What happens to an episode of Stargate once it’s been filmed? Quite a lot, actually! Join us as Kerry McDowall, Stargate’s Post Production Supervisor, talks taking the show from Bridge Studios to our TVs!

Share This Video ► afsdf

Visit DialtheGate ► https://www.dialthegate.com
on Facebook ► https://www.facebook.com/dialthegate
on Instagram ► https://instagram.com/dialthegateshow
on Twitter ► https://twitter.com/dial_the_gate
Visit this episode on IMDb ►https://www.imdb.com/title/tt39148031
Visit Wormhole X-Tremists ► https://www.youtube.com/WormholeXTremists

Visit The Daily Gate ► https://www.youtube.com/@thedailygate

MERCHANDISE!
https://www.dialthegate.com/merch

SUBSCRIBE!
https://youtube.com/dialthegate/

Timecodes
Coming Soon!

***
“Stargate,” “Stargate SG-1,” “Stargate Atlantis,” “Stargate Universe,” and all related materials are owned by Amazon MGM Studios.

#Stargate
#DialtheGate
#turtletimeline
#wxtremists

TRANSCRIPT
Find an error? Submit it here.

David Read:
Welcome everyone, to Episode– Kerry, the number comes up and then it’s gone out of my brain. It just falls right out. I think that was 412 [sic]. I don’t know what number I’m doing.

Kerry McDowall:
A lot.

David Read:
Kerry, post-production producer, help me out here. What number am I in? I’m in 412 [sic] of Dial the Gate: The Stargate Oral History Project. My name is David Read. I really appreciate you tuning in for this one. Kerry McDowall, post-production producer, is joining me for this episode. At the conclusion of Stargate Universe with “Gauntlet,” she was a post-production supervisor, and she knows where some of the bodies are buried in terms of everything that has to go on after filming wraps at Bridge Studios. And not necessarily even then, but definitely all the way past that. Am I right about that?

Kerry McDowall:
Yeah, post actually gets involved in prep.

David Read:
Really?

Kerry McDowall:
It’s actually a misnomer that we sort of jump into the process after wrap. We’re involved in prep. When I was at Stargate, I started as a PA, this was my first paid job back then. And then I worked my way up to post supervisor. You’d be sitting in concept meetings and production meetings for every episode, making sure that if they needed something for playback, that landed on us to find the asset for that. And then also going through things that would be potentially informative for us in prep to know how to then attack it when we’re in editorial. So, in any TV or film, what they shoot on Monday gets processed Monday night, and our editors are working on it on Tuesday. So we’re step in step with production for every episode.

David Read:
That is the misnomer of the century, for sure. ‘Cause there’s so much that goes on in terms of creating a TV series that most people don’t even tend to think about, because it’s all just done so, it seems, automatically, but it’s not. There’s a person doing it every step of the way. You’ve got data wranglers now who are responsible for the little SD cards that come out of the cameras, and I think there’s two of those that come out of camera now. And I think they probably get split immediately. They go in two different directions, probably, don’t they? If that gets lost, that’s everything.

Kerry McDowall:
We’re pretty obsessive about tertiary backups. Your media has to live in three different locations, those three backups– It’s a little bit different now, because, for instance, Netflix has, you would upload to the cloud, and then they have their own backup of a backup on different servers. So, the days are disappearing where you have to have these physical hard drives living in three different places, but– That is still the mentality of it, is to have a triple backup of everything.

David Read:
Is there a wireless backup now generally going on at the same time? Is speed fast enough for that, or is it still physical media the only thing at the beginning?

Kerry McDowall:
As technology is allowing for faster transfers, technology is also allowing for massive files.

David Read:
It’s doing this.

Kerry McDowall:
Exactly. So, a typical project will shoot anywhere from one to four terabytes of footage a day. And it’s impossible to move that with any sort of speed.

David Read:
You can’t. No. That makes a lot of sense.

Kerry McDowall:
So, the data manager on set would be doing a backup on their hard drive. It goes to the post house. They then put it to their server, they process it, and then it gets uploaded to the cloud. And then normally, I would also have them transfer the original camera masters to a physical RAID drive. So those are the three places. ‘Cause the data manager doesn’t hold the entire, they’ll hold maybe two weeks of immediate backup if they need it.

David Read:
And running checksums and all this kind …

Kerry McDowall:
All of it.

David Read:
… of thing. See, this …

Kerry McDowall:
Everything’s encrypted.

David Read:
… is what gets my blood going. ‘Cause you have to make sure that all the file integrity and everything else. But let’s dial it back a little bit. So, you found your way to Stargate, like you said, pretty early on in your career. What is it that this franchise means to you? What do you think about Stargate when you’re looking back on it.

Kerry McDowall:
Yeah, I have a really soft spot for my years at Stargate. It was my first– I had one paid legit gig in the industry before I managed to get myself over onto Stargate. And it was such a great eight years for me. I did the last four years of SG-1. I moved on to the last two years of Atlantis and then finished up on the two years of Universe. So I was really fortunate to be able to span all three of the franchises. We did 20 to 22 episodes a season. Those days are over. And then to be able to be on a season that kept getting renewed. By the eighth year everyone was family. I just think so fondly of that time and the people that I met and the colleagues who became friends, and I’m still in touch with a lot of people from the Stargate days, and we end up finding ourselves on projects again, and it’s really lovely. And it’s a bit of a club, to be honest, especially in post-production. If there were people who grew up in that post-production, we called it the submarine because it was this long narrow hallway with edit suites on the lot at Bridge Studios. At MGM, it was the MGM post. So there was Stargate, all three Stargates, but there was also Dead Like Me, and Jeremiah, and before my time, like Outer Limits and all of those. It wasn’t just the Stargate crew, we were working with other MGM post crews. And it is a bit of a club. If we find ourselves working together on different projects, and you’re all around the lunch table, we’ll start talking about stories back when we all worked at Stargate. Unfortunately, you just don’t get those opportunities to really get to know people over that long of a time, and create true friendships. There were great days. I just can’t– I always think back in such fondness for my time there.

David Read:
Christopher Judge called it Shangri-La. He said there were not many places that they would have barbecues on the weekends, and bouncy castles brought in for the kids. This was a family thing. They wanted everyone to feel like this was a family group, and it was.

Kerry McDowall:
100%. Chris Judge used to throw Halloween parties for the crew. I remember Atlantis, it was probably the first year of Atlantis, and the main lead cast threw a karaoke party for everyone at the media club. People treated each other like we were family. There’s no other way really to explain it. And I’m sure there’s other TV shows out there where people can relate, but the sad thing is that no one’s making eight seasons of anything anymore, like Stargate, a kajillion seasons if you add them all up. You don’t really get that opportunity anymore. You’re lucky if something gets to Season Two, to be honest. There’s more of a trend of limited-run series where it’s a one-season anthology. You don’t get that opportunity to get the band back together the way that we used to back then.

David Read:
Is getting the work harder now because there’s fewer episodes, there’s fewer seasons? Is there more inconsistency? Is there less that you can be certain about?

Kerry McDowall:
No, there’s always been inconsistency. It’s such a gig economy, and whether BC gets work is so dependent on the landscape in LA if there’s pending strikes, but it’s also really dependent on our tax incentive, whether BC is a place that people want to put their production money into. We all had great job security on Stargate back then, but the city didn’t necessarily. Not everyone was experiencing that luxury of knowing that you were always coming back. We worked 11 months of the year on a season. In post, I would know in November if we got picked up for the next season, but I had work until January. I would always have about February off, but it was so nice to be off knowing I had a job to come back to. Usually when you wrap out of a project, you might be off for a month or a couple of months waiting for the next one to land, or you haven’t actually wrapped out of your project.

David Read:
The writers are already coming back in February for the next season, so you’re trailing that, finishing, polishing things off.

Kerry McDowall:
While production was prepping the next season, we were still delivering the final episodes. And it was the old-school delivery of it aired in September, and then it was every week, there would be the next episode. When we were building schedules, we always had to make sure that you always delivered the first episode well in advance of September. But the problem was that you would start airing faster than you could churn out an episode, so you really had to make sure that those last episodes were getting out there with enough time, and Stargate’s a perfect example. At the time, it was a very extended post schedule because we had so many visual effects. It wasn’t just like a talkie drama where you needed to give sound enough time to build their sound design and soundscape. With Stargate, you had to give visual effects enough time to actually do those crazy effects that they were doing for TV.

