Producing Stargate - with production demands, staying on schedule -
is a huge undertaking.
But luckily things around here work like a well-oiled machine.
True. To make a show like this succeed you need a talented group of...
...writers, producers, directors, cast and crew, all willing to go that extra mile.
They also have to be willing to wake up way too early in the morning...
...and stay way beyond sundown and way...
- You're not complaining? - Not a chance. Me complain?
No, and that's the most important thing.
- Me not complaining? - Right. That's it.
- We've come to the root of our problems. - Let's meet some of those people.
Action!
We have six people in the art department...
...that generate all of the concepts and the drawings.
We're in control of the props department, where we design a lot of the props,...
...the set-decorating department, where they decorate the sets that we design.
We have a huge construction department, a paint department, our own model shop.
We work closely with visual effects...
...because we're ahead, in terms of our scripts and where we're working.
So we'll come up with a design and bring them in to see if we or they can do it.
I'm James Tichenor. I'm the visual-effects producer on Stargate.
Here's an example of how visual effects are done on our show.
This is from "Nemesis". This is the bugs attacking, obviously.
Our original plate, we had to shoot pretending there were bugs in the corner.
Rick had to act as if there were bugs in the corner and fire his shotgun at them,...
...then we pan around to find our tracking points -those green dots - so that,...
...as the camera comes into position, we can track the 3-D camera into place.
These are wireframe passes, basic tracking of the set.
You can see we actually used the DXF files from the art department...
...to help us in our track.
And then this is our first pass of the bugs.
Basically a low-res render as a test to make sure the animation is working.
Then you have different passes.
You can see the shadows underneath and the mattes combined in one pass.
This was from Image Engine. I think I mentioned that.
And then the final cut into the show.
A lot of blowing up of the pieces as they come down,...
...a lot of dynamics, a lot of animation in that.
A lot of work for a shot that's basically three seconds long.
"Small Victories" was, at that time,...
...the best show for all of us in a number of different areas.
We shot, actually, on a real Russian submarine - a Russian Foxtrot submarine.
We walked into it on the first day of the scout and nobody could stand upright.
We were going "How many days can we shoot in here?"
We had to shoot people running and shooting with USAs - automatic shotguns.
The first day I said to the camera operator...
..."I'd like a shot from inside the torpedo tube looking out", and he went "No!"
"I'm claustrophobic. I can't go in there."
So I looked at the B camera operator and he just ran out of the room.
I thought "I can't ask them to do it if I won't do it myself,"...
...so I grabbed the cameras and said "I'm going in."
So I'm 25 feet down a steel coffin and they close the door.
Now, what happens is that it goes completely dark,...
...with no sound and no air moving,...
...and suddenly you're going "If they don't open that door right now, I'll go insane."
So I turn on the camera, I'm looking at the numbers,...
...and the door opens, we shoot the scene and I say "Cut",...
...and they close the door again.
And I went "Guys!" I'm yelling and they can't hear me...
...cos they think I'm wanting another one right now.
Just know when you watch that, that my heart is actually touching the lens.
In the show "Upgrades", Carter runs into a force field.
We couldn't think of a way to make this happen, until we came up with -
again it was the director of photography that came up with this - Saran Wrap.
Big four-foot pieces of Saran Wrap that are stretched across the hallway.
So they actually are running and they smash into these things and fall back.
And if you watch Rick when he lands in it, his nose gets mushed sideways...
...and his face flattens out.
It's a really great effect.
"Crystal Skull" was a big challenge for us because it involved our first virtual set.
So on Stage Two at our other studio, we were surrounded by greenscreen...
...and we had a little walkway and a plinth where the actors could stand and act.
Everything else was a virtual set.
We learned so much during that production...
...that the next time we do a virtual set it'll be much better.
Hi, I'm Thom Wells. I'm the construction coordinator for Stargate SG-1.
We build the props, we build the scenery, the construction, the paint, the model.
We have fun doing it, so come in and meet some of the people doing the work.
This is the model shop. When we started, we did 10% of the models for Stargate.
We're now up to... Probably 90% of the work is being done in-house.
