Award-winning Visual Effects Supervisor Mark Savela served on all three television series of Stargate bringing his expertise of visual magic to life. Now he stops by for his first interview on Dial the Gate to discuss some of the challenges of working on the franchise, and to take fan questions live!

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Timecodes
00:00 – Opening Credits
00:38 – Welcome and Episode Outline
02:04 – Welcoming Mark
03:12 – When did you realize you wanted to do this for a career?
04:07 – SG-1’s Pilot Episode and the Puddle Effect
10:04 – Eight Year Break, Moving to Vancouver, Getting back into Stargate
14:42 – Stargate Universe
19:17 – CGI Creatures in SGU
22:32 – Lou Diamond Phillips Joke on Set and Camaraderie with Crew
25:46 – Brad Wright and SGU’s Talented Cast
31:30 – Pulling off Stargate Atlantis Effects
35:30 – A Typical Stargate Episode
39:20 – The Single Most Expensive Shot
40:49 – Martin Gero
43:42 – Destiny
47:36 – Camera Styles, Battlestar Galactica, Vancouver as a Visual Effects Hot Bed
52:09 – Aging Wraith Victims, Digital Challenges, “Trio.”
54:52 – Difference of Symbols and Looks of Various Stargates
1:02:25 – Twitter and Social Media Fan Engagement for Universe
1:07:29 – Ship Comparison Size Charts, Atlantis and Universe location gates, and “Epilogue.”
1:11:06 – The Number of Universe Gates and Kinos
1:16:19 – The Effect of Young Using Communication Stones in “Space”
1:18:18 – Working with Robert C. Cooper and the SGU Cast
1:21:58 – Reusing Assets, the SGU Shuttle
1:25:55 – More Visual Effects
1:28:38 – Mark’s Last Name
1:29:52 – Wrapping up with Mark
1:36:17 – Post interview housekeeping
1:39:50 – End credits

***

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TRANSCRIPT
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David Read
Hello everyone and welcome to episode 130 of Dial the Gate, my name is David Read. Mark Savela, Stargate SG-1, Atlantis and Universe visual effects supervisor is joining us in this episode. He and I go way back and I’m looking forward to having him on because he is a wealth of knowledge. The man is keeping busy so he’ll tell us about some of the projects that he’s working on right now. Before we get into the thick of it, if you like Stargate and you want to see more content like this on YouTube, it would mean a great deal to me if you click that Like button. It makes a difference with YouTube’s algorithm and will help the show continue to grow its audience. Please also consider sharing this video with a Stargate friend and if you want to get notified about future episodes, click that subscribe icon. Giving the bell icon a click will notify you the moment a new video drops and you’ll get my notifications of any last minute guest changes. Clips from this live stream will be released over the course of the next few days and in the upcoming weeks on the Gateworld.net YouTube channel. This is a live episode which means Mark and I will be talking live for the duration of the show. My moderating team is standing by in the chat at youtube.com/dialthegate and we’ll give you an opportunity to submit questions to Mark as we go. Halfway through the show I’ll turn the questions over to what you have submitted, so that’s the plan for this episode. I appreciate you tuning in. Mark Savela, visual effects supervisor for Stargate SG-1, Atlantis and Universe. Welcome to my Stargate temple, sir. How are you doing?

Mark Savela
I’m doing very well. Thank you so much for having me.

David Read
I am delighted to have you join us.

Mark Savela
I want to thank you and also curse you at the same time for inviting me, because I did research for this because. I wanted to be true to it. It’s a lot to unload when you look back, eight years of your life in total. So many things happen, so many people and it was a lot. It’s so much nostalgia to look back at what happened in 8 years but it was a journey, that’s for sure.

David Read
Absolutely. It is daunting to approach it, but Mark, how do you eat an elephant?

Mark Savela
It’s true. How long is a piece of string?

David Read
When did you know this was the kind of thing that you wanted to spend the rest of your life doing? Making extraordinary stuff out of ordinary stuff?

Mark Savela
Very early on but originally I wanted to get into audio, I wanted to be an audio engineer. Then I was in post production for a while because certain circumstances happen. Funnily enough, Kids in the Hall are back, I just saw the trailer and I worked on season four and five of Kids in the Hall. It’s 27 years later and I’m going “oh my god, that’s 27 years later.” When you’re in this industry you always think “well, I’ll wait till it runs out and then I’ll find a real career.” Then after a certain number of years you go, “I guess this is my career.” After post production I went to Gajdecki visual effects and that’s where I started in visual effects. It was pretty soon after that that I was working on the pilot of SG-1, Children to the Gods.

David Read
I didn’t know you were all the way back at the beginning.

Mark Savela
Oh, totally. I was back at the start. I remember we were shooting models and John and Ted Rae and Bob Habros, all kind of co-supervised Children of the Gods. I came out here because everybody was racing to get the puddle look. There was Rainmaker, there was us and it was something that wasn’t perfectly perfected yet. There were a bazillion shots in Children of the Gods when they all come through and…

David Read
I think there’s three different vendors if I’m not mistaken, for the pilot.

David Read
Right. So you were based in Toronto sending the shots to Vancouver?

Mark Savela
Yeah, I think at least. I think Northwest Imaging at that point, there was a lot. Originally I had a producer in Toronto and I was bringing back a transport ring. We had shot a motion control before we use CG for the transport rings. We had one from the movie and I was bringing it back in a giant box into Vancouver. It was the first time I was ever at Bridge Studios which was pretty awesome. I think, the pilot, the way it works, it’s not like the pilot on a network series where you shoot the pilot, you wait, you test it out. This was the pilot straight to series order. I think they were shooting Cold Lazarus at the time because I remember being in the hospital room with a motion control shot. We were already working on other episodes like Emancipation and episodes like that and Bob Habros got me in a room and a producer in Toronto said “we’re full. Don’t come back with any shots for the show.” Bob came in the room and I was like, “I really love this show and I believe in it so much” and I came back with like 60, 65 shots and go, “Well, we have to do this for the pilot now.” It was funny developing the puddle because at that point in time is was Power Animator Maya, I think it was PowerAnimator even. Developing that look, it was a challenge to do for TV and to repeat it over and over again. I remember different things would happen. I remember RDA, one time, stuck his gun in or made the Zorro thing, he made a Z in the puddle. We saw that and we go, “What are we supposed to do with that?” Over the years it got so good afterwards, it was so amazing how good it got. I think I actually may have, I’m not sure, unofficially held the first ever kind of Stargate party. It was in Toronto where we rented out a bar when Children of the Gods was premiering. We got all the artists who worked on the show, everybody who worked on the show, we packed this bar. In Canada we didn’t have Showtime.

Mark Savela
Oh, yeah.

Mark Savela
Yeah, totally. Tangent on that, that was back in the day which was so funny. I was talking to Kerry McDowall about this the other day. Back in the day when we used to send VHS’ FedEx to get signed off by the producers. They would cut them in on three quarter inch and the deep beta would go to the online suite.

David Read
Okay.

David Read
What a different world.

Mark Savela
Oh, I don’t even know how we finished shows. It’s crazy. We’d try to hit FedEx and if we didn’t hit FedEx, the number of times we put in a cab this package, care of Canada Cargoes, it would be flown overnight to Vancouver. Producers were approving shots on VHS tape which to me is mind boggling today.

David Read
I mean, where’s the detail?

Mark Savela
I know. Exactly.

David Read
You’d never catch a Starbucks cup in Game of Thrones if that were the case.

Mark Savela
You go back to those shows and it was done amazingly; nothing was missed, the little details or anything. The work was amazing.

David Read
They had the right talent.

Mark Savela
Yeah, absolutely. So back to the bar. So we rented a bar that had a satellite dish that could get Children of the Gods. Everybody got there and we’re in the bar, we’re waiting for the show, we’re super excited and pumped about it. Then we find out the bar doesn’t have sound on their TVs and we’re like, “Oh no, we did all this.” We went through and most people were yelling out the dialogue because we knew the film so well. We were yelling out dialogue as it was going along on certain scenes and it was just really fun. It was amazing to see that show come about like that. I worked on the show from seasons one and two and then took a six or seven year break.

