Galactica.com - Battlestar Galactica Set Report

By Kyle Braun, on 04-07-2007

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Battlestar Galactica Set Report: Part One
By Kyle Braun
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"With the announcement that Season 4 will be all she wrote for the series at large, all of the invited reporters were looking for a hint of what's to come." When the SCI FI channel announced they were throwing open the doors to four of their hottest shows, one set stood out above the rest. It didn't take a call sheet or an itinerary to know that Battlestar Galactica is what the online press were frothing at the mouth to see. TV's best space opera has some of the most ravenous fans in the world, and with the announcement that Season 4 will be all she wrote for the series at large, all of the invited reporters were looking for a hint of what's to come. While the Season 4 spoilers were kept under wraps, the SCI FI channel and Vancouver Film Studios showcased Battlestar Galactica in all its glory.

Delving into the darkness of Stage G, my skin began to tingle with excitement. It turns out the anticipation was well-justified, especially after rounding a corner where the hanger bay of the Galactica revealed itself like a surprise party somewhere in space. A full-size Raptor, two real-size Vipers and six empty chairs were positioned in front of the online press where actors Aaron Douglas, Michael Hogan, Jamie Bamber, Grace Park, Tahmoh Penikett and producer Harvey Frand took to the stage.

The Galactica Sound Stage:

Sure, it was a blast to see the cast of Battlestar Galactica, but the real fun was seeing all of the sets and set pieces. With Galactica's production designer Richard Hudolin and its art director Doug McLean as tour guides, the visit to the set was nothing short of spectacular. Almost all of the Colonial Fleet sets were housed in Stage I, and that's where Richard Hudolin explained how a sound stage sits in for the only warship left from the Twelve Colonies.

"There are two rooms here, and we're playing one of them right now as an infirmary. There's a wall hidden that just flies straight up, so we can split this room in half, and play this as a smaller infirmary or a lab. The room next door, we can play as a ready room or play all of this as a ward room," explained Hudolin. "So, in this one space, we have about six or seven different configurations. Part of the problem with ,em>Battlestar is that we that we have a limited space, and if someone wants to come in here and shoot back to back to back, we need the time to flip it over. There's a crew that does nothing but flip sets, but in here and in the room next door. The way this was originally designed, we had a space on the North Shore [of Vancouver] that was 100 feet wide by about 200 feet long, so all of this new set, plus the one next door, were all one set, so we could do these long tracking shots that we did in the mini-series."

Doug McLean, the Galactica art director, also mentioned that the small room was the true workhorse on the Battlestar Galactica set, stating, "Probably 60% of the Galactica was these two rooms and one other room." McLean also shared some of the other uses and purposes for the set. "This room plays as the enlisted bed, it plays as the ward room, it was Baltar's lab when it was that, it plays as the plotting room and next door is the ready room. We tear it all out and we use it when we're playing the Cylon containment cell. The small room we have is the lab, the brig, the enlisted quarters, as well. As Richard says, it does flip over a lot, and that's one of the challenges with scheduling."

The Many Faces of the Galactica Set:

Although the stage served as one of the main staples for the show, the one room actually serves as several locations within the show. The entire set is designed to give the sense there is a massive Battlestar, when in reality, everything is contained in one warehouse-sized building. "It's quite flexible. I think when you watch the show, they don't feel like those are all the same room. One of the ways that is helped is, unlike a lot of shows, we have a lot of corridors," explained McLean. "Initially, it used to be kind of a figure 8, but it's a little different than that now, because of different stages, and we have added a couple rooms we didn't have in the original, but it's very easy to do a tracking shot, or a steady-cam shot, where we bring a character out of one room, walk him through the corridors, bring him through the hub, take him back out into the corridor, through the hub again and into another room. You have no idea that in actuality, you've only gone 20 feet away."

The Mini-Series Philosophy:

Since the show was initially designed to act as a mini-series, and not to be a four-season masterpiece, things have changed dramatically in relation to the production. "There's actually only one large multi-purpose room in the mini-series. It served as most everything we've mentioned, as well as Adama's quarters," said McLean, "When we came to doing the series, we thought, 'Okay, we're going to be in Adama's quarters a fair bit.' That then became a standing set. The pilot's ready room became a standing set. Other rooms changed over, Even as the show developed, we started doing things like clearing the pilot's ready room out and it became a multi-purpose room."

Adama's Quarters:

The next stop on our journey through the Galactica took us to Admiral Adama's quarters. As Richard Hudolin explained, the room served more than one purpose, much like the other rooms used on Galactica. "These quarters play for Adama's, and when we're in Tigh's room, we split it: we put a wall down, and we play one side as Tigh's entrance, which will take you out of where we exit the set. We change the set dressing, obviously, but the layout is basically the same, we just make it about half the size. You can see all the detailing in Adama's quarters, because it's one of the few areas of the ship we could insert some personality. It's Adams's place, and he's got some history. The big painting above the couch is of the Cylon wars. It's the last thing our illustrator did on the mini-series, I think."

