Atlantis (Stargate)
Atlantis | |
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Zero Point Module |
Atlantis is a fictional
The shows production designer Bridget McGuire oversaw the interior set design of Atlantis, with James Robbins adding to it after taking over the role in the
Development and production
Development
Following completing work on Stargate SG-1 season seven, Bridget McGuire and her art department were on hiatus. Stargate SG-1 had been confirmed for an eighth season in July 2003, but with no series order for Stargate Atlantis, McGuire assumed the show would not go ahead that year.[4][5] Stargate Atlantis was given the green light on November 17 2003 and according to McGuire the day after meeting with executive producer John Smith, McGuire was back at work designing Atlantis.[6][5][7]
Wright imagined Atlantis as being a city that had been created by a fictional race of beings called the
Concept
During
In designing the Atlantis, according to McGuire there were certain requirements for the set. Similarly to the Stargate Command set used on Stargate SG-1 there needed to be a Stargate, a control area, a conference room and some multi-purpose spaces that could become laboratories and other rooms as and when required.[5] Despite this, Brad Wright and Robert C. Cooper wanted the Atlantis set to be aesthetically "distinctly different" from the Stargate Command, which McGuire noted "wasn't difficult to do" as she "basically just went in the opposite direction". In contrast to the "dark" and "claustrophobic" Stargate Command set, McGuire designed Atlantis to have "plenty of light and windows" and be "very open and airy".[12] According to Wright, the Atlantis gate room "had to be big and have plenty of scope" imagining that Atlantis was "built as a base for Space exploration".[13]
The work and architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright played a major influence in both the interior and exterior design of Atlantis.[8] According to McGuire "It was a nice jumping-off place, because his architecture is so distinctive", specifically citing the geometry of the Lloyd Wright designed Price Tower in Bartleville, Oklahoma as informing that of the Atlantis set.[14][15] Brad Wright decided on a copper colour pallet to be used throughout the sets of Atlantis, with bright reds to blue-green variations, based around copper oxidizing used.[14][16]
Sets
The main Atlantis set, consisting of the gateroom, control area, briefing room, Weir's office and multi-purpose rooms were constructed on Stage 6 at The Bridge Studios in Burnaby, Canada.[17]
Having been given the greenlight on November 17, 2003, McGuire had less than 3 months to design and build the Atlantis set in time for filming to commence in February 2004. Although Wright and Cooper had an outline for Stargate Atlantis, they were still writing the script until the end of December 2003.[1][18] McGuire and her team spent two weeks coming up with "The floor plan and general approach" as well as the costing for the set. Construction then commenced whilst the set continued to be designed and the script written.[14] From November until February, around 200 people were involved in the design and construction of Atlantis, with building work taking place 24 hours a day and stopping only for Christmas. According to Wright the set was only finished "the morning on the first day of shooting".[14][19]
In designing the sets for Atlantis, McGuire was mindful that production should be able to repurpose spaces and sets. McGuire recognised that the Stargate Command gateroom on Stargate SG-1 was a "giant set" which could not be easily reconfigured for any other uses, due to the Stargate prop being fixed.[14] Keen to avoid the same problem in the even larger Atlantis gateroom set, McGuire's team designed a system that allowed the Stargate to be lowered down and hidden below the set floor. This then meant the set could be redressed as another space when required.[5] The central gateroom area, often referred to as the "Gatetrium" was positioned on the ground floor, which was then linked by a staircase to the briefing room, control room and command office on the second floor.[20] McGuire designed the open layout to both maximise the space and so that the Stargate appeared at an angle when viewed from the control and briefing rooms, "rather than flat on, like in the SGC".[5] Below the briefing room, control room and command office was a space that could be used as a "swing set", with movable walls allowing production to repurpose the space into rooms such as an infirmary, a lab or living quarters.[20] According to Wright, McGuire had designed the control room set to feature a spiral staircase, however during construction it was incorrectly installed behind a set wall and therefore only ended up being used for crew access.[21] Frank Lloyd Wright's influence continued in the sets use of huge stained glass windows, which were used to achieve McGuire's desire to have a bright set, with plenty of light coming in.[7][22] Robbin's designed windows and then printed them onto appliques, which were then adhered to glass.[22]
