Visual Effects Supervisor Mark Savela is back on Dial the Gate to discuss the ever-changing industry landscape and share more memories about specific effects sequences from each series!

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TRANSCRIPT
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David Read:
Welcome everyone to Stargate’s Oral History Project. What kind of opening was that? Mark, Dial the Gate. Welcome back to Dial the Gate. How are you, my friend?

Mark Savela:
Thank you very much, sir. I’m well. I love being on just to see your back wall. You should have your camera open 24 hours a day so people can open it and be happy. You can be your own Christmas fireplace channel.

David Read:
If it’s open 24 hours a day the toys wouldn’t jump down and do their own thing because people would always be watching them.

Mark Savela:
It’s so impressive, it’s so cool to see. I wanna thank you in advance for doing this because it’s so deeply, deeply humbling. I’m so honored that people have an interest, 16 plus years later, of something that we did and you’re the driving force of everything It shows how great the fandom is, and you yourself. 424, this is episode?

David Read:
Yeah. I’m very blessed and thank you for those words. I think that there are a lot of moving parts to it and a lot of people responsible. We have a fourth television series coming. Can you believe this?

Mark Savela:
I know. It’s insane. It’s so exciting and it’s such an exciting world for it to happen.

David Read:
They can do anything now.

Mark Savela:
I know. With Martin at the helm, I think it’s gonna be incredible. He’s such a driving creative force and with Brad involved, Joe involved, I think it’s gonna be incredible. The fandom should be so excited about this, because it is spectacular.

David Read:
Agreed. We have people who love the series and who recognize the essence of what it is. They’ve really got this thing set up to succeed and I’m looking forward to taking that journey again for sure. It’s one of those that is evergreen.

Mark Savela:
I think the trust that’s there and the trust of the people that are doing it, is incredible. Not to get too off-topic right away, but tangent…

David Read:
Please.

Mark Savela:
Like I like to do.

David Read:
It’s your show.

Mark Savela:
Speaking of reboots, can you imagine the Buffy reboot?

David Read:
Yes.

Mark Savela:
You’ve heard about that?

David Read:
I heard about the cancellation of it.

Mark Savela:
The cancellation and then Sarah Michelle Gellar’s come out and she said there was a studio executive who walked around the whole time we were shooting – and this is all speculation, so I’m saying it – and said, “I was never really a fan of the original series and I never saw many episodes but I didn’t like it.” Why are you involved in this series then? Can you imagine something like that happening on Stargate if somebody went up to Martin Gero or Brad and said, “I saw a couple of episodes of some of the Stargate series and didn’t really like it, wasn’t a fan.” I’m sure she has come out publicly and said that it was a disaster, because they had somebody in place.

David Read:
So, they were in production, you’re saying?

Mark Savela:
Yeah.

David Read:
I didn’t know it got that far.

Mark Savela:
They weren’t attached to the show; they had no stakes in the game.

David Read:
No, not at all. Are you aware of Stargate Origins, which came out a few years ago?

Mark Savela:
Yes.

David Read:
OK. They got the Dial Home device and it was put on upside down.

Mark Savela:
Really?

David Read:
I don’t think I’ve shared this story. I hope I don’t get in trouble for it. The horns were on the bottom, they didn’t know how it went. I was very fortunate because I was with MGM as a consultant at that time so I got to provide input on the script. There are beats in the script, references to SG-1 canon specifically. There’s a reference to the Germans took the DHD and then when Germany was sacked by the Russians, the Russians took it and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Those things were inserted. There was no one on set to handle any of the series minutiae, they just knew the film. I know that kind of tightrope walk, but if you’re going around being all mopey about the fact that…especially today when you’re not promised anything anymore, that’s not really appropriate.

Mark Savela:
Absolutely not and it’s so disrespectful of what’s come before. To the fans and everybody involved in the original series, it’s so disheartening. I’m sure that’s not gonna happen and I’m sure Brad and Martin and Joe won’t take any of that if that ever did happen.

David Read:
I don’t see Martin allowing that to happen at all.

Mark Savela:
There’s too much history there, 15 years of content. You can’t ignore it.

David Read:
17 seasons. Darren and I just announced a couple of days ago, Industrial Light & Magic is gonna be one of the visual effects houses involved in this series. The supervisor for Andor and Rogue One, he’s coming on. It’s like, poof. What are you working on right now? What’s going on with you?

Mark Savela:
Myself, I’m working on a show called Tracker on CBS with Justin Hartley starring in it. We’re just finishing in the next couple of weeks our third season. We went from 13 episodes in the first season to 20 in the second, and 22 this year.

David Read:
That never happens anymore.

Mark Savela:
No, doesn’t happen anymore.

David Read:
Hour-long?

Mark Savela:
Hour-longs, yeah. It is the number-one show on broadcast TV and I think it’s up there post-broadcast too. It’s number three or four, behind Stranger Things and something else. It’s an incredibly popular show and the cast and the producers, like Elwood Reid and Ken Olin and Justin, are great. It’s been a nice show to be on and a nice run to have. I watched Kerry’s interview and everybody’s saying, “Nobody does 20 up anymore” and we’re doing 22. We’re already renewed for Season 4 so I don’t know what that order is.

David Read:
They just got it. Fantastic.

Mark Savela:
Again, it hearkens back to the days where you work 10, 11 months and you know you’re coming back to something with a month off, which is nice in this day and age.

David Read:
For sure, and not going to necessarily have to go to the soup line at the end, ’cause nothing’s guaranteed anymore. The last time that we had you on, we had the conversation about the evolving landscape in visual effects, so all kinds of things were encompassed into that. Do you feel your footing under you better now than before? How are you feeling about how things are going in general? Not just specifically your position and your career trajectory, but holistically.

Mark Savela:
30 years ago, I thought, “What am I gonna do with my life after this ends?” It’s always been that year after year after year, until you finally go, “I guess this is a career now and I don’t have to look for something else.” Luckily, I’m on more of the tail end of my career. I think it’s a scary world out there, it’s a scary environment. It’s so unstable and it lends itself to be that way because it’s not a personal environment anymore, I don’t believe. I think it’s run by companies and decision makers who have no skin in the game, really.

David Read:
It’s content; it’s not art. Not that it all has to be art. It doesn’t all have to be art, but even entertaining is not always the objective of content. Sometimes, when I hear that term, I think, “Keeping you busy,” something that I can do when I’m working out or when I’m doing the dishes. Rob Cooper, we had him on a few months ago, and he was like, “I’ve pitched to Netflix and they’re like, “you’re gonna have to rewrite these scenes because with the lines that are in place as they are, people who are casual, in and out of the room, the characters need to tell the audience, they need to feed the audience what’s happening.” Rob was like, “Well, why?” “Because we wanna make this accessible to a very casual viewer.” Rob was like, “That’s not that kind of show I wanna work on.”

