Podcast:He That Believeth In Me
| "He That Believeth In Me" Podcast | ||
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| [[Image:{{{image}}}|200px|He That Believeth In Me]] | ||
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| Posted on: | 2008-05-06 | |
| Transcribed by: | Catrope | |
| Verified by: | ||
| Length of Podcast: | 43:43 | |
| Speaker(s) | ||
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Ronald D. Moore | |
| Terry Dresbach | ||
| Comedy Elements | ||
| Scotch: | Macallan Fine Oak 17 | |
| Smokes: | ||
| Word of the Week: | ||
| Legal Notice | ||
| All contents are believed to be copyright by the speakers. Contents of this article may not be used under the Creative Commons license. This transcript is intended for nonprofit educational purposes. We believe that this falls under the scope of fair use. If the copyright holder objects to this use, please contact the transcriber(s) or site administrator Joe Beaudoin Jr. To view all the podcasts that have been transcribed, see the podcast project page. | ||
Hello, and welcome to the podcast, I'm Ronald D. Moore, the executive producer and developer of the new Battlestar Galactica, and I'm here to welcome you to the first podcast of season four. We're here to talk about episode 403, "He That Believeth In Me". You'll find that I will be continually referring to numbers that make no sense to all of you, (laughs) as I discuss the season in this and subsequent podcasts, because essentially— it's not as complicated as it sounds, it's actually— "Razor" were filmed as the first— were filmed at the beginning of the fourth season and we count "Razor" as episodes one and two, "He That Believeth In Me" is essentially number three to us. And so, internally there's a— I'm used to referring to these episodes by that nomenclature, so I'm— I always call this episode three. So. I think, therefore, what you want is another bit of Galactica arcane of— for all of you.
Anyway, at the end of "Crossroads" number two, we found ourselves in an interesting position here with Baltar and the rest of the Fleet. And, of course, being Battlestar Galactica, we didn't really have a solid idea of exactly how we were gonna pick up season four. This storyline, as you're seeing, is reviewed there with Baltar, we did have some conversations about where that was going, we had some general ideas of how we were gonna play the Final Four into the fourth season, and we knew Kara was coming back, obviously. And it felt like the puzzle pieces were in place, we felt like we were at a good place in terms of the narrative and where we were all going, and it didn't feel like we really had to continue to break out exactly what the season opener was as we continued to work on the finale of season three. (coughs) Excuse me. In retrospect, I think that that was wise, to provide a freshness to when we got down to actually breaking these episode— this episode and subsequent stories in the fourth season. We did talk, pretty early on, about the fact that season four would open with a direct pickup from last year, that we would essentially come straight back into the moment that we left, that Lee is still out there with Kara, and the audience has been given a taste that there really is an Earth out there someplace.
I think there was a moment, actually, where Michael Rymer started to call. I think I was standing outside the sound stage in Vancouver with Michael Rymer at some point in the filming of "Crossroads" two, and I think we were discussing— I think we might've been shooting some of the Starbuck scenes. Maybe— it might've been one of the alternates where Kara was— I think I mentioned this on that podcast for "Crossroads" two, but essentially there was a sequence where Lee came back to his quarters to get his flight suit, as he was answering the call to action stations, and Kara was in his quarters. And we were gonna— we had a way of going out on the third season where Kara was actually in his quarters, as opposed to outer space. And what Rymer pointed out, which I though was interesting, was that if we went out on the idea that she was in his quarters, we can also play it— maybe she's a ghost, or maybe she's one of the head people like Head-Six and Head-Bal— y'know, and what you will see is Head-Baltar into the next episode. And I was intrigued by that, and Lee, maybe, would see Kara and no one else would, and that she sort of appeared to him, and she would be one of those beings into the fourth season. And it was intriguing, but ultimately it felt like it— y'know, we would lose too much from the show, that you really wanted Starbuck back, and we needed Starbuck back, and she was part of the fabric of the show. And— y'know, the fact that she— we had killed her and that she had died was itself shocking enough. And it— there was something more to be played by the fact that she was literally resurrected, I mean resurrection is a recurring theme in the show, obviously with the Cylons, and life, and the quest for mortality, and the notions of God and all that are sprinkled throughout the series. So to have a character who had been literally resurrected and was actually walking among us clearly would have a great deal of symbolism, a great deal of meaning, it would at least resonate in the show in terms of what we'd established.
This moment is really quite good. The amazing thing to me is that this is one of the scenes that I nearly cut over and over again, I kept thinking that we've played this before, I'm referring to Saul's shooting Adama right in the eye, it's a quick pop and he really does shoot him right in the eye, which I love. We talked about this in the room, it was structured, it was in the story and it was in the— it was in all drafts of the script, and yet some part of me always kept wanting to cut it and feeling like "No, they're gonna see this coming, they're never gonna buy it, and it— y'know, we've played it before". I was really wrong, because when he shot it, when he got in and actually shot this piece of Tigh shooting him, and then that camera pan and then the look on Saul's face, and slowing the action down a little bit and coming back around, and Adama is still there, and it feels like it's in one take. It's not, it's— there's actually a cut in there, if you look at it closely, but it's really done well, it's very seamless, it's really nicely done, it's nicely paced, it's a really— a nice touch that Michael has there. He's very good at those little cinematic moments and really— it's quite a daft gag he did.