In addition to the Atlantis sets designed and build specifically for the first season of the show, production also inherited a large set built for the 2004 film
Some sets, such as the launch bay housing the Puddle Jumpers were created almost entirely digitally, with just a single set wall with a doorway built. Texture photographs of different walls from around the physical set were taken and with variations created by digitally altering the images, with artist Tom Brydon then building the set digitally.[27] Additionally, digital set extensions were used whenever scenes took place on any of the cities outdoor balconies.[28] During the first season of the show, Brad Wright was frustrated due to the lack of money available, often finding himself having to remove visual effects scenes with windows in Atlantis, venting "It's supposed to be this majestic city and you're really in closet after closet after closet".[29] NEC-Mitsubishi provided flat-screen LCD displays for the Atlantis set, as well as refitting the Stargate Command set.[30]
The set had been left up for some time after Stargate Atlantis was cancelled, with the intention that it would be used for the planned
Models and exterior
Design
Although it was ultimately not featured in the finished episode, McGuire had art director James Robbins develop concept drawings of the exterior of Atlantis during pre-production of the Stargate SG-1
Whilst the sets were being constructed, concept artist Chris Wren was hired to work on the exterior design of the city. McGuire, Wright and Cooper had already established the general shape and structure of the city, as well as outlaying the technology present and "how the various sections interacted".[36] Wren would go back-and-forth with his ideas to Cooper and Wright, working in a variety of mediums to produce concept art, which included quick pencil drawings, which he would then expanding into full colour artwork. Wren would also build scenes "with very basic primitive shapes" to help under composition and perspective and then go on to "paint over the render in Photoshop, adding all the ambient lighting and details".[37][38] These drawings would be fed onto John Gajdecki and the visual effects team at Rainmaker, who were developing the visual effects model of Atlantis.[39]
Visual Effects
At least two full models of Atlantis were created over the course of the show.
Although the Atlantis model was entirely created using visual effects, many of the scenes it would appear in would contain live action elements. In the shows pilot episode, a visual effects sequence in which Atlantis rises from the bottom of the ocean required more water particle effects than the show would be able to afford. In order to overcome this, water particle visual effects were used for close-up shots, whilst live action water particles were used for the wider shots of the city.[45] Rainmaker used Lightwave for creating the city, water and sky, whilst Autodesk Maya was used to create the water particle splash dynamics, developing a pipeline to move elements back and forth between the two programs.[42][46] Production physically recreated Atlantis' 'pier e' out of industrial strength steel.[45] The seven metre long model which weighed approximately two tonnes was subsequently transported to False Creek, Vancouver, where a crane was used to lower and lift the model to and from the water. Filmed at 120 frames per second, water coming off of the pier was captured from a variety of angles and subsequently composited into the visual effects shots of Atlantis rising.[42][47] Additionally, water particles were filmed against a number of different backdrops to be added into various visual effects shots of the city.[45] The sky surrounding Atlantis was created using photographs taken by many of the visual effects artists, including supervisors John Gajdecki and Bruce Woloshyn.[45][48]
During the break between
Depiction
The Lost City of the
In the episodes "
Further reading
References
Citations
- ^ ISBN 1845761162.
- ^ Wright, Brad (2 January 2009). "Brad Wright Answers Your Questions". josephmallozzi.com.
- ^ Wright, Brad; Cooper, Robert C. (28 April 2004). "New Order". rdanderson.com (Interview). Interviewed by Kate Ritter.
- ^ "MGM Confirms SG-1 Season 8". scifi.com. 21 July 2003. Archived from the original on 9 October 2003.
- ^ ISBN 1845761162.
- ISBN 1845761162.
