 
GW: What do you think are going to be some of your favorite Sanctuary episodes? They're all you, right?
MW: Sanctuary is a different animal because the germ for it started down here, and we built it up together, Amanda and Damian and I, and Sam Egan is a part of that too. There's four of us that will sit in here and start battling it out about what the world is going to be, and the coolest part about creating something is that you're actually talking about what the world is, what the rules are.
I sat in here one day and said "No magic. We don't have any magic." And everybody fought that and came around to the point where you have to have rules like that. You start looking at some of the things I know Brad and Robert and Paul and Joe would love to not be part of the mythology of Stargate and you learn. "No, don't ever shoot anybody three times with a zat'ni'katel. That's got to go out."
Beaming technology, which changes the way that your whole mythology has to move. As soon as you inject something like that in now you have to write around it.
GW: The chips, they always have to deactivate the chips, you have to pull your chip out so they can't find you and beam you out.
MW: There's so many weird things that you learn in a series like that that you watch happening around you and you're going, "Oh, this isn't a good idea." Later on somebody comes and says "That just wasn't a good idea." Or there's the other part. I shouldn't say it like that. Because there's a million good ideas that come out from that.
While Martin is happy to continue doing work for Stargate, he is also eager to delve into the new challenges of Sanctuary. | |
What we're doing in here right now is trying to far cast. "If we do it like this, what happens there?" You make characters from scratch. There's a character that is going to live with you for the next five years, or ten years ... (smiles) … You're sitting there hoping the powers that you imbue in that character right now are going to be the powers that keep that person alive and not make you write yourself into a corner sometimes.
It's fascinating. I love it. I love doing it. There's a whole bunch of other junk that happens right now. We don't have a studio. We are our own studio. Don't' ever do that. Really. I'm telling people that now. It is so much grief trying to make this thing happen that has nothing to do with creating a television show. It just has to do with the business of TV. For somebody that tends to like a paint brush and an easel, it's not fun. But it's necessary, and I'm glad I'm doing it. I'm not glad right now. I will be glad.
GW: The fun will outweigh it.
MW: That's right.
GW: Once the foundation is in we can get to work. How have you grown as a producer coming over here? More responsibility. Smaller team.
MW: You know what's interesting is there's such a machine over at Stargate where you just depend on John Smith to be able to do things. You just depend on John Lenic to do things. You just depend on the executive producers to do things that you don't have to do. There's this whole idea of the fact that you are shielded from the buffeting so that you are allowed to direct, so that you are allowed to act.
And here Amanda and I, who have gone through twelve years together of that shielded part of it, are now exposed to the hideous underbelly of this thing and going, "What the hell is going on?" You look at John Smith and John Lenic and Robert Cooper and Brad Wright and Paul and Joe and you sit there and go, "That's what they've had to deal with."
Truthfully what's interesting to me is the network has been really good to us. I'm waiting for the day when they turn around and get really angry at us for something we've done, and thinking, "There' s no buffer now. I have to take it in the face and stand up in the wind."
That's how I've grown. I know now a lot more about what I didn't know for the past twelve years about how I was shielded. And will do it to anybody I can, will shield them, because nobody should have to deal with all the junk. It stifles you creatively. You don't have the energy you had creatively. What's going to happen is we're building the team that will allow us to do that. Once it gets into production.
GW: What are you most excited about this project?
MW: Two things, one is that it is a brand new thing that's happening. The virtual aspect of Sanctuary is probably the most exciting thing to me. You are completely unfettered. We have a group called Anthem, who did the vis effects for Tin Man. The head of Anthem, Lee Wilson, has been over here probably ten times now. We're talking about the scripts. I'll say "I'd like to do this," and "I want to move like this." And he goes "OK. And then we can do this …" My scope is like this. There's the end of the wall, this is how I'm going to move the camera. He grabs this hand and [pulls]. And rops it down there, and you have a ceiling that's this high, and you're going, "Oh, yeah!"
GW: That's right! It's virtual!
MW: I described a shot the other day where there was a city map behind somebody and I said "OK, we're going to start here." Lee was just out of my eye line. "We're going to start here and we're going to push into his face. He's going to look into the city map. It's a Google Maps kind of thing. It's that kind of satellite look.
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" "[My imput is] making wholesale changes the direction [Sanctuary] is going. That's an interesting thing to me right now."
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Then he turns away and walks away. And the camera goes forward and it drops in. You see it's heading toward city hall, and then it drops down to the sidewalk of city hall. And now our character walks by and walks into City Hall. And that's what you can do when you're virtual. And you can't do it in a world that's just sci fi, because you've just defied a lot of rules that you can't do. But in a virtual set you can do that. So that for me is what's interesting.
GW: Wasn't there something else, too?
MW: Right. With what we're doing right now, having as much input as I do is a really important thing to me. Stargate, like I said, they were so good to me as a supervising producer, as a creative consultant, all those kinds of things. I always had input. Now it's expected right now. I have to give input now. If I didn't give the input then the show wouldn't be what it is.
In Stargate the input I had I was hoping would move it up just a little bit, or give me a chance to do something as a director. Here the input is changing the course of where you're going, and that's something that I had the opportunity to do at Stargate but honestly didn't have the time, and truthfully it wasn't my position to do that. I wasn't navigating those kind[s] of waters. But here, it's making wholesale changes the direction the show is going. That's an interesting thing to me right now. I'm looking forward to it.
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