February 23, 2011: A final visit to my Stargate stomping grounds?

I got up early this morning to tackle the rewrites on both scripts, a task that took me a little over three hours to complete.  Once done, I fired them off to the various interested parties, along with an email to Alex breaking down how I'd addressed his notes and, occasionally, arguing why I thought certain aspects of the script should remain unchanged.  As it stands, we're a several months away from production and the scripts will undoubtedly go through a few more revisions before then, so there'll be plenty of time to discuss and tweak between now and then.

On my way into work today, I dropped off the dogs at the daycare for a half day of exercise and a nail clipping.  I figure they haven't had their nails clipped in a while and, with that post-flight weigh-in losing, every little bit of weight loss helps.  I then swung by a liquor store and picked up a bottle of wine for Stargate SG-1/Atlantis/Universe Creator/Executive Producer Brad Wright.  Now for a foodie, you'd figure I would know a little bit about wine but, the truth is, I know even less about wine than I do about the finer points of golf (as opposed to Brad who knows a lot about both).  All I know about wine is that I like the German whites that most aficionados fine cloying, and disdain reds because they give me indigestion.  Armed with this information, I scoured the liquor store until I came across the upscale wine section where I selected a bottle by considering such important characteristics as bottle shape and general label appeal.

 

Stargate SG-1/Atlantis/Universe Co-Creator and Executive Producer Brad Wright.

The wine was a thank-you gift to Brad because if it weren't for him and Robert Cooper, today I would probably be raising stock for the lucrative camel milk market.  They welcomed us to the Stargate family with open arms (way back at the beginning of SG-1′s fourth season) and allowed us to learn at our own pace, accept increasing responsibilities, and, ultimately, thrive doing something we loved.  For that, both Paul and I will be forever indebted to them.  And so, as thanks for eleven glorious years, I gave him a nice bottle of wine.  Oh, and a promise to take him to dinner whenever he's in Toronto.  As for Rob – If you can make Vegas, dinner's on me!

While Brad and Paul had lunch, I took the half hour to finish clearing out my office.  Among the items I packed away were my books, that terrific blog calendar Chevron7 sent me, my People's Choice Award, and -

 

A slew of digital dailies from my Stargate: Atlantis episodes.





And the red flag. Whenever a story session or notes discussion would take a crazy turn, someone would invariably wave the red flag to signal trouble ahead.

And that was that.  After eleven great years, our amazing run had come to an end and it was time to say goodbye.

But before we could get around to goodbyes, we had a mix to watch – to be more precise a Day 2 mix of The Hunt.  One of the things I loved about this episode is that there is so much going on – an A, B, C, AND D story, all of which allow all of our principals and supporting characters their moments to shine.  The mix was great.  We only had three notes: 1) Lose what sounds like a cat meowing during the Exterior Alien Planet scene, 2) The popping sound we hear when Greer adjusts his shoulders is so loud, you would think he'd just broken his own neck, 3) We want the sound of Varro snapping the magazine into his gun to be more present.

Then, it was off to post to approve some EXPLOSIVE visual effects shots and sequences for Epilogue and Gauntlet.  Oh, to those of you asking about the SyFy promo for the back half of season 2 – Yes, the promo does state "Every Destiny has an ending…" but, in all fairness, it should also add "…except in the case of Stargate: Universe because the final episode WILL end on a cliffhanger."

On a completely unrelated topic – cool Stargate-related online videos – we walked into post after lunch and found Visual Effects Producer Mark Savela sitting, mesmerized, by the following fan-made video.  We stopped to watch and, in seconds, we too were thoroughly entranced.  It's epic, expertly edited, and includes almost every awesome visual effects we've ever done.  Check it out -

JaapVSWDelta, don't know who you are, but that is one bad-ass video!  Also, you misspelled "universe" in the closing rolling credits.

Anyway, we approved those visual effects shots, I chatted with Kerry, then said my goodbyes to the editors who happened to be there -

 

Ryan – he of the man awesome trailers.





Mike Banas, P.I.





Mike's assistant – Ruby.

After approving two different sets of visual effects in two different rooms, we headed across the lot to the does-not-meet-minimal-Earthquake-proof-standards VFX building to approved a third and final set of visual effects…

 

When the Big One hits, that building is coming down like a house of cards.





Bones greets us in typical fashion.





The gang at work. They have to finish up and clear out by this weekend because, next week, the offices will be teeming with children making sneakers for a nickel an hour.





VFX Supervisor Mark Savela considers a shot.





Krista hates having her picture taken.

I also snapped a few pics of their working environment…

Explains a lot, don't it?

And with that, my business at The Bridge was done.  I loaded up by SUV and rolled off the lot for what could be the last time.

I've been toying with the idea of doing a Memories of Stargate entry covering my 11 years with the franchise, but the more I think about it, the more it looks like it would be a looooongis  multi-part posting.  Perhaps when my time frees up.

 

Mark bids you all a fond farewell. Hope to see him in T.O.!

Tomorrow, I shift focus to that series bible.  One more character breakdown to finish, about a half dozen episode springboards to type up and I'm done.

Then, it's smoooooooooooth sailing!