David Read
Did other things.

Mark Savela
It was so sad to take that break because I still missed it a lot. I came up to Vancouver to work on one movie, because in Toronto we had SARS happening at the time and the death of the MOW’s.

Mark Savela
Yeah and reality TV was just becoming super popular. So Toronto was dying and I came up to Vancouver to do one movie. It was +20 in Vancouver, it was -25 in Toronto and I was like, “oh, I’m staying here forever. There’s no way I’m going back.” When I finished a couple of movies I met up with James Tichenor, who’s a legend in SG-1 and Atlantis history. He was saying to me, “why don’t you come work on season two Atlantis and season nine of SG-1?” Michelle Comens was doing SG-1, James was gonna do Atlantis and I was hired on to be a floater, in between. Which was amazing for me, I got to play in both sandboxes at the same time and have a blast doing it. I think the first episode I supervised was Intruder.

David Read
Movies of the Week.

David Read
On the Daedalus set?

Mark Savela
Yeah. Onboard the Daedalus set, a lot of F-302 work. I think it was DeLuise who directed that episode, I’m pretty sure, But that was a Joe [Mallozzi] and Paul [Mullie] episode.

David Read
You’re correct on both counts? You got it.

Mark Savela
I can’t even remember the shows I did last year. But in that episode, it was a Joe and Paul episode, my first introduction with everybody. I had met Brad for maybe 10 minutes during Children of the Gods and I didn’t really know him. I was inserted in, they were like, “you’re welcome, your family.” Like, “You fit good with James and Michelle, come on in” and you’re part of the gang, right. I remember going and doing that dogfight sequence with the F-302s and I was showing it to a couple of people on I was going to show it to Joe and Paul and Brad and they were like, “you’re really gonna show this to them?” I’m like, “Yeah, why? This is pretty cool.” It was like, “we don’t do zooms in space.” There was like a couple of bows and whatnot. They go “well it was nice working with you.”

David Read
More static.

Mark Savela
Yeah. Well, it was…

David Read
Okay, but I mean, in terms of this, know this.

Mark Savela
Yeah. So I showed it to Joe and Paul and Brad and everybody loved it. It wasn’t the crazy snap zooms and cross, it was just repoing and stuff and it was bringing a little bit of my style to it. People seemed to like it so I kept pushing it forward, moving more and more, as much as I could. I think I did The Ties That Bind after which was an SG-1 episode and I think Will {Waring] directed that one. I designed this shot where he’s under the…

David Read
You’re correct, go ahead.

Mark Savela
I designed the shot where you come underneath the cargo ship and come up and reveal our gang driving it. Crazy, crazy shot, everybody was like, “who the hell is this guy?” But it worked really well, it was really cool. Atlantis we had, I always like to match kind of the camera style of the show. Atlantis went on and then in Universe we got to do more and more of that.

David Read
The look was evolving on television and YouTube was becoming a thing. People were accustomed to seeing these more jerky movements, it wasn’t so jarring anymore.

Mark Savela
Oh totally.

David Read
Like when Cloverfield came out, it made half the audience sick. It’s just Blair Witch. Cloverfield was designed for the big screen, you know. I’ve actually never seen Blair Witch Project. But by SGU, you know our girl right here [points to Destiny].

Mark Savela
Yes.

David Read
Zoom’s and that kind of frenzied aesthetic are part of the fabric of the storytelling.

Mark Savela
Totally, absolutely, and it was part of the camera style and we just wanted to match the cameras as best as we could. It was certainly of mandate for us to do it and I think it works really well in all three shows. It certainly works in SG-1 but then the technology was advancing as well and the tracking. One of the things I did for this was watch Air again, parts one and two. I was blown away by it, the gate scene, the way we shot it.

David Read
Everyone coming through? I mean, talk about evolving that puddle sequence.

Mark Savela
It wasn’t like you pan over and you lock onto the gate and somebody walks through. It was like people are flying through in the background, there’s big giant flares everywhere through the gate. It was just like, I would be scared of shooting that scene today.

David Read
The amount of handheld that Andy pulls off in that sequence! I can’t imagine going through that frame by frame, post production, and filling in all the pieces. Not only do you have to match when someone passes the event horizon, which I think is just crazy in and of itself, how you figure that out, but you’ve got the camera moving and you’ve got people in the foreground at the same time.

Mark Savela
Totally.

David Read
And the light source through the gate.

Mark Savela
Yeah, we had three camera, I think there was three, maybe even four, camera operators who were down on the floor, up above. They were just everywhere and catching action. It was a mandate of everyone to go “okay, let’s make things happen in the gate, like off to the side.” We’re not telegraphing visual effects shots, we’re seeing them. They’re not meant to be the main…

David Read
Front and center.

Mark Savela
Yeah, exactly. It was a thing we did, I loved that thing. Air part one, to me, people have their own opinions of the series, of course and that’s good. Air part one, to me, is the fastest 40 minutes of television. I couldn’t believe when it was over and I was like, “did I miss something?”

David Read
Exactly.

Mark Savela
It was really quick. And the Icarus base, the difference between the gates, the blue Icarus gate and then you had the nice silvery…

David Read
The surface of the puddle?

Mark Savela
Of the puddle itself, yeah. Plus we had redone all the ships in high res, at that time it was a little 2k. We did the Lucian Alliance ships, they were all up-res’d completely. The Daedalus was, or the Hammond, was up res’d. It was feature quality for the time, I think, and it still would be a scary sequence to take on even to this day.

David Read
I go back and I watch the finale of Atlantis. The visual effects that you guys pulled off in that we’re great. Then I pull up Universe, you’re gonna have to explain to me, maybe it’s just different software, maybe it’s software upgrades. The photo realism of those shots compared to the work that came before was such step up. I know that you worked on Childhoods End, which is one of my favorite all time sci-fi mini series. That looks real; the ships, the alien world. Going back to Universe with the Ursini and with the Nakai, the fish people. They look like they’re standing there.

Mark Savela
We had never really done it before, entirely to have, especially the CG creatures. We’d done Ori I think, a couple of times, mostly a puppet.

David Read
Certain shots.

Mark Savela
Certain shots he was 3D. But then when we decided to not have people in suits for Universe, have aliens in suits, and the aliens we’re gonna be completely aliens. We knew we had to step up and it was once again a challenge. For our blue aliens it was Image Engine.

David Read
Who did the prawns in District 9.

Mark Savela
Yeah, exactly. We went over there before I think D9 was out and we took Brad and Robert over there and said, “okay, for space, we want to embrace this and really go for it.” For the Fred’s in Awakening, what’s the name?

David Read
The Ursini. You call them Fred’s?

Mark Savela
Well, the one guy, the little tiny guy that they meet at the beginning, we always called him Fred, he was like our little buddy. That was all Craig Van Den Biggelaar, who had a huge history. He was one of the artists who started Image Engine who went out on his own. I think Craig’s got 10 Emmy nominations and whatnot. He’s been on everything Stargate from the beginning. He did that guy on his own and that guy was amazing, he was just incredible. When Brian hands him the piece of dried fruit, it was mind blowing. I had artists that were, it was a popular show among visual effects people and I had artists from Sony Imageworks and a lot of places going “man, these aliens are just incredible, they’re phenomenal.” And then we took them to new heights when we did like the Lou Diamond Phillips joke.

David Read
I was going to ask if you had something to do with that. Was that Lou’s idea or was that someone else’s?

Mark Savela
The thing was, Lou was there and he was just acting with nothing.

David Read
Right, which is probably frustrating for an actor.

