Prior to Comic-Con, Sci Fi’s Eureka’s Colin Ferguson and Jaime Paglia talked to some online journalists including Monsters and Critics about the third season with eight new episodes starting tonight, Tuesday, July 29 at 9:00 pm on Sci Fi.
07/26/2008 - Mark Sheppard, Colin Ferguson and Jamie Paglia - 2008 Comic Con International Sci-Fi/Entertainment Weekly Party - Arrivals - Hotel Solamar - San Diego, CA. USA © Austin Gorum / PR Photos
Colin, what's next for Carter and Allison?
Colin Ferguson: Wow. Well, I guess we're starting the season's - sorry, I suppose I should say it's Colin. So it's Colin. We starting the Season 3 right now and before I think Carter and Allison do anything.
At the end of Season 2 there was a proposal from Stark to Allison. And they're sorting out all that whole line. We're trying to do that, well I mean Jaime's paying close attention to make sure that's (laundered) and everything. And so hopefully we'll get back to that, I don't know, sometime next season. What's up Jaime?
Jaime Paglia: Yeah, we made a concerted effort in Season 2 to sort of force Carter and Allison apart. And that's just a relationship that you want to earn over the course of hopefully many seasons.
This is the season that we want to start bringing them back together again, closer to the secret that she was keeping about Kevin's connection to the artifacts and trying to solve that with Stark - brought the two of them together.
We do have this proposal that is going to have to play out and then you've got the first half of this season where we will be dealing with the answer and what that - how that's going to impact Carter and Allison's relationship as well.
Then going into the back half of the season we'll see a lot more about that.
Ferguson as Carter
How do you keep the show fresh?
Colin Ferguson: We ask ourselves that a lot. I don't know, you show up and you try to stay in a good mood and you - from our end anyways - I mean obviously it's different in the writer's room and on the set.
But we just try to stay as honest as we can. And when something smells foul, we don't let it go. And you just try to stay vigilant I guess. Probably not dissimilar to a lot of things.
Jaime Paglia: Yeah, I mean from the writer's perspective, we obviously want to continue to grow these characters in new and interesting ways and we consider this to be a character drama first and ideally every episode stands on what's going on with the characters.
And the science fiction is sort of that catalyst that we can throw in there that gives us a big toy box to play in that will impact those relationships. And we try to just make sure that whatever the concept is that we're using that we don't push too far.
I know occasionally we will probably walk that line and straight across it, but we do do our best to not go too far. And, it's helpful when you've got performers like we have that really know their characters and know what they would do or wouldn't do and don't go too far.
Richardson as Allison
Colin, I am totally wanting your character Jack to bust a move on Allison and I'm very impatient in that way.
Colin Ferguson: Me too.
Speaking of toy box, I loved the press kit by the way. I've been manipulating all your little peel off characters in this two dimensional diorama...
Colin Ferguson: Good. Haven't seen in. I want to see it.
It's awesome.
Jaime Paglia: I haven't even gotten ours yet. They keep on promising that they're in the mail but, you know, we're always the last ones.
I loved the opening episode of the season, ‘Bad to the Drone.’ And I have a technical question for anyone who can answer.
Colin Ferguson: That particular stunt is - they have a - I'm not a percussion, but inside the jeep. It's hanging in the center of the jeep. And they say okay, stand as close as you're comfortable to the jeep because we're going to explode all the windows. And so they do and they were actually a little disappointed. They wanted more of a blowout but Ronnie - Ron in special effects is the guy who does it.
And he was saying that with safety glass these days - unless you replace the windshield, it's near impossible to get that sort of explode out affect.
Jaime Paglia: And then when special effects practically blew out all of the side windows. But then we had to go in at the end and visual effects, our visual effects (Hal Zoic) and Matt Gore had to do a digital effect to blow out the front windshield.
Colin Ferguson: Yeah. Because you're never really sure how the practical is going to work. I mean you hope for it.
Jaime Paglia: Yeah.
Colin Ferguson: But it's not like we have 12 jeeps lined up on the side of the road to sort of pull in another one if it doesn't work out.
Jaime Paglia: Although we did...
Colin Ferguson: But it's interesting though to be on set where they say okay, stand next to that, now turn around and everybody put in earplugs and there's, you know, there's like 50 people around with earplugs and facemasks on and like...