- ^ a b Wright, Brad; McGuire, Bridget (August 2004). "ATLANTIS RISING - Page 1 of 4". Scifi.com. Interviewed by Thomasina Gibson. Archived from the original on 22 August 2004.
- ^ a b O'Hare, Kate (12 July 2004). "'Stargate Atlantis' Gets Its Feet Wet on Sci Fi". Zap2it. Archived from the original on 11 October 2004.
- ^ Marais, Carin (13 September 2022). "Stargate Atlantis in Myth: From Ancient History to Stargate's Lost City". The Companion.
- ISSN 0960-8230.
This is the first time we see any of the Lost City of Atlantis, and it is, in fact, an outpost or part of the city itself. I had to keep in mind that if the Atlantis series were to become a reality then its standing sets would in some way have to tie-in with those we establish in Lost City. I wanted to come up with a motif or design for this world that was not only interesting to look at but also adaptable. So for instance, there would be one main space that was a cathedral-like room with alcoves, and then other smaller areas that could serve as a lab, corridors or anything else necessary. Of course, with all these spaces you need instruments, places to sit, etc, and as we're in an alien environment everything has to look alien. It has to make sense in its own world, too. Although our outpost set is inside an ice cave it's not a crystal cave. So I went on the Internet and began looking at crystalline structures and came across electron-microscopic images of snowflakes. Oddly enough, they looked more like spaceships rather than snowflakes and I thought, 'Hey, that's cool'. Also, even though they're organic shapes that occur in Nature they have an architecture-like appearance as well. We took those elements and incorporated them into the look of our set. This process could then be carried through when designing the Atlantis sets.
- ISBN 1845761162.
- ISSN 0960-8230.
When it came to the look of the set, the producers wanted it to be distinctly different from the one on Stargate. That wasn't difficult to do. We basically just went in the opposite direction. The Stargate Command facility is dark and claustrophobic, whereas our base on Atlantis has plenty of light and windows and is very open and airy. The Atlantis set is also bigger. Its Stargate is set on the diagonal of the studio, so the distance between the gate and the control room is actually further.
- ISSN 0960-8230.
The Atlantis gate room set is especially impressive. It had to be big and have plenty of scope. The beauty of this gate room, which was part of the basic concept for the series, is that in the show it was built as a base for Space exploration. That's why it has the puddle-jumpers and everything else that goes along with it. It's a place used to explore the Pegasus galaxy. There's a great deal of fun in that, and therefore fun in the design of the sets as well.
- ^ a b c d e McGuire, Bridget; Wright, Brad (3 May 2004). "'Stargate': Rise of a Fertile Franchise". Next TV. Interviewed by Mary McNamara.
- ISSN 0960-8230.
I used [architect] Frank Lloyd Wright as my inspiration. He designed, among countless other things, the Price Tower in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, which is based on a 30-60-90 triangle. Our set was constructed using a similar type of geometry. The lower gallery is made up of equilateral triangles in order that flat surfaces can be shifted around to create different spaces and shapes. So most of the walls are at 30 degree angles or some variation of that, and anything circular is, in fact, some sort of machinery. For example, the Stargate is round and so is the Atlantis conference room, which also serves as a VR [visual reality] room.
- ^ McGuire, Bridget (5 August 2023). "210: Bridget McGuire, Art Director and Production Designer, Stargate (Interview)". Youtube (Interview). Interviewed by David Read. Dial the Gate.
- ISSN 1743-8020.
First stop on the tour is a visit to the main Stargate: Atlantis set, housed in Stage six. The show's standing set is comprised of a magnificent, split level interior, housing the stargate, those huge stairs, the balcony on which stand the gate's control panels, and Weir's office. Below, adjacent and on a slightly lower level to the floor on which stands the Stargate, is an extra room used for shooting a variety of scenes.
- ^ ISSN 0960-8230.