This beat with Anders and Tyrol, there was a little moment where we were gonna have Anders demanding that they cut his cast off. If you recall, Anders fell off a Viper in a previous episode in— late in the third season, and there was a beat here where he (unintelligible) the cast on, and he whipped out a knife or something, and he had somebody cut it off, or he was gonna cut it off, and myself, I can't really recall which it was. But we dropped that for the (unintelligible), as the scene went on, and it just— it didn't feel necessary, and it was like something else that was gonna slow down the action, so we just went "Ah, fuck it, the audience will— (unintelligible) on this".
Oh, I didn't— by the way, the scotch tonight is Macallan Fine Oak 17, the kids and Mrs Ron are downstairs, so the smoking lamp is, unfortunately, out.
This battle sequence is remarkable (laughs). It's especially remarkable to me, 'cause of— y'know, at this point in the run of the show, the battle sequences— I keep getting to a point where I feel like "Well, OK, we've really shot a lot of battle sequences, we're not really gonna be able to top ourselves, so this won't be that great. But let's give it a shot and try and come up with some interesting pieces." And I tell David or Bradley, and David or Bradley go off and they think about it and they come up with these little great set pieces, and ideas that are happening in the battle, and they go through all the pilot talk and making it work. And I always approached it a bit sceptically, that— y'know, this time it's not gonna be that exciting and this time it's— you're not— it feels like "Oh, it's the fourth year, we've seen the Cylons and the Vipers quite— fight quite a few times, what's new under the sun to any of this?" And then the pre-vis starts coming in, and Gary Hutzel— his team pre-visualize all these sequences, and I start seeing it, and I start "What's going on? This is kind of cool." And then su— there comes a point in the process you see it shot by shot by shot, and you keep seeing all this stuff and it keeps getting refined, and then at some point it just takes off and it becomes really elegant and quite— (laughs) and quite lovely to watch, and that's where we are. This is one of the best battle sequences we've ever done, which is really great.
There was a moment that was cut here, the teaser for this episode used to end on Anders getting Seelix in his sights, in his gun sights, and the ques— it went out on him frozen with his finger over the trigger, and the question was "Oh, has his Cylon nature kicked in and he's now going to blow Seelix out of the sky?" But with that— the teaser was trunc— was simplified and condensed in Michael's cut, and all that went away, which I think was very very smart.
We worked over this sequence in visual effects quite a bit in post, exactly what they're doing and where I don't— at points in the early pre-vis of it I felt that you couldn't understand who was chasing who, and I kept setting it back, and I kept simplifying out some of the more complex moves so that you could follow the basic story of Seelix and Anders. You see, that shot right there where the Viper's trailing the Raider that's tur— (unintelligible) after Anders, we worked on a lot.
Now this scene— this is great. I love this scene. This was also one of the scenes that— I was in the editing bay and beating up my visual effects guys over and over again. They delivered a different sequence, they surprised me, they delivered a sequence here where instead of this one Raider that sees Anders and pulls around and goes, they delivered a sequence where there was this Raider came— that Raider came right up on Anders's Viper, flipped over, and was hovering right over his cockpit, the Cylon eye was just a couple of feet from Anders's literal eye outside the canopy. And then, while that was happening four other Raiders came up, two on each side of Anders's nose, and came up— if you can imagine lifting their arms, almost like little angels, I mean four of them, two on each side coming up. And then, when the red eye stopped, the first one peeled off and the others all went down together, and it was very much like a ballet, it was a really interesting idea, the choreography— it was literally choreography— of it was quite beautiful, it was a sequence that I hadn't really seen anybody do, and I hated it. (laughs) I just hated it, and I told Gary that there was no way— I thought he'd lost his mind. I called him from the car, and went "What are you going?!" And he said "No, we're just— we're trying something." And I said "I know, you guys are trying something, I like it, I like it, but it's not the show, it's not the show, it's not show." So then they did— they took a second crack at it and they still kept trying to talk me into it periodically. And I know that there's— the sequence is out there and I think it should definitely be included on the DVD. So if you're listening to this on the DVD, I hope you can go and find it in the deleted scenes section. Because it just wasn't the show, I mean the show lives in this docu style, a naturalistic idea, and that was so stylized, that it was just— it went over the top for me. And where— but what we have, I think, is still pretty stylized, that moment of him— of slowing down time, of their— of the Raider seeing Anders, and Anders's frozen face, and the tiny little red pop on the eye, all of that, I think it— you're still— you've left the documentary template, and you're outside of that now, you're not playing in a naturalistic key, you're intentionally hyping some— making something a little more hyper-real.