Well now. Things are perking up quite nicely.
I avoided most of the photo shoot sessions this morning (and autographs) because I hate rushing about and I’m not your typical Brit – I hate queuing. I also don’t do autographs – I never really understood it all to be honest (although I do have a few autographed books, but I never asked for them to be signed funnily enough). But fair play to those that seek autographs – it’s just not for me.
The photo shoot thing did confused me. There were no signs to explain where group A or B were being held, what the status of each group was, etc. Thankfully crew members were on hand to assist, but it’d have been appreciated if more signage and perhaps during the opening ceremony things could have been explained a little better. For newcomers to conventions, it’s all quite strange and odd and results in a lot of confused people wondering about blocking corridors and whatnot.
I’ll be attempting to squeeze in the photo sessions tomorrow depending on how things go. I don’t expect I’ll get to meet everybody, but we’ll see how we go. Hopefully most people will have tried to get their photos today.
But I did attend the talks. All of them.
I apologise for the bad quality photos digital zoom on an iPhone 5s is appalling, and as mentioned before, being positioned that far away from the stage makes everybody look like Hobbits.
First up were Simone Bailly and Robert Duncan who gave a thoroughly entertaining talk about how they got into acting.
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Robert told a great story about how he was the understudy for John Malkovich in New York, Simone about how the musical Grease gave her the acting bug.
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The subject of auditions also came up – for both Stargate and elsewhere. According to Robert, Vancouver it is said, is particularly close-knit when it comes to casting directors and consequently if one buggers up an audition it can be passed amongst the great and good of Vancouvers casting establishment.
Simone’s strangest audition was for a jeans advert which asked her to turn around and bend over – slowly. Oo-err missus!
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The photos here don’t show Simone’s legs (oo-er missus), but she was wearing quite stunning (and appropriate) starry/galactic leggings.
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After Simone and Robert came Patrick Currie and Alex Zahara, two actors who have spent a considerable amount of time wearing prosthetic special effects make-up. One anecdote revolved around the Unas make-up whereby one of the specially made contact lenses ($600 a pair) broke and – as luck would have it – was able to use one of Alex’s as he had exactly the same eye shape.
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Patrick on the left, Alex on the right. Alex is wearing part of the original costume from the SG-1 episode, 1969, where he played a hippy.
Patrick and Alex told many amusing stories about having to deal with replicators, groups of Unas’ and former high school colleagues. I got to ask a question: “What was the most difficult visual effects sequence or make-up that you had to endure either on Stargate or any other programme?”
Being that I’ve spent six years professionally in film and TV visual effects (BAFTA, Emmy, and Academy Award winning companies at that) where we have replaced animatronics and produced digital augmented make-up for actors, it seemed like a good question to ask.
That and I wanted to become an animatronics/make-up effects artist – applying (and not quite succeeding) to the Jim Henson Creature Shop when I was back in secondary school. Ironic I would work in an industry that tries to replace physical effects with digital ones for cost purposes (and the old “fix it in post” mantra – yuck).
So I wanted to hear from the actor’s perspective of what it’s like to have you face covered in chemicals, rubber (or mainly silicone these days) and having your eyesight obscured by contact lenses and speech made more difficult by having false teeth.
Boy did we get the lowdown!
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Patrick once suffered from a make-up effects artist who was doing too many drugs and had put him in make-up that was not specifically designed for his face and head. The result was excruciating pressure on the skin because there just wasn’t any flexibility in the pieces applied to his face. Usually you’d create a cast of the actor’s head first before designing the pieces that will end up on their face. On this particular job, the artist didn’t do that.
Alex suffered from having a make-up brush that had been dipped in alcohol accidentally pushed into his eye. Ouch.
And there were the stories of having to have somebody wipe the spit and gunk whenever the false teeth were removed, having a tiny female assistant help with toilet duties and not having the relevant holes in costumes to make going to the toilet easier, along with not being able to eat due to the 2nd call of nature.
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After Patrick and Alex, we had Sharon Taylor and Rachel Luttrell. While the questions seemed to be mainly geared around Rachel (she was the female lead in Stargate Atlantis), Sharon nevertheless got a few good questions put her way.
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One of the very first questions went to Rachel who sang a beautiful lullaby to us all. She is an extraordinary singer, and I can only really demonstrate that by embedding this sequence from the episode called “Beyond the Night”. Music by the late Joel Goldsmith.
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And finally, what I think everybody was waiting for, and the only individual talk given out of all the sessions: Joe Flanigan. The room went nuts when he arrived.
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Joe began telling us of the time that he was invited by the US Air Force to fly in an F16 outside of Las Vegas. The story goes that the USAF had painted his name on the aircraft which wouldn’t initially fly due to engine trouble. So they got him out the plane, he went to have something to eat, and they prepared a new aircraft and off they went. Only the pilot decided it’d be a good thing to throw all the G forces at Joe at once, causing him to be quite sick in the process.
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Other stories included specific lines (in which Joe mentioned the lack of female input into the scripts and direction, although he forgot that there was only one woman director during Atlantis’ five year run – Holly Dale, who has more TV directing credits than most people have had hot dinners and is one of the leading Canadian female directors including Breaking Bad’s Michelle Maclaren, The Borgias (and recently Vikings) Kari Skogland and, yes, even Stargate’s Amanda Tapping to work heavily on US and international shows), practical jokes between himself, David Hewlett, Paul McGillion and Jason Momoa.
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It was a most excellent series of talks and I felt that even if I don’t get the photos, autographs or whatnot the silver pass allows me to get this weekend, these talks were worth the price of the ticket alone. Thank you to all the guests for a thoroughly entertaining afternoon.
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The impossibly tiny chairs that make it difficult for me to sit at the table properly without stretching my legs out at the side. Not friendly for those of us with long legs (ooer missus).
I shortly went for an evening meal at Trunk (fish ‘n’ chips and Grolsh – £20), but it turns that that after the talks they held an auction. Somebody won dinner with all the guests – £625. Ouch. Hope that involved more than fish ‘n’ chips and a pint of Grolsh! For desert I economised a bit:
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What will tomorrow bring? We’ll see. Another report coming up as always.
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