Mark Savela
A little bit. He was doing it and then between takes he was just telling these jokes. Then, I think it was between midseason and whatnot, I went up to Brad and Robert and I go, “I’m going to put in one of our aliens for LDP telling his jokes.” They go “go for it.” Then Jen got involved, our post producer, and she mixed it and everything and we made it sound like there were people in the back and it was an actual take and everything else. Then I went to the guys and said “I’m gonna put this on YouTube, okay.”

David Read
For people who are not familiar with what’s going on, there is a shot that was done as a gag where Lou and one of his, so Telford and one of his Ursini pals are in, it’s like a mid shot. It’s not a tight shot but it’s kind of a mid. They’re waiting for a cue and Lou starts telling a joke to the Ursini who’s not there. If someone in the chat can find on YouTube the scene so that everybody can see it, it’s a great little beat. The sound is in there, he makes noise. It’s one of those moments where…We’ve watched ILM do Star Wars gags for years and finally Stargate was getting one.

Mark Savela
Yeah, totally. We did that and we were doing stuff to try and really connect with the fans. I did a giveaway myself that was a big giant photo of the Destiny that was signed by James Robbins, myself and Brad and Robert. I just raffled that off and I was like, “come on.” We were trying to get people behind us so much. That show at that point in time, I wouldn’t say it was just us, but it was a group of people, cast, crew, everybody, that were just running on all cylinders. Because of everything that had been honed from SG-1 and Atlantis, every crew member on that show was just giving 110%. The problem solving that was done was amazing, I haven’t seen it post-SGU, in the world. You had great minds coming and solving problems and how to do it and how to shoot certain things. It just became such a wonderful experience to shoot that show. Brad and Robert, both geniuses, as you well know. Brad Wright, you can’t say enough good things about him because he’s just amazing at making an engaging story, but also making a producible episode of television.

David Read
As a viewer, when I hear heard Travelers, I wanted to wait a couple of seasons for it to get a few under its belt but the moment that I heard about the concept I was like, “Ooh, I want to see that.” I imagine as an artist you’re like, “I want to work on that.”

Mark Savela
Totally, totally, in everything Brad does. Everything he did, and I know some were people saying things here and there, everything Brad did was for his family, crew, and for the fans and to keep the show going. I remember at, I think it was Gatecon in Vancouver, when he announced that there would be no more Stargate for a while. I had lunch with him afterwards and it was just me and him and it was like, this was heavy.

David Read
This was when Universe was cancelled.

Mark Savela
Was cancelled but then there was talk about movies and everything else. He showed up at Gatecon and said “nothing’s happening right now” and told the audience and made that announcement that nothing was in the works. It was heavy. Brad cared so much about his family of crew that worked with him. And the actors on that show, you go down on a call sheet, each person’s assigned a number. On our call sheets it’d be like 1 to 10, 11, right. From top to bottom they were some of the most talented people I’ve ever worked with.

David Read
Well, look at what they have been working on since.

Mark Savela
LDP and Brian, right? I remember seeing Brian back for the very first time, I think it was the church scene in Air part three, I think it was.

David Read
Yes, talking about potentially aborting a baby.

Mark Savela
We shot that fairly early but I was sitting beside Robert Cooper and I just turned around and looked at him and go “where did you get this guy?” He was just amazing right out of the gate.

David Read
Someone you wanted to root for, Scott you wanted to root for.

Mark Savela
And Brian too, Brian’s the nicest guy in the world here. You had everybody like the established experienced actors. You had Bobby and Louie who are just amazing, then you had the newcomers kids. Hold on for one second [dog barking].

David Read
Live television folks.

Mark Savela
I’m sorry, my house is like a mini zoo. This will happen if unexpected people come by, I didn’t expect anybody. Sorry. I was talking about…

David Read
The cast; they’re stellar.

Mark Savela
To everybody to the people who weren’t supposed to necessarily be highlighted like Jen Spence and Patrick Gilmore and Peter Kelamis, right, who are just stunning. You watch those first couple of episodes and they just stand out and they just started being written for more and more because they were that good, right?

David Read
Well, their dynamic is working. Those three scientists, they’re almost like a side show in the main show hidden, in many respects.

Mark Savela
Totally, and they can hold their own for sure. That was like the best thing to watch; you get to go to work every day and you get to watch these people work and you’re just going “oh my goodness, this is such an amazing thing and amazing job that I have.” The one thing I always regret, I always wanted to get Bobby to throw a pint glass over the observation deck.

David Read
Why is this?

Mark Savela
Because of Trainspotting.

David Read
Oh, I haven’t seen it in years.

Mark Savela
When he does it off of the balcony. I always wanted him to do it just for me. I wanted to film it to which would have been really funny. [dogs barking]

David Read
Goodness.

Mark Savela
All right, we’re back.

David Read
What kind of a dog do you have?

Mark Savela
We have two Dachshunds, a Schnauzer, two house Hippos.

David Read
Oh my gosh. You have a menagerie.

Mark Savela
And two Bearded dragons behind me.

David Read
Geez.

Mark Savela
We do have a mini zoo here. Stuff goes crazy at any point in time and I apologize.

David Read
No, you’re all right. What did it take to pull off some of those shots in Atlantis? I remember in The Shrine when the valley got flooded and the team had to climb on top of the Stargate. Some of those shots I think you just pulled off with the fish tank, did you not?

Mark Savela
A lot of that stuff was actually live, that was Jim Menard, our DP, his specialty. I think we did a couple of wides and the rest lived, physically, real in-camera, which was amazing to us. Like I said, on that show and on all three, SG-1 and Atlantis and SGU, people were really good at their jobs. People stayed because it was so much fun to work with everybody and that was the big giant thing for all of us I think. We were family. You look at, I think it’s in one of the books somewhere, about how many children were born during the run of the show. My son was born during, I think it was between season two and three of Atlantis. Everything that happened kind of revolved around the show somehow, you know?

David Read
How many series do you have where everyone gets together for barbecues on their days off?

Mark Savela
Oh, totally.

David Read
That’s not really a thing but it was on Stargate.

Mark Savela
In the last season of SGU Louie would have these pizza parties and everybody would go and it was just so much fun. You got to hang with people that you work with and you weren’t sick of them. I remember, I think the first time we met personally, I think we met at Comic Con didn’t we? I don’t think we had met before.

David Read
I’m trying to remember Mark because there’s been so much. You’re right, so much that this show has done for so many fans in terms of set visits and connecting with people and conventions. It’s hard to tell.

Mark Savela
And what you guys did was always so true and honest. I always loved the interviews that I did with you guys and Sharon Gosling and Steve Ramo. Then you could get the big press days where people would ask the question, “so how many computers does it take to do a season of Atlantis?” You go “what?” With you guys we would talk about the story, we would talk about the episodes and then you get the big press days where you get a lot of people who wouldn’t really know what they were talking about sometimes.

David Read
It’s the difference between someone who is doing a nine to five to get the stuff that they have to get to put it in the can and ship a piece of content, and those who love the content that you’re making.

Mark Savela
With you guys, Shannon Gurney and myself, Shannon Gurney, my producer, I could never have done anything without her. We would always like, the weekend after the episodes aired, I think it was firstly Atlantis, we’d always go and read the reviews on Gateworld.

David Read
Most of them were good, most of them.

Mark Savela
No, totally. But you guys were always honest and it was like the best thing, right? We were like “it’s out, let’s see what they said.”

David Read
For a typical episode of Stargate, if you wouldn’t mind taking me through your process and how you would divide that work up. From getting the script, to execution, to post production. Can you give me an insight into what a typical episode would look like from beginning to end, from how you would make a meal of it coming down the assembly line?

Mark Savela
It all depends on where you are in the season. If you’re in middle of the season, per se, you get the script and you break it down, where all the effects are. Another thing Brad and Robert, Joe and Paul, everybody; their scripts are just amazingly clear. You what is happening and what is supposed to happen.

David Read
Nothing’s kept vague? Like deliberately?

