 
MW: Yeah. In Continuum there are two scenes which I knew were going to be good, but when I actually read them I flipped past them. "I know this explanation. I know how we're going to get there." You flip past them and you get to the other end of it and there's another "hit in the back" scene.
One of them is a scene in a hangar with Michael, Amanda, Ben and Beau. You'll see it when you get to it. You'll know which one it is. It was one of those scenes where I'm whipping through the pages, and I'm thinking "When's the next explosion going to happen?" I'm reading it and thinking "This is going to be good, so I'm going to cover it like this."
As I watched the scene rehearsed I looked at Brad and said, "I need another camera." He goes "Why?" I said, "I don't want to miss this. I don't want to miss what's going on. I'll order up another camera right now." We brought another camera in that day and I shot more film on that scene than I did for half the movie. Because I really wanted to cover it in a certain way. I wanted to cover it so that, in the edit suite, we would be able to put together the scene I had seen rehearsed.
It was magic. All four of our characters sat there. Even now, you guys can attest to this. You see these goose bumps. It' because I'm thinking about that, the way that the scene came off. It's an integral scene to what's going on in the movie. And it's not a page-passed kind of scene.
"For me, the smaller exposition scenes sometimes have that 'hit in the back' after I've seen it done. It's kind of cool.
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The brilliance of what Brad Wright can do when he has a little bit of time to write these things. Not that he's not brilliant all the time. But when there's the time, months to be able to write something like this, he puts so much into that scene and he's there watching you. That's a really dense scene.
Then there's a montage that happens just before that. It was Brad Wright's idea to do what he does, which is a sort of floating motion. So we've got all three characters on the screen at the same time, all of them talking at the same time. They're all giving a primer on what the SGC is all about to anybody that doesn't know that. But they're all talking at the same time.
If you listen to each individual one you'll want to go back and play them again and again and again, because you want to hear what each of them is saying.
Brad Rines, when he put it together in the edit suite. He walked in, and what you see there is virtually what Brad and I saw he had done in his editor's copy. That's another really powerful scene.
For me, the smaller exposition scenes sometimes have that "hit in the back" after I've seen it done. It's kind of cool.
GW: You say a script isn't good unless there's an explosion every ten seconds or so, especially in the bigger opening episodes and ending episodes, but it really is the character moments between the characters.
MW: It is. It's action-adventure. And an action adventure is action and an adventure. But you know what? Truthfully, having done a million shots where things are blowing up, they're cool. And they're what you look forward to in your day. But honestly, I've done some Atlantises in the last little while where it's just people stuck talking, and they're so much fun to do because it's a part of drama you get to play out, and harder to shoot. There's not a lot of angles, so you have to really think about how to do it.
GW: You've been doing this show for so long now, which of your episodes do you feel most withstand the test of time? Which are you most proud of?
MW: You know, I get asked this a lot when people look at the volume of work. It's a very hard question for me to answer. I'd rather say "In this category, [these] are the ones I like." "In this category, these are the ones I like." "In this category, these are the ones I like."
Because truthfully, the evolution that's happened with me in my directing skill. "Skill" in quotation marks. The evolution that's happened to me as a director has really made a difference in how I like the shows. Because I look at some of the old shows and I go, "Hoo, hey ... I can't believe I did that."
But, you know what? One of my favorite shows is still "Solitudes." "Solitudes," "Small Victories," these are shows that I can watch over and over again and look past the directing and think, "Those are my favorite shows." Things like "Grace Under Pressure" was another one of my favorites. It was just David and Amanda.
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Wood lists "Rising" as another of his favorite episodes from Stargate. |
The ones I have to take my brain and pull it out and do this with. When I'm actually thinking not just how to make it through the day and how to tell the story the best, but what can I add to this story to make it move forward in a way that becomes a more "roundful" story. But I mean, there's the "Lost City"s. I love doing those kinds of things. "Rising" was a favorite of mine. "The Storm," "The Eye." Those are Atlantises.
You go back into the Stargates where you start thinking about. "The Siege." Sorry, that's Atlantis. "The Siege, I, II and III," I really liked. You start thinking about "Into the Fire" where they were supposed to be this big. "Into the Fire" was not supposed to be a huge show. It suddenly became this massive thing.
There's a lot of them I really, really like. It's hard unless we are saying, "What's your favorite Richard Dean Anderson show?" What's your favorite Teal'c episode?" I loved "Avatar." I had such a good time with "Avatar." I can tell you when you talk about it in those categories which are my favorites, but it's hard to say overall favorite for anything.
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