One of the reporters noticed a model frigate in the middle of Adama's room, and wondered if it was the same one smashed by Edward James Olmos earlier on in the series. Hudolin recalled, "It could be one of the them, yes. We didn't know he was going to do that, actually, when he did it the first time. It was a great scene. On set, we went 'Holy Christ! Look what he did! Where are we going to get another one that matches? Come on, Eddie, work with us.'" As for the rest of the room, Hudolin revealed how the location connects with Adama the character. "It's his history, and we're on the Galactica which is his ship, and it's traveling through time and space, and that's where the nautical influence came from. And he liked it. He just loves his quarters and this set, and Colonial One as well for Laura. They are very personal space to the actors, and they personalize them."

The Junior Officers' Quarters:

After leaving Adam's room, we were led into the Galactica's meandering metallic corridors, which gave off the feeling of being trapped in a sterile, military vessel (one without a roof, mind you). Soon we were whisked out of the hallway and into one extremely cramped room where 25 journalists looked more like a bunch of clowns exiting a tiny Volkswagen than tourists on the Galactica. Imagine our surprise when Doug McLean revealed, "This is the junior officers' quarters, and as you can tell, it's a small space." That was one heck of an understatement, though McLean went on to explain, "Almost all of the walls wild out very easily. We can even move the whole bunk piece out, or portions of them. Almost always when you see them shooting in here, you'll seem them shooting over a bunk at people. With HD, the cameras are about four feet long when you put a lens on them, which can be a problem when you get into small spaces."

McLean, the mighty art director, then revealed that the junior officer's quarters, "... used to be one of the multi-purpose rooms. We used to have a little airlock that was built off one of the doors, then we wound up rarely using the airlock and we kept coming back to this, so we set this up on its own. This is actually a big space compared to Tyrol and Cally's quarters, which appeared for the first time last season and will appear again this season. It literally is 8 feet deep by maybe 12 - 14 feet wide."

The Cylon Jail:

As we all nearly fell out of the junior officers' house, an ominous jail cell came into view. Slightly larger than the previous room, the (real) metal bars and Doug McLean let us know it was the Cylon jail cell on the Galactica. "In addition to this cell, there is also the holding cell built back in Season 2 to hold Sharon. After she shot Adama, they thought it was a good idea to not keep her in a normal jail cell, so we built this heavy duty cell. That cell plays again this year, and it has someone in it, though I won't say who. You should know who just from the season ending last year."

ugo.com - Part 1

Battlestar Galactica Set Report: Part Two
By Kyle Braun

"A few steps later and we found ourselves in the Galactica's CIC, or Combat Information Center, the nerve center for the first, last and only line of defense for the rag-tag Colonial Fleet."

After checking out some of the smaller sets on the Battlestar Galactica in Part One of our set report, production designer Richard Hudolin took us to a different part of the Vancouver Film Studios sound stage, where a series of ropes blocked us from a set that the Galactica faithful have yet to see. Departing from the futuristic, militant feel from the previous locations, the new Season 4 set looked like something straight out of the '60s and the Summer of Love. Thin mattresses covered several silky sheets and dozens of small pillows. Both Hudolin and art director Doug McLean weren't about to cough up any of the details of how they'd be using the location in upcoming episodes. Instead, they guided us down another narrow hallway, with the promise of something we all wanted to see. Sure enough, a few steps later and we found ourselves in the Galactica's CIC, or Combat Information Center, the nerve center for the first, last and only line of defense for the rag-tag Colonial Fleet.

The Combat Information Center:

First things first: The DRADIS monitor revealed the Colonial fleet, and thankfully no Cylons were in range. With that taken care of, I was free to wander around one of the most grandiose and awe-inspiring sets on TV. The tactical plotting screen bore the details of the last encounter with the Cylons, though I had no idea what it meant for the series. Papers streamed out of data printers, complete with chopped corners. Closer inspection revealed that the papers still contained the first warning messages of the Cylon attack, devastation of all 12 colonies, the overrun of the entire fleet, and the massive loss of life. Thank the Gods it's just a TV show.

Gathered around the Command & Control Center in the middle of the CIC, Richard Hudolin recalled the process of setting up the entire Command Center when the series was first resurrected. "When we were finished the mini-series, we were asked to disassemble them and store them. So everything you are seeing on this stage and stage G [Hangar Bay], was dismantled, and we didn't own the monitors and things like that because we were designing for a mini-series, and not a series, so a lot of that stuff went away. They called us back about 8 months later and asked, 'What do you think about putting this back together?' I thought they were insane. It was just a huge job. It took us about three months to put it all back together, and it must have cost over a million bucks just to reassemble it, because now we have to get our own monitors, we have to do a lot of stuff we didn't do for the mini-series. Just the sheer mass of doing all this was enormous, but we had the same crew we had on the mini-series, and it all worked out well."