Mark Savela:
It was a big story with Ben Affleck that he said that about their Netflix show; that they had to keep hammering in the plot details and exposition ’cause of the way people watch TV now and do not pay attention. They had specific notes where they had to go through what’s been going on in the show so far and what’s happening. I think it was that Safe House movie that just came out with Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, the Netflix movie. It’s such an interesting approach. It all goes back to, I was thinking this when you talked about ILM being on the new Stargate, which is fantastic news. 30-plus years ago, when I was first starting in this industry, a producer that I knew had a big, giant poster on her wall that said, “Film is art, television is furniture.” Then they blended together so well, TV and film, in quality, you can’t really tell the difference anymore. Good television and film.

David Read:
I can think of Bravo, I would consider that TV, but it’s not appointment television.

Mark Savela:
No. There is some, which is great. I think Apple does a great job of doing less volume of shows and more quality of shows. Pluribus became a great show for me; I just loved it. From the get-go they concentrated on Rhea Seehorn; she drew you into that world and you never stopped in her world. She was unlikeable.

David Read:
She’s unlikeable. Exactly.

Mark Savela:
Unlikeable character, but you loved her somehow. She’s doing such a fantastic job and shows like that are great, but we fell into the post-pandemic problem where too much content was being created. I think it was because of the pandemic. Can you believe that’s been only six years ago?

David Read:
I feel every inch of it because that’s when Dial the Gate started.

Mark Savela:
Six years ago. It feels like 35 years ago, yet two weeks ago at the same time, which is very bizarre.

David Read:
Darren over at GateWorld calls it “the before times.”

Mark Savela:
But after the pandemic and during, everybody was like, “We have to make content. We have to make content.” They built so much crap. Even Marvel fell into that trap where they were trying to churn out everything as soon as possible and really fell short on a lot of things. Have you seen the Spider-Man trailer?

David Read:
It’s OK.

Mark Savela:
I think it looks really good. I think it looks stylized, but it looks good.

David Read:
I got hooked up on the music. The last one was excellent. It’s one of the few franchises underneath the Marvel banner, Sony banner, that do tend to do very well, so I’m sure it will be great.

Mark Savela:
They have begun to concentrate more, because this is the only release before Doomsday, I think, right? Where they’re not having six releases a year. It’s like one or two a year, which I think will benefit them greatly on what the final product is gonna look like. That first shot of the city upside down, I love that. I thought that was amazing.

David Read:
That is true. Him plummeting down and the deadness in his eyes. This is what happens when you’re in a pandemic and isolated from people forever. No one knows who you are anymore. You kinda wanna wisp away. I am sure it will be great.

Mark Savela:
I feel like there’s such a thing about the secret sauce of television. I know we’ll talk a little bit about AI and whatnot. A bunch of people getting together and collaborating, instead, the way it’s going is people are looked at more as dispensable, I believe. You look back at one of the greatest movies, I think, of our current times, in terms of visual effects, which still holds up, is Jurassic Park, an amazing movie. When they were doing that, and Steve ‘Spaz’ Williams at ILM started making dinosaurs move and people like Phill Tippett and everybody else could have just went, “Well, I’m out of a job, I’m done.” But everybody decided to collaborate and find new positions to make the movie better, instead of saying, “Well, we can eliminate these jobs and save money, so let’s get rid of Tippett, let’s get rid of a bunch of people.” But “Let’s incorporate everybody’s knowledge and make something really frigging good.” That’s what they did. Now, in terms of AI, it’s looked at as more of it will eliminate people’s jobs.

David Read:
We feel like we’ve reached the end of the line.

Mark Savela:
A little bit.

David Read:
Bean counting is so important now.

Mark Savela:
It is.

David Read:
That wasn’t the case when Spielberg was creating Jurassic Park. They still had a place for Go Motion, that team.

Mark Savela:
Absolutely.

David Read:
Make them the animators of the creatures.

Mark Savela:
Exactly.

David Read:
I don’t see that happening now.

Mark Savela:
It was everybody getting together and that’s your secret sauce of a movie. You take away parts of that and it becomes not that magical ingredients. You start losing animators for some things, to AI, or even writing, which we’ve seen, ChatGPT writing and crap. It becomes a little bit soulless. I know the last time we talked about it, which is funny, because I was talking to a director yesterday about this, about how the bar has become Will Smith eating spaghetti.

David Read:
We’re there, man. Literally.

Mark Savela:
The latest Will Smith eating spaghetti is pretty darn good. It’s pretty good.

David Read:
It took, what? Two years? It’s pretty darn extraordinary.

Mark Savela:
We looked it up yesterday, it was 2.9 years ago. It moved so quickly, exponentially, that it became like a steamroller thing. I still believe that AI gets hurt a little bit by branding. I don’t believe it’s artificial intelligence, I still believe it’s machine learning. It’s not what it’s purposed to be. It can be used as a tool to help artists and people can use it to do their art better instead of replacing artists completely. The one thing about AI is that I always say, it doesn’t know when it’s wrong. I think they did an episode of The Pit about it, where people were getting misdiagnosed by AI, but it didn’t know it was wrong. It was sending things back to people and saying, “Well, this person has this, this person has that.” It totally makes sense if there is no backup checking, then there’s gonna be mistakes all over the place.

David Read:
You can’t take the human out of the process yet.

Mark Savela:
No. Yet, ever?

David Read:
I personally hope not ever. But at a certain point, we’re not gonna be driving anymore. Already the track record is proving that these automated cars can perform better than we can. When one of them crashes, it’s spectacular and it’s everywhere. But take a step back, statistically, they’re still safer than we are.

Mark Savela:
That’s driving, that isn’t art or film, television, music. Things that have a soul to them. Does driving ever have a soul?

David Read:
I agree.

Mark Savela:
Will AI replace race car drivers and people will still show up?

David Read:
People will always drive on closed tracks.

Mark Savela:
Exactly.

David Read:
Just like they race horses on closed tracks.

Mark Savela:
t’s part of the human element that people love to see; something live.

David Read:
Spectacle and athleticism.

Mark Savela:
To see… and concerts. Will they ever go away? I don’t think so.

David Read:
No.

Mark Savela:
People need that experience; they need that escapism to a certain degree. I don’t think you could do it fully by a soulless thing, unless you’re like Total Recall.

David Read:
That’s true. Live theater, I’m seeing a bit of a resurgence. Perhaps it’s just me, but I’ve been finding myself going to more performances lately.

Mark Savela:
Really? That’s awesome.