Jaime Paglia: They say Colin could you switch a little closer.
Colin Ferguson: ...closer. It's going to be loud.
Jaime Paglia: Colin, I think that scene - actually I have to give Colin props on this. I think that - I think that has one of my very favorite improv lines from Colin. He just turns around. He says, no.
One of those things that it happens on a day and when it actually works that way, it's gold.
Colin Ferguson: And actually that speaks to that other question as well which is -that's one of the ways to keep it fresh is sort of they do give us a little latitude on the day. If something like that goes down, you have an innate reaction that it's really hard to figure out what it's going to be until something behind you explodes. So that's one way to keep it fresh.
It seems like the writers just play off all your natural strengths and your improv abilities are great. I love your conversations with Martha through this whole episode and how it's analogous to your teenage daughter's story.
Colin Ferguson: Yeah. That was all scripted. I mean that - the whole tone of those exchanges...
Was there an actual like a prototype of Martha sort of hanging off of a, you know, something or was it just that you were just talking to air? Was it just put in after in (CG)?
Colin Ferguson: We had a prototype of Martha. It was smaller but you could only use it in certain scenes because of the plate - because of all sorts of things and also because of time. I mean - so like in Cafe Diem it was nothing. It was just a taped X on a wall.
But then when you need two or three people who are looking at Martha as Martha moves through space...all those eye lines are going to be different. So when you're doing that, you need out of the tennis ball on the end of a stick or something just to keep the eye line looking at the same place.
Jaime Paglia: And this was one of those episodes that I've talked about this a little bit on the blog and on the Podcast we just did down here.
But this was the biggest episode that we've done since our pilot in terms of the demands on visual effects and budget and we completely blew our budget on this episode by half million dollars over budget because we created, this fully CGI character.
She had to have personality. She had to have moving parts and expressions and, moods and if you don't connect to her on that level, it just doesn't work - we built this very expensive, $30,000 model that we thought was going to suffice for, 50% of the scenes. And it was very clear…
Art Director Bryan Spicer came in - first thing he said guys I just got to tell you, there's no way this is going to work the way you want it to. I can try but I'm telling you right now it's not going to work.
Luckily the studio and the network - everybody sort of stepped up and agreed and we have this amazing visual effects house and so those guys started doing middle mockups of what they would do if they were going to do more three dimensional stuff.
And we just said all right, if we're going to try to do an episode about a drone who is going through a teenage rebellion, we got to see her that way and...I think that they did a great job with it.
I was telling the story to somebody the other day that you have these huge meetings with all your crew members and your department heads when you're talking about budgets for these episodes.
And we were having a big visual effects budget and we walked into the room and you've got Robert Petrovich who is our Producer in Canada who runs this whole thing and actually - his crew - he's the one that actually puts this stuff on the screen and they're amazing and Matt Gore our visual effects supervisor for Zoic and Art Director Bryan Spicer and Charlie Craig and myself.
We're talking about the fact that we're basically $350,000 over budget. And we can't do it and we have to cut $300,000 out of this budget.
I have to be responsible about the budget but you start talking and then you start ripping ideas and then all of a sudden, you find something that you fall in love with.
So by the time they came in 20 minutes later, instead of taking out $300,000 I think we had added another $150,000 sequence that ended up being our finale.
Frances Fisher, the casting, brilliant. I loved her as Eva. How long are we going to see her in this particular season and the find out the real reason for her visit?
Jaime Paglia: You'll be seeing Eva for at least this first eight episodes. That's what we are looking at this being an art for her and then whether we continue to have her in parts in the back 13 is still up for debate.
My father was a researcher for 40 years at UCLA and he saw the transition from grants that were being put into pure research to that when UCLA went from being UCLA Medical Center to UCLA Medical Enterprises.
It was a big shift. I mean they had to start making money in ways. You're having to do research to generate funds and that certainly shifts things. So - we kind of wanted to explore that a little bit which is the ideal of Eureka was that you bring together all these great minds and let them just sort of work and explore and see what they come up with versus if you come in with a mandate and say now you have to actually produce something and you have to be physically reasonable.
What kind of impact does that have? And do you get competition for those grant funds? Do you get people cutting corners, you know, going to great lengths to impress so that they don't lose their jobs? And those are definitely some of the things that we explore this season (with Eva's character).
