Pilot (Smallville)

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"Pilot"
Smallville episode
Clark is strung up as a scarecrow in the promotional poster for the premiere; this would lend to comparisons to Christ, as well as other character themes between Clark and Lex.
Episode no.Season 1
Episode 1
Directed byDavid Nutter
Written byAlfred Gough & Miles Millar
Production code475165
Original air dateOctober 16, 2001 (2001-10-16)
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The pilot episode of the television series

The WB on October 16, 2001. It was written by series developers Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, and directed by David Nutter.[1] The Smallville pilot introduces the characters of Clark Kent, an orphaned alien with superhuman abilities, and his friends and family who live in the fictional town of Smallville, Kansas
. It follows Clark as he first learns of his alien origins, and attempts to stop a vengeful student from killing Smallville High School students. The episode introduces many themes that were designed to run either the course of the season or the entire series, such as the triangular relationships of the main characters.

Production was set in Vancouver, Canada, used for its "middle America" landscape, with five months devoted to casting the right actors in the lead roles.[2] Filming for the pilot officially began four days after the last actor was cast for the series. When time constraints would not allow the production crew to physically create the sets, computer-generated imagery was used to digitally insert set pieces into a scene. When the series premiere was broadcast, it broke several of The WB's viewership records. It was generally well received by critics, and was nominated for various awards, winning two.

Plot and themes introduced

The episode begins in 1989 when a meteor shower hits Smallville; at the same time a small spacecraft, containing an alien boy, crashes in front of Jonathan and Martha Kent's (played by John Schneider and Annette O'Toole) truck. They adopt the superhumanly powerful child and name him Clark. Gough and Millar use this opening scene to establish that the three lead characters of the series, Clark, Lana and Lex, share a common bond—they are all without one or both parents: Clark is the only survivor of his homeworld; Lana's parents are killed in the meteor shower; and Lex is alienated from his father, Lionel Luthor (John Glover), after being rendered bald by the meteor blast.[3]

The episode jumps forward twelve years to when Clark (

Whitney Fordman (Eric Johnson), becomes jealous of Clark and Lana's friendship and ties Clark to a scarecrow pole, using Lana's necklace, indirectly, to subdue Clark. This image of Clark, in just his underwear and a red "S" painted on his chest, stretches back to Gough and Millar's foundation for the series, which was about taking Clark down to the basic elements of the Superman character.[3]

In the second strand of the story, Lex Luthor (Michael Rosenbaum) and Clark develop a "yin and yang" relationship. Clark first saves Lex from drowning when they get into a car accident; at the end of the episode, Lex saves Clark when he is strung up in the cornfield and immobilized by kryptonite.[4] Jeremy Creek (Adrian McMorran)—who was mutated by the meteor rocks, gaining special powers—puts the three former jocks, who tied him to a scarecrow pole during the meteor shower, into comas. He sets out to kill everyone attending the school's dance, after witnessing Clark experience the same hazing he did, but Clark is able to arrive in time to stop him.

Production

Casting

Tom Welling (pictured in 2010) twice refused the role of Clark Kent before testing for it.

Gough and Millar had five months for casting, but their primary focus was on finding an actor to play Clark Kent. They received Kristin Kreuk's audition tape for the role of Lana Lang and liked it so much that they immediately showed her to the network.[2] Tom Welling, after twice turning down the producers' attempts to get him to audition for the role of Clark Kent, eventually accepted the opportunity to be part of the show.[5] It was David Nutter who finally convinced Welling to read the script for the pilot, after finding Welling's picture in a photo album at the casting director's office. Welling's manager did not want him to take the role because it could hurt his feature film career, but Welling liked the script and agreed to come in for an audition.[3] Welling's reason for turning down the role was because the producers were keeping quiet on what the show was really about, which left him with the impression the show was going to be "Superman in high school", something he did not want to do. Nutter promised to let Welling read the script if he came in and auditioned. After auditioning, Welling was given the script to read, which he thought was "amazing".[6] For one of his auditions, he read the graveyard scene, from the pilot, with Kristin Kreuk; the network thought they had "great chemistry". No one could agree on which actors had the best audition for Lex Luthor.[2] Michael Rosenbaum auditioned twice, and, believing he did not take his first audition seriously, outlined a two-and-a-half-page scene from the pilot. He indicated all the places to be funny, charismatic, or menacing,[7] and performed so well that everyone agreed he was "the guy".[2]

John Schneider was brought in to play Jonathan Kent. Schneider was already well known as Bo Duke from The Dukes of Hazzard, and Gough believed Schneider's experience from The Dukes of Hazzard added believability to the idea that he could have grown up running a farm. Cynthia Ettinger was originally cast as Martha Kent, but during filming it was generally agreed—Ettinger included—that she was not right for the role.[2] Annette O'Toole, who previously portrayed Lana Lang in Superman III,[8] and who was fresh off the recent cancellation of her television series The Huntress, was cast in Ettinger's place, reshooting the scenes Ettinger had filmed.[9]

Eric Johnson, after auditioning for the roles of Lex and Clark, was cast as Lana Lang's boyfriend Whitney Fordman. Johnson only spent one day filming his scenes for the pilot.