David Read:
This leads from the point that you made earlier, it probably folds exactly into the same thing more than likely, but I want to clarify for my own edification at this point, in terms of everything scaling. Martin Gero, we had him on in December, me and Darren over at GateWorld did. We did a concurrent episode with Martin, and one of the things that I did was air my frustration about the fact that we are two and three years now between seasons of television of eight, nine episodes. What the actual heck? Why is this? I said, “I am running– I just upgraded my 1080 rendering computer system which would take me an hour to render 90 minutes, and I can do the same thing in 4K in 45 minutes. Even though things are increasing in size, shouldn’t visual effects and post-production be not doubling in length? What is going on? What’s happening? Why are seasons taking two and three years to come out?

Kerry McDowall:
Because the audience expects a certain fidelity now that surpasses what we were even capable of doing 20 years ago. The bar keeps getting raised, and the streaming services have also changed. As I was saying, back on Stargate, we had these fixed air dates, and they were serial. It was episodic every week. If you’re delivering to a Netflix or an Amazon, like the new Stargate will, they might just drop it all at once. And they can drop it in May if they want. They can drop it in February. They can just drop it whenever they want, and it ends up allowing a schedule to bloom or to bloat if it needs to, because you’re not up against these hard broadcast deadlines anymore. So it’s a blessing and a curse. Because it does allow people to–

David Read:
Wiggle room. I detected that for sure.

Kerry McDowall:
Ask for more, and then you can write bigger episodes and if there’s more budget for a project, you want that money to go on the screen. And if it goes on the screen, that takes longer.

David Read:
That’s exactly right. So, cinema-level film quality and effects on TV now, we have reached the point where it looks fairly similar. I can watch a TV series from Apple or Amazon or what have you, and get the same quality of an experience as I would going into the movie theater and seeing something on the big screen there.

Kerry McDowall:
There’s nothing like being in a movie theater.

David Read:
That’s an advantage.

Kerry McDowall:
I have to say. There’s that communal–

David Read:
Gotta love the smell of butter popcorn, licorice. Exactly. It’s a shared experience.

Kerry McDowall:
It’s the shared experience of laughter or gasping.

David Read:
You become one.

Kerry McDowall:
There’s nothing like being in a full movie theater. For instance, a series now that might be 10 episodes that used to be 22. I can’t speak to every project. This is sort of my perception of it from what I know. But if a project is gonna get greenlight for a certain amount of money, if there’s the opportunity to put more money into an episode and do 10 versus spreading it thinner over 22, I think these days a lot of people would want more money into one episode and do less of them, if it means the fidelity of that project gets to be better.

David Read:
When you’re doing 20, 22 episodes a season, your filler ideas, your B and C awesome ideas–by the time you get to C, they’re a little less awesome–they have to sometimes go in as well. Those shows, in terms of arcs for a season, are going to be more like filler, because not every single piece will have the same relevance to play in terms of stories throughout a season. It’s just what audiences have come to expect now in terms of quality.

Kerry McDowall:
Back then, you’d see it. Stargate did it, Friends did it, Seinfeld did it. There always were the clip shows, the flashback episodes, and that always gave the writer’s room a little bit of breathing, because most of those episodes were built in post-production. The writers will know which shots or which episodes they wanna flash back to. But the script is that outline. Then we’re going back to the archives and finding it, and then there’s all this licensing that’s involved when you do a flashback, because the actors and the writers and the director all get paid to have that flashback. So there’s all this paperwork post has to create for those types of episodes. So it’s interesting, ’cause I would say that it’s probably the easiest episode for the writers’ room to churn out. There’s probably not a ton of iterations other than opinions on what to flash back to. But for post-production, it was a hell of an episode to put out, because of the clearance that fell on our department, to make sure that all the paperwork– It was crazy; you don’t even think about these things, but if there was someone in the background of a clip, not speaking in the background, but if they spoke in the episode, they have to be credited and part of the UBCP or SAG documents you fill out. So then we’d have to watch these episodes from Season Two, well before my time, to see if that face actually spoke in the actual episode so that you knew that they weren’t an extra and actually a guest star or a day-player actor. So there was so much that went into those episodes for us. But that would be the filler, in my opinion.

David Read:
That begs the next, perhaps logical question. “Previously on Stargate SG-1,” were the previously-ons considered a different category because they didn’t have to be credited in the end.

Kerry McDowall:
No.

David Read:
Is there a clause in there that you can use those to continue the story?

Kerry McDowall:
That’s considered promo, and in context, promo of the episode. Those would be considered part of their regular contract. We could do that however we wanted to. Same with, “Stay tuned for next week,” if a program has that. That’s all part of their–

David Read:
Fascinating stuff.

Kerry McDowall:
But to have a standalone episode where you’re flashing back to all these previous episodes, those actors, writers, and directors get paid. It’s a small percentage. I don’t know.

David Read:
Doesn’t matter. They are owed it.

Kerry McDowall:
I don’t think dump trucks were backing up into people’s driveways. But still, that’s what the unions are for. You have to protect people’s work.

David Read:
That’s it. And there are those situations where you’re getting a dollar envelope in postage to deliver a two-cent check. That’s how it’s done. If you have an issue with tearing all the trees down, get direct deposit and keep those up to date. There is so much that– As a post-production supervisor at Stargate, how many folks did you have on a team to work with that you could lean on at that level when you were doing Universe? How big of a team is that? Or are you a team of one?

Kerry McDowall:
No, MGM had a really great professional ladder to climb. There was tons of mentorship back then because of how it was set up. The assistant coordinator was the first; that’s the entry-level position back then. It’s basically a post-production PA. Then you become a coordinator, then a supervisor, and then there’s the associate producer, post-producer. MGM was a little bit– It was great, and it had that very well-laid-out mentorship ladder. But there also were two LA post producers that set up the whole MGM post-production, that oversaw all the MGM projects. That was this other extra layer that existed back then, more of an old-school way of doing things. I had two people under me when I was supervising, and I still had people above me if I needed support in anything. But as a post supervisor, you’re dealing with all of it. You’re in sessions at the post facility dealing with making sure the credits are going up the way they’re supposed to. You’re listening to the playback of the mix to make sure it sounds right and there aren’t any– It’s already an approved mix, but to make sure that, technically, you don’t hear an audio dropout or a pop or anything.

David Read:
So, you’re in there listening too.

Kerry McDowall:
Yeah. And back then, we still delivered tape. You would listen. You’d go in, and you’d QC, you just watch the episode and look and listen for any issues. But you would QC the 5.1, and that was the HD cam. And then you would have to do a DV cam, and then at that point, if I remember correctly, we then would listen to the M&E, which is only music and effects. And the reason why we all, and this is still to this day, we always deliver a music and effects version of the mix, because then when it goes to Japan or Italy or wherever, and they’re gonna overdub, they can redo their dialogue, but they’re still true to exactly what our music and effects mix was. So you’d have to monitor that, and then you would make the final delivery, and you’d monitor the stereo when you did that. So you’re listening to all these different versions of the sound before it goes out. And then you’d make the DVD box set versions, and then you have to watch it all over again. That’s at the end. The post super is dealing with schedule, constantly we’re moving dates around, especially for visual effects. If they’re realizing that a certain episode might be heavier than another, you’re borrowing from Peter to pay Paul on different episodes of what dates deliver when. You’re dealing with all of the–

David Read:
‘Cause you have a budget just like anyone else does.

Kerry McDowall:
Exactly. And you’re dealing with all the POs and invoices. It was a lot. But it was great. This position, I don’t think people realize how your hands are everywhere in the process. And working on the lot was so great because you could just walk up to the writers’ room if you needed them to turn around notes for a cut and actually talk to them about it. It wasn’t just an email hassling them. And then you’d walk across to the stage if you needed to talk to an actor about moving their ADR when they come in to record additional dialogue. Or if you need to talk to sound ’cause there’s an issue, or maybe you need to talk to camera. Everyone just walked around and talked to everyone face to face. I never would pick up the phone to talk to Brad and Rob. I would walk upstairs to their offices and plunk myself on the couch …

David Read:
You’re not in LA. They’re right there.

Kerry McDowall:
… and just talk to them. And that access–

David Read:
Did they have an open door policy?

Kerry McDowall:
Yeah, everyone did. And that access was really lovely, and it was great. And again, it’s one of those scenarios where because everyone was just so open, and you’d sit down and talk about life half the time, not just work. That’s what …

David Read:
These are family.

