The Hollywood Reporter: You’ve had some quickly-canceled shows on your resume. What did you learn from them?
Kevin Murphy: In a case like Caprica, I came in halfway into the order. After a week or so, Ron Moore and David Eick promoted me to showrunner and one of the interesting things there was figuring out how to make it grand -- how to make it live up to the [Battlestar Galactica] franchise while being realistic about the fact that the show had ended up costing NBCUniversal a lot more than they had originally expected or budgeted for. Part of that was the nature of the beast. When you’re doing a show set on a spaceship, you can always do a bottle show where you can have a perfectly good episode where everybody stays on the standing sets of the Battlestar Galactica. Because the overall jeopardy is the imminent of the human race, it can be an exciting, suspenseful ride having people standing around on the bridge talking.
On Caprica, it was conceived to be this wide canvas with multiple families, blue skies and outdoor locations. You’re not just seeing the ruins of Caprica, you’re seeing it 24/7 on the show and you have to make it not look like British Columbia. That required a lot of CGI adjustment and changing the skyline of Vancouver. I arrived the moment the cookie jar was empty. I learned more doing that show in eight episodes than I learned on three years with Desperate Housewives. On the CW, you’ve only got so much money, doing all the tricks when you’re trying to save money, so those skills have come handy on this particular show.
Also, for anyone who hasn't heard it on the DVD commentary for "Apotheosis," The Caprica Times has an excellent recap of Murphy's plan for season two and where they were going with those last five minutes of the season finale.
The rest of the THR interview is about Murphy's other shows, including Hellcats, which still hasn't been picked up for a second season. You can read the whole article at THR.com. The Futon Critic has the May upfronts schedule, so those are the dates to watch, not only for Hellcats, but also the pilots (Grimm, 17th Precinct, Hart of Dixie, etc.)
A new episode of Hellcats airs tonight at 9 on the CW.
Square Enix Music Online has a new interview with Bear McCreary, which is mostly about his score for SOCOM 4, but he also gives an update on the Caprica soundtrack.
About those shows... The Cape, Caprica, and Trauma were prematurely cancelled despite having a considerable fanbase. Was this disappointing for you or partly expected, given the highly competitive nature of primetime broadcasting?
Bear McCreary: Of course. It's always disappointing when something you work on — and really invest yourself emotionally in — does not continue. At the same time, in all three of those shows, I was able to explore what I wanted to explore.
Looking at The Cape as a perfect example, of course I'm disappointed that there wasn't another season where I could write big, epic superhero music and record it with an 80-piece orchestra every week. But in looking at that from the other side, from the artistic perspective, I was able to record a full season of a superhero show with an 80-piece orchestra every week! So I'm very proud of the work I've done on those series and it is good to know that it will live on in other media for people to discover as the years go on.
In the case of The Cape and Caprica, I am in the process of working on a soundtrack album release for both of those so that fans can hear all the things that I put in the score that sometimes get lost in the final edit.
Some other updates, in random order:
A new episode of Mortal Kombat: Legacy, with Tahmoh Penikett, is available on YouTube.
Panou tweets that he has wrapped filming Underworld 4.
Ryan Robbins tweets that he will make an appearance on The Listener this Friday.
Game of Thrones has already been picked up for a second season, after a single aired episode.
Here is the trailer for Amazon Falls, with Zak Santiago and William B. Davis, playing in Vancouver these days:
Spoiler TV has a couple of previews from next week's United States of Tara, with Patton Oswalt:
And the teaser and sneak peek from Sanctuary 3x12, "Hangover," with Ryan Robbins:
No comments:
Post a Comment