David Read:
I’ve been hearing that as well from other people who are like, “You know what? I wanna do a live show, a more intimate one.” There will always be, at least for our generations, a desire for something tangible. We need that because we resonate with that.

Mark Savela:
I went to a concert, it was probably four or five months ago, and I was in there, it was one of my favorite bands.

David Read:
Who’d you see?

Mark Savela:
It was Iron Maiden, actually. No, it might have been AC/DC. It was AC/DC.

David Read:
AC/DC?

Mark Savela:
Which was funny. I had never seen AC/DC in my life. I saw AC/DC last year and I was in there and I got out my phone to shoot one song that I liked. I thought to myself, “What the hell am I doing?” Everybody else shooting concerts, you see that all over the place. I put away my phone and said, “I’m not gonna record something. Will I watch it ever? Will it stay on my phone? Or do I want to be in the moment and enjoy this?” I put the phone away and I had the best time I had in a concert in years because I enjoyed it. I wasn’t worried about, is my camera doing this? I just sat there and listened to the music.

David Read:
Good for you.

Mark Savela:
I had so much fun; I would recommend it to anybody. Put your phones down and just enjoy what you came to see. Who’s gonna watch 17 videos that you took on your phone at a show? Unless you’re posting them to something or whatever.

David Read:
I would push back and be like, maybe one song. As a video creator myself, always having my hand out, I don’t pay attention to the phone when it’s in my hand. I can see in my periphery that it’s in the spot that I want and I’m making eye contact. People who get lost in that; you’ve completely lost the plot.

Mark Savela:
You look at things like – and this is well off TV that we just went through. The Swifties, they created this thing that was an event for everybody who went and it was a personal thing. It wasn’t a digital thing; it wasn’t anything else. It was something where people just came together and enjoyed themselves.

David Read:
It’s real.

Mark Savela:
As we spoke about the pandemic, remember that time during the pandemic where everybody said, “You know what? I think we should slow down, be nicer to each other and really appreciate the world more, appreciate ourselves more?” That lasted about three weeks after we were back out. It didn’t really last after the fact.

David Read:
Humans are going to human, man.

Mark Savela:
It would be good to get back to that spot again of let’s enjoy our lives. It’s so chaotic at the moment, not to get political at all, but it’s such a crazy world right now. We’re making it worse all the time just by some of the expectations we’re putting on. AI, at some point in time, is gonna make movies and be our entertainment without anybody else involved. I talked to someone who is in this space a little bit and they said the goal is to have your entertainment personalized to you.

David Read:
Like a holiday.

Mark Savela:
It’s being fed to you. If you don’t like something, it’s not gonna show it to you. It won’t be involved in any of the shows that you watch, it’ll be custom-made entertainment. I think it is completely the wrong way to go because there are things in movies that you don’t like, that make you uncomfortable, and that’s what makes them really good movies. “I don’t wanna see this, I don’t wanna see a dog dying,” so the thing will never show you a dog dying in the movie. Sometimes a dog dying in the movie makes you uncomfortable, but it gives you that emotional thing that you need; it pushes you. I think we’re gonna be so complacent if that happens, we’ll be sitting on our couches. It’s so vanilla in a way.

David Read:
With an IV in our arms, an entertainment IV. Where’s the fun in that? Where’s the spontaneity? Where’s the surprise?

Mark Savela:
Then you’re not getting a true emotional response; you’re looking at things that make you happy. It’s watching puppy pictures all day snd going, “there’s nothing else there.” It’s weird. It’s a weird time.

David Read:
It sure is. I’m thrilled to have you on because I spent last night and this morning going through the shows and I’ve pulled out a lot of different sequences from the three series, 95% you were involved in. I’d like to go through them with you if you’re willing.

Mark Savela:
Awesome. David’s all, “Mark, shut up about politics and the end of the world.”

David Read:
No. I’m being cognizant of the schedule here because there’s a lot to go through and I really want your input.

Mark Savela:
You sent me the thing early this morning.

David Read:
Wanted to give you a peek.

Mark Savela:
I know and I thank you for that. I was expecting to be so cringed out by it. I was like, “Oh my God.” I was so scared to open anything because things get dated two weeks after you make them and this is like eight years ago.

David Read:
How bad was it?

Mark Savela:
I wasn’t as cringey as I thought. I was really quite happy with some of it. It was funny because you look back and think “the work comes flooding in.” I remember that being really hard, I remember that challenge. The one thing I think that everyone did really well between the producers, the writers, the directors, all the artists who work on the show, we created some pretty cool shots. Our shot design was pretty cool. I know that shot from First Strike was in there where Martin said he wanted to do a two-minute shot or whatever that was. People went, “What the?” At the time, how are you gonna manage that? It was something else.

David Read:
You found your way to pull it off. Are you receiving these images?

Mark Savela:
Yes, I can see it.

David Read:
It’s the longest sequence, I think, in the franchise’s history. DinnerBeef actually asks a question, a corresponding question, “One of the coolest shots in all the Stargate to me was the Horizon missile.”

Mark Savela:
Really?

David Read:
“How was it getting that to come together?” Mainly because I know people say it’s the longest visual-effect shot at that time.” It is.

Mark Savela:
At the time, to see the planet in the background, everything going through the clouds, that was a big deal. I don’t really like those missiles flying off that much.

David Read:
Here we go.

Mark Savela:
That shot was mammoth. Again, with the reboot, this is what Martin Gero does. He says, “Let’s do this.” He pushes forward with it and he makes it happen. He takes chances, which I don’t think as many people do today as they should. That’s why the show’s gonna be killer, I think.

David Read:
His instincts are in the right spot, for sure.

Mark Savela:
He’s also not afraid to do something new. He’s not afraid to leap into the unknown, per se. He’s not going to go, “I see this in my head, I want it to happen. Let’s get everybody together, all the brains, and let’s make it happen.”

David Read:
Let’s have a look at another one here.

Mark Savela:
That was fun.

David Read:
I’m not sure if this was your episode. I don’t believe so.

Mark Savela:
Yeah, it was.

David Read:
It was?

Mark Savela:
I think this is “Beachhead.” Yeah.

David Read:
This is “Beachhead,” yes. Lower left. I apologize. How do you make a molten Stargate? I’m assuming you take the asset of the gate itself and you dial up the red.

Mark Savela:
Yep.

David Read:
How do you do that? I mean, look at it, it’s melting underneath.

Mark Savela:
That’s fun. I think there’s a lot of heat distortion going on in front, which is really giving that nice effect. This episode was actually intimidating for me.

David Read:
Why is that?