Kerry McDowall:
… fostered this family.

David Read:
There’s dogs running around everywhere, for heaven’s sake.

Kerry McDowall:
Joe’s dogs were always around.

David Read:
I wanna do a couple of things as a case study. Rob Cooper goes to Vegas and films “Vegas.”

Kerry McDowall:
That’s one of my favorite episodes of Atlantis.

David Read:
Great episode. Very different, obviously. It’s like Stargate CSI: Vegas. It comes back. A camera ran out of film shooting the drop off of …

Kerry McDowall:
Shooting the drop …

David Read:
… Planet Hollywood.

Kerry McDowall:
… off the building.

David Read:
Tell us your perspective …

Kerry McDowall:
I forgot about that.

David Read:
… on that story.

Kerry McDowall:
I probably should be talking with Rob. I actually totally forgot about that, to be honest.

David Read:
He told us that perspective. I told you it would come back.

Kerry McDowall:
Ah, what did you do?

David Read:
You give me a minute and I’ll find out. They didn’t know until they had got home, and because you’re in Vegas, you’re hiring union people in the States to handle that, and if you’re asking them, “Is it good? Did we get it?” and they said yes, and you’re running, and the guy’s, “You know what? I’m just not feeling it. My kid’s birthday is tonight. I wanna get home and I wanna see him. I don’t wanna reset this shot. I don’t want–” And they’re going back to Canada, “Who cares? It’s Stargate. What difference does it make?”

Kerry McDowall:
Was it that nefarious? I don’t think so. I’d have to really look back. I assume at that point we were, if not solid-state cameras, we were recording to HD cam tape, and back then, when all these crews were switching from film to high-res video, it was a massive learning curve because it’s very obvious when the film is running.

David Read:
Coop said the mag ran out.

Kerry McDowall:
But were we film? I don’t remember we were film for that.

David Read:
For Atlantis, that would’ve been 2007.

Kerry McDowall:
‘Cause I was on that episode, so it was either Season Four or Season Five that we went to Vegas.

David Read:
It was Season Five, the second to last episode of the show. He just said mag. It didn’t get taped, so either the file was corrupted.

Kerry McDowall:
No, I think what the issue is, is that a lot of camera operators were making mistakes in those early days of hitting record, not realizing that they didn’t hit stop, so in between the takes it’s recording and then they go to hit record and what they’ve done is actually stopped recording, and then you miss the take. Now, I don’t know if that’s what happened, but that used to happen.

David Read:
That makes sense.

Kerry McDowall:
It’s legit human error in those early days of going from film to video. Not saying that’s what happened, but I wouldn’t have been surprised.

David Read:
Make the big red light recording and record button larger in the viewfinder.

Kerry McDowall:
I know. I forgot, you know what? I forgot that happened. That episode still was great and we still had coverage of that jump off the building.

David Read:
You had coverage.

Kerry McDowall:
I’m sure they had more than one camera rolling.

David Read:
He’s falling for you guys. “Film it, guys.” At least film it. Jeez. That was the thing. At least there was a secondary or tertiary cameras to cover that. But it’s little things like this that happen.

Kerry McDowall:
Usually a big stunt you have three cameras rolling for that reason. You just cover yourself.

David Read:
You have to. You’ve got Lenic and all these people on it making sure that all this has to happen.

Kerry McDowall:
Probably we didn’t realize until dailies because back then we would’ve FedExed. So, all those tapes would’ve been bundled up, FedExed back up to Vancouver. We were probably editing two days behind shooting for that reason. Now what you would do is you’d find a place in Vegas with fiber, they’d upload it to Vancouver’s post facility who would then still transfer it that night, but back then we had to FedEx everything. So, we were probably two, three days behind shooting, which means we wouldn’t have realized until it was too late.

David Read:
That’s it. That’s what Rob said, they didn’t know until they were back in Vancouver. My questions have gone to hell. I’m so into this.

Kerry McDowall:
I know.

David Read:
The typical timeframe for focusing on a single episode was typically how long? How long did you have to nurture every episode on average? Or did it compress the further along that you got in the season and things had to get a little bit more crunchy, not like you’re gonna finish it, send it out and it’s not done, but it’s, “Look, how much time do I have to play with this issue that we have here?”

Kerry McDowall:
The writers were very savvy in being able to write a script to a certain budget. They were very good at that. So, they would know if at the end of the season they wanted to do this two-parter massive episode combo or this big cliffhanger episode. They’d put the money in the first two episodes, maybe a mid-episode cliffhanger before some sort of airing hiatus. And then usually the end would have some big two-parter. So, usually they would shoot that two-parter in advance. We didn’t always shoot chronologically of how it aired.

David Read:
No, “Lost City” was filmed and then you guys went and filmed Amanda Tapping’s episode that Michael Shanks wrote.

Kerry McDowall:
Sure, exactly.

David Read:
Rick was already home.

Kerry McDowall:
You would do that two-parter in, so if there were ten blocks, probably block six or block eight, ’cause again, the big episodes were big visual effects. That’s what always made them big. So, then maybe you’d give the writers a little more time in the edit to finesse the edit than you would for a standalone one-off. But you would need more time for visual effects. So, we would actually deliver– And it’s possible that those last two episodes would still deliver before the two-parters. And we’d deliver in order, but we certainly didn’t shoot in order, ’cause you do have to give certain episodes more time.

David Read:
Look at “Heroes.” “Heroes” was gonna be a single episode, and then Rob had to reach out to Sci-Fi and say, “Look, I’m at an hour of content for this.” And it became two. And Andy Mikita ended up shooting that thing largely second unit over Season Seven. It took months to finish that thing. So, you’re just, I guess, stacking this stuff on the side. “OK, here’s “Heroes.” Let’s sit it here, we’ll come back to it. We’ll pick at it, we’ll graze on it.” Sharpe Sound and everyone else, they’re like, “OK.” You’re building the track ahead of the train as you go along.

Kerry McDowall:
You have to look at it all from a very logistical execution eye of what makes sense of when to shoot a certain episode, based on what it’s gonna do to post. Sometimes Sci-Fi would change the air order on us, and then we would realize they’re actually gonna air something earlier. And then we’d have to go into the schedule, kind of going, “Oh, God,” and then trying to figure out what you could air.

David Read:
There’s some things that you can catch and there’s some things you can’t. There’s a famous one in Season Eight that Daniel gets captured by the rogue NID, they’re called The Trust, and he mentions their name. And in the next airing episode, he then finds out that they’re called The Trust. Everything else in those episodes is chronologically intact, but that little detail didn’t make it and was transposed.

Kerry McDowall:
And the fans went crazy.

David Read:
It was like, “Aha!” It was one of those where it was like, “We caught you with your pants down.” It’s a testament of how often it happened, which was next to never, because you guys were on it that much.

Kerry McDowall:
The writers were so good about the lore and how it all should play out. And like any writers’ room, you break your whole season at the beginning. And then you get into the minutiae of the episodes as you’re going through. You guys caught them a little bit. But I can’t remember if that was a slight in the script, because, of course, they’re thinking big picture of the whole season, or if it was actually that we had to switch the air order for some other reason.

David Read:
It might have been an air order switch. Especially in those later seasons, a lot of the content really tied together. It was still fairly, as Brad would call it, a hybrid. It was not purely episodic and it was not purely serialized. It was a combination of the two. Before we get too far in the weeds, I’m loving this. Can you distinguish between post-production supervisor and post-production producer? Supervisor was you on Stargate, producer is you now.

Kerry McDowall:
Yes. A post producer oversees everything that is post related. I’m the department head of all of post, and then editorial will have its department head and sound has its own supervisor, but I oversee all of it. The producer title is because I’m in charge of all that money as well. And I need to make sure that–

David Read:
Clock stops there.

Kerry McDowall:
I need to make sure that we’re not going over. The interesting thing about film and TV is that I also can’t be too under. There’s this interesting dance you have to do where, on series TV, speaking specifically, you aren’t really a hero if you come in super under-budget. Because what’ll happen is the studio–

David Read:
They’ll cut your budget off.