African-American, against the mythology.[12]

Filming

Once Warner Bros. Television secured the rights to the show, Gough and Millar set out to write the script and find a director for the pilot.[2] Gough and Millar were fans of director David Nutter's previous work; they considered him to be a "preeminent pilot director".[2] David Nutter joined the project because he wanted to make a pilot that respected the audience but that was still fun and smart. Nutter also believes in creating shows that appeal to a wide variety of audiences.[13] He wanted the final scene for the pilot, in which Clark fantasizes about dancing with Lana, to express the show's essence.[2] According to Welling: "It brings them close—not as close as Clark would like, but at the end of [this] episode, he imagines that he's with her and can really see it happening".[5]

Production was initially slated to take place in Australia, but

second unit filming. Time constraints forced Nutter to film strictly from Adrien Van Viersen's 150–page storyboard when filming the opening meteor shower scene.[3]
Much of the look for Smallville came from Millar, who wanted the epitome of "Smalltown, USA". Construction coordinator Rob Maier explained: "It had to be cleaner than clean, nicer than nice, more beautiful than it would be in the real world. All of the people in Smallville are beautiful; all of the colors are bright and sharp". For the Kent farm, Nutter wanted to have "an old world sensibility and tone".[13] For the pilot, the production crew only built a kitchen and dining room to represent the Kent home.[15] All the exterior shots of the farm were taken at the Andalinis farm, owned by a local couple who also gave the crew permission to paint their forest green house yellow.[16] Since the Vancouver farm already had a barn, the production crew only had to build a loft with stairs leading up to it.[15]

Hatley Castle provides the outside look of the Luthor ancestral home, but the interior was shot at Shannon Mews, in Vancouver.[3]

Exterior shots of the Luthor Mansion were shot at the

Cloverdale.[3] Most of the filming took place in Cloverdale, since the town had a long stretch of vacant buildings that could double as Smallville's Main Street. When the production crew came to film the opening teaser, they had to decorate the town with ribbons and balloons, as well as paint some of the buildings to attain Millar's idea of "Smalltown, USA".[16] Two sets were built just for the pilot. The Kent storm cellar was built as a cover set inside the farm's barn. For the cemetery scene between Clark and Lana, production designer Bernard Hides built the entire cemetery from scratch in an empty field.[3]

Effects

On-set computer-generated effects for the pilot were done by Thomas Special Effects. Certain scenes, because of time and money, had to be created digitally. The opening sequence showing the destruction of the water tower by a meteor was created on the computer. A persistent problem during production was the lack of cornfields. As realistic corn was a necessity for a show based in Kansas, this became a problem for the filmmakers. Over 10,000 stalks of corn were grown in a greenhouse for the pilot, but they only grew two feet high, which was not usable to the crew. The day the crew was filming the scene for Clark's landing there were no cornfields in the surrounding area. The cornfields had to be digitally added. Digital corn was a common substitute for the undersized corn that was grown, but for scenes where digital corn was not an option, six hundred stalks of fake corn were flown in from a manufacturer in Arizona. Other digital effects include the flattened cornfield where Lex was caught in a meteorite blast. Some scenes required physical effects, instead of computer imagery. When Lex drives his car off a bridge and hits Clark, the stunt performer, who doubled as Wolverine in the film X-Men, was literally hit by the car as it went over the bridge.[3]

Release and reception

"Pilot" premiered on

Foley Sound Editing and one for Music Sound Editing.[24][25] Peter Wunstorf was also nominated for an American Society of Cinematographers Award for his work on the pilot.[26] The pilot, along with the second episode "Metamorphosis", was released in Canada as a special pilot movie. The episodes were altered on the DVD, formatted in 1.78 widescreen, and presented with no opening segment and an alternate closing. It also contained the same special features present in the DVD box set of the first season. The DVD was released in a snap case.[27]

The pilot received favorable reviews upon its release.