Mark Savela
They write because they know their stuff, they know what they’re writing for. You break that down, there’s a concept meeting with all the heads of departments. There’s a visual effects meeting which usually involves the production designer, the director of the episode and whoever is producing that episode. There’s tech surveys where you go on and walk all the sets with the director. Then you shoot the episode, it goes into Director’s Cut and then Producers Cut, Studio cut and then you get a final cut. Meanwhile, you’re bidding the shots with different vendors at the same time.

David Read
So you have a specific budget that’s been assigned to you for the episode.

Mark Savela
Yeah, you budget it right at the beginning and then things are moved around based on how high your budget is and things are taken out. Another amazing thing that Brad and Robert and everybody are so great at, if things are too high they know where they can lose things without losing the story, which they’re amazing at. Then you send out your episode and based on all the vendors getting back their prices, you’re usually pretty even, like we were pretty good at our jobs. You ship them all out, you have a temp delivery which is in for the sound mix, and then your final delivery. When you’re in the middle of a season, you’re working on about nine to ten episodes kind of at the same time, at various stages.

David Read
None are in a bottle of their own.

Mark Savela
Yeah. So we used to have this giant whiteboard on where we were sending shots and where we’d like. It was just like somebody’s brain exploded on this whiteboard. I would look at it and say to Shannon, “we’re either geniuses or we’re super lucky” because everything would fit in, fall into place perfectly. We’d get the vendors who we wanted for different shows and you pick out who you think will do the best at certain types of effects.

David Read
Right, certain companies are better at landscapes than critters.

Mark Savela
Totally, absolutely. Some people are better at CG creatures than other things. Some people are better at puddles. We had it so dialed in for some reason and I always thought we were super lucky and not geniuses. We’re not that smart.

David Read
I have to ask, what, if you can recall, what was the single most expensive shot in the episodes that you worked on?

Mark Savela
I don’t know what would be the single most expensive, I really don’t. It’s interesting. One of the things we had was our in-house department, which we started, me and James and Michelle, started in season two and nine. That just became such a workhorse, those people in there who for show, we relied on them so heavily.

David Read
I have to give you accolades, the battle at the Super Gate in Camelot was extraordinary.

Mark Savela
That was Michelle. Yeah, that was awesome.

David Read
I would always think, in terms of practical effects, the most expensive thing would had to have been blowing the pyramid in season six, but that was before your time. That sequence of blowing up the Abydos pyramid had to have been expensive.

Mark Savela
When you say the actors, you look at everybody and what they’ve gone on to do is just insane. Martin Gero is just the king television right now.

David Read
He is.

Mark Savela
Him, during the Atlantis day, I loved him so much and he would just challenge us. I can’t remember what episode it was but I remember him saying, “I’m gonna write a minute long visual effects shot.”

David Read
This is for Strike, the attack on the Asuran replicators because they’re building ships and you guys launch WMDs. Still, I think the longest visual effects sequence in Stargate.

Mark Savela
Yeah, and the longest one single shot. Everyone’s like, “you think it’ll be exciting?” and actually, it was pretty cool.

David Read
Joel Goldsmith plus visual effects, you can’t lose.

Mark Savela
But it was so fun. Martin would always come up with these things and just go “wow.” He would really push us and it was always a challenge, but fun challenges. I remember we did McKay and Mrs. Miller, I think it was, with the two Rod and Rodney. I think it was Martin Wood who directed it, I’m not sure.

David Read
That’s correct.

Mark Savela
It came out to be way more shots than we had planned. It wasn’t just a double over two, to Hewlett, it was Hewlett acting against Hewlett because you saw the side of his face.

David Read
Right, tennis ball stand in.

Mark Savela
Yeah and it became a billion shots. We didn’t know how we were gonna afford to do them really so we all went out and got cuts of shapes, like a compositing tool. Myself and Geoff Anderson, one of my other producers, and Jin at the time, during the shooting and everything else, we would all work on shots, just anytime we had like a spare moment. We actually did most of the twinning in that episode between the three of us so that didn’t even go out to any vendors. We’re just going, “we got to do this for Martin.”

David Read
Right. I remember the one criticism that he gave to me during production is he said between seasons two and season three I think, he was not happy with the explosions. He said, “I’m looking at other explosions on shows, this is something that we’ve got to do better.” Yeah. Out of the entire franchise that I ever worked on, that was the one comment.

Mark Savela
Yeah. I think we really upped our game later on. There were shows like Twin Destinies.

David Read
Oh my gosh, what a shot.

Mark Savela
Where you saw the whole Destiny explode.

David Read
Yep. That shot, that opening shot where they switched to the ship in orbit of the star. I was like, “can I get that printed out on a design poster because I really want a high res shot of this.” Later on this season of Dial the Gate I’m going to show off my house and downstairs in my dining room is a fan inspired shot of Destiny in the foreground with the galaxy outside of it. A fan actually made a version of that. It’s one of the greatest ships in all of science fiction, certainly my favorite from all the work that you guys did. Not because it was the last, but I think because it was a culmination of, at that point, 15 seasons of effort that inspired it.

Mark Savela
Yeah. I saw somebody, when you interviewed Joe two weeks ago and I snuck in for a little bit. Somebody asked about the ship itself, and if it was a chevron. The history of designing that ship was crazy because it’s so awesome. It’s cool.

David Read
Absolutely a Chevron, Chevron inspired, then you guys took it from there. As much as Atlantis is a snowflake.

Mark Savela
Yeah, exactly. But at the beginning James Robbins was coming up with designs and it was like a circular ship sometimes. James was creating these beautiful ships that were just gorgeous but it didn’t really, like, feel it. The pressure was really on because we wanted to create an iconic ship. We were all sweating at that point. We were like “when is this going to hit? When is this going to hit?” It is honestly like Hollywood story of a napkin thing. I forget if Brad actually drew it in the room and he came in the next day and he goes, “I’ve got it.” I think he pulled out the napkin and he had this Chevron from a bird’s eye view and he said “that’s our ship.” Everybody went “that’s it.” He just hit it right away. He had it like it was this big [10 square cm].

David Read
I hope he saved it.

Mark Savela
I don’t know, I wish I had that. It was so awesome, it was just one of those eureka moments where it was just “oh my god, that’s the ship.” Brad just pulled out the napkin, “here it is guys.”

David Read
Absolutely. The aesthetic of that design was just so cool. What James Robbins did with the set was absolutely amazing. That thing was so cool. As a fan of Jules Verne, I’m like, “it’s pulled right out of those books.”

Mark Savela
You just love to be in that set because it was so creepy, so cool. The lighting was so amazing where the lighting was built into the set. The hallways were great, it was just an amazing playground to be in. We were talking about camera style and stuff, the one thing I’ve never seen in my life, and people will be really surprised and I’ve told this to people before, is I’ve never seen an episode of Battlestar.

David Read
You have not?

Mark Savela
No. I knew my style and Hutzel, of course, Gary Hutzel the supervisor, I never wanted to be compared. I knew people were comparing, even a little bit in Atlantis. So when SGU, I was like, “I can’t even watch the show.” I’ve never seen an episode, I’ve heard it’s amazing. Sometime when I’m 60 I’ll watch it.

David Read
I would watch it now. I think you’re safe at this point. During production there’s a firewall, there’s a legitimate reason to not be influenced by it, but now I think you’re okay. Classic science fiction as much as Universe is.

Mark Savela
I totally did not want people to compare us at the time. I was like, “I can’t be compared here so I’m not gonna watch it so people can never accuse me.”

David Read
Yeah, I legitimately can’t.

Mark Savela
Totally. Vancouver has become such a hotbed of visual effects. Everywhere in the world is but, honestly, not enough praise is handed to, I think, the people who started it all. Like John Gajdecki, Bob Habros, like James Tichenor, Michelle Comens; we were making high end TV up here. To a lesser extent myself. Hutzel did most of his work, or a lot of it, up here as well for Battlestar. It was done in Vancouver. I don’t think Vancouver would have become such a hotbed if not for those people because everybody was creating high level…

David Read
Feature quality every week.