Mark Savela:
I think this was the first Brad Wright-written episode that I supervised on. It was SG-1 and that was Michelle Comens, that was her show. In that season, Season Nine, which I supervised episodes on, there were a lot of intimidating things about that. I did “Crusade” which was Robert’s directorial debut on SG-1. Going into that, him and Michelle had such a great relationship. These days, if it was anybody else, and if it was another show or whatever, Robert would have said, “I don’t really know this guy. Get him off, I want Michelle. Put him on another rotation, on another show. This is my directorial debut on the series, get Michelle to do my episode.” But he didn’t do that. One of the many, many things about Stargate was the amount of trust that you were given by Robert, Brad, Joe, Paul, Carl and Martin. When I went in and met Brad for the first time, before I started Season Two of Atlantis, Season Nine of SG-1 as production supervisor, I had met Brad before, but meeting him as an employee of the show. James brought me up to his office and we said hi, we’ve met before and blah, blah, blah.

David Read:
James Robbins?

Mark Savela:
James Tichenor.

David Read:
Tichenor, yes.

Mark Savela:
He was doing Season Two of Atlantis as well. Brad was like, “All right, cool, let’s get to work. You’ve got a concept meeting in a bit.” There was none of this, “What have you done before? What can you do? There’s so much, not distrust, but you have to prove yourself so much.

David Read:
Prove yourself.

Mark Savela:
Over and over again. It becomes disheartening. I think I’ve talked about this before, where you come off awards – not to tout awards or any big deal or anything – but you’re considered one of the top four people in the world at your craft at a certain point in time. With Universe, we had three nominations in two years, three Emmy nominations. Then the next year, you’re scrounging for a job. If it was any other industry, if there were the four greatest accountants in the world, perceivably, I don’t think they’d have a hard time getting a job if their company went under. But we would scramble. I’ve been blessed; I’ve been lucky. I’ve always been working for 30 plus years, but there are people who aren’t. I’m not really complaining, it’s just the way the industry goes. It’s a grind more to get work than it is to actually do the work, at times.

David Read:
That’s the thing with the creative field, it’s here one day, gone the next; feast or famine.

Mark Savela:
Totally. But going back to Brad and Robert, the amount of trust that they put in. I don’t even know if that exists today because you have to prove yourself on everything. If you go in for a job and it’s a bunch of muzzle flashes, people go, “Have you done muzzle flashes before? Let’s see them.” If it’s a job for this, you have to prove that you’ve done it. Nobody will go, “If somebody else is supporting you, I support you too, so let’s get to work and let’s make something cool.” That was the thing about Stargate, which I’m sure you’ve heard with many people. One of the great things about this as well is you get to go back to what would be one of many people’s best periods of time in their life.

David Read:
Often.

Mark Savela:
For 15, 16 years. People always say that. Professionally wise, it was such a great time and it was so nice to have that family aspect that everyone had. Everybody talks about that. With “Beachhead” it was intimidating, and it was Brad. Brad Turner directed that episode, who’s also a little bit of an intimidating guy until you get to know him. Such a fun episode because we introduced the Supergate, I think. So cool.

David Read:
That is correct. That’s exactly right. What a cool thing.

Mark Savela:
Which was really cool for the lore. I think in Rob’s episode, “Crusade,” which I mentioned, that’s where we introduce the Ori ships.

David Read:
We’re gonna be showing those.

Mark Savela:
Which was, again, super fun.

David Read:
I’ll be getting to them in a minute here. These are all from a folder that I put together called “Damn Cool.”

Mark Savela:
Good.

David Read:
Was any of this shot actually them at the opening of this.

Mark Savela:
No, 100%.

David Read:
This whole thing is them?

Mark Savela:
Not the whole thing. It transitions to a CG during the pullout.

David Read:
OK. But that right there is them and then they switch to digital characters.

Mark Savela:
Yes, correct. That is a submerged portion of an actual gate that they were all sitting on.

David Read:
You guys built, I think one third of a Stargate, and then used it for a number of shots later on in the show when you wanted to have it in the foreground. One of my frustrations with Atlantis was we had no location Stargate, so when it was there, it had to be digital. There was always something about SG-1 that I loved where it could be out of focus in the background. If it’s a digital Stargate, you’re putting money on the screen and you better make it front and center. You don’t really feel it as being a part of the shot because it’s not there being a part of the shot unless it’s there to be the shot.

Mark Savela:
Exactly. For actors, it helps too. People don’t say it, but it does, to have a real thing there rather than just running through nothing. On the grass and looking back and going, “Well, now I’m seeing this big giant blue screen here.”

David Read:
That’s it. That’s exactly right. This is “Progeny,” this is Season Three. You took Atlantis and then made it times ten.

Mark Savela:
I remember how tough this shot was to design, which I think is really cool. When I saw that, I went, “Oh my God, that’s pretty cool,” actually. I remember the artist working on the shot when we were pre-vis’ing it and he would pull out a little bit and I just kept pushing him and pushing him and going, “Think about what you want to do and then go 25, 30 times more. Let’s… go, let’s see the whole thing.” A shot like that was challenging. You look back and Atlantis always had a CG look to it a bit, but it’s a cool shot.

David Read:
That’s the thing. Definitely.

Mark Savela:
It’s fun.

David Read:
They put the money on screen, for sure. Speaking of ships that you could put the money on screen, my favorite ship from the canon, this whole sequence is extraordinary. Most of the sequences that we’re gonna be talking about later on are gonna be specific shots, but this is one of the few where I went ahead and pulled the whole actual sequence. That cyclone right there is extraordinary. You have several disciplines coming together for this.

Mark Savela:
Not to mention the incredible action hero, Jen Spence. She became an action hero in that goddamn suit; did such a good job. I remember, I don’t think that was her hanging. I think that might have been the stunt person on that one, hanging upside down.

David Read:
Yeah, for sure, except for the close-ups.

Mark Savela:
It’s so cool. The writers came out with cool things like “let’s blow out the atrium of the Destiny.”

David Read:
Again. “We just fixed it!”

Mark Savela:
You just go, “How can we do it?” I love that shot where you’re coming into the Destiny, creeping in, and you see the fire in there. It’s a nicely blocked shot; I do like it. I wanna sound like a jerk now ’cause I like a lot of this stuff. It’s fun.

David Read:
I think that you were 17 seasons into this franchise, the collective you, and I think it shows itself on screen.

Mark Savela:
I’ve always said this with Universe, whether people liked it or not, I know there’s a divide, and whether it was ahead of its time, behind its time, for every argument, whether the acting was too good… It was a joy to watch everybody work every day and act. It was a show where every department was working on all cylinders, it really was. It was a thing where nobody ever threw their hands up in the air and said, “Visual effects is gonna fix that.” It’s a common occurrence now where people go, “Let’s send it to this department, you’re responsible.” Every challenge became everyone’s challenge and it wasn’t separated out so much or pigeonholed, like, “We need to do this, so you have to do this.” “Let’s all gather together and work out the ways to accomplish a goal,” which is one of the truly rewarding things about that show and the way it was. Instead of, “This is my department” or “it’s not my department.” It was so great to work with so many talented people in that way.

