April 24, 2016: That damned star field! Reading recommendations!

So, over on alt. Dark Matter twitter account (@DarkMatter_show) I uploaded the above pic, snapped very early on in the show’s first season.  It’s a beautiful set, beautifully lit, with gorgeous playback displays and…a truly awful star field out the front.  The production purchased it from somewhere in the middle east – and it didn’t come cheap.  It was, I was told, a top of the line star field often used in planetarium shows and displays.  Which would have been great – had I been putting on a planetarium show or display.  On camera though, the stars looked terrible – big and bright and oh-so-fake.  Our attempts to dial them down were less than successful and a consultation of the handy guidebook that accompanied the purchase proved equally problematic given that it was entirely in Farsi.  Despite our eventually securing a translation, the damn star field never quite worked and, in the end, the majority of our looks out the window had to be helped along by VFX Supervisor Lawren Bancroft-Wilson and the visual effects department.

When we got our second season pick up, the first thing to go was that pricey star field.  We took a page out of Stargate: Universe’s playbook, replacing it with a simple black curtain studded with tiny lights and tinsel.  At less than a tenth the cost, it looks roughly a thousand times better.

How’s that for behind the scenes trivia?

Also part of the DarkMatter_show’s twitter feed season 1 flashback were these pics of our cast – back when they were young, oh-so-innocent and, frankly, didn’t know any better.  Jodelle Ferland (FIVE) above, and the boys (Alex Mallri Jr., Roger Cross, and Anthony Lemke) below.

Anyways, I’ve put a handy little widget in the right sidebar of this blog that will allow you to keep up with the latest twitter developments.  Oh, and before I move on, there was also this –

First version of the Ferrous Corp guard outfit that was eventually toned down considerably to basic black.

So, hey, amid the prep, post, on-set action, and spinning ideas for season 3, I now have considerably more free time on my hands and have returned to my reading ways.  Here are a couple of recommendations I’m throwing your way:

Beyond Redemption By Michael R. Fletcher

This title topped the list of author/blogger Terry Ibele’s “Six Amazingly Bizarre Sci-Fi & Fantasy Novels You’ve Never Heard Of” –

https://octotea.wordpress.com/2016/04/16/six-amazingly-bizarre-sci-fi-fantasy-novels-youve-never-heard-of/

Intrigued, I purchased a copy and was absolutely blown away by the most outrageously heinous characters in the most outrageously good fantasy novel I’ve read in recent memory. If you like your fantasy (grim) dark, this is the book for you.

4 Kids Walk Into A Bank by Matthew Rosenberg, Tyler Boss, and Thomas Mauer

It opens with a D&D dragon-slaying expedition and ends with a diner reveal.  In between, it’s sheer comical, caper-centric, character-driven brilliance.

At present, my love for this title knows no bounds.  Check it out.

Turncoat by Alex Paknadel and Artyom Trakhanov

via BOOM! Studios: “300 years since humanity was brutally subjugated by the alien race known simply as the Management. Two years since these invaders abandoned Earth to return to their home world. Following her participation in the brutal massacre of human-alien hybrids left behind by the Management, resistance fighter Marta Gonzalez declines to join the new human government and starts her own private detective agency instead. Gonzalez is forced to confront her own bloody past and acknowledge the fact that the transition from oppression to emancipation is anything but clean.“

The latest from Alex Paknadel (Arcadia), one of my favorite comic book writers.

Okay, off to get in a little more reading and a little more season 3 story spinning before tonight’s Game of Thrones premiere.  Who’s watching?

Tagged: #DarkMatter, 4 Kids Walk into a Bank, Beyond Redemption, Comic Books, Comics, Dark Matter, Turncoat