Mark Savela
Science fiction shows here so there’s got to be a talent pool there and people really honed their craft draft here. I really think it’s those people who really, really laid the groundwork for everything that came after. I give them props all the time.

David Read
I remember going up to Vancouver in 2000 for the earlier Gatecons. By, I think 2018 was the last time I came up, the city had just exploded in comparison. The industry people are all over the place up there now, they’re just everywhere. It’s because of the infrastructure largely that you guys built, to make it happen.

Mark Savela
The crews as well, it was everybody making a really, really good TV show. The weird thing about Stargate was it always had a-show-without-a-country type feel. We weren’t really considered American because we were shot up here and everything, but we weren’t really considered Canadian because we were MGM.

David Read
A hybrid.

Mark Savela
It was a hybrid, but we weren’t owned by anybody. We were always like “the show that could” for the awards and everything else. James has, I think, 8 Emmy noms, John has whatever. John has two or three, I think, at least. Michelle as a bunch. It was a show that we were making that we we’re saying, “you can’t ignore us. We’re up there and we’re gonna keep making this and we’re gonna keep sticking it down your throat.” We had three Emmy noms for Universe in two seasons. I think we were nominated for Air and Space in the first season and Drift in the second. We were like, “we’re gonna keep doing this keep, keep shoving it down your throats.”

David Read
It’s great content. I’ve got some fan questions for you here, Mark.

Mark Savela
Ah cool.

David Read
Some you may be able to answer more than others. If you’re like, “this is someone else,” then let me know and I’ll have them come on.”

Mark Savela
You mean like family? Hello family. Hello, my friends in Kirkland Lake.

David Read
That’s funny. Teresa Mc – Mark, can you speak at all to the process of aging a victim during a Wraith feeding process? Your side of that.

Mark Savela
There were different ways that we would do it. We would do it by prosthetics and shoot the first half, and then shoot the second half where the husk is more so. Then we would do kind of morph from one to the other. That’s how we used to do it, technology. I think we do it different now but that’s how we did it back then. It was always fun to have Wraith feed on people.

David Read
Were there any specific digital challenges with the Wraith?

Mark Savela
No, except one time I think it was Todd, maybe. Was it Todd? It might have been. Sometimes their contacts would really infect their eyes so we would end up with 150 eye shots where either they couldn’t wear their contacts or we’d be painting out their bloody eyes.

David Read
In post production?

Mark Savela
Yeah.

David Read
Wow. I talked with Bruce Woloshyn once, I said “all the money has to be on the screen, right?” He said “Well not necessarily like the way that you think. Some of the more complicated things are rig removal where you have cables in shots and you have to digitally erase them. That’s hard and if you do it right, no one ever knows that you touched it.”

Mark Savela
No. I remember one of the really expensive episodes, again, Martin Gero, was Trio.

David Read
Yep, I was hoping we’d bring this up. It was designed to be a cost saver originally.

Mark Savela
It was supposed to be a tiny tiny episode. We just had rigs all over the place because it was Jewel and Amanda right.

David Read
Yup, and David.

Mark Savela
It was rigs all over the place and it was just every shot was a visual effects shot, right. It just became an expensive episode, an awesome episode nonetheless.

David Read
Lockwatcher, this is more of a design question. Maybe you do have the answer to it just from knowledge. Lockwatcher wanted to know – what led to having different numbers of symbols on the gates between SG-1 and then the two that came later? The SG-1 gate had 39 symbols and the others had 36.

Mark Savela
Yeah, I do not know. I think that was a thing in between SG-1 and Atlantis.

David Read
For sure. I think I can lend some of that because the Atlantis and SGU gates are static in terms of the chevron placement; there’s no spinning track underneath. They had to have certain blocks equidistant between every Chevron, which added up to 36 from nine times four.

Mark Savela
That’s awesome. Yeah, I saw it somewhere where there was a difference in the space gate somehow. I didn’t have the answer to that. I was like “is this a mistake?”

David Read
I think it’s an error. After this episode, everyone, go and look at, I believe it’s in several shows. The one that I know specifically, is again, First Strike. The Asuran satellite that has the beam weapon in the center of the Stargate has eight Chevron’s instead of nine.

Mark Savela
Really?

David Read
You can argue they didn’t need nine because they were never planning on dialing outside the galaxy but I think it’s literally just a design mistake. Someone had forgot, had not paid that close attention and it just never got caught through the design process. Or it did too late and they were like, “Ah, it’s too late.”

Mark Savela
I don’t know how that wouldn’t happen though, it’s really interesting. I am going to go and research that now.

David Read
One of the things that frustrated me was the difference in look on Atlantis. I’ve made this comment to you and it’s one of the things that you said, when when you guys got to Destiny you made sure that everyone had the same copy of that ship, to the different vendors. Atlantis looks markedly different from the version that Rainmaker started off with in the pilot to the version that’s actually here in my set. Who did this version at the end of the show?

Mark Savela
By time Atlantis ended, I think everybody had done their own version of it.

David Read
Okay. Who else, besides Rainmaker, was shooting shots of Atlantis?

Mark Savela
I think Atmosphere Visual FX did, I know the in-house department did. There were multiple vendors who did it and I don’t think everybody had the exact same model. I think season two was when it veered off because I think season one was all Rainmaker.

David Read
Okay. Season three has some Rainmaker shots for sure. What’s the episode where Asurus, they they launch their own Atlantis ship and it comes over orbit and it blows up? That was the Rainmaker model. Is it just that someone forgot, Mark? Or is it that Rainmaker said, “if you want our model, you can’t have it.” Or, “it’ll cost $100,000 to take it.” What causes another model of the central piece of hardware in a series to be duplicated so that the naked eye can tell the difference?

Mark Savela
I know there are reasons for it but I can’t really exactly remember, but I know there are reasons for it. I know, like today, in this day and age, it would never happen,

David Read
Right. We’ve got 80 inch televisions. Everything’s right here.

Mark Savela
But it would never happen with the legalities of everything now. People would go, “we, the studio, own this model so give us the model right now.” For a while, it’s not saying anything about Rainmaker, for a while I know it was a grey area in terms of the models and who owned what. That’s all been really laid out now in terms of doing a show, it’s quite a definitive thing. If you do a Netflix show, all the assets and everything go into the Netflix Content Hub and get backed up there.

David Read
That makes sense.

Mark Savela
Back then it was little bit more loosey goosey.

David Read
Hard drives are just ubiquitous now whereas, back in the day, it’s “well, who has what files?” in some cases. There’s a couple of guys who did work on most of DS9 and Voyager and they, personally themselves, have the assets on hard drives somewhere. IBREC wanted to know in regards to that – what happened to the 3d models of Stargate? Have they been archived? Do you know where they are?

Mark Savela
They were archived when Universe was cancelled. Myself and Steven Bahr, who kind of ran the in-house department at the time, we were enlisted to go and…The visual effects for Stargate and Poltergeist and going back to Outer Limits and everything else.

David Read
Yep, all Bridge Studios.

Mark Savela
Lived in this brick building at Bridge Studios and we had to go and backup everything and clean out that entire place. You’ve seen it before, it was kind of a disaster.

David Read
I’ll never forget, a quick aside, I’ll never forget the day that John Lenic brought me on to the set when I was working for Propworx. This was 2009, December 2009, and we walk into the soundstage where the SGC was. The only thing that’s there is the spiral staircase from the ceiling to the floor and the rest of the room is just a cube. I just stopped in my tracks. I had been for a few years before, on and off the set, and that plus watching it on the show, knowing definitively, it’s gone. That sucked.

Mark Savela
Was that question answered?

David Read
The 3d models, so who has them now?