We got the go-ahead for the series around mid-November [2003]. The following day, the production design team began working on ideas for the standing sets. Brad and I were actually approving the building of the sets while we were writing the script. No one had even seen a script when they were designing the interior set for the city, which is the central feature of the TV show. The city of Atlantis itself is built as a CGI model and 10 times the size of anything they've ever built at Rainmaker, which is one of the bigger VFX companies here in Vancouver.
- ISSN 0960-8230.
Designing the main standing set for Atlantis came up very quickly. Everyone was on hiatus last November when we all received phone calls asking us to come into the office for a meeting the following morning. The day after that we started working on our designs. Construction began about three weeks later and the set was finished by the beginning of February.
- ^ ISSN 0960-8230.
We call the central area where the gate is the Gatetrium. If you walk up the main set of stairs you arrive at a landing. To the left is the conference room and to the right is the control room. Behind the tall stained glass window of the landing is an exterior balcony that supposedly overlooks the ocean surrounding Atlantis. If you walk out of the control room and across an overhead bridge you'll end up in a small space that serves as Dr Weir's [Torri Higginson] office. Heading back downstairs, if you stand with your back to the gate there's a ramp on the left and one to the right. They come together to form what's known as the lower gallery. That space is used as a swing set. The walls can be moved around to create an infirmary, a lab, someone's living quarters, whatever we need for the particular episode being shot.
- ^ a b Wright, Brad; Cooper, Robert C. (8 December 2023). "Revealing the secrets of the Stargate Atlantis set!". Youtube. The Companion.
- ^ a b Robbins, James; Cooper, Robert C.; Wright, Brad; Higginson, Torri; Flanigan, Joe; Francks, Rainbow Sun (August 2004). "ATLANTIS RISING — Page 2 of 4". Scifi.com. Interviewed by Thomasina Gibson. Archived from the original on 24 October 2004.
- ^ a b "Sci Fi Lowdown: Behind the Stargate - Secrets Revealed". Sci Fi Lowdown. 17 January 2005. 18:20 minutes in. Scifi Channel.
- ^ Cooper, Robert C. (31 October 2020). "012: Robert C. Cooper, Writer and Executive Producer, Stargate (Interview)". Youtube. Interviewed by David Read. Dial the Gate.
- ^ Wright, Brad; Cooper, Robert C. (3 July 2005). "Executive Decisions (Part 3)". Gateworld (Interview). Interviewed by Darren Sumner.
- ISSN 1743-8020.
- ^ a b c d Woloshyn, Bruce (3 December 2005). "Bruce Woloshyn interview". The Scifi World. Interviewed by Gilles Nuytens.
- ^ Mallozzi, Joseph (26 March 2013). "You asked for it! Atlantis floor plans! The Control Room! The ZPM Room! Weir's Office! The Adrift & Lifeline Art Department Package!". josephmallozzi.com.
- ^ Wright, Brad; Cooper, Robert C. (1 July 2005). "Executive Decisions (Part 1)". Gateworld.
- ^ "NEC-MITSUBISHI Electronic Display gets prime time exposure with 'STARGATE SG-1' and 'STARGATE ATLANTIS'". NEC-Mitsubishi. 21 June 2004. Archived from the original on 2 July 2004.
- ^ Mallozzi, Joseph (2 October 2008). "What the Future Holds (No Spoilers!)". Joseph Mallozzi.
- ^ "To Attendees of The Official Stargate Vancouver Convention". Creation Entertainment. Archived from the original on 12 February 2010.
- ^ Mallozzi, Joseph (11 February 2010). "Production update! Olympic update! Mailbag!". josephmallozzi.com.
- ^ Robbins, James (31 January 2021). "047: James CD Robbins, Art Director and Production Designer, Stargate (Interview)". Youtube (Interview). Interviewed by David Read. Dial the Gate.
- ^ Robbins, James (22 July 2023). "206: SG-1 Seasons 6-7 Concept Art with James CD Robbins (Special)". Youtube (Interview). Interviewed by David Read. Dial the Gate.
- ISSN 1743-8020.