We're proud of this achievement and we're hoping to do one of the aliens soon.
Here we are, we've arrived into our casting room.
All these sculptures... This particular case is our Goa'uld lights for our Goa'uld ships.
They're sculpted, built, cast and painted here, then go to the different departments.
All the staff weapons, the guns - everything is done in this shop.
We do rubber castings of all the military stuff so that nobody gets hurt.
We have our laser gun, which is close to completion,...
...and Russ, our very skilled and finickety painter that loves to get into the details.
Here we are on a set for "Ascensions" - episode three, season five -
a set with many ruins. We come to our main set with the laser gun that we saw.
Inside, this is what protects our heroes.
There's a big laser gun that we saw in the prop shop that fits on top of this,...
...and all the energy's gonna be created by visual effects,...
...and it'll be shooting outside this hole into outer space.
Here we are at Stage Three, building the friar's room for an upcoming episode.
We have the Tok'ra caves stored in the background.
And with this crew and the production designer involved,...
...the challenge to build anything and go to a new world is ours.
And it's been a lot of fun and we hope it carries on.
My name is Christina McQuarrie and I'm a costume designer on Stargate.
One of the best episodes for us was "Jolinar's Memories"...
...and "The Devil You Know", which was a two-parter.
We introduced some interesting characters, like my favourite red guard,...
...who is, I think, sitting behind me here!
That was quite neat because it was a background character,...
...it wasn't that prominent, but we were able to go to town on him.
And he ended up to be one of our more interesting costumes I think we've done.
And he has reappeared manytimes, and that was quite wonderful.
Then we had the denizens in the prison, which, although it was background,...
...things like that are interesting to do...
...cos they're all very textural and you can do some fairly extreme things with it.
My job as the head ofthe department is to make sure that every area is covered,...
...as far as make-up is concerned.
In "The Broca Divide" there was a disease that created a neanderthal appearance,...
...with the full eyebrow across the forehead and the bulging forehead.
For Jack O'Neill's character, we went without the hair on his forehead,...
...but he still had that neanderthal look, and it was extremely effective...
...because Richard did a fabulous job creating that character.
I'm Wray Douglas, special-effects supervisor.
You get to do what everybody wants to do - make little explosions,...
...do the nice big explosions that are, especially, a lot of fun.
It's everything from bullet hits on people...
When they're getting shot by machine guns by our heroes,...
...we place in many squibs, sparking squibs.
On this one we have 16 of 'em and we'll show you a test of that.
1, 2, 3.
Two of these are the mechanical staffs, which have a fully mechanical head,...
...which fire four small charges so they can sink the laser effect in.
We'll give you a demonstration on how they work,...
- ...if Wray's ready there. You ready? - Ready.
OK. I'll just arm the staff.
In "Into The Fire", there was a large gun tower, 30 feet high, that we used.
On the tower, there was a Jaffa guard firing at our good guys.
You had explosions all through fields, and it was quite spectacular.
Then they came to us and asked us to blow up the tower.
It was a structural piece so it was made out of steel, wood, glass and Plexi:
products we normally don't put into an explosion cos they're hard-flying debris.
So we rigged it, sent everybody to a safe distance and did the explosion,...
...and it worked out quite spectacular.
My name's Dan Shea. I'm the stunt coordinator for Stargate.
I'm Richard Dean Anderson's stunt double - Colonel O'Neill.
Today we're choreographing a fight. We're trying to incorporate Jaffa t'ai chi.
They tend to use their staff weapons a lot for sweeping and shooting,...
...so we're trying to incorporate that stuff into the scene.
A lot of prep goes into it for safety.
If you're doing a ratchet pull, you're jerking a body violently backwards,...
...so you have to work out when and how hard you're gonna jerk the person back.
Then you have to cut it at the point of impact,...
...so it looks like you're smashing into the wall,...
...but in fact you're deaccelerating down the wall.
It looks hard, but in fact the stunt guy is not hitting that hard.
I also have a recurring thing on the show as the technician, Sergeant Siler,...
...who walks around with a huge wrench and fixes the Stargate.
- Hey, Siler. - Argh!