Mark Savela
MGM, they were all sent to MGM. It was really funny. That time in everybody’s life, especially SGU, was a wild one. Twitter was so new and no one knew the real kind of cesspool it would become, or can be. I think we were all just naive. I think one of the first shows was SGU when everybody, all the actors, it wasn’t a studio mandate or anything, but all the actors joined and were talking to the fans and really engaged in everything. People were doing it just on their own.

David Read
Figuring this stuff out.

Mark Savela
I remember being on my way home and I’d stop in the grocery store parking lot and be checking Twitter as the show was airing on a Friday night. It just got really heavy where there were fights and insults. I think we were all a little naive at the time about what…I think if it happened now people would be more accustomed to it. People can say whatever they want on Twitter and just be [inaudible]. At that point it really took its toll on people. You had people insulting people’s moms.

David Read
It’s ridiculous.

Mark Savela
Who were proud of their sons and you go, “why? Why did any of that happen?

David Read
People have polarizing opinions and at that time a lot of the fan base, particularly when SGU started, felt like Atlantis was ripped away from them unfairly. The precedent had been set for two shows to overlap and it didn’t happen, for whatever reason. There were some people who were pissed and they weren’t gonna let it go. Frankly, certain actors feeled it as well, threw gasoline on the fire. Let’s be honest.

Mark Savela
It was a weird time. Especially with Twitter, I remember when we were cancelled in season two, I know Brad and some of the cast were on the…

David Read
USS Carl Vinson, at sea.

Mark Savela
I think it was [David] Blue, Blue wasn’t on that trip, he got a hold of me and he goes, “are we cancelled?” We found out on Twitter because Brad was gone, everybody else was gone and we were still working on finishing the show. All of a sudden people are contacting me and going, “are we cancelled?” I go “I don’t know. I’ll have to talk to Brad, I guess. It’s on Twitter here.”

David Read
There was a lot of stuff that happened. There was no one at MGM to take Syfy’s call. I’ve heard all kinds of stories.

Mark Savela
It was so weird for us. Everybody got around, the visual effects department, my crew, and we’re just like, “let’s finish this” because we still had months to go.

David Read
Back ten [second half of season] had not aired for season two and oh, were they good.

Mark Savela
We were like, “let’s go out with such a friggin bang.” Still, nobody would talk to us. I think there was like a week or at least half a week before we heard from anybody. We still kept on going.

David Read
Yeah, you just have to keep your head down and do the work. Otherwise, what are you going to do? There’s nothing you can do except do your job.

Mark Savela
Yeah. It was one of the first stories where a show gets cancelled and everybody finds out on Twitter. Weird!

David Read
Yeah, this is not normally how things are supposed to go but that’s how information is now. Gateworld would find out some things, I think, back in the day before certain members of production did. I don’t know how that was possible but depending on the velocity of information, very weird.

Mark Savela
Yeah. It was a strange time and I think if everything moved in time, it would have been better. Like if it moved more to the present day. People may still have been mad but I think people would have taken it a little bit better. I used to always tell people, “you shouldn’t engage with people who are…just start something.”

David Read
Make something positive. As I put it, “make good ripples.”

Mark Savela
Yes. There you go, that’s awesome.

David Read
Priest Bishop wanted to know – Mark, was there ever, or will there ever be, a correct ship size comparison chart put out?

Mark Savela
I don’t know, I hope so. I always looked at it and gone, “wow, this is crazy.”

David Read
There are some fan made ones.

Mark Savela
Which are pretty good I think. I’ve seen a really good one. I don’t think, you know, unless a new show happens and everybody gets it all together, then there will be one. I think everybody should fight for one for sure.

David Read
I’d love to put it on my wall if nothing else.

Mark Savela
Exactly. I’d like to too.

David Read
Ákos wanted to know – for Atlantis, they didn’t build a physical location gate, they just did it digital. It’s one of my frustrations about Atlantis because it’s so iconic. You always want to have it in the background of shots because it’s a star as much as the cast star. Was that a deliberate reason why Universe had a location gate built?

Mark Savela
I yeah, I think so. It really made sense to do it. I love the SG-1 episodes that I did where we had the location gate.

David Read
It’s always back in the background just waiting.

Mark Savela
I didn’t like the ones in Atlantis where we didn’t have the gate. It made so much sense and it brings such production value to it, right?

David Read
At least you guys built a section of it eventually. I had a fun time selling that one and plugging that into the wall and having it light up at Propworx. That was cool, that was so cool.

David Read
Yes, that is Common Descent.

Mark Savela
But even to see it there!. I remember we did, it was funny, it was where Scott and Chloe come out of the gate and meet the young people.

Mark Savela
Common Descent, thank you very much.

David Read
Best episodes of the show, along with Epilogue. Carl Binder extravaganza, they’re so good.

Mark Savela
Damn that Carl Binder, making such good TV. They were such fun episodes to do. But Common Descent, that was like a traveling gate and that was gorgeous.

David Read
You blew it up in that one as well, which I didn’t think was possible. It would take so much to blow up a Stargate and I’m like, “Well, this is version 1.0 so I guess they are more flimsy.”

Mark Savela
Yeah, exactly.

David Read
And who knows what ore they’re mining out in the cosmos.

Mark Savela
Epilogue is such a beautiful episode. Again, you look at people and I think that was Bill Terezakis, who’s since passed away, who did all the special effects makeup on that

David Read
That wasn’t Tichenor? Excuse me, not Tichenor, Todd Masters?

Mark Savela
No, I think it was Bill, I think it was Bill Terezakis.

David Read
Ming’s transformation is amazing.

Mark Savela
Oh god, yeah. It was just amazing that episode and so much fun to do. Especially Kelamis who’s just a crusty old man.

David Read
It’s a font.

Mark Savela
It was Carl Binder writing for himself. “[inaudible] you crazy kids.”

David Read
Oh god. Can you settle a debate for me?

Mark Savela
I can try. I’ll probably make it worse.

David Read
How many Universe gates were built? Some say there’s three. My understanding was there was the one on set and then the travelling one.

Mark Savela
I think there was only two. I can’t see where there was a third one ever built.

David Read
That would be my understanding.

Mark Savela
The one on set was just so impressive; to see it go off with the special effects, the steam, everything else. That thing just motoring up and turning was, god it was amazing. Anytime we shot in that gate room there was usually like 50 to 75 people in there. You had to get everybody in there because it was like a giant announcement or whatever and it would just be a packed room, it was crazy. Like Twin Destinies, when everybody was going over and they were having like a town hall in that room, it was just wild.

David Read
That’s right, when they were all deciding what the game plan was going to be.

Mark Savela
The batteries and everything and that stuff.

David Read
Watching it spin was just such a marvel. You had a palm pilot that tied it to all of the right sequences of symbols, it was just insane.

Mark Savela
It was crazy and it was something to marvel. You could just feel it in the room, right?

David Read
Under the floor.

Mark Savela
It was happening. That set, it wasn’t like other spaceship sets where you can walk in or there’s a wild wall somewhere. It was so self contained that you felt like you were on an actual ship. You were walking around and there are just hallways everywhere and there weren’t these little lead-offs everywhere.

David Read
It felt like the real deal, for sure. I have a piece of the gate from the set, the SGU gate, in my entryway downstairs.

Mark Savela
No way!

David Read
I do. It was a gift from, I paid for it obviously, it was a gift from a friend who had bought two. I think they have one of the SGU travel pieces and I have one of the ones from the set. I want so badly to reconnect the electronics that are still inside of it but I’m terrified to get an electrician to open it up. I don’t know if they would know what they’re doing because there’s a prop on the outside.

Mark Savela
Well, all the stuff that was built was so genius. Like the kino balls, if you ever see a kino ball up close, it is amazing. It’s just incredible to see that thing. It’s just wild and it was such an amazing job that they did on it.

David Read
Just extraordinary craftsmanship put into creating one. The tricks that you guys had to come up with to make them fly; I know you used several. I think you even had half of one stuck on a plexiglass sheet that you could bring in tight to the camera and just pretend that it was hovering.