Did I sense that Eva is sort of shining towards Stark a bit?
Collin Ferguson: Yeah, well there's all sort of stuff that we're playing over the course of...You get scenes. You're never sure where it's going to go. So I know the actors all got together and they're like wow, we'll play like we get along and we'll play like we get along and, you know, yeah, you make up stuff to play.
Jaime Paglia: She's kind of a master manipulator too. So you never quite know what her - I mean she's someone who's come here with a real agenda and a job to do. But she also has a hidden agenda a secret, which is sort of the methodology for this season. And that's the thing that, you know, you never quite which, you know, which way she's playing people, if it's genuine or not.
Colin, are you a techno aficiando?
Colin Ferguson: Well, I'm kind of a techie in that I like technology a lot. I tend to wait and then move in bursts. I'm not the guy who's sort of waiting outside Apple for the latest iPhone and the latest everything. But when something comes out, I sort of wait for them to fix it and then I jump on it.
In my car I got the blue tooth hands free GPS, all that stuff because I love it. But, there have been a couple generations that have come out since and I don't jump until I really need a change.
Has there been a Eureka invention or innovation that was purely fictional for the show that has become a real gadget today?
Colin Ferguson: Yeah. I'd say the PDAs. I mean when Jaime and (Andy) came out with the tiny little PDAs that they use on the show. They're - I don't know how big they are- maybe a matchbox and a half.
And all they are is a screen. There's no touch pad, there's no nothing. And when we started using them, the iPhone wasn't out. That's a whole wave of sort of just the screen hadn't come out yet. And so it's fun now to see that that's the way that a lot of the phones are going.
Jaime Paglia: We were so far ahead of Apple on this.
Is Jack going to get a girlfriend this season? I know he's kind of got a thing with Allison but she's with Nathan.
Colin Ferguson: Yeah. I mean not in the first date, but I want him to have a girlfriend. Jaime.
Jaime Paglia: Yes, we're working on that idea, believe me.
Colin Ferguson: I got some (classy) choices...
Jaime Paglia: Colin's always sending pictures.
Colin Ferguson: I hear that Michele Pfeiffer's available.
Jaime Paglia: Well we are actually working on that episode. And episode idea from Season 1 that we never did that we're talking about. Eureka version DNA speed dating. You basically take a little DNA swab and put it in the scanner and people figure out whether or not those markers line up, if they're a good match for each other.
So anyway, that's a concept that we're still playing with.
Any cool upcoming gadgets?
Jaime Paglia: Yeah, we have been doing a lot of homages to some of our favorite kinds of sci fi concepts in films this season. And some of those are heavier in technology than others. We wanted to do an episode that was sort of a personal nod to me, to my dad who was involved some years back.
I think you might remember the Biosphere 2 project that was out there in Arizona and he was - my dad's a scientist, a medical doctor. And he was one of the primary consultants on that.
So we have an episode that's about what does a biosphere in Eureka look like and what happens if some you have a missing persons case inside of the closed biosphere. We're playing with a nod to a groundhog day because it's one of those we've always wanted to do.
And to Carter it happens on the worst day possible. We wanted to see what it would be like, you know, it's a comic book nod to have a super hero in Eureka and what technologies might he be using in terms of, you know, appearing to have super powers.
Whether it's (jet foods) to walking through walls. And then, we've got a couple of other things that we're looking at for the back half of the season that will, you know, also be sort of incorporating visual tech as well as tech that's sort of non-lethal weaponry and things like that and what does that look like. What are the possible effects on our towns folk if they're exposed to certain things.
Colin Ferguson: And I guess the difference between or the different duties of the writers room versus the on set is, the writers come up with the idea and they write it in and they do all the back story on that. And then we're sort of the beta testers on set.
We get this technology and it shows up in prop form and we okay, well if it's shaped like this and does this and it has to work like this and we got to make sure that this really stays constant through the episode. Because you're dealing with a real life prop at that point. And it has specific material property.
Colin - why is Jack's sister Lexi in town?
Colin Ferguson: She's here because she wants to get closer to the family.
Ever Carradine plays my sister and she brings such an energy and such a life and she doesn't look dissimilar to my sister. So we have an instantly sort of fun cantankerous, irritating each other relationship which we both really enjoy. She looks so similar to my sister it freaks me out.
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