David Read:
Everyone’s a team. “We are all rowing in the same direction here.” This is a cool sequence here.

Mark Savela:
I love that ship too. I like that ship.

David Read:
The Lantean Destroyer?

Mark Savela:
Yeah, I liked it. It was cool. It was all beat up. Fun.

David Read:
This whole idea, I’m guessing this is a green screen that he’s standing on?

Mark Savela:
I think it was. I’m pretty sure it was, or it could have been the stage. It’s cool. I love that down from the one ship to the other. I think it’s something that didn’t really exist. It was an aesthetic thing. Stargate was, for the ship shots, a lot of very static and grand and they looked great. The first episode I did of Atlantis was “Intruder,” I think. Was that DeLuise? Might have been DeLuise, Peter DeLuise.

David Read:
I think it might have been.

Mark Savela:
And it was a Joe/Paul show. “Intruder” lent itself to be a new style of shooting because it had the two…

David Read:
F-302s.

Mark Savela:
Yeah, the two F-302s.

David Read:
The Daedalus too.

Mark Savela:
It was a thing where we had to do this, not hugely elaborate, but a little cat-and-mouse thing. It became a thing where I was, “Let’s do something different.” I started to introduce zooms into this Stargate world, in this episode, and a little bit more frenetic camera work. People were saying, “Well, is that too Battlestar-like?” I’d never seen Battlestar at the time and I was just, “Well, it’s these one-on-one little ships, let’s make it a little bit more lively.” It got a very good response by Joe and Paul and Brad and everybody else. It was like, “OK, let’s start expanding the camera movement.” A goal of mine was to always make the ship shots and the exterior space shots be really entwined with the camera work style of everything else. If we had a show that was more claustrophobic, I wanted the outside ship shots to feel like that. If there was more handheld, then I wanted it to feel like that as well. If it was more static, then let’s do that. It was very intentional. I’ve never seen an episode – curse me for that – of Battlestar. One thing that Gary Hutzel did, the supervisor on that show, was he said, in the same vein, “OK, this is the style of our show. We’re very handheld. We do lots of zooms.” I remember at the time, all the visual effects houses, they went, “OK, you have to deal with it. You’ve gotta get on board and figure out a way to track this stuff and everything else.” They did it. It was revolutionary because all of a sudden, the lock-off thing went a little bit out the window, where people were more, “OK, we can actually track this in, we can do this.” It shows in Universe where a lot of times we had moving shots to everything. There was a lot more handheld style, which wasn’t necessarily emulating Battlestar, but we definitely had a more handheld style, which there was a lot of tracking involved in that series.

David Read:
There’s a lot. As we moved into the YouTube era, people are used to seeing shaky cam. I think Cloverfield just blew open the door to a lot of that too, to be perfectly frank. Battlestar predates it, but it was what people were used to seeing.

Mark Savela:
Lovely shot.

David Read:
This may be my single favorite shot and I still don’t know how you did it. I showed this to Louis Ferreira. He was blown away again. My understanding here is that when you’re tight in on him here, what’s happening at this moment right here? What’s going on? The lighting is being changed? You’re removing something from a piece of clothing, or was something digital? What’s happening in this shot, if you can recall?

Mark Savela:
I don’t know. Trying to think. He’s in the room with the stones.

David Read:
And then you switch him. I swear you said that something was being taken off of him. It’s the same shot on him. He’s suddenly in the SGC corridor, which is where this was shot.

Mark Savela:
Then he walked– oh my God, I wish I remembered shooting that shot. I don’t. That’s cool.

David Read:
We actually explained it in a GateWorld article. You took us through that. I think it’s just an extraordinary sequence because it’s all one take on Louis. It’s not been cut.

Mark Savela:
It’s very cool. I like it. To be in that tight!

David Read:
I’ll literally just shoot the guy who did it.

Mark Savela:
To be in that tight, tight room and not be in that room. Something must have been taken away.

David Read:
Exactly.

Mark Savela:
Those are practical hallways for sure.

David Read:
That’s right. That’s the SGC corridor that’s been dressed up.

Mark Savela:
Those are the funny leather suits.

David Read:
That’s it. This is “Sateda.”

Mark Savela:
“Sateda.” Loved it.

David Read:
Great sequence here. You’ve got practical explosions and you’ve got shaky cam. Obviously, this is probably digitally inserted. You’ve got the shadow of the ship and you’ve got the ship itself.

Mark Savela:
I like that. It’s fun. “Sateda” was such a great show because there was, I think, Robert’s debut on Atlantis as a director.

David Read:
That’s correct.

Mark Savela:
The episode was so different and fresh for Atlantis because it was raw. It was a knock-down, punch-out fight on the street with Ronon and people getting thrown into telephone poles. That episode was cool to see Robert’s vision come together. I think he really captured it. All of his episodes are so great.

David Read:
I agree.

Mark Savela:
This episode and “Vegas,” it was cool. It’s not a huge, huge shot, but it’s fun. You put it in the context of the show in Ronon’s memory. It’s cool. It’s neat.

David Read:
There’s a couple of times in the show where people get engulfed in fire. The other time is Paul McGillion’s character, Beckett, in “Sunday.” I can see that there’s some digital explosions in the back behind her, obviously the glass breaking. I’m guessing that was a separate element. The front here that kind of engulfs her looks like a practical fire element, which is actually very similar to this one from “Crusade.”

Mark Savela:
Ooh. I saw this in digital. I love this because that is practical elements there. The special effects department…

David Read:
Went and shot fire?

Mark Savela:
Went and shot a giant piece of wood with the rolling fire. I’m not so crazy about the first shot, but the second shot is cool with the face coming out and it’s incorporated into that. I think it looks cool.

David Read:
This one on the side here is mind-blowing because you can see the bedpost is on fire. It’s wild.

Mark Savela:
It was a separate element. It’s neat. I like the side shot way better than the front on, but it’s cool. I like that. It’s a bunch of departments coming together. You could say, “Let’s do this all digitally and blah, blah, blah,” but let’s do it together and make the better of the shots. I would put that up against a shot that you would see on many TV shows today. It’s cool.

David Read:
I think the fire would have progressed somewhat. I’ve got an element here about particle effects. Fire interacting with water, this is tricky. You have a laser beam from space hitting the ocean. You’re only gonna be able to pull so much off. How does that interact with it? It’s cutting through the water, so you’ve got particlelization of the water because liquid turns into gas.