Mark Savela
Going back to our style and everything, there was so much tracking in that show. We did 3d kino balls. In the apple core room all the grates and everything were just crazy that we did. It was a really challenging show actually.

David Read
Which of those effects proved to be the more time consuming and would it have to do with the amount of prep, or lack thereof, that was done during production itself? You had kino balls and you had visual displays that would be three dimensional that would come up. Which would prove to be the more challenging?

Mark Savela
I think they were all kind of equally challenging. We came up with a thing where we would put a piece of plastic in front of the size of the screens in the apple core room. We’d run a take with it so that the actors would know where to look, exactly, and then we’d pull it out and run the scenes. It’s just the sheer amount of tracking that went into that because our cameras were always moving, right? We would go crazy with that, we never sat still for a moment.

David Read
But those were programmed by computer so that they would be the same shots, right? Or was it handheld?

Mark Savela
It was all handheld.

David Read
Wow. Oh my gosh.

Mark Savela
It was all handheld in the entire series. I don’t think we had a lock-off or I don’t think we used motion control once on SGU.

David Read
The one, the single shot that to this day blows me away, and we’ve talked about it in text on Gateworld, you and I. The transition from Young when he takes the communication stone and he closes his eyes and you pull back and his costume has changed and the environment has changed. It’s all a physical effect that you guys did and that was in Space.

Mark Savela
Space was such a fun show to do as well; those aliens, we had a blast with them. Everybody got right into it, acting as if they were aliens. Louis and Bobby fighting the aliens was awesome. We ran that two ways, once with a stunt person and Bobby jumping on top of them and then we would do it clean as well without anybody there so Bobby would be struggling with nobody there.

David Read
With no one.

Mark Savela
I remember, his kids, somebody was there, I think it might have been his kids at the time. They showed up on set and Bobby’s in this wetsuit. and he’s flying out of the water and beating up the stunt double guy. It is hilarious. “This is what I do for a living.” Even that thing that they were inside, how cool was that?

David Read
The tank?

Mark Savela
The tank stuiff was amazing as well. Elyse was in it…

David Read
Carlyle was.

Mark Savela
And when it broke and Bobby fell out, was just incredible. It was fun. Going back and seeing, even Robert, I think I was supervisor on Robert’s first episode.

David Read
As director?

Mark Savela
As director.

David Read
That was Crusade.

Mark Savela
Crusade. I think I did all of his episodes except for the movie. I think it was Crusade and I remember going, “well, he’s gonna want Michelle to do this because he’s not gonna trust me to do this.”

David Read
Why do you say that?

Mark Savela
That was my first season, right.

David Read
Oh, I see.

Mark Savela
I was like, “he’s going to get MichelIe.” This is Robert’s first time directing, right. I’m glad that he trusted me because we did some cool episodes, like Sateda and Vegas and Time. Robert was an amazing director.

David Read
He sunk his teeth into it for sure.

Mark Savela
He was so cool and he was so good with the crew and he was so good in knowing exactly what he wanted. That’s one thing about Robert, he knows exactly what he wants.

David Read
Which is important.

Mark Savela
Totally. A lot of people think he’s intimidating but he’s such a nice guy, he’s an amazingly nice guy. On set he was so nice to the cast and crew and everybody, under crazy conditions. Time was the big jungle on our stage, it was raining the whole time inside. It was wild, that was one of our favorite episodes. I remember seeing the reaction of, I think it was Blue and Jamil and Brian watched it in the writers room. I think it’s out there somewhere where they watch and then the alien comes out…

David Read
Through Chloe.

Mark Savela
Chloe and then Blue has the line, Eli has the line, “what the F***.” Somebody recorded them watching that for the first time.

David Read
I have not seen that.

Mark Savela
Oh yeah, it’s somewhere. They just freaked right out, they were just “wow!” That was the thing about those guys, too. They were so amazing about that, Blue and Brian. When we had our in-house department, which was right across from the main Destiny stage, they would show up all the time, up to the brick building. Artists of ours that usually wouldn’t get any exposure, they’d be working on a shot with Brian in it, they’d turn around and he’d be sitting right there.

David Read
Yeah, he’d want to see what was going on?

Mark Savela
Yeah, and Blue was like that too. They were up there a lot. They were going “we want to see what you guys are doing. This is so cool.” They were so into the show. You work on shows and I think one out of every five you really enjoy. There are some that last for a season and it’s a shame but with Stargate it just going. It was just a joy; every single season of every one of the franchise.

David Read
Absolutely. Lockwatcher wanted to know – was there any time that you would reuse assets from one project to another, to save time or to enhance things? I know a lot of props were reused. In Window of Opportunity they had the things with the stones, not the communication stones but the the square panels that were then used later on in the show. Did you find yourself reusing any assets?

Mark Savela
I don’t think so. We always wanted to create something new and it was always expensive to do. I can’t really remember us retrofitting much or changing existing things much, we always wanted to be brand new. Even in a practical standpoint, even the suits that became the suits that were used on SGU for the ice cave stuff.

David Read
Yeah, right, the Asgard suits in Atlantis were repurposed and the mask was changed, the helmet.

Mark Savela
Yeah. Those were crazy things for sure to shoot. I don’t think they were popular by any actor.

David Read
I wouldn’t think so.

Mark Savela
But they look awesome. When Brian and Louie were…they were like, “geez.” That’s some good acting right there, in that episode, it was just cool. But I can’t remember why we would retrofit something, I don’t think we ever did. I remember the Travelers ships we wanted to be brand new, those were fun episodes. I think that it is kind of an interesting thing, like you said about Atlantis. The hive ships change too, right?

David Read
They got more aggresive as the show evolved, especially on set.

Mark Savela
The look of them changed as well and I think the darts changed. A lot of that stuff changed and evolved as we went on and I kind of wish that a certain amount would have stayed more of the same, kind of like Atlantis. The ship I don’t like the most, if you ever want to hear this, is the SGU shuttle. I don’t like it.

David Read
You didn’t care for it? Just by design?

Mark Savela
I didn’t like it. I didn’t like how it looked. It wasn’t part of the original design of Destiny. We knew that there were going to be shuttles on there and then when it came to the design of it I didn’t really…

David Read
Just weren’t crazy about it.

Mark Savela
It became functional and matched the inside so that was fun but I wasn’t crazy about the look of it. That was the only ship I didn’t really like.

David Read
I was never crazy about the design for Prometheus but they were definitely saying for that one, function over form, that’s what James Robbins said. That was his mandate. When you get kind of an office building in space, that’s…

Mark Savela
I don’t think the shuttle on Universe, I don’t think that was a James Robbins design.

David Read
Really? Okay.

Mark Savela
I think it would have been better if it was a James Robbins design.

David Read
I did not know that, okay.

Mark Savela
Yeah, I think it was designed separately.

David Read
Jamerperson wanted to know – is there something that was, that you recall, anything that was done in visual effects that most people come away with thinking that it was done practically? You really managed to trick the eye into thinking that something was real when it wasn’t?

Mark Savela
I hope so. I hope I can do that once in a while. Yeah, like in Trio where Jewel and Amanda and David don’t have that good a balance. They needed wires, they needed wires to walk across those beams. That’s what I’m always trying to do; I love invisible effects more. It’s weird because in the sci-fi genre it’s less important which is why I actually always move around every once in a while. I go from sci-fi to doing other projects where I can do more invisible effects to doing other stuff where it’s more fantasy. I kind of do this wheel of projects that I do.

David Read
Oh, so you can keep it fresh for yourself?

Mark Savela
Yeah.

David Read
I get it.

Mark Savela
In sci-fi it becomes less important to do visual effects but I still believe that the story is the most important thing. Even on a sci-fi show where you’re doing 100 shots, you should still be the gravy on the turkey dinner, right? You should never become the dinner. For every story, you’re enhancing the story and you become the story when you become a lame show, I think.