Hi, my name is Lynn Smith and I'm the location manager for Stargate SG-1.
We're on Mount Seymour, North Vancouver, British Columbia,...
...at yet another one of our unusual locations.
We have many locations that we go to for Stargate - several reoccurring locations.
This is our first time on Mount Seymour. These are not rain towers, this is real.
It's not supposed to be raining, but we can't back out now. We've a full day here.
We have a lot of weather problems in British Columbia,...
...as you can see, but we take it as it is.
We can make a rainy day look sunny, but often we shoot it like it is.
If you don't backlight rain, you don't see it.
Filming is a cheat anyway. We go to other planets, which in reality we can't do.
The challenge for us, and a lot of the fun we have, is...
...give us a script with a desert in it - if we don't have one, we make one.
We say to the writers "You write it and we'll figure out how to do it."
If there's something we can't overcome, we go back to them.
Brad Wright, Jonathan Glassner and Robert Cooper - all the guys are fabulous.
They're versatile. They can come up with new ideas and ways to do stuff,...
...so we work together as a team and figure out how to do it.
The challenge is give us a problem, we'll solve it.
Peter DeLuise was a famous actor in a long-running TV show.
Never listened to producers, so he became a director so he wouldn't have to.
See how that works?
There are a lot of producers on this show, but only one creative consultant - me.
Nothing can happen creatively on the show unless I'm consulted first.
So this is what we want. If you just go "Pow!" Right?
Yeah, you're pulling it, straining against that.
On this show we have many examples of where we have to turn around a set...
...from one look to another. I'll give you an example.
You'll recognise this from the episode "Nemesis",...
...where the replicator bugs come in and start making a big mess.
And the silver at the top ofthe set is the remnants of Thor's ship.
Now you see below that.
And Richard Hudolin and the incredibly talented art department...
...is able to make a whole new ship here.
This particular ship will be a ship that is from "Scorched Earth".
See that big circle piece, that header piece?
That big circle there.
Man! I can't believe they still have that.
There's an episode called "Urgo", in which my dad played the character Urgo.
And the alien lab had that big circle as the centre piece.
Sometimes we scout a location and it's a sunny day...
...and we go "The sun's gonna be right there, and it'll be backlit."
Then we get up there and you can't see your hand because there's so much fog.
Here's an example.
Because we're such a big unit and we try to achieve a special look on the show,...
...we don't usually brave the elements.
We have fog today, which is limiting our view, our depth.
We were prepared to create some atmosphere with our fires and smokers,...
...but the big guy upstairs is, uh... had his own plan in mind,...
...so he's created a ton of fog so we can't see anything.
So having had to come up here maybe is a moot point...
...because we could have probably achieved this look in a sound stage.
Conceptually we're on a whole bunch of different worlds,...
...so that in itself offers a huge range.
We've come to the point now where we're given a lot of leeway.
We can really go almost anywhere we like, in terms ofthe look of the show.
That's what we do.
We can experiment, we can go over the edge sometimes if we want to.
The worlds are our oyster, basically.
They've rarely said no.
We can take it as far as...
That expands our creative abilities, and it lets us practise everything we want to do.
That's what's exciting about it.
The crew we work with is amazing and what they do on a week-to-week basis -
the visual-effects people, directors, most notably Martin Wood and Peter DeLuise -
you write it on the page...
...and in your wildest dreams you couldn't imagine it coming off the way...
And it somehow turns out better.
You walk on the sets and you're like...
..."I imagined something a lot smaller than this, believe me"!
It amazes you when you finally see it all come together.
Now we hope you can better understand the work that goes into making the series.
Well-oiled machine.
Rick, I think you're needed on the set.
That's the most important aspect of all production.
You're right again.
Go.
- (Dr Fraiser) Oh, please! - (laughter)
- Teryl's the best, pound for pound. - Did you hear that?
- She is the best actress on this show. - I'm totally the best.
And action.
- (Hammond) A Stargate? - Exactly.
Yeah, I'm ready(!) What's the line?
You're doing a wonderful job.
That's a Canadian thing. It's a two-dollar coin.