Mark Savela:
Turns into steam.

David Read:
That’s it. It’s wild.

Mark Savela:
The thing is, this is one that is completely dated, but it doesn’t look great to me.

David Read:
No?

Mark Savela:
It is cool at the same time. There’s something about it and you put it in the context of a show that was 17 years ago.

David Read:
Exactly right. Let’s face facts; you don’t have a year and a half, like Martin does, to do 10 episodes. You are turning these things out in a matter of weeks. Sometimes you have to look at it and go, “This is the time that we had to do this shot. This is where we got with it. We now have to turn it over.”

Mark Savela:
I remember in your reviews, you guys would be honest with us, but you would be very supportive and kind of nice about it, I think.

David Read:
We tried.

Mark Savela:
You didn’t trash as much as we could’ve been done with at times.

David Read:
We’re gonna have some fun with a couple of these, for sure. When we get to the creatures, we’ll have a couple of those conversations. There’s a lot here that I wanna go through in terms of evolving.

Mark Savela:
My least favorite effect of all time. Oh my God.

David Read:
Really? You don’t care for this.

Mark Savela:
I hate it. No. With Amanda, I like the little veins and whatnot. I think it was probably done for the time but I don’t like the straight-in approach. Have you seen Deadpool and Wolverine?

David Read:
I have not seen it yet.

Mark Savela:
It’s cool. Where she puts all her fingers in people’s heads and they bulge out and everything.

David Read:
Oh, God. All right.

Mark Savela:
That looked brutal.

David Read:
We know where they came from now. This is an example, I think, of the transporter effect – I’ve slowed it down – where it’s really working. In this shot, if you look at Jack, you see his legs being teleported out. Then take a look at this shot here, it’s just the top of Thor. There’s no information underneath and that’s from the same episode. I’m guessing, is that a time thing? Is that just not considering “we probably would wanna attach his legs to this as well?” What do you think’s happening there?

Mark Savela:
I don’t know.

David Read:
In the beam?

Mark Savela:
It’s not my episode.

David Read:
OK. That’s fair.

Mark Savela:
We didn’t do this one.

David Read:
That’s perfectly fair.

Mark Savela:
I don’t know, I couldn’t guess. One of the things that was great about the show was that we had signature effects too. They were plug and play a little bit, except for the Zat blasts. I remember those being a nightmare every single time.

David Read:
‘Cause people go crazy.

Mark Savela:
You need the specific arcing that came with them. But also, the way they were built, they were all particle systems in there and whatnot. A friend of mine designed that effect and she was crazy and she made life hard on everybody. Thank you, Barb. We had Zat blasts. We had the transporter thing happening.

David Read:
The rings.

Mark Savela:
The rings, which were very cool. I still think the rings were the best way to get in and out. They were awesome.

David Read:
I think they’re great.

Mark Savela:
They worked so cool.

David Read:
I think they’re one of the coolest effects that you guys did.

Mark Savela:
That looks like CG cloth, doesn’t it?

David Read:
I don’t think so. That’s a CG cloth? I guess on the tip of it.

Mark Savela:
On the tip. I know his hand was wrapped, his hand would’ve been painted out and a CG covering would’ve been put on that end there.

David Read:
There is something to be said for really going for it. I remember for MASH, when Hawkeye has his dream that he’s lost his hands, they’re just covered in gauze. There ain’t nothing covered in gauze here, covering up the elements. You guys actually removed that and then painted that on. It’s a much more effective thing than just pretending that everything beneath his wrists has been cut off, even though we’re starring right at them. I have to appreciate the artistry here in saying, “You know what? We’re gonna go for it. We’re gonna actually suggest to audiences that we have maimed our leading man.”

Mark Savela:
It was cool. I did a TV series once, and if anybody ever sees it, it was called Sacred Lies, where our lead of the show had both of her hands cut off. We had to do 10 episodes of getting rid of her hands.

David Read:
There’s no replacement for it.

Mark Savela:
It was fun.

David Read:
Man, I would have never noticed it.

Mark Savela:
I like this effect. I like if there’s purpose to it. I always hated telegraphing shots. I remember when lock-offs were a huge thing and everybody locked off the camera for a visual effect shot. You would come to any show and you would see camera movement, panning around, and you get to this shot, there is a lock-off shot of the gate, and you go, “I know something’s gonna happen.”

David Read:
Exactly. “Something’s about to happen.”

Mark Savela:
If you’re telegraphing it, you’re doing a visual effect shot. Now it’s less so.

David Read:
You get the language of that after a while. Now, the resolution is so good, you can pull back and get a larger thing and then animate the parts that you want and bring the camera in tighter. Or do a parallax.

Mark Savela:
Even back in the day, if you tried to do that, it would feel more pan-and-scan, which people really did not like. Now you can actually punch in and you can go in and track the shots before and after and get that same style of camera movement. Even that shot was less telegraphic. This is one of my favorite shots of all time.

David Read:
With the food?

Mark Savela:
Yeah. I just love the peanut.

David Read:
Matthew and Fred.

Mark Savela:
Matthew and Fred. I think I’ve talked about Fred before. It was a creature that was designed, modeled, animated, composited, all by one person, pretty much, was Craig Van Den Biggelaar.

David Read:
Craig is so good.

Mark Savela:
He was a one-man army. This was when he was out on his own with his own company and he took this one creature and went for it. We talked about the difference between TV and film. I was down at an award show once and I think it was for this episode – I think Transformers was big at the time – it wasn’t the Emmys. It was more where you celebrate both film and TV. I think it was Pirates of the Caribbean. We had so many people coming up to us saying, “You know what? You guys have closed the gap on movies with that one creature.” I had people from Sony, other companies, going, “This is probably the best CG creature I’ve seen in a long time.” You had artists from everywhere that were getting in touch with me, complimenting that one creature. It was so, so nice to get that feedback at the time. We started the gap closure, somebody else finished it, but we started it.

David Read:
There are so many amazing creatures that the franchise has done and I’ve gotten a few of them here. This is a complicated shot. You’ve got the Asgard inserted into the scene and then you’ve got the camera flashes going off, which I assume you would have done digitally?

Mark Savela:
I would think so. This was Craig, back when Craig was at Image Engine. Thor was introduced as a puppet and then as a moving CG talking character. I think it has to be the first integrated CG walking, talking character on television. They got that much screen time.

David Read:
It’s up there. Heimdall with Teryl at the end of Season Five, so that’s 2001. It’s the same critter and it’s wild.

Mark Savela:
To do a walking, talking, and integrate it as well as they did at the time, I think was brilliant.

David Read:
That’s true.

