The Shape of Things to Come

The producers of Caprica had a fairly good idea from the start that their show would be a tough sell. The ending of their first season, which has turned out to be their last, proves they weren’t really expecting to get a second season after all. Full of action and surprises, Caprica comes to an explosive conclusion, with an epilogue that will blow you away. The fans get far more closure than they might have expected, but this episode is hardly a showcase for the high calibre acting that has distinguished the series so far. At least one major character is unseen.

You didn’t really expect Apotheosis to be as nice and shiny as Clarice told you, did you?

 

It All Comes Down to the Biggest Game of the Season

What follows is a recap and review of the Caprica finale, and therefore CONTAINS SPOILERS.

BSG on agenda for VFX festival

There will be two Battlestar Galactica themed panels at Spark FX 10, the visual effects conference and festival, held at the VanCity theatre in Vancouver at the end of January.

The 9am panel on January 30^th will talk about the groundbreaking visual effects done for the 1978 version of the show, with the 10:45am panel focusing on the 2005 show.   Panelists will include Gene Kozicki from the Visual Effects Society (VES), Glenn Campbell (Area 51 and former BSG original series crew member), Derek Ledbetter (VFX Compositor, Universal Studios) and Pierre Drolet (Lead CG Modeler on the new BSG).

The events are open to the public but sell out well in advance, so buy quickly if you wish to attend.  Tickets and descriptions of the BSG panels, as well as other Spark FX 10 events, can be found here.

Battlestar Switcheroo

Being sneaky, eh? While a group of 13th Colonists were out this past weekend scouting around for shooting locations in one of the parks on Vancouver’s North Shore mountains, we discovered something interesting. One of the most famous features of the North Shore mountains are “The Lions” named because when they are covered in snow, they look like two reclining lions. Our beautiful Lions Gate Bridge is named after this natural formation, as is our local CFL football team, the BC Lions.

In the world of Battlestar Galactica, it appears on Kobol and is seen as below:

In actual fact, they’ve pulled a switch on us, reversing the shot from how it appears in nature, as seen from this picture we took from the north end of Capilano Park, near the Cleveland Dam.

Ha!  Very clever, but we’re on to you…and as a result of our most recent foray into the woods, we’ve also closed in a couple more shooting locations, so stay tuned and we’ll have more pics for you in the coming weeks.

BSG Visual FX Mojo

by spacepug

Most of the 13th Colonists (I’m speaking of the Vancouver BSG Fan Club variety) already have an idea of how much I love “the old guys.” I carried my old style Cylon Centurion mini-mate with me to nearly all of our events for the first year of the club, until his arms would no longer stay in their sockets. Now they’re stuck in permanently thanks to powerful glue, but the old guy sits on the shelf, as much a museum piece as the antique we saw destined for the Galactica museum at the beginning of the miniseries.

So imagine my thrill when I came across this blog by Darth Mojo, a member of the VFX team for the new Battlestar Galactica. He describes the process of re-creating and updating the old style Cylons for Razor, with anecdotes and pictures from designer Pierre Drolet.

Their results were certainly amazing. When our crowd gathered to watch Razor, they let out an incredible cheer when they saw and heard the old-style Centurions. You just know when something turns out that RIGHT, that true geek love went into the making of it. Thanks very much for sharing, Darth Mojo.

BSG fans have to check out his insider’s story about winning the Visual Effects Emmy last year. And if you’re a fan of Babylon 5, there’s some interesting behind-the-scenes tales from that show as well. Worth adding to your daily blog rounds.