David Read
I agree. George Lucas always said people show up to the show for the visuals and I’m like, “I don’t agree George. I show up for the characters.”

Mark Savela
Yeah, totally, totally. It’s the characters that people fall in love with. You can have a mediocre story and then put in amazing shots and it’s not a good show.

David Read
It looks great but it doesn’t mean it has any substance.

Mark Savela
And you con have an amazing story and amazing characters and have mediocre effects and that show will still succeed, more than the other one.

David Read
Tiina Nyrhinen, I probably butchered that. Not really a Stargate related question mark but your last name seems Finnish. Is that correct?

Mark Savela
It is Finnish.

David Read
“Does he have finished relatives?” So I would surmise, yes.

Mark Savela
I do have Finnish relatives, it’s quite crazy. Yeah, it is Finnish. Most people mistake it for Italian but it is Finnish. Yeah, most people think it’s Italian. I just worked with someone who was an assistant to, who’s the guy who directed Cutthroat Island and all that stuff? Geena Davis.

David Read
Standby. The director?

Mark Savela
Yeah.

David Read
Renny Harlin.

Mark Savela
Renny Harlin, who is also a…

David Read
Finnish film director.

Mark Savela
I just talked to somebody who was his assistant and she was telling me that Renny would take her off to Finland and go come on, “we’re gonna do some work” and they’d go to Finland. When she found out I was Finnish she told everybody on the set that I was Finnish. But yes, Finnish it is.

David Read
Mark, it has been a treat having you on. I apologize that it’s taken this long to schedule this, totally my fault.

Mark Savela
Not at all. It’s a complete joy and so much fun to do.

David Read
The work that you guys created together will continue to withstand the test of time, regardless of what comes up with MGM being absorbed into Amazon. If Brad Wright’s next Stargate script is approved and move forward with Amazon, would you be ready to come back?

Mark Savela
Oh god, to work with Brad, I would work with Brad any day of the week, no matter what I was doing, no matter where, no matter what. If, the timing and he wanted me, I would show up in a heartbeat. Brad is one of my favorite people in this industry and this medium. As a co-worker, as a boss and as a fan, he’s No. 1 to me, Brad and Robert. I love those guys, they’re amazing. I hope it happens.

Mark Savela
I hope it happens for everybody. I know Brad will kill it and Brad will just blow it out of the water and people will be happy again. Things ended too soon, I think, with Universe. The ramification of it became this big, long delay of nothing happening and I think fans deserve an iteration of the show, going for years to come. People should be in charge who can do it justice, like Brad. Anybody else, I think, would be kind of…I don’t know who they would even think of, but I don’t think anybody else could do it really.

David Read
I do to.

David Read
I know that whatever comes next is gonna look good because it’s got a lot of money in it. But I don’t know if I’m going to love the concept because if he’s not doing it…I will always tune in for that ring, but will I love it as much? I may pretend to, doing this, if I’m perfectly honest. But we’ll see.

Mark Savela
I think it will happen. I think he will knock it out of the park and I think all the fans are gonna be so happy, when and if it does.

David Read
I hope they tap him for another one, I really do.

Mark Savela
Yeah, so do I.

David Read
What are you working on right now that we can be on the lookout for?

Mark Savela
Right now I am finishing up, or starting to finish up, Under the Banner of Heaven. It is an FX show and Hulu starring Andrew Garfield, based on a Jon Krakauer book.

David Read
Has Britt Irvin in it as well, we just recently had her on.

Mark Savela
Oh really?

David Read
Yep, as a wife.

Mark Savela
I’ve just finished shooting a Disney movie, that’ll be out in Christmas 2023.

David Read
Gosh, they’re gonna sit it on the shelf for 18 months, 20 months?

Mark Savela
I just finished shooting Monster High which will be the first live action Monster High. I’m doing three movies for Netflix at the moment which is Ivy + Bean, number one, two and three, for those who have young kids. It’s an amazing book series. I just wrapped shooting a docudrama movie that I asked the director if I can talk about and he said no, because it hasn’t been announced yet. It is a movie that’s a year in the making so far. It is incredible and as soon as I can talk about it…He told me as soon as it’s announced, call everybody, your dog, your mother. It’s an important, powerful movie for everyone and everyone will love it.

David Read
Okay. Your Twitter? Can we watch your Twitter for this announcement?

Mark Savela
Yeah, totally. Absolutely.

David Read
What’s your Twitter? I think it’s @marksavela. Come on Mark! @marksavela, that’s it. We will keep an eye my friend, I’m excited.

Mark Savela
Thank you so much. You guys and you have always been such a rock in the franchise, in everything. You do more than people really realize or people give you credit for. Thank you for having me and thank you for everything you do.

David Read
Absolutely. It’s the power of the work that you have done that keeps all of us together in this. The messages that are told in the work just transcend time and continue to resonate. It’s the craftsmanship that you have managed to pull off over so many seasons of TV that keeps every new generation coming back for more.

Mark Savela
That is so nice to hear. We always say “as soon as you air, your outdated.”

David Read
Not with Stargate.

Mark Savela
Well, I hope not, but that’s so nice to hear. I hope you have an amazing Easter weekend.

David Read
Thank you Mark and you as well. You have a good Easter as well. I appreciate you coming on and I hope to have you back.

Mark Savela
All right, cool. Anytime, you have my number.

David Read
Yes sir. You take care of yourself my friend.

Mark Savela
Thank you, David. You too.

David Read
Be well. Mark Savela, visual effects maestro, supervisor on Stargate SG-1, Atlantis, and Universe. I really appreciate everyone writing in and submitting questions, this was a solid, solid episode. Dial the Gate is brought to you every week for free and we do appreciate you watching, but if you want to support the show further, consider buying some of our themed swag. We offer T-shirts, tank tops, sweatshirts and hoodies for all ages as well as cups and other accessories in a variety of sizes and colors at dialthegate.com. From the merchandise tab click on a specific design to see what items are being offered. Checkout is fast and easy, you can use your credit card or PayPal, just visit dial the gatethegate.com/merch and thank you so much for your support. Future episodes, I am going to make an announcement. We have a very special episode coming up on May 14th, I’m so excited about this. Stargate science with Mika McKinnon and David Hewlett. Mika was the science advisor on Atlantis and Universe and she and David Hewlett, Rodney McKay, and I are going to be getting together and discussing Stargate science. Well, mostly David and I are going to show up and be educated by what Mika has to say. I think that this is going to be a fantastic live show. This is going to be at 12 noon, currently, the schedule may change, but currently at 12 noon pacific time on Saturday, May 14th. It’s going to be a live show so we’re going to invite fans to ask questions. Mika, she joined us for season one, it was one of the best episodes of Dial the Gate. Her energy is just infectious and she loves exploring new ways of thinking about the universe and sharing new pieces of scientific information that becomes available. She makes other people love it as well. So me, David Hewlett and Mika McKinnon will be discussing Stargate science at 12 noon Pacific time on May 14th in a very special live episode. Stay tuned for that for more announcements to come. We appreciate you tuning in. I appreciate my team who helped make this episode possible, make every episode possible. Linda “GateGabber” Furey, my producer, as well as my moderating team Sommer, Tracy, Keith, Jeremy, Rhys and Anthony. You guys make the show what it is. A big thanks to Frederick Marcoux at ConceptsWeb, he’s our web developer on Dial the Gate. Also a big thanks to Jeremy, our webmaster, who keeps the site up to date as well. We are available in podcast format so if you enjoy listening to these episodes you can also tune in to your favorite podcast system; iTunes, Google, Spotify, Dial the Gate is available there. We’re about three weeks behind on podcast releases. I’m going to start accelerating that pretty quickly here to be more in line with YouTube, but I still want to be a little bit ahead on YouTube to give people a chance to see the episode here first. My name is David Read for Dial the Gate, new episodes will be announced soon. I appreciate you for tuning in and we’ll see you on the other side.