Mark Savela:
I remember doing things like Reetou in Season Two or Three or whatever and that was in the environment, I think. To actually do something as a fully realized CG character was impressive for television at the time. That’s kinda cool. I saw this today and I went, “That’s kind of fun.”

David Read:
It’s an awesome little piece.

Mark Savela:
I don’t mind the smoky transition thing. It’s neat. I think we did this in-house, too. I think it was part of the in-house department that did that. I believe it was, for sure.

David Read:
Do you see the seed machine? If you look at it, at the left, near the light, the little edge of it disappears in the transition. I cut two shots together, I had never noticed that before.

Mark Savela:
That’s crazy.

David Read:
It’s the things you don’t see, ’cause those shots were separate. I combined them and deleted the cutaway. It’s little things like that you never even notice.

Mark Savela:
That would have been eating into it to get it away, for sure. I know why it happened; it was a mismatch, but interesting. Oh my God. Robert Carlyle and his big rumbling, tumbling stampede.

David Read:
Stampede Earl. Man. What a sequence.

Mark Savela:
For creatures, that’s fun. It doesn’t mean anything, I don’t know, but it was fun.

David Read:
Not Gallimimus.

Mark Savela:
I think it was Atmosphere visual effects that did this sequence and it was so neat at the time. I worked with them heavily on Primeval: New World, where we did dinosaurs like crazy all the time. It’s fun. I like that one foot that you can see in the foreground just comes into focus a little bit in the side shot.

David Read:
It’s the only one that’s not obstructed by dust. That’s so funny.

Mark Savela:
I never liked this guy.

David Read:
You didn’t?

Mark Savela:
He’s too large. No. I thought he was too lumbering. He couldn’t get around very much. I know he’s supposed to be intimidating, but never a super fan. Actually, I kinda like the way he looks in that profile, in that 50/50.

David Read:
It’s the eyes. Here he’s more menacing, but when you really get a close-up on the eyes, especially in the profile, you get the sense of a gentle creature. At least I do.

Mark Savela:
I think this was Craig as well. He opens his eyes a little bit and I think he does a little snoop thing as well.

David Read:
He’s sniffing.

Mark Savela:
I wasn’t a fan of him. Why does he have six legs?

David Read:
They were wanting to be different.

Mark Savela:
The plant things.

David Read:
Attack of the plants!

Mark Savela:
“Cloverdale.” This was such a challenging episode. Oh my god, that doesn’t look right. It was such a challenging episode. I just remember this was a hard, hard episode. This was another Brad episode. Brad wrote this episode, I remember.

David Read:
This is one of my favorites.

Mark Savela:
Yeah?

David Read:
Yeah. It’s fantasy. We see them all back on Earth and everyone’s in a small town together.

Mark Savela:
The wedding and everything.

David Read:
It’s the same town as Once Upon a Time. I think it’s actually called Cloverdale.

Mark Savela:
We shot it in Cloverdale. I remember that.

David Read:
A Hallmark town.

Mark Savela:
Scott gets bitten by something. The concept of this open field, it was tough to create all that space with all that action going on of the vines. It was a tough episode, I remember. It wasn’t one of my favorite things that I’ve ever done. That guy’s interesting.

David Read:
Not my favorite of dragons. Is this more of a time thing or what do you think when you look at a sequence like this?

Mark Savela:
I don’t know. “The Quest” wasn’t mine, “Quest Part One” and “Part Two.” It was a two-parter; it must have been. There must have been a lot of stuff in it. I don’t really remember. Was that the whole Merlin thing?

David Read:
Yes, that’s right.

Mark Savela:
It was. I remember seeing it. I think there was a lot going on in that episode. There had to have been.

David Read:
So, a lot of deliverables?

Mark Savela:
I think so. I’m not even sure. I couldn’t tell you who did that. Little blue guys.

David Read:
The Nakai, these things are so friggin’ cool. My understanding is that the skeleton is actually The Prawns.

Mark Savela:
I don’t think that’s true.

David Read:
You don’t think that’s true?

Mark Savela:
Is that true? No.

David Read:
I was talking with Craig about it and I swear that he had said that Image Engine had already had the infrastructure in place from District 9.

Mark Savela:
District 9, yeah.

David Read:
To make this thing possible.

Mark Savela:
I think the infrastructure may be meaning the pipeline. I think all the elements were specific to this creature. I remember when District 9 was getting a buzz and I don’t think it was really out yet. When this episode was coming out, we actually took Robert and Brad to Image Engine to get a sneak peek of The Prawns and what they were doing to sell them on “this could be done on our show.” The skeletons are cool. I think I remember the contact sheets that they would send us where, for every element, “Here’s what we’re thinking the eyes was, here’s what we’re thinking,” it was a fishlike creature. Every different element, and we’d go through with them and say, “We like this. Let’s incorporate this.” I think they’re cool, I love them. I love when they interact with people. They’re so fun.

David Read:
They work. It worked so insanely well.

Mark Savela:
It was such a mandate with Universe that we don’t do guys in rubber suits for aliens.

David Read:
You’re too far out.

Mark Savela:
We made it specifically impossible that it couldn’t be a dude in a rubber suit. You can see right through his arms. His waist is linear in length.

David Read:
It wouldn’t work.

Mark Savela:
It wouldn’t work. Try it again.

David Read:
This is an extraordinary sequence, because you’ve got shadow.

Mark Savela:
Got a tight hallway, got a handheld camera and you’ve got interaction with the set, which is brilliant. That’s Craig again and that’s cool; the way he climbs up, the way he stops and pauses. I remember talking to Craig about this at times. Craig always comes up with these wacky ideas. “Should he stop for a beat and turn back and ‘Hey, come get me.'”

David Read:
Screw you.

Mark Savela:
He has the upper hand and you see it in that performance of the character. He stops and goes, “Hey,” and takes off.

David Read:
Almost like, “Come chase me.”

Mark Savela:
Exactly. That was a specific conversation that I know Craig and I had. My memory’s horrible, so maybe we didn’t, but I’m sure we did. “We’re gonna pause here, take this little beat.” Nothing’s there and we wouldn’t have shot a stand-in or anything, this was an empty hallway. Incorporating that into the way the camera pauses on that beat is brilliant. It’s not my brilliance.

David Read:
You supervised this, Mark. You can see the soldier, he follows the Ursini as he moves. The muzzle is pointed in one direction, then it goes another, then another, and it works.

Mark Savela:
I remember that would’ve been an Andy-directed episode. I love the way the handheld style moves from side to side and then up. It’s nice. You have to think about those things. An artist could just go, “All right, let’s get him through, and buh, buh, buh,” and ignore those little pauses where the camera pauses. Craig wasn’t like that at all. He put that little pause and turned back and I love that.

David Read:
I imagine this clothing is digital?