Kerry McDowall:
The studio will be like, “Great, you did it for X amount of dollars less than we gave you, so next season, we’re only gonna give you that much.” So you really have to manage your money so specifically to make sure that every dollar spent is on the screen and that you don’t go over, but you also can’t go under. So it’s a tricky thing. And then I’m also sitting in on sound mixes and making sure that what the producers or director are wanting is actually being done. It’s just another set of eyes on the stage at that point. In series TV, the showrunners can’t be at every mix, because they’re either writing the next episode or they’re on set for one of the episodes. And so this position is, you are their eyes and ears at the color grade, the sound mix, you’re an extension of their vision. And so it’s really important that you’re aligned with them in that and that there is a massive amount of trust with their post producer when it comes to those types of things.

David Read:
Peter DeLuise was always saying, “You don’t want to end up in the how-come room.”

Kerry McDowall:
Nope.

David Read:
Especially when you’re their eyes and ears down there. I’ve gotta ask, Kerry, if you were too under, did you ever just throw a pizza party for the team to bump up that number a little bit?

Kerry McDowall:
I was never that under. I was very good.

David Read:
Well, it’s ’cause Lenic was doing his job.

Kerry McDowall:
It is nice though when you do find– ‘Cause you do have to pad your budget, always. Because you have to be ready for the curveball that’s expensive and you don’t wanna have to go to the studio and ask for more money. So it is good to have padding for contingency. But as you get towards the end, it is a really nice thing to be able to go, “OK, we have an extra X amount of money, so let’s make sure we put it in these last episodes.” And so you would have those conversations. Or you throw the pizza party. It can’t really go into labor, either; the studios want to see that that money is on the screen. You get a few more visual effects shots, or you get to do the crazier visual effects sequence that you didn’t think you could afford. Usually it all goes to visual effects, to be honest. Actually, that’s not true. A lot of times now everyone’s really big on music licensing, and getting really cool songs. And they’re expensive. It’s really expensive to put music into film and TV, and so, when you do have a bit of extra money, it’s an easy thing to go, “Maybe we will go after Coldplay.” Or whatever.

David Read:
Take a swing for it. I was thrilled when they got CCR in, Have You Ever Seen the Rain for the conclusion in SG-1’s “Unending.” There was something that really buttoned that up, in a nice way. It was a great sendoff. Rob said that this song was chasing him around for days. It was like, “This demands to be used.”

Kerry McDowall:
And that’ one of the reasons I loved “Vegas.” The soundtrack to that “Vegas” episode was super awesome, and we didn’t have– Up until that point, Stargate, we had Joel Goldsmith. We had such a wonderfully, amazingly talented composer that just elevated Stargate. I don’t think we even realized how lucky we were. Viewers probably don’t realize how lucky we were to have someone like Joel doing proper orchestrations for a score.

David Read:
‘Cause he’s the first fan to watch, and give it the emotional backdrop.

Kerry McDowall:
He made me so happy all the time. I loved him so much. We can fan over Joel in a second. So Stargate was always score-driven, and “Vegas” was really the first time we went all in on music, like a soundtrack and licensing, needle-drops. So we didn’t have a music supervisor, so it was me.

David Read:
That was you for “Vegas.”

Kerry McDowall:
Yeah, it was me, phoning Universal. I had no idea, I had no business doing this, trying to negotiate getting all of that purchased.

David Read:
Solitary Man and–

Kerry McDowall:
Spirit in the Sky, I was talking to the actual guy, ’cause he wasn’t under a label anymore. And then even the Johnny Cash cover–

David Read:
Sympathy for the Devil? No. Could it be Solitary Man?

David Read:
No, that was The Rolling Stones.

Kerry McDowall:
It was the Johnny Cash cover. God, these are the memories. I haven’t obviously watched this episode since I worked on it, but I think there was a shot of him on a motorbike.

David Read:
Johnny Cash’s cover of Solitary Man, prominently featured, near the end.

Kerry McDowall:
So we got that, and then I asked, because I loved that cover, and it was so clearly Tom Petty’s voice in there. And I remember being like–

David Read:
OK, Sheppard’s a Johnny Cash fan, so it makes sense.

Kerry McDowall:
And so I was talking with whoever represented that song, and I was like, “So, do I also need to go– Is Tom Petty’s– That’s all covered in this?” ‘Cause I didn’t really understand how it even worked back then, the mastering. I knew that there was sync for the people who wrote the song, but then there was the mastering of the label who owned the recording of the song. But when I heard Petty’s voice, and I noticed that he wasn’t listed as a performer in the sort of deal memo, I brought it up with the label, and they’re like, “He’s not on that recording.” And I was like, “Oh, he’s on that recording.” I mean, I might be wrong, but that to me is clearly Tom Petty’s voice. And so it turned out, he probably just went in to visit on the day, recorded his track, there was no paperwork about it. I guess it never came up again. And so, yeah, it turned out that they had to amend it and add Tom Petty to it. So I think Tom Petty ended up getting a little bit of money for that. But it’s just those weird things. You ask sometimes, you have to ask all these questions, and then you realize you’ve asked too many questions.

David Read:
Well, you’re catching things that other people should have caught and haven’t. I have one that’s on my back burner right now, so I’m gonna air this piece so that I can get on email on Monday and actually do it. On the Amazon entry for “The Fifth Race” right now, Season Two, there is a post-processing error on one of the Asgard talking with O’Neill in “The Fifth Race,” and they’re missing a layer of computer distortion that converted the woman’s voice into an Asgard voice. And it’s out there right now streaming. So if anyone goes to Amazon Prime Video and pulls up the conversation at the end of “The Fifth Race,” they’ll hear the incorrect audio, and someone’s just gotta go back in there and swap it out. And I’ve now, thanks to you and reaching out to Amazon MGM, I know the guy. I need to communicate with him and tell him this is swinging in the wind here.

Kerry McDowall:
I wonder how that happened. I don’t understand how that can happen, because they would be taking the old archive masters and airing them. They’re not going back in and remixing, which means–

David Read:
No, and all the stems for a Season Two episode from 1999.

Kerry McDowall:
No, they don’t have the stems, I’m sure. They’re locked away in a box like the end of Raider of the Lost Ark. That’s where all those tapes are.

David Read:
It’s not the other Asgard; it’s this specific one. At first, everyone was like, “Did they change it?” No. Something just got missed.

Kerry McDowall:
The plug-in somehow. But I don’t understand how that happens. It’s all baked together when you deliver. ‘Cause even if you delivered splits where you’re delivering dialogue separate from music, separate from sound effects, all of the plug-ins, all that treatment that we would put on voices, it’s all baked in. It doesn’t make sense to me that it would be missing unless it was missing on the original deliverable.

David Read:
I’ll send you a link afterwards.

Kerry McDowall:
Maybe not the Sci-Fi master, but whatever the archive master was that MGM has found, or was using.

David Read:
I’ll do the side-by-side for you.

Kerry McDowall:
Obviously there was a mistake back in Season Two about that. It probably lives that way, unfortunately.

David Read:
I’ve never heard it anywhere else. I’m gonna check. Now it’s on Netflix, I’m gonna check and see if it’s there too, because SG-1 is back on Netflix, all ten seasons. And it’s in the top 10 in its second week of being there. This is good news, Kerry.

Kerry McDowall:
That’s amazing.

David Read:
This is a big deal.

Kerry McDowall:
This is why they’re rebooting it, because the fans are steadfast and loyal. And obviously it’s creating buzz with new generations too. So it’s great. I’m really excited for them all. It’ll be so great for it to come back.

David Read:
Were you surprised that it’s back? Or was it, “It’s about time,” or what was your reaction to the announcement? I’m curious.

Kerry McDowall:
I talked to Gero afterwards and my reaction was, “No effing way. This is so great.”

David Read:
You can imagine my reaction.

Kerry McDowall:
And again, it’s because, for me, I just have such wonderful, nostalgic positive memories of that time, and so to hear it come back, you’re just, “That’s awesome. That’s just so great.” Obviously Vancouver would love it to come back. It’d be a lovely swan song …

David Read:
London got it.

Kerry McDowall:
… for the city. It’s not the plan. I’m not sure where they landed, if it’s the UK or LA or where.

David Read:
It’s going to London.

Kerry McDowall:
It’s great. It’ll be great for the fans. I’m excited for them all. I’m really excited for them.

David Read:
We have been waiting 15 years this year for this. Just days before, I was answering a question in the comments feed and someone posted, “It’s never coming back.” And I just said, “Oh, ye of little faith.” And then the next day the news came down, and I went back and checked and someone had written, “Damn you.”

Kerry McDowall:
Touché.

David Read:
Someone else was like, “Ah, of course.” That was so funny.

