After you've read the article check out the includes pictures from the five minute trailer. Enjoy them!!! |
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| DREAMWATCH,
dec. issue 1999
Story: Richard Hatches last book seems to be the basis for the new movie Richard Hatch is trying to create. Battlestar Galactica: the Second Coming is a five minute trailer for the projected new feature film based on the twenty one year old series. The show has long been upheld by its star Richard Hatch as a shining example of how a television programme can be more than just an hour of entertainment running for twenty two weeks. In interviews he's talked regularly about preparing a trailer, and about eighteen months ago he was starring in Iron Thunder on which he was working with Johnnie Young and Jay Woelfer to whom he talked about desire to resurrect GALACTICA. With the twenty Yahren reunion coming up that September, Hatch wanted something firm to be able to report to the fans, and so pre-production on the trailer began.
A total of six or so days were spent filming twenty eight to thirty pages of script (which equates to approx. twenty-eight minutes of film), which have been cut down to the very fast moving trailer. Help came from all sides - from fans of the show who happened to be professionals in the industry, including highly repspected cinematographer Dean Cundey who helmed a day of special effects work; from other fans who were eager to help in any respect. As co-producer Jay Woelfel explains, everyone was galvanized by the zeal and enthusiasm Richard Hatch brought to the project. "Some of the people who said they would help us didn't end up helping us. It's a free project, and some people came out and helped for five minutes, then disappeared, and those people aren't really the people who got the thing done. But if somebody promised something and they didn't do it, Richard would be ready to go, but just as open, and give them the same speech he'd given to that last person who'd dropped out. He had to do that on several occasions.
The script was written by Hatch in conjunction with his partner Sophie LaPorte, and Hatch both co-directed and co-produced the film. "The one thing that we brought on to this that Richard couldn't bring was a professional
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production ability to make the
thing." says co-producer Johnnie Young. "Richard had a lot passion and could
talk about what he wanted to do, but he need a core of people to actually make it reality.
I think that for the most part, it worked pretty well together, being able for him to say
something and for us to tell him what could and couldn't be done, and jay and the
collaborated a lot creatively on direction and stuff for the piece."
His passion was tempered by the reality of the situation. "He'd say he'd want the battles to be like this and me and the other effects guys would come up with how to do it," adds Woelfel. "We wanted the space battles to be very visceral, not the traditional spaceships shooting each other, but having the ships practically whamming into each other, much closer together. I would interpret Richard's ideas of how he wanted things to be handled -- like keeping the camera moving and having exciting direction."
It had to be a low budget independent-financed trailer yet look as if it could compete with the highly expensive style of todays science fiction films. They used a steadycam guy that they knew and he came in for a day and refused any payment from Richard Hatch.
Fans of the original series won't be disappointed with the trailer. Besides the fimiliar faces of the vipers, Apollo and Baltar there are new faces as well, including redesigned Cylon warriors and ships. The new Cylons are conceptualised as new beings, but they were based what was in the old shows, and based on the original concepts of what they were meant to be. The designer was also in touch with the guy who designed the original Cylons, Andy Probert, who sent sketches for a new Cylon. Ken didn't slave just to his ideas either, but he had all that stuff in front of him, and he used all those many version to come up with the new Cylons.
With Richard Hatch now ensconced in negotiations with Universal, everyone on the Second Coming is very optimistic that fleeing from the Cylon tyranny, the last Battlestar Galactica, will once again lead a ragtag fugitive fleat, on a lonely quest - for a shining planet known as Earth. The battle is just beginning with Glen, I ruined Galactica, larson now working on his movie version of the series based on Cain and the Pegasus. END OF LINE |
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