked to Martin about this concept. Because unlike Thor, the puppet, this has half the show shooting "nothing". They had a model to gauge relative size, and since it was rarely one "bug", the eyelines didn't have to match up exactly, they could just fire guns at "an area". And trust the CGI people to follow the eyeline.
Martin points out his requisite episode cameo as one of the people Daniel runs into in his race to the Gate room (as usual, he's with Siler).
MW also explains how Michael Shanks, the actor who plays Daniel, developed appendicitis during the filming of "Crystal Skull", so they wrote the character of Daniel also having appendicitis, and they picked it up in the next year.
Jim Menard hated noting a difference when using a stock shot and the new footage because of changing from 16mm to 35 mm. [Note to Jim, to average viewer me, I never noticed. Heh.]
MW was disappointed he didn't have a bit more fanfare on SG-1's return. They also discussed and joked about Teal'c's "caterpiller", Chris Judge's desire to give Teal'c some chin hair. They let him go with it until Chris realized how funny it looked. [It really was ridiculous, but you can always recognize early S4 because of it, can't you?]
They also decided to play on a little arc for five episodes (starting with "Nemesis") of shooting tighter shots and more intimate with O'Neill and Carter, culminating in "Divide and Conquer." Further discussion of this idea was interrupting when they noted how Rick seemed to be having fun and playing up the humor more this season. And "Season 4 was good for increasing the humor content."
Missing part of a scene: the two replicator pieces Carter is holding click together.
They purposefully paralleled Jack's getting beamed away scene in "Nemesis" with Hammond's call interrupting Jack's leaving in this episode. "Deja View."
Briefing Room: They started using the rear screen projector in Hammond's office to make the briefing room scenes, and the commentators all kinda geeked out on that for a while, including how it created a cost saving puddle effect in the Gate room. Heh.
Board room is hard to shoot because it's used so often; it ends up being an exposition tool to show the story points and character positions. Case in point: Daniel, Hammond, and Maj. Davis are positioned differently since they haven't had first-hand experience with the "bugs".
MW revealed Michael Shanks is the voice of Thor. [This may have been when Shanks was first outed, because I've heard later interviews that MS thought it was cool no one knew who Thor's voice was. But I can't be certain it wasn't revealed before now.]
During Thor's arrival, Tichenor explained a lot about creating Thor, and the CG versus the puppet. Plus the puddle effects...[more cute geeking out amongst the guys].
JT: "How does Thor turn all the lights out?"
JM: "He needed the extra power to come in."
MW: "He has a silent clapper." He then goes on to snark on Thor's walk. Heh.
Tichenor explained the budget issues of doing tv show effects versus feature film. More discussion of working with Thor, including the 6 puppeteers and Thor's "bum issues". [I ain't touching that.]
Shot the "camera angles for the four" at different times, and had to get them to sync up.
More discussion on making matte paintings, CGI effects look "realistic" and lighting as Carter goes to the Asgard galaxy. Used a "white" screen instead of a "green" screen to make a brighter effect on Sam and Thor. Also speed v. size of ships in getting effects to look realistic.
Back to the submarine. The helmet lights were actually how the scenes were lit. And the helmet cam was how they filmed it. "Kinoscope(?) [It's a lot of tech talk, but kind of cool.]
More on the filming process generally, including a heavy effects episode. 41 minutes in 7 days.
Martin found showing Teal'c was alive after escaping the replicators wasn't a "big" enough reveal.
Amanda's spots are done at a different time than Thor's close ups. Most of Thor's scenes were done by Andy Mikita on second unit. The top lip of Thor is broken in this scene, and it gets worse as time goes on. Amanda is mostly acting by herself. She has the puppeteers. And sometimes Michael [Shanks] stuck around and read Thor's lines to her.
Teal'c getting Replicator piece removed:
That scene was reworked because of the actors. There was a page or two of dialogue, and the cast questioned, "why are we discussing this? There's no question we all want to blow it up." So Michael Greenberg agreed and the scene was cut way down and became about the "thing in Teal'c's back." What was lost though was Teal'c's guilt about having to leave a man behind.