Kerry McDowall:
It’ll be great. I’m excited to see what they do with it.

David Read:
Looking at an episode like “Threads,” which was an extended cut–

Kerry McDowall:
Yes, it was. Yep, the 90 minutes.

David Read:
Not only do you have the extended broadcast cut with commercials, then you have the DVD cut …

Kerry McDowall:
90 minutes.

David Read:
… without commercials. That is also 90 minutes.

Kerry McDowall:
We had four deliverables.

David Read:
I wanna go through that. And then on top of that, the original went out without the extended cut. It was shortened to 42 minutes, and that version has the production commentary on it, not the long one. So, tell us about the different versions, ’cause it’s pretty obvious, on Joel’s end, the music has to crescendo oftentimes for the commercial break. And in other places it doesn’t, so he has to do two mixes often on those. Can you get into the weeds a little bit on all this?

Kerry McDowall:
Yeah, of course. So, normally we would always do the act break version and then the DVD box sets were the seamless version.

David Read:
The premium.

Kerry McDowall:
What you would do is you would then go back in and you would basically– Normally instead of the act break you’d put a new establisher, or you’d butt everything right up again. Sometimes you’d be coming back to the exact same scene. So we had to then build a seamless version for the DVDs. I’m trying to figure out how to say this in the easiest way to– So, basically what you would do is the seamless version would speak back to the act break. So you’re never remixing a whole thing. You’re basically rolling across everything that hasn’t changed, and then at the point where it has changed, you’re remixing. You have a new music queue from Joel that will span it. Or maybe instead of a really short ring out for commercial breaks, he would extend the ring out that would go over the first shot of the next one. It never needed to be super elaborate when we would join them together. For every episode you were always doing the seamless version. Then “Threads” came along, and I can’t remember if the script couldn’t fit into 60 minutes or 45 minutes really, 44 or something or other.

David Read:
He couldn’t. There was just too much content. It wasn’t big enough for two episodes.

Kerry McDowall:
So, I think they got approval to create a 90-minute version. So, this was the only time that we actually mastered the 90-minute act break version first, because that’s what was gonna go to air, but we still, for syndicated and for sales overseas, had to create the 44-and-a-half-minute version. It was a great episode. His girlfriend, Kerry Johnson, is Kerry because of me. And Johnson was my boss, Jennifer Johnson. So Rob had actually combined our names to create that character, which is my little Easter egg of all of Stargate.

David Read:
So, that’s you.

Kerry McDowall:
That’s me.

David Read:
That’s your Kerry. That’s great. So, another redhead. You look red. This looks a little red.

Kerry McDowall:
Yes, I’m brunette. Brunette with some red maybe.

David Read:
Wow, good little Easter Egg.

Kerry McDowall:
But I remember that time distinctively because we had to deliver it by Q4, and it was right before the Christmas holidays. And I was so sick with the flu, and I knew that I had four versions of this goddamn episode that had to get out in time. This is obviously pre-COVID days where you’re sick, you still came to work. You had to be the martyr who came to work. And because we all were contract–

David Read:
It has to get done.

Kerry McDowall:
We were contract; you get paid when you come to work. You don’t get paid if you don’t. It was this bad, bad weird thing about …

David Read:
It’s what everyone did.

Kerry McDowall:
… not ever getting sick days.

David Read:
We just don’t do it every–

Kerry McDowall:
So, we showed up. I remember being so sick, fluey, in the DI suite.

David Read:
Hey, look, there’s Kerry.

Kerry McDowall:
It was more like I had such a fever, and I was just sitting there-

David Read:
No, I mean, on screen. There’s my character, and I’m dying here.

Kerry McDowall:
And I remember being like, “I sure hope this episode is correct.” Technically correct. Because I was so hopped up on flu medication, I might have actually, sorry Rob and Brad, put my head down at one point because I was so– And I remember being in that suite for eight hours, in this dark room for eight hours. As I said, you had to listen to the 5.1, you had to listen to the M&E, you had to listen to the stereo. So, three passes of one version, the act break version, and they’re 90 minutes long. And then you had to do the same for the 44-minute three times. And then I think after Christmas, we came back to do the box-set seamless versions. But I will never forget that episode because I was so happy about it ’cause my name was in it. And then I remember being like, “I am doing maybe 50% of my job at the moment ’cause I am so sick.” But no one else could do that, do what I was doing. It was all on me, and there was no option of not delivering. It had to deliver to Sci-fi before Q4 ended. But that was stress.

David Read:
So are you mixing at Sharpe Sound, or are you mixing somewhere at Bridge?

Kerry McDowall:
No, we would go to Sharpe Sound. So, my offices were at Bridge. They shot at Bridge, and then on mix days, you’d go to Sharpe Sound, which was actually a pretty quick commute because the two were very close to each other. And then you would drive over to Rainmaker, which is now Company 3, and that’s where we did all of our finishing. So the sound is separate from the picture finishing, but sound delivers to picture finishing where everything gets married together, if that makes sense.

David Read:
Tell me about Kelly Cole.

Kerry McDowall:
Kelly Cole is great. I’m working with Kelly right now. I’m about to mix a Disney movie with him in a week. Kelly and Bill.

David Read:
Do you have any idea how badly I want to sit down and talk with Kelly and Bill?

Kerry McDowall:
I know. I was on the phone with him yesterday, and I told him that I was doing this today, and he’s like, “He’s been trying to get me to go on that for quite …

David Read:
I have.

Kerry McDowall:
… some years,” but he’s like, Kelly is always busy. He is always mixing.

David Read:
That’s the thing. If you’re in demand–

Kerry McDowall:
It’s hard to get him.

David Read:
I would probably have to go to him and sit with him at a coffee break in his studio and say, “Give us the lowdo-” ‘Cause, this, …

Kerry McDowall:
That would be super interesting, …

David Read:
… the Foley, the music–

Kerry McDowall:
… if you went to the stage.

David Read:
I think so. I may ask you to extend an introduction for th- … ’cause this is the most interesting part of it for me, because the Foley and the wah-wah, where do the sounds, the fricking darts. I always wanted to know, what is that actually from, Bruce Woloshyn? And he was like, “I can’t tell you.” It’s gotta be a motorcycle or something. There has to be someone who knows that who designed those elements. And this is a very technically minded audience. There’s 60 people watching right now, so the nitty-gritty is very important to us, and those are the kinds of conversations that I’ve been lacking so far.

Kerry McDowall:
Kelly and Bill obviously would be great ones to talk to, but you really need to talk to the sound designers from back then, like Devan Kraushar was one. I think James Fonnyadt also did …

David Read:
These are new names to me.

Kerry McDowall:
… some seasons. It’s the sound designers. Obviously there’s real-world sounds. Those are easy-peasy, but Stargate was filled with so many things that were out of this world and dreamed up by the teams. I think they had a lot of fun deciding what goes into that sound. And they’re layering stuff all the time.

David Read:
That’s it. You have to create things sometimes. What are you gonna do?

Kerry McDowall:
For sure, all the time. You have to be constantly trying to figure out how to make it unique and how to make it its own signature sound. If there is something in a project that is really subjective on how it should sound, a lot of times the sound designer, in advance of the mix, is auditioning things to the director or showrunners. Director if it’s a movie, showrunners if it’s a TV show, so that they know in advance that they’re on the right track, ’cause you don’t wanna get into a mix and have someone say, “That’s not what I had in my head at all.” You wanna get ahead of those things that are almost so subjective that it’s really just based on personal opinion. Sound designers are usually working in advance with the teams to make sure that they’re on the right track.

David Read:
Art is entirely subjective. What feels right and normal for you may be, for the person who created it, “I’m not feeling that.” Or it may be, “Man, I didn’t have that idea at all, and that’s really good.” When you find someone like the folks that you’re mentioning who, they’re in their groove, I would be in a much better position to want to trust them rather than not. Just say, “What do you feel about what’s happening here? How do you see this mixing?” Because it’s a muscle that you build up of creativity. “Oh, I’m seeing this thing on the screen. I have an idea of what this could be, because there’s a niche that I’ve been wanting to fill over here.” And you just let your creative people go.

Kerry McDowall:
I think that’s what is so great about filmmaking, is that it is so collaborative. And you do have these people, whether it’s in production on set or in post, that are highly skilled and highly specialized in what they do. So, sound is a great example of that. It’s like visual effects, which I can talk about, too. You have career dialogue editors and you have career rerecording mixers and you have career Foley artists and you have career sound designers. They’re specialized in what they do; they don’t usually wear a bunch of hats at all. So, you do have to trust the team that’s built and know that they actually know more than you in their specialized categories or sectors.

