Added: Oct 11, 2011

From: LextheRobot

Duration: 1:3

I wish I had all of the segments of this character, but I only have a couple. The director, Bill Barnett, was let go from TV-15 before all six of the spots were shot. He asked them what they planned to do about the last one, and they said the prize had already been awarded, which to this day seems pretty shady to me. Maybe they canned him just so they wouldn't have to award a prize, shrug. This was fun. Bill and Danny Wright and I made a trip to Huntsville to shoot this, and also to pick up some office furniture from the parent studio to take back to the Florence branch. The entire ride back was me in a rolling office chair in the back of the van. For an hour. With no seatbelt. I was a new dad. What the hell was I thinking? Bill named the character Lt. Daley partially after my son and partially after my son's namesake, sci-fi author Brian Daley, my writing mentor who passed away just a few years before. The TV station paid for and kept the costume, darn it, which was really just the tunic. We had to stop at Bill's mother's house and have her sew me into the 'dickie', which I then had to keep on for the rest of the day. We stopped for dinner on the way out of town, and this little kid kept staring at me. I had a black jacket on over this costume, but I was wearing pretty heavy makeup. It got annoying, really, the way he seemed terrified of me. What, kid? You never saw a man in makeup before? We did part of the shoot just on the side of a surprisingly busy road up the side of a mountain, and numerous takes were ruined by the noise of passing cars. By the time I finally got to say the entire speech start to finish, I'd almost forgotten what the end of it was! We also did several takes of the 'beam-in' effect. Having done some editing of my own, I insisted that before each shot of me, they take yet another empty background plate, since the clouds and sunlight would vary. Bill later thanked me for this, because the first plate they had presumed would work for every effect proved to be too different from the best take of me. Even using the plate shot just seconds before I stepped onto the rock, you can see the clouds shift a bit. There was a certain irony to having a lifelong Star Wars fan appear as a Star Trek character, so Bill threw in the "You're my only hope" reference as a deliberate nod. Bill was the Star Trek fan, so it surprised me that my friend Jamie later pointed out the Trek continuity glitch... the script says 'shuttlecraft' but they used stock footage of a 'runabout.' Whoops! I've also uploaded a second spot shot at the Space Rocket Center, and a gag reel we did in my front yard of me as this character.

Channel: Entertainment

Rating: ( ratings)    Views: 72    Comments: 0