Asgard ship: Amanda's working off a recording, and having to ignore the mechanical noises of the gears within the puppet, and they compliment her professionalism and acting.
When she eats the "yellow one", the food actually didn't taste very good, but it wasn't as bad as Amanda made it seem. Martin tried a yellow one too.
JT geeks out on the "burn in" effects of the Asgard wall monitor. JM asked about how the reflection on the floor is made, and JT explains it in detail.
The warehouse: MW another exposition scene. With exposition scenes either Michael or Amanda will do a lot of talking here because their characters are the super-brains and they will often be the ones to make the connection. Anything science/physics/etc is Carter's realm and anything with culture/humanity is usually Daniel's realm. "But here Daniel makes the science connection because he is the only one among these characters who can." [I can't see why that's a stretch for Daniel. He's smart and has some scientific knowledge. Then again, Jack, Teal'c, and Maj. Davis aren't stupid either.]
MW comments that this script addresses something a lot of other scripts don't. Instead of everything following to one major action, there are two different stories and everything interrelating to more action.
Back to Thor's ship and Amanda's "green screen acting." JT likes when actors make you believe the effect is there rather than JT having to work to make the audience believe the effect is there. JM teases how MW's moving cameras don't make the job easier. It's important not to make it all about the effects, just make them one part of the show.
They talked about the seamlessness result and filming of the sub scenes.
Carter tried to convince Thor her way is right. MW: "At one point, Amanda became so frustrated, she grabbed Thor and started strangling the puppet, because for two reasons. 1) Because he wasn't working very well and 2) because she was in that moment where she's just mad at him."
JT: "Because he's such a know it all."
After that scene, the "sub scenes" were actually in the set, not the real sub. They point out the welder making sparks. JM convinced MW to stay tight on the bug shots too, and MW was pleased with the result.
Asgard: Never see the enemies in this sequence, and yet the suspense still works on the "B" story.
MW was disappointed that there wasn't more jeopardy when the hatchway is sealed by the replicators.
"Aw, crap." is MW's favorite line. "It comes back year after year."
JT: "And no one delivers it better than Richard Dean Anderson."
They speak more about how the camera is "living" in this climactic scene. Will Waring was the camera operator.
MW points out a missing scene when Jack's yelling at Daniel where he swore. "Nuke my ass!"
Point out the "second space shot" which is a hard shot.
Thor doesn't stand well because he has "toothpick legs", so they don't have him stand often.
Hugging the puppet. They took out an "ooh" sound by Thor then because it didn't work.
JM: "Thor's not the most emotionally tactile creature in the universe, is he?"
MW: "No."
More geeking on the kinoscoping effect. Michael and Dan and Colin really bought into this monitor by this point. Played the emotion of these moments really well, when they really didn't have anything in front of them.
JT: U-Boat 571 came out right at the same time, and they bitch how that was competition they didn't need, but it worked anyway. It's possibly why the network delayed the premiere.
The last scene "with Thor and the gang...RDA does so much ad lib, much to the writer's chagrin. There is so much of RDA in the show because he makes Jack O'Neill come to life in an odd way that nobody can recreate on paper." Basically putting his own spin on the lines.
"He likes working with Thor too."
"He loves working with Thor...And Thor likes working with him too."
"You think so? I thought we could never get Thor out of his trailer."
"The Thor outtakes." [can you tell I love Thor? Heh.]
Jack inviting Thor to go fishing is all ad lib.
[One thing is clear, these three guys really love their jobs.]
The commentary is relatively technical, but the three have a great camaraderie.
They start out talking about "Nemesis" and the "set up for the bugs." Tichenor partly thinks that Robert Cooper enjoyed giving Tichenor something to squirm about with all the f/x. Heh.
The water shot in the opening is CG (computer generated), and there was some discussion of how to get the "bug" into the sub. The sub itself is a real Russian Foxtrot submarine (and "real Russians" as the crew members).
Jim and Martin chuckle how the sub was so small they could fit three people and two tiny "pepper lights" to film, and then another set was created to mimic the sub that could give them "more room" in other scenes.
Most of the Russian spoken is typical lines for the characters in this situation. But there is one "meta" moment when the launch tube is opened.