David Read:
‘Cause a certain set of frequencies for vocals versus something else.

Kerry McDowall:
It’s like visual effects. A comp artist who does 2D work and paint work is a totally different skillset than someone who builds CG models, which is a totally different skillset of how to light and render those models, like someone who textures the models, adds fur to them. Water simulation is a very specialized thing. That person only does water simulation. They don’t all mix. It may be in the beginning when you’re junior, you of course learn all of it, but then you get yourself specialized and you become excellent at that one sector.

David Read:
You can’t sing the praises enough of folks like Bruce Woloshyn or Craig Van Den Biggelaar. That man is responsible for Replicators. He was the one doing ’em in Season Three when they were introduced. And he was having to render certain groups of Replicators and then put more behind them and blow up some, others would disappear when they were shot. And then by the time that he got to Ark of Truth, he was still doing them. At that point, they were crude enough in terms of AI that he could put them on the wall of the Odyssey and they would march around the stuck-out objects on there and basically avoid them. The technology just evolved, and you had these guys, look, he was making it back in the day. Let’s give that to him now, because these are his thing. This is what he does, and this is what he’s good at. He’s watched the technology evolve.

Kerry McDowall:
Visual effect supervisors will lean on certain vendors based on their specialized skills. There’s vendors that are really great at doing metal textures, really great at spaceships and Replicators. But then there’s different vendors that are really great with creature fur. And then there’s different vendors that don’t really touch CG at all, but they’re amazing comp artists who can do so much in Nuke without needing 3D at all. It’s great for that. It’s great to have your niche. For all of us.

David Read:
How much time did you get to spend with Neill Blomkamp?

Kerry McDowall:
I didn’t spend any time with him.

David Read:
He created District 9 and the Prawns. He worked on SG-1 for a little while. If it weren’t for the Prawns and that skeletal structure in District 9, we would not have had the fish aliens, the Nakai, in Stargate Universe. They would not have been the quality that they were because the bones underneath were constructed in advance for the Prawns.

Kerry McDowall:
I would flip that. There was, and I can’t remember what episode it was, an episode where Image Engine did some crazy robot work for us, and that was pre-District 9. So, anyone on Stargate would say that it probably set them up pretty well. They were probably doing a lot of R&D with how robots look and how to integrate them well into episodic TV. And that predated District 9.

David Read:
That’s for sure. Ark of Truth has a Replicator–

Kerry McDowall:
I can’t remember. It wasn’t the Replicators though. I thought it was some more robot-y …

David Read:
Get on it, chat.

Kerry McDowall:
… thing.

David Read:
It was pre-District 9, but it had to have been near that time then.

Kerry McDowall:
It was pre-District 9, ’cause District 9 came out in, what, 2009?

David Read:
2000, I think.

Kerry McDowall:
2008, nine, ten? Nine?

David Read:
August 14th of 2009, so that Season One of SGU is in …

Kerry McDowall:
No.

David Read:
… production at that time.

Kerry McDowall:
Mm-mm.

David Read:
No, it’s Season Two of SGU.

Kerry McDowall:
No, Season–

David Read:
No?

Kerry McDowall:
Yeah, SGU. Sorry. 2009 was SGU, 2010 was SGU, and then I wrapped out in 2011. But no, I feel like there was something in SG-1 that Image Engine did for us.

David Read:
It’s entirely possible. OK, folks.

Kerry McDowall:
That was metal-based visual effects.

David Read:
Metal-based visual effects.

Kerry McDowall:
I’d have to talk–

David Read:
There wasn’t a Replicator that was– ‘Cause there was a Replicator that looked like a Terminator …

Kerry McDowall:
Replicators were the …

David Read:
… in Ark of Truth.

Kerry McDowall:
… spider ones, right?

David Read:
No, it was– Currie Graham gets bitten by Replicators in Ark of Truth, and then they take over his body and he stands up like a human. It’s the first time we saw a Replicator in a humanoid form before. And he goes to town with Mitchell, and that’s in Ark of Truth. That’s the very last form of them that we see. And I suspect that that might have had something to do with it, because-

Kerry McDowall:
Maybe. I’m thinking more of a metal robot.

David Read:
It was a metal robot.

Kerry McDowall:
A metal robot. That then was familiar to me.

David Read:
It was in pieces. It was in the replicator block pieces. Let me pull up a picture.

Kerry McDowall:
There were so many episodes. I worked on so many episodes. They’re all– And within the three different franchises, I can easily separate SGU, but it’s hard for me sometimes when I think of who the aliens were between Atlantis and SGU in the end. I just can’t …

David Read:
Let me show this one ’cause you…

Kerry McDowall:
… quite remember them all.

David Read:
Let me show it to you right now.

Kerry McDowall:
Anyway.

David Read:
Whoops. OK.

Kerry McDowall:
Where are you going?

David Read:
Wacko. Hang on a second. There.

Kerry McDowall:
That’s not what I’m remembering. That is really cool, though.

David Read:
It is really cool. That was done for Ark of Truth, ’cause that was the metal form-

Kerry McDowall:
And Ark of Truth was Season 10, right?

David Read:
Ark of Truth would’ve been during Season 11, so Ark of Truth and Continuum substituted for Season 11.

Kerry McDowall:
The movies. They were the movies.

David Read:
Exactly right.

Kerry McDowall:
Another lovely story about Joel Goldsmith. It was so great on those movies. I didn’t work on them ’cause I had moved on to Atlantis at that point, but they had budget for Joel to record a live orchestra for both of those. And he did it in Kirkland, Washington. And it just so happened my friend and I were driving down to Seattle for a concert, and he was like, “You should stop by and see it on your way home.” So, we did. He was recording it in a church in Kirkland. He even let us… While they were recording, we were allowed to lie down in the pews. So he didn’t even make us stay up there in the recording booth where they had set up. He’s like, “Just don’t make a noise, but you can go down there and listen to it.” My friend and I laid down on pews staring up at a church ceiling listening to the orchestra work through cues of the score. I think it was Ark of Truth. I don’t think it was Continuum when we were there at that time. But it’s such a core memory for me, because I find movie and TV scores so amazing, and I’ve always been a fan …

David Read:
They elevate us.

Kerry McDowall:
… of scores. It elevates everything and it evokes emotion that you didn’t think is possible when you’re watching a 2D screen, and it’s the music that really gets to your emotions, whether it’s scared or happy or sad. It was such a great, great opportunity. And then I took a bunch of photos there, and those are the photos that are in the CD cover. Like of the music notes. Those are all my photos.

David Read:
I want to have you back to see some of those at some point, if you’re willing.

Kerry McDowall:
Yeah.

David Read:
I could go on and on with this, but I’ve got a number of fan questions, so I’m gonna stop talking and let the fans have a chance to talk. Are we good for 15 more minutes? 10, 15?

Kerry McDowall:
Yeah. No problem.

David Read:
OK, this is awesome. Lockwatcher wanted to know, what was involved in closing down the production for your teams near the end of the season? What would you do to button stuff up as you would get to the end of the season to close things off and make sure that everyone had the deliverables that they needed and that nothing was gonna fall out of the truck on the way to shipping?

Kerry McDowall:
So, do you mean between seasons or when we wrapped out for good at the very end?

David Read:
Specifically between seasons.

Kerry McDowall:
Between seasons. You would obsess over the FedEx. ‘Cause again, this is all before; you wouldn’t send a digital file. At that time, you could. It took a really long time. So, we were still FedExing tapes. That still was what Sci-Fi wanted. And you’d obsess over the tracking number, for sure. You needed to make sure that it got delivered and that there was a proof of delivery. The contact over there was really good about also emailing, saying, “We have receipt of the tape.” But the thing is, then they QC it, and if they have technical things that they want you to fix, they would then ship the tape back. We would do the fixes. We’d insert them into the tape and then resend it back. So, even when you were done and delivered, you weren’t really done. So, there’s always a couple of extra weeks waiting to make sure that it passed QC and that you didn’t have to retrieve the file again, which was so crazy.

David Read:
Gosh. So many elements.

