 
Beware minor SPOILERS for Stargate: Continuum in the interview below!
Martin Wood has been involved with Stargate since the very first season of SG-1 and has directed nearly a quarter of the franchise. GateWorld has considered itself long overdue for an in-depth discussion with this influential producer. We spoke with him at the Stage 3 Media offices earlier this year.
In Part Two of our video interview, GateWorld talks with Wood about some of his favorite scenes from Stargate Continuum, memorable shows he directed over his decade-long run with the franchise, and his new personal frontiers with Sanctuary.
GateWorld's interview with Martin runs approximately 19 minutes. The video requires QuickTime 7.0 or higher. The interview is also available at GateWorld Play! Rather not view the video? It's also transcribed below!
Check out Part One of our interview here!
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GateWorld: Were there any shots that you weren't thinking you were going to get that you were able to achieve?
Martin Wood: In the arctic or just for the whole movie?
GW: And the whole movie.
MW: When you make up a list, as a TV series director, I do a shot list. Some of you may have seen them in the 200 book. I am very irreverent in them because generally I'm the only one that looks at them, or the people I hand them to. Anybody that's ever read my shot list know that they're very irreverent. They're 20 pages long. But it lists off every shot I wanted to do for the show.
If you know how many shots didn't make it into some of your favorite shows, some of your favorite episodes, I save all those. I have all my old shot lists and old scripts. The scripts themselves actually have little diagrams on them, how I'm going to shoot a scene. For people who are real fans of the show, if you ever saw those things, you'd go "Wow, if you did this shot it would've been amazing!"
That's what it's all about in television. It's compromising your shots. It's compromising what you can do because of time. It starts to rain. Because of all that kind of stuff. There's no slop-over. There's no "Let's take a couple of days to do it."
Wood during filming of Stargate: Continuum. | |
With the movie, even though we were moving at an amazingly rapid pace, because Brad was there, I was able to get the shots I really wanted to. There was one shot -- the shot we spent the longest waiting for other than the submarine shots in the north was one that is a duplication shot that we had to do, and it was just because one piece of equipment didn't work. So we sat around for three hours. Three hours on a schedule that we were on is four shots.
Those are the kinds of compromises that you make. And there are shots that you have in your head that after the number of years that I've been directing Stargate I know what I can and can't get. So it's become much more precise science for me. But still, when you go into something you dream shots that you're never going to get because you don't have the time, the equipment isn't working the way you want it to, or you have to just give it up because you've got a producer with a hammer standing on top of your head.
GW: Yeah. Keeping you realistic.
MW: Yeah. "You are now four and a half hours overtime. Do you know how much that costs?" "Yes I do." "Well I'm sending the crane home." (Groan) There goes that crane shot.
GW: Does that happen a lot?
MW: In television it happens more because you are on a very fixed budget and there's not a lot of wiggle room. As I've said, with the experience that I've had on Stargate I know how fast the crew moves. I know how fast the actors can move. I know what we can get. Unless there's something really unexpected that comes up I can pretty much get my shot list in a day.
GW: Wow. That's impressive. Have you seen the completed film? Is it all done?
MW: Oh, have I. I sat in what's called the layback, when they put the music on. Joel Goldsmith went crazy. I actually called him and left a message with his assistant saying, "Tell Joel I love him." Joel calls me back and leaves a message for me, "I love you too, man." [Laughter]
But he's amazing. I couldn't go down because I had to be in England for Sanctuary. Brad went down into Seattle and sat with the orchestra, sat with Joel, and went through the music. It was remarkable.
This is what happened: We went into the layback and we sat there, Brad was over on this side, he'd seen it already. He'd heard the music already. I hadn't. So I'm sitting there looking at it in this beautiful high definition monitor. I had only seen low-res versions of the movie because we're editing it on a lower res.
I'm sitting there and I'm watching it, and this is my expression. [Awe]. And I keep hitting Brad. I keep hitting him in the arm. "Augh, man!" And I get teary-eyed. "That's amazing! That's incredible!" This is the good thing about it coming out on DVD first, instead of TV. You can put it into a good system, you can turn it up loud, and you can hear it the way it's supposed to be heard. And I love that.
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Wood cites the hangar scene as one of his favorites from Continuum. |
Normally with a TV show you know that people are going to miss about a third of what there is aurally. You're just not going to hear the sound that's actually there.
GW: What did you think about the story compared to the other stuff that you'd done for Stargate?
MW: The story is kind of a cool romp. The easiest way for me to tell you this. The scenes that I usually like in a show are the ones that propel us into something, just grab you in the back, you're standing there and just hit you in the back. Those are the scenes I usually like.
I've done 70 shows where I read the script first and almost every time there's a scene there that surprises me. I read it, I go through, and it's a scene I just read. It's exposition. And then I get there on the day and the actors really surprise me because they just bring something to it that wasn't there when I read it. That becomes my favorite scene, and they're often short exposition scenes. They're not the "Hit you in the back" things. Suddenly everyone's magic just comes together in it.
GW: They brought it to life.
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