One Russian asks: "What is it?"
The other responds: "Maybe it's those bugs from the other episode."
That's why there's no subtitles for this sequence. You can actually hear the guy say "episode" if you listen closely. [Personal note: a friend of mine is friends with one of these "Russian actors", and her buddy confirmed the inside joke. Heh!]
Martin Wood actually filmed the shot from the "bug POV" inside the torpedo tube...and that's when he discovered he was claustrophobic. [Poor Martin!]
The "acid shot": the actor sprayed himself and it was hard to coordinate with the CGI bug, and there was a long explanation of the backwards engineering of that shot.
MW then discussed how the exec. producers first talked to Martin about this concept. Because unlike Thor, the puppet, this has half the show shooting "nothing". They had a model to gauge relative size, and since it was rarely one "bug", the eyelines didn't have to match up exactly, they could just fire guns at "an area". And trust the CGI people to follow the eyeline.
Martin points out his requisite episode cameo as one of the people Daniel runs into in his race to the Gate room (as usual, he's with Siler).
MW also explains how Michael Shanks, the actor who plays Daniel, developed appendicitis during the filming of "Crystal Skull", so they wrote the character of Daniel also having appendicitis, and they picked it up in the next year.
Jim Menard hated noting a difference when using a stock shot and the new footage because of changing from 16mm to 35 mm. [Note to Jim, to average viewer me, I never noticed. Heh.]
MW was disappointed he didn't have a bit more fanfare on SG-1's return. They also discussed and joked about Teal'c's "caterpiller", Chris Judge's desire to give Teal'c some chin hair. They let him go with it until Chris realized how funny it looked. [It really was ridiculous, but you can always recognize early S4 because of it, can't you?]
They also decided to play on a little arc for five episodes (starting with "Nemesis") of shooting tighter shots and more intimate with O'Neill and Carter, culminating in "Divide and Conquer." Further discussion of this idea was interrupting when they noted how Rick seemed to be having fun and playing up the humor more this season. And "Season 4 was good for increasing the humor content."
Missing part of a scene: the two replicator pieces Carter is holding click together.
They purposefully paralleled Jack's getting beamed away scene in "Nemesis" with Hammond's call interrupting Jack's leaving in this episode. "Deja View."
Briefing Room: They started using the rear screen projector in Hammond's office to make the briefing room scenes, and the commentators all kinda geeked out on that for a while, including how it created a cost saving puddle effect in the Gate room. Heh.
Board room is hard to shoot because it's used so often; it ends up being an exposition tool to show the story points and character positions. Case in point: Daniel, Hammond, and Maj. Davis are positioned differently since they haven't had first-hand experience with the "bugs".
MW revealed Michael Shanks is the voice of Thor. [This may have been when Shanks was first outed, because I've heard later interviews that MS thought it was cool no one knew who Thor's voice was. But I can't be certain it wasn't revealed before now.]
During Thor's arrival, Tichenor explained a lot about creating Thor, and the CG versus the puppet. Plus the puddle effects...[more cute geeking out amongst the guys].
JT: "How does Thor turn all the lights out?"
JM: "He needed the extra power to come in."
MW: "He has a silent clapper." He then goes on to snark on Thor's walk. Heh.
Tichenor explained the budget issues of doing tv show effects versus feature film. More discussion of working with Thor, including the 6 puppeteers and Thor's "bum issues". [I ain't touching that.]
Shot the "camera angles for the four" at different times, and had to get them to sync up.
More discussion on making matte paintings, CGI effects look "realistic" and lighting as Carter goes to the Asgard galaxy. Used a "white" screen instead of a "green" screen to make a brighter effect on Sam and Thor. Also speed v. size of ships in getting effects to look realistic.
Back to the submarine. The helmet lights were actually how the scenes were lit. And the helmet cam was how they filmed it. "Kinoscope(?) [It's a lot of tech talk, but kind of cool.]
More on the filming process generally, including a heavy effects episode. 41 minutes in 7 days.
Martin found showing Teal'c was alive after escaping the replicators wasn't a "big" enough reveal.