Kerry McDowall:
But then also it was never a big deal because as long as you made the air dates, a lot of times it would air and then they’d pull it back and you’d fix it for syndication. So, certain things didn’t need to be fixed for air, but it did need to be fixed before they made the DVD box sets where people could actually press pause and notice something odd. But then we were already back for the next season, so that would have been work that would have fallen on our plate in March when we were getting ready to start posting the next season. I don’t remember it ever being stressful when we wrapped out at all.

David Read:
‘Cause everyone knew what they were doing and were doing their job.

Kerry McDowall:
It was a very well-oiled machine.

David Read:
That’s it. I haven’t taken a look at a lot of the different takes. For instance, with “Lost City,” the feature-length version originally on the DVD cut. It was the first time the fans had a chance, at least in Region 1, to see a feature-length version of it, because “Lost City” aired over two weekends. I was doing commentary for our sister channel, Wormhole X-Tremists, and I was doing a cut for each group of fans, so that depending on whichever version they had, they could listen to our commentary on it. It’s the first time I got to see the movie unstitched in one version and combined in another. And lo and behold, like you said, there’s a shot of Cheyenne Mountain there. There’s a whole extended cut of this pan that Martin did with Jack and Daniel and Sam that just doesn’t exist in the other version. There’s a whole section of material there that I didn’t notice that it was missing before. It’s the gives and takes.

Kerry McDowall:
Definitely.

David Read:
And how do you get down to 42 minutes, almost exactly, every single time? I have to wonder. Someone’s there, “Oh, we need three seconds taken out of this episode.”

Kerry McDowall:
We do that.

David Read:
“Let’s find it.”

Kerry McDowall:
We do. We’re constantly– It’s called a three-day timing. An episode would be shot over about seven days. By day three– They’ll be shooting day four, and we’re editing day three. We had to put out a three-day timing to actually show if we were projecting to be on target with–

David Read:
On course.

Kerry McDowall:
On course. Because sometimes it would happen that a scene would play out a lot slower or faster than they had originally thought when writing the script. Now, when it plays out longer, it’s really not the end of the world, because we know that we can cut down scenes, and we can get it to time. Where it’s a real problem is if you’re trending to be short, because you also can’t be shorter than 44 minutes. If you’re trending to be short, then the writers have to write some extra scene, or an extension to a scene not yet shot, to make sure that we have enough footage. And that rarely happened, but that is why you do the three-day timing. To make sure that everyone understands the projections of what they timed it. A script supervisor will actually time the script based on what they feel it will run out as. We then time what is actually targeted as. And then against that script supervisor’s timing, we can– There’s a math where you can be, “OK, we’ve only done a third of the footage, but we’re trending 15 seconds short, but that means it’s actually gonna be 45 seconds short,” if we continue to trend in this way.

David Read:
There is an average that is relatively on target.

Kerry McDowall:
It’s just a standard. Everyone does it.

David Read:
Exactly. I’m sure you know the famous story about “Window of Opportunity” in Season Four. Because of the time loop, it was so under-timed that Joe and Paul had to go and write the scene of O’Neill and Teal’c screwing stuff up, taking a few loops off. And that’s the signature thing that people remember from that episode. Because they had to fill the time with something.

Kerry McDowall:
It was a happenstance.

David Read:
Exactly.

Kerry McDowall:
There you go. It happened in that episode. That’s before my time, so I didn’t know about that.

David Read:
One of the things that I now notice watching with earbuds in is that you can hear a lot more little detail in terms of where there are cuts with dialogue. And you can hear when someone has gone too close, and had to cut the actor because they’re about to say something else, or someone else in that particular piece–not even necessarily what’s on screen–was about to talk over them.

Kerry McDowall:
Usually, your line, they probably shortened a sentence.

David Read:
There’s certain things that, “This is what we’ve got.” There’s no time to ADR anything else. How often would you encounter that? Or are we just picking up things that you guys just didn’t hear in the mix?

Kerry McDowall:
No, you usually hear it. Sometimes you have to live with it ’cause it can’t be perfect, and you have to move on to the next one. It’s interesting now where people listen with earbuds, ’cause I think sometimes earbuds either are too unforgiving. I think if people are using headphones that are meant for music, it actually screws it up, because it takes out the really low and higher sounds. You actually miss a bunch of stuff if you’re listening to any movie or TV, and you’ve got the Beats, something that’s made for music. It actually does a disservice to any sort of film and TV. It’s like cutting stuff out. It’s noise reduc– It’s all bad. You should never do that.

David Read:
Agreed. It wasn’t meant to be heard that way. So, that makes a lot of sense.

Kerry McDowall:
It was never meant to be heard that way.

David Read:
Martin Smith wanted to know, “Was there ever anything…” Huh, 20 years ago, Kerry. “Was there ever anything like the infamous Wilhelm Scream, or anything that was used in an episode or across several episodes that was kind of an inside joke that you can share that was layered in?” “200” was one of my favorites with all these kinds of sounds. They had a billion scenes for this, that was …

Kerry McDowall:
“200” was fabulous.

David Read:
… three and four episodes crammed in one. I don’t know how you did it.

Kerry McDowall:
How we managed to get away with “200?” It was funny when Martin Gero and I connected last fall, we were laughing about what a crazy time to be in TV. That Stargate got to make “200.” And I think too because, for both Martin and I, our careers, we grew up with Stargate. It was our first real gig, and we both, like so many others, you learn so much when you have such a well-staffed for mentorship. In the writers’ room it was that way, in post it was that way, in all the departments. And we were laughing in the fall about “200,” because it was so absurd in all the right ways.

David Read:
No, I get it.

Kerry McDowall:
But I don’t remember any inside joke with regards to– I’m sure there were, but my brain isn’t– I guess if there were …

David Read:
Not calibrated that way.

Kerry McDowall:
… I probably wouldn’t say it out loud anyway.

David Read:
That’s a good point.

Kerry McDowall:
I can’t remember anything that we would repeat all the time just to entertain ourselves. “200” was very much written self-reflexive for everyone to entertain themselves and the crew for sure.

David Read:
Every moment.

Kerry McDowall:
How we got the Team America puppets made for Stargate, it still baffles me. I think I was so naive back then that all TV shows were like this. All TV shows got to Episode 200 and threw a big party and had this crazy episode for the sake of celebrating 200. Shows don’t get to 200 anymore. Shows don’t even get to 100 anymore. It was a really golden age of television for us, in so many ways.

David Read:
In that vein, Philippe Cannat wanted to know, you’re obviously on the technical side of things. Was there ever a beat where you were enveloped by the performance of these folks that you were watching? Some of the stuff, …

Kerry McDowall:
Yeah, the puppets.

David Read:
… Robert Carlyle–

Kerry McDowall:
The Team America puppets.

David Read:
The Team America– And that was all shot in LA and then green screened.

Kerry McDowall:
Or when Brad Wright’s Scottish accent made the Star Trek spoof portion of “200.” I remember that really well as well.

David Read:
Do you know why it was Brad?

Kerry McDowall:
I do.

David Read:
You wanna tell that story real quick?

Kerry McDowall:
No. Not my place to tell that story.

David Read:
OK. We’ve already had it told several times.

Kerry McDowall:
Happy for you guys to know the story. Feels a bit gossipy for me to talk about it. Unless you’ve been …

David Read:
He’s come on and talked about it, so.

Kerry McDowall:
… told a different story than me.

David Read:
I was told that Paul couldn’t– There was a scheduling thing, so I’m gonna leave that at that. Look, Kerry, this has just been fantastic. Thank you so much for being so generous with your time. There is so much that goes into building these shows. I don’t know how you guys did 40 a year. You obviously had a counterpart who did, for those three years, the other 20.

Kerry McDowall:
In post, we never had the same teams work on Stargate and Atlantis at the same time. So there was a Stargate team in post, three editors, two assistants, the producer, super coordinator, assistant coordinator. We all were separate. However, props to a lot of the department heads in production who were crazy enough to take on both. Dean, the props master, took on both, costumes might have taken on both, if I recall. I think production design was the only one that had to, but I think the art directors were both. Obviously the writers were doing 40 episodes. It was crazy. 40 episodes a year is too much. It’s too much.

David Read:
Val Halverson, James CD Robbins, and Bridget McGuire. These people. Richard Hudolin. My gosh, giants in this field. Stargate was really lucky.

Kerry McDowall:
We had an amazing crew. We really did. It was awesome. Really good times.

David Read:
Thank you so much. This is a treat. The sound people, the two guys who did the effects, are you still in touch with them?