The Series versus The Mini-Series:

It seemed like a lot had changed since the mini-series, but that just wasn't the case. Doug McLean explained that, "The only thing that really changed in the CIC between the mini-series and the series, was we switched from film to High Definition. When we got everything here and we got it all set up, everybody in and we ran some HD tests, all of the monitors and anything that was lit just screamed out at you. And because HD, and digital in general, tends to keep more in focus than film, you can't really tell, but if you turn one of these monitors off, the screen looks absolutely filthy. We we had to do is going around with wax, and we waxed all of the screens, all of the lights, everything. It just drops everything back just a bit. It takes the sharpness out a little bit."

In relation to creating the stage for the CIC, Hudolin discussed the location of the Center in the Galactica. "The whole idea behind this set is that you're internal in the ship. You're not like an aircraft carrier where the Commander and all the guys running the ship are up in a tower. We thought you'd put all your key people and all your weapons systems and things like that, you'd bury it as far inside your ship as you can, so the chances of it going down are very slim." Doug McLean seconded that sentiment, stating, "These phones came off of a battleship, and we were definitely thinking aircraft carriers, and battleships, and that kind of thing. We're designing a mothership coming up that I can't tell you much more about, where we're thinking much more about a submarine." More on that ship a little bit later.

The Cylon Basestar:

After vacating Galactica's CIC, we were soon herded to Stage D where the Cylons were based. Stage D contained the set for the Cylon Basestar and while the set seemed almost empty, save for an odd, triangle-shaped structure in the middle, it took a hell of a lot of planning to come up with something so simple. But, what exactly was that triangle-shaped object? As Doug McLean explained, "What we tried to do, and it just kind of evolved, was we wanted to get some element of that organic, but we didn't want to go for that weepy, wet look that we had at one point. So, what happened was, at some point we came up with the basic concept of this person immersed in liquid, which eventually became the hybrid. Then it was, 'What on Earth does that mean and what does it do?' So, we start to think, 'Okay, they are the central core of the whole ship: everything is running through them. So, they are connected into the ship, and information flows.'"

Why was the Cylon set such a risk? Hudolin explained that, "When we were working on this set, Ron Moore and David Eick were in L.A., so we came up with the concept, but you don't see any knobs or handles or switches anywhere, like you do in the Galactica, which freaked out a lot of people when they got in here, because the director wondered 'Well, how do I steer this?' We're not giving them steering wheels, there's a philosophy that comes from David and Ron about what the Cylon world is, and we took it in a new direction, so this went way to the edge. Only recently had the Director of Photography said to me 'This set is working pretty well now.' It's been almost a year that I've had to go nose to nose with directors and D.P.'s, who say, 'What am I supposed to do?' I said 'Make your actors act, for one.' It's a complicated thing. It's light, it's water, it's projections, it's obviously very well designed in style, as opposed to the clunkiness of Galactica, but you look at the exterior of the ship and its triangles. So this is meant to fit with that."

Galactica art director Doug McLean backed up the thought, stating, "This was a very radical departure from the rest of the show, and I don't think anyone knew how well it was going to work until we finally saw one cut together and went, 'Wow, that really works.' It's startling when you first see it, and you go from that very heavy, dense and dark world of the Galactica, and suddenly it's very serene in here, and they played that up when they did the editing with the music and they got into doing a lot of dissolves in the transitions, whereas in the Galactica, it's mostly swish-pans or snaps. It had to evolve it's own filming style, but now I think most everyone is happy with it."

Behind the main Basestar set was a conference room, but as production designer Richard Hudolin informed, it was all a well kept secret for Season 4, "We can only walk you past the other room because it's a hot set. It was shot up the other day and for continuity, you can only walk by it. You'll see the red eye stretches wall to wall." Like he said, we see the red line spanning the length of the wall, as well as several off-set whites square lights. More noticeable, however, is the fact that it looks as though several automatic rifles have been fired in the room, as support beams have gaping holes and chunks of concrete (or some Cylon equivalent) line the floor. Whoever was at this end of the conference room had a rough scene to film, though no hint was given as to who it might have been. Time to guess, people.

Stage H - A New Ship:

The last real treasure on the set visit was Stage H, which turned out to be a carpenter's shop. I'm not talking about a set of a carpenter's shop: these people were literally building a new spaceship for the series. As Doug McLean joked, it's still insider info for those close to the production, "People in the know call it, 'The Ship'. You can call it 'The Ship', too. The purpose of 'The Ship' is to take people through space." Aside from the horribly vague description, McLean did state that, "We started building this a week and a half ago, and it will start shooting not this coming Friday, but the Friday after that. There's a whole other room to go on to it, and in later episodes, we'll add more on to it." A little snooping around the set (after all, I am a reporter), revealed a blueprint for the ship with the name "????????" on it. Maybe that's the real name; maybe it's not: its significance will only be known in Season 4.

ugo.com - Part 2