Mark Savela:
Yes. I remember we scanned Louis and Elyse in their outfits and everything. We had full scans of them at the time, which wasn’t as easy to do back then as it is now. Now it’s a piece of cake. I love the clothes on that guy. I remember in this scene, it was the back and forth between, I think it was Brian interrogating. The back and forth was brilliant; you felt like the two actors were there. It was one of the things with Universe as well, where you talk to directors and everybody’s concerned about shot count and volume and everything else. My biggest thing was, uf we’re gonna put CG characters in here, we have to treat them like they’re one of the actors. We can’t avoid them and then cut to them standing there for one shot. You have to treat them as if it was a real actor; give them their appropriate coverage. Let the editor deal with it how they want to, but you can’t just say “this is a specific CG character shot, we can only use this a certain amount of times.” The back and forth, I remember the camera panned back and forth and it was cool. It would be what you would do if there were two actors sitting there.

David Read:
You gotta give the actor time to breathe, even if the actor doesn’t exist, because sooner or later a digital creator is gonna come in and create that performance.

Mark Savela:
You want the appropriate coverage, too. You don’t want it to be fake as if it wouldn’t be an actor actually sitting there doing this. I think it’s cool. He added an awesome amount of aggression to him. It was cool. This is so much fun.

David Read:
This has been a treat to share these with you.

Mark Savela:
Oh my God, we’re almost out of time.

David Read:
I know. I’ve got another show coming up in nine minutes, but I do have a couple of fan questions for you, if that’s okay.

Mark Savela:
Totally. Love ’em.

David Read:
Marcia Middleton, “As a fan of mermaid lore, I must ask, can you share a memory or two about your work on Siren?”

Mark Savela:
I did Season One of Siren. Loved it, by the way. Amanda directed a few episodes, I’m sure she did. They had already shot the pilot and it was a challenge for us because they were having a hard time. They wanted to do a practical tail at first and it was bubbly. It didn’t work. We went full-on mermaids pretty much. There were actresses there, but we digitally did their makeup and did everything. They were in tanks; they were all over the place. It was such a fun show. It was a challenge to do at the time and there were a lot of mermaids. Our lead actress could hold her breath for a long time. We’d actually shoot them in the water, doing swimming and stuff like that and use that facial performance to act and then do everything around the acting. It was a fun show to work on. I loved it. It was good. It went for three or four seasons, I think. Pretty pumped.

David Read:
Thank you, Marcia. Matthew Hammond, “when or how do you determine if a shot is gonna be practical, visual effects, a mixture of the two?” Is it a question of cost? Is it a question of time? Is it a question of always what looks the best? Is it different moment to moment?

Mark Savela:
I like to think and hope that, at least in the Stargate days, it was a question of whatever’s gonna look the best. I think we, like I said, and I’ve touched on this already, shots were discussed in the olden times. People would gather in a room and we’d say, “What’s the best approach to this shot? What’s gonna make it look the best on screen?” Everybody had their opinion, everybody had their input and everybody’s input was valued too. I think I’ve told this story before, I remember on one show I was working on, we had a spaceship and it came time to cut and this ship was built a certain way and the producer wanted the ship to have this maneuver. I regretfully told him, “No, the ship can’t do that ’cause it’s not built that way.” He got mad at me and said, “But that’s what it says in the script.” He was dead firm that the ship had to do this maneuver even if the ship was built that way or not. It’s that kind of inflexibility that hurts things. Whereas, Stargate, it was always, “there’s a wall in front, let’s figure out the best way around it. Is it around this side or over top?” Everybody’s opinions are valid and let’s figure out the problem instead of saying there is no problem.

David Read:
It’s not your project… it’s our project.

Mark Savela:
Because it’s written exactly like that on the script, it can change. It’s a fluid thing to make the best product. I like to think on the show that it was for whatever was best for the screen and I think everybody did a great job of that.

David Read:
Mark, thank you so much. This has been a treat as always.

Mark Savela:
Thank you.

David Read:
It is a shame; it is criminal that I have taken so long to get you back.

Mark Savela:
No, not at all. It’s so much fun.

David Read:
The amount of work that you guys created that fans still enjoy to this day and are rediscovering now through Netflix again…

Mark Savela:
Which is wild. It’s crazy.

David Read:
It hit the top 10 in week two or three of it being on the platform.

Mark Savela:
That’s amazing.

David Read:
SG-1 … my gosh. It’s extraordinary.

Mark Savela:
I think there will always be a place for good stories.

David Read:
There’s some immortality there.

Mark Savela:
That comes first and foremost. There’s so much garbage out there where I watch a lot of TV and movies and wondered with myself, “How did this get made?” “Why is it made?” It just becomes baffling. Everybody with Brad and Robert and Joe and Paul and Carl and Martin, it seemed limitless about where their imaginations could take everyone and still tell a good story and still be compelling. That’s the number one thing, I think. That’s what will still capture people. When the new show comes out, it’s gonna be friggin’ fantastic.

David Read:
We are very blessed.

Mark Savela:
I hope the audience builds with the new Netflix popularity and they’re gonna have such a success. It’s gonna be crazy. I’m still proud to be a part of the franchise and still proud to have such wonderful people follow what we’ve done.

David Read:
Yes, sir. Mark, thank you.

Mark Savela:
Thank you so much, David, and thank you to anybody who’s watching out there.

David Read:
Absolutely. There’s plenty of people watching.

Mark Savela:
If nobody’s watching out there, it’s just a conversation between you and me and we can do this for ages.

David Read:
There are 55 people watching right now.

Mark Savela:
How many?

David Read:
55.

Mark Savela:
Really? That’s crazy.

David Read:
Yes. We’ll have you back on later this year, promise.

Mark Savela:
Thank you so much to everyone who’s watching and thank you for being fans of the show, the franchise, and continue on with it because it is truly so close to everybody’s heart.

David Read:
Agreed. Thank you so much, sir. I’m gonna go ahead and wrap up the show on this end. I’ll be in touch with you. OK?

Mark Savela:
All right. Thank you, David.

David Read:
Good to see you.

Mark Savela:
Bye-bye.

David Read:
Be well. Bye-bye. Everyone, that’s Mark Savela, visual effects supervisor, Stargate SG-1, Atlantis and Universe. My name is David Read; you’re watching The Stargate Oral History Project. Thank you to my amazing moderators for pulling this one off. Thank you to Antony, Marcia, Raj, Enigma. We have Ben Robinson of Master Replicas coming on in a moment here to share the Zero Point Module prop replica, prototype that they have. We’re gonna get over to Ben on the other page in a moment here. Appreciate you tuning in, we’re gonna keep these things going. My name is David Read for Dial the Gate and I’ll see you on the other side.