Kerry McDowall:
On-set sound? Or …

David Read:
The ones that were making the sound for the vehicles and things like that, who created a lot of the sci-fi sound for the shows. I would love to …

Kerry McDowall:
The designers.

David Read:
… send an email to one of them.

Kerry McDowall:
I’ll talk to Kelly next week, and he needs to remind me who did– I remember Devan was definitely SG-1 when I was on SG-1, but I can’t remember the rest.

David Read:
That’s totally cool. There are so many unsung heroes that have gone in and out over the years to make this thing. Hundreds of people pull this off. Thank you. Thank you for taking the time from your days.

Kerry McDowall:
In the sound world, and visual effects too, a lot of people will say at some point their hands, and the actors especially in Vancouver– There are different sound houses now in Vancouver, and all of them at some point worked early in their careers at Sharpe on Stargate, and then branched off onto other projects. Stargate has a really massive imprint if you worked in the industry in the early 2000s especially, in the aughts. Chances are your fingerprint is somewhere on Stargate, which is really a testament to what it did to our city, the benefit that we all got because of it.

David Read:
One quick last question for you. What advice would you give to someone interested in doing a post-production role like what you pursued? Raj Luthra wanted to know that.

Kerry McDowall:
I think what makes a really good post producer, there’s two aspects to it. There’s obviously the ability to multitask and juggle a bunch of balls ’cause you’re– And not let them drop, ever. Because you’re dealing with, for instance, on Stargate, you would be prepping the last two episodes, and probably you just delivered maybe the fourth. So, you usually had about 16 episodes in play, from either prep to trying to get it out the door, and then everything in between. So, it’s really important that you don’t get super stressed out by the idea of that. That the challenge is really exciting and you have that brain that likes to problem solve, you like to troubleshoot, that there’s always an answer, the sky isn’t falling, you’re kind of grace under pressure. I think that really makes for a great post producer. You do have to enjoy Excel, ’cause I live in Excel. You have to be the nerdy Excel person that’s, “Ooh, I made a …”

David Read:
Where’s my pivot tables?

Kerry McDowall:
“… great template here.” Because budgeting is part of it, too. Everyone is constantly asking, “Are we over? Are we under? By how much?” So, my budgets are current and live as much as they can be. So, you can’t avoid math, so that’s an important thing. But I think the soft skills. I think people don’t talk enough in this industry about how important your soft skills are. There are a lot of personalities in this industry. There are some major egos. There’s people with major insecurities, and then they take it out on you with their egos. I’ve been really lucky in my career. I mostly have worked with really incredibly nice, collaborative, encouraging people. Both above and under me. I’ve always had a really positive experience, to be honest. But you still, at one moment, might be talking with your PA, and at the very next moment, talking to an executive at a studio. It’s just really important that your soft skills are people managing, and managing expectations, and understanding how to handle one personality is different from the next personality. Everyone needs to trust you, so however you can build that trust is your experience, but it also is your personality. I think people who can do their job really well and be a really nice human at the same time do very well. That sort of toxic, I’m gonna treat you like crap when you’re a PA, and then you one day become a producer, and then you just treat the PA like crap, those days should be gone. I think it’s the soft skills of understanding different personalities and figuring out how to navigate them and make everyone feel like you’ve got their back. So, whether that’s delivering to the studio and managing what the studio expectations are, and that might be different from what your director’s expectations are, but you have to support both because you kind of work for both. That’s something that you get through experience. I like doing jigsaw puzzles and crosswords. I’m very problem-solving, the answer is there somewhere. I just gotta figure out how to get there and what the best one is. And I have a plan A, but I also have a plan D because nothing ever goes as planned, and you have to be agile when that happens. You can’t be upset when you get thrown a curveball. It’s part of the job. They say fix it in post for a reason. So, it’s definitely a personality position, for sure.

David Read:
Sooner or later, you’re gonna slip up, and you have to be accountable for when that happens. ‘Cause you don’t wanna lose that trust.

Kerry McDowall:
Or be prepared for when it happens, so that if it happens, it’s, “Don’t worry, I’ve already got this idea in my back pocket.”

David Read:
There you go. And know thyself. Kerry, I can’t wait to have you back. Thank you so much. This was great.

Kerry McDowall:
It’s been fun. I was very nervous. I’ve never done something like this before. But it was great. You put me at ease. Thank you.

David Read:
You are very welcome. And all the best, truly. Continue to do awesome work. I will be in touch. And thank you for everything that you did beforehand with Rob, and connecting you and I together. This was tremendous, so I really appreciate it.

Kerry McDowall:
I’m glad we met.

David Read:
Same. I’m gonna wrap up the show on this end. You be well.

Kerry McDowall:
OK. Thank you.

David Read:
Bye.

Kerry McDowall:
Bye.

David Read:
That is Kerry McDowall, post-production producer. I am so blessed in this role to get to rub elbows with so many extraordinary people who have made this franchise work. And so many of them in the back office don’t get their praises sung enough. And that’s one of the things that I’ve really been blessed with this show about doing, is that look, everyone loves the onscreen talent. They’re half the reason we tune in, if not more. But there are people that prop them up on one side and make them look good. And there are people who are specifically there to make sure that all the pipe is laid underneath the floorboards, and that infrastructure to give them a place to stand. And it’s important that we give those folks acknowledgment too. Thank you so much to everyone who submitted questions to make this episode that special. That was really cool. Thank you to my Mod Captain Jeremy and my Mod Lieutenant Lockwatcher. You guys were fantastic. I think Marcia is in there as well. Man, I’ve got everybody in here. Kevin, Raj, Jeremy, my goodness, everybody showed up for this one. Really, thank you guys so much. We recorded a Stargate trivia segment that’s supposed to be airing tomorrow. Most of it will, hopefully, if I can get the file recovered. One of the things that I wanted to discuss with Kerry was, sometimes shit just happens and you have to deal with it. And in this particular situation, which has never happened to me before in 412 [sic] episodes, my computer just spontaneously decided to restart. Like it hit a blue screen of death, except it didn’t show one. It just said, “Restarting now.” And that footage for that episode, what was taped of it, I’m gonna have to figure out how to– The file is sitting there and the video wasn’t allowed to properly save the recording and close. So, I’m gonna have to figure out how to make that work, and there’s gotta be a way, I know it. But hopefully that’ll be playing tomorrow, and just like what we were talking about with her, you have to have a plan D. You have to be able to pivot and be prepared to handle the unexpected. So, we’ll see. Jeremy said, “Better during a recorded episode than a live one.” Yes, sir! That is absolutely correct. And I’m gonna see what I can see to make sure that that does not happen again. Hopefully the computer generated some kind of a log, because everything got wiped. I had to reopen Firefox and relog back in. It was really bizarre. There was no proper shutdown sequence and I’ve never seen the computer behave like this before. And it’s a new PC, so I don’t understand why it’s doing this. It should be better than that. So, my name is David Read. You’re watching The Stargate Oral History Project. If you enjoy the show and you wanna see more content like this, click the Like button. It does make a difference and will help us continue to grow our audience. Please also consider sharing the video with a Stargate friend. And if you wanna get notified about future episodes, click Subscribe. And if you click the Bell icon, it’ll notify you the moment a new video drops and you’ll get my notifications of any last-minute guest changes. And clips from this episode will be released over the course of the next few weeks on both the Dial the Gate and GateWorld.net YouTube channels. There’s a bit of a shuffle in terms of content coming out in the next few days here. A couple of the Vancouver pieces are going to be shuffled around in terms of their sequence, so I hope you don’t mind that we’re doing that and that we get you what we get you. Coming up in the next few days here, I do have a couple of folks that I’m really excited to share with you. Robert Murray Duncan is going to be back. He played Seth and Daniel Jackson’s dad, and that is going to be on Monday the 2nd that we’re going to have him. And then on the 3rd, David Warry-Smith, who directed episodes like “The Fifth Race” and “There But For The Grace of God” and “Pretense.” He’s going to be coming on to talk about his career and his time directing Stargate SG-1. It’s been a while since we’ve had a new old director on. I’m always thrilled to have DeLuise and Martin Wood, and I’m thrilled that the rising tide is continuing to raise the boat and we will continue to keep on doing this as we move forward. My thanks again to Kerry McDowall. Thanks again to my moderating team, to everyone who builds this show and makes this possible. Let’s roll tape and show all of them off to you. My name is David Read for Dial the Gate. I appreciate you tuning in. I’ll see you on the other side.