EST)—but also the audience's expectations of "what Superman should be".[19][30] USA Today's Robert Bianco was a bit more mixed in his criticism. Bianco stated: "For all its innovations, there's also something rehashed and repetitive about Smallville... shows often look more familiar at the outset than they do as they progress. There's talent and intelligence at work in Smallville. Given time, maybe they'll find a more distinctive voice".[31] Jeremy Conrad, from IGN, swore to himself that he would never watch Smallville, because he was a "huge Superman fan" and he did not like the idea the creators would be making changes to the Superman mythology. After viewing the pilot, Conrad said: "It's a very solid start to the series, and one of the better pilot episodes I've seen in a while".[32] In The Futon Critic's 50 best episodes of 2001 rankings, the pilot was placed 31st, with Brian Ford Sullivan stating that "Smallville opened us to a surprisingly fresh take on the Superman myth-this time showing us the humble beginnings of a young Clark Kent".[33]

The CW re-aired the pilot on Friday, April 8, 2011 in preparation for the series finale. The episode was watched by 1.55 million viewers and achieved a 0.5 Adults 18-49 rating, despite only 92% coverage.[34]

See also

References

Footnotes

  1. ^ "Smallville – 'Pilot' Episode Info – MSN TV". MSN. Archived from the original on 2007-11-03. Retrieved 2007-08-21.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Simpson, pp. 8–17
  3. ^
    Warner Bros. Television
    . 2002.
  4. Warner Bros. Television
    . 2002.
  5. ^ a b Simpson, pp. 112–115.
  6. ^ Robert Falconer (2005-05-30). "Super-Natural: A Conversation with Tom Welling". Hollywood North Reporter.
  7. ^ Simpson, pp. 120–123.
  8. ^ a b Rob Owen (2001-10-14). "Superman revisited in "Smallville"". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Retrieved 2007-07-08.
  9. ^ Simpson, pp. 136–139.
  10. ^ Simpson, pp. 132–135.
  11. ^ a b Simpson, pp. 128–131.
  12. ^ Simpson, pp. 124–127.
  13. ^ a b Simpson, pp. 20–23.
  14. ^ "CBS PressExpress – The CW-Shows". CBS. Retrieved 2007-08-21.[permanent dead link]
  15. ^ a b Simpson, pp. 24–27.
  16. ^
    Warner Bros. Television
    . 2002.
  17. ^ "Smallville Episodes | TVGuide.com". TV Guide. Retrieved 2007-07-09.
  18. ^ Seth Gunderson (2001-11-05). "Smallville, Kansas. The biggest little town you've ever seen". The Trades. Archived from the original on October 11, 2007. Retrieved 2007-05-22.
  19. ^ a b Elizabeth White (2001-10-22). "Big ifs for WB's very cool 'Smallville'". Media Life Magazine. Archived from the original on 2007-09-30. Retrieved 2007-05-24.
  20. ^ Rob Allstetter (2001-12-21). "Mass o' Media: Smallville gets a full season". Comics Buyer's Guide (1466): 14.
  21. ^ "CNN's 2002 Emmy Winners". CNN. Archived from the original on May 18, 2007. Retrieved 2007-05-02.
  22. ^ "2002 Winners". Leo Awards. Archived from the original on September 27, 2007. Retrieved 2007-06-09.
  23. ^ "Artios Award Winners". Casting Society. Archived from the original on 2008-01-30. Retrieved 2007-06-09.
  24. ^ "Past Golden Reel Awards". Motion Picture Sound Editors. Archived from the original on 2007-09-28. Retrieved 2007-06-09.
  25. Internet Movie Database
    . Retrieved 2007-06-09.
  26. ^ "16th Annual Awards". American Society of Cinematographers. Archived from the original on 2006-05-22. Retrieved 2007-06-09.
  27. ^ Gord Lacey (2002-06-30). "Smallville - Pilot movie review". TV Shows on DVD. Archived from the original on 2014-03-20. Retrieved 2008-08-07.
  28. ^ Rob Owen (2001-09-16). "Fall 2001: A mediocre TV odyssey". Post-Gazette. Retrieved 2007-05-22.
  29. ^ Judge Bryan Byun (2003-11-24). "Season 1 DVD review". DVD Verdict. Archived from the original on 2008-07-04. Retrieved 2008-08-07.
  30. ^ Rob Owen (2001-11-29). "Tuned In: It's time to revisit the season's new shows". Post Gazette. Retrieved 2007-05-27.
  31. ^ Robert Bianco (2001-10-16). "'Smallville' has a good chance of flying high". USA Today. Retrieved 2007-05-26.
  32. ^ Jeremy Conrad (2002-07-09). "Smallville (Pilot Episode)". IGN. Retrieved 2007-08-18.
  33. ^ Brian Ford Sullivan (2002-01-02). "The 50 Best Episodes Of 2001-#40-31". The Futon Critic. Retrieved 2007-08-18.
  34. ^ Gorman, Bill (April 11, 2011). "Friday Final Ratings: 'CSI:NY', 'Blue Bloods' Adjusted Up; 'Smallville', 'Supernatural' Adjusted Down". TV by the Numbers. Archived from the original on April 14, 2011. Retrieved April 11, 2011.

Bibliography

  • Simpson, Paul (2004). Smallville: The Official Companion Season 1. London:
    ISBN 1-84023-795-3
    .

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to Season 1.
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Smallville.

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