I was brought into work with the 3D artists and devise a layout for the city. Brad Wright and Robert Cooper had given us tons of visual reference about what the general shape of the City was to be and how they wanted the overall structure to look, but they pretty much left everything else to us. They had very specific ideas about the history and the backstory, how the technology worked and how the various sections interacted, but I got the impression from them that they really enjoy watching the ideas evolve visually. They gave us a lot of room to experiment.
- ISSN 1743-8020.
Part of the reference was electron microscope images of snowflakes, which I think Brad Wright was taken with. Robert Cooper is also a fan of Frank Lloyd Wright and his style of modernist architecture. We would talk about how they wanted the city to work structurally. Then I would go away and come up with some different ideas and very rough pencil sketches. We'd discuss those again and I would produce some colour artwork that the 3D artists would use as a general reference to help them as they were building the city. I work with 3D quite a bit when I developing concept ideas - it's just so much faster than drawing. Usually I'll build a scene with very basic primitive shapes, just to get the composition and perspective right. Then I'll paint over the render in Photoshop, adding all the ambient lighting and details.
- ^ "Stargate Atlantis - Preproduction Designs". Mondolithic. 2004. Archived from the original on 3 August 2004.
- ^ Gajdecki, John (8 July 2023). "202: John Gajdecki, VFX Supervisor, Stargate Stargate (Interview)". Youtube (Interview). Interviewed by David Read. Dial the Gate. Event occurs at 1:16:08.
- ^ a b c Savela, Mark (14 July 2009). "Digital Magic". Gateworld. Interviewed by David Read.
- ^ Gajdecki, John (2 August 2004). "Gajdecki rises again at Rainmaker". Playback.ca. Interviewed by Ian Edwards.
- ^ a b c "Outstanding Special Visual Effects for a Series" (PDF). Emmy Awards. 2005. pp. 22–36. Archived from the original (pdf) on 10 September 2005.
- ^ Woloshyn, Bruce (14 February 2005). "A Day At Rainmaker". Youtube. Interviewed by David Read. Gateworld. Event occurs at 9:50.
- ISSN 1743-8020.
- ^ a b c d e Gajdecki, John (15 October 2023). "228: John Gajdecki Part 2, VFX Supervisor, Stargate Stargate (Interview)". Youtube (Interview). Interviewed by David Read. Dial the Gate.
- ^ Woloshyn, Bruce (1 February 2005). "Step by Step: Stargate: Atlantis". Millimeter (Interview). Interviewed by Ellen Wolff. Archived from the original on 6 March 2005.
- ^ Woloshyn, Bruce (28 September 2006). "TV VFX: Asserting Early Creative Control". Animated World Network.
- ^ Woloshyn, Bruce (3 March 2005). "Bruce Woloshyn describes effects challenges". Gateworld. Archived from the original on 8 March 2008.
- ^ a b Tichenor, James (11 February 2023). "169: James Tichenor, Visual Effects Producer and Writer, Stargate (Interview)". Youtube. Interviewed by David Read. Dial the Gate. Event occurs at 1:11:22.
- ^ Perez, Jose A. (14 September 2010). "MODELS IN MOTION: STARGATE ATLANTIS". fxstation.net.
- Season 6. Episode 22. 21 March 2003. Sky One. Dialog Continuity Script(PDF).
- Season 7. Episode 22. 12 March 2004. Sky One. Dialog Continuity Script(PDF).
- Season 1. Episode 01. 16 July 2004. Scifi Channel.
- Season 1. Episode 10. 17 September 2004. Scifi Channel.
- Season 1. Episode 11. 21 January 2005. Scifi Channel.
- Season 2. Episode 01. 15 July 2005. Scifi Channel.
- Season 3. Episode 11. 13 April 2007. Scifi Channel.
- Season 4. Episode 03. 12 October 2007. Scifi Channel.
- Season 5. Episode 01. 11 July 2008. Scifi Channel.
- Season 5. Episode 20. 9 January 2009. Scifi Channel.