Amanda's spots are done at a different time than Thor's close ups. Most of Thor's scenes were done by Andy Mikita on second unit. The top lip of Thor is broken in this scene, and it gets worse as time goes on. Amanda is mostly acting by herself. She has the puppeteers. And sometimes Michael [Shanks] stuck around and read Thor's lines to her.
Teal'c getting Replicator piece removed:
That scene was reworked because of the actors. There was a page or two of dialogue, and the cast questioned, "why are we discussing this? There's no question we all want to blow it up." So Michael Greenberg agreed and the scene was cut way down and became about the "thing in Teal'c's back." What was lost though was Teal'c's guilt about having to leave a man behind.
Asgard ship: Amanda's working off a recording, and having to ignore the mechanical noises of the gears within the puppet, and they compliment her professionalism and acting.
When she eats the "yellow one", the food actually didn't taste very good, but it wasn't as bad as Amanda made it seem. Martin tried a yellow one too.
JT geeks out on the "burn in" effects of the Asgard wall monitor. JM asked about how the reflection on the floor is made, and JT explains it in detail.
The warehouse: MW another exposition scene. With exposition scenes either Michael or Amanda will do a lot of talking here because their characters are the super-brains and they will often be the ones to make the connection. Anything science/physics/etc is Carter's realm and anything with culture/humanity is usually Daniel's realm. "But here Daniel makes the science connection because he is the only one among these characters who can." [I can't see why that's a stretch for Daniel. He's smart and has some scientific knowledge. Then again, Jack, Teal'c, and Maj. Davis aren't stupid either.]
MW comments that this script addresses something a lot of other scripts don't. Instead of everything following to one major action, there are two different stories and everything interrelating to more action.
Back to Thor's ship and Amanda's "green screen acting." JT likes when actors make you believe the effect is there rather than JT having to work to make the audience believe the effect is there. JM teases how MW's moving cameras don't make the job easier. It's important not to make it all about the effects, just make them one part of the show.
They talked about the seamlessness result and filming of the sub scenes.
Carter tried to convince Thor her way is right. MW: "At one point, Amanda became so frustrated, she grabbed Thor and started strangling the puppet, because for two reasons. 1) Because he wasn't working very well and 2) because she was in that moment where she's just mad at him."
JT: "Because he's such a know it all."
After that scene, the "sub scenes" were actually in the set, not the real sub. They point out the welder making sparks. JM convinced MW to stay tight on the bug shots too, and MW was pleased with the result.
Asgard: Never see the enemies in this sequence, and yet the suspense still works on the "B" story.
MW was disappointed that there wasn't more jeopardy when the hatchway is sealed by the replicators.
"Aw, crap." is MW's favorite line. "It comes back year after year."
JT: "And no one delivers it better than Richard Dean Anderson."
They speak more about how the camera is "living" in this climactic scene. Will Waring was the camera operator.
MW points out a missing scene when Jack's yelling at Daniel where he swore. "Nuke my ass!"
Point out the "second space shot" which is a hard shot.
Thor doesn't stand well because he has "toothpick legs", so they don't have him stand often.
Hugging the puppet. They took out an "ooh" sound by Thor then because it didn't work.
JM: "Thor's not the most emotionally tactile creature in the universe, is he?"
MW: "No."
More geeking on the kinoscoping effect. Michael and Dan and Colin really bought into this monitor by this point. Played the emotion of these moments really well, when they really didn't have anything in front of them.
JT: U-Boat 571 came out right at the same time, and they bitch how that was competition they didn't need, but it worked anyway. It's possibly why the network delayed the premiere.
The last scene "with Thor and the gang...RDA does so much ad lib, much to the writer's chagrin. There is so much of RDA in the show because he makes Jack O'Neill come to life in an odd way that nobody can recreate on paper." Basically putting his own spin on the lines.
"He likes working with Thor too."
"He loves working with Thor...And Thor likes working with him too."
"You think so? I thought we could never get Thor out of his trailer."
"The Thor outtakes." [can you tell I love Thor? Heh.]
Jack inviting Thor to go fishing is all ad lib.
[One thing is clear, these three guys really love their jobs.]