Cast & creators discuss morality on Caprica + new BTS clip with Alessandra Torresani

SyFy has released two new clips today. In the first one, the cast and producers talk about the concept of moral responsibility on the show and how it relates to the main characters.

In the clip: David Eick, Sasha Roiz, Mark Stern, Paula Malcomson, Polly Walker, Alessandra Torresani, Esai Morales, Jonas Pate and Eric Stoltz



And here is the second part of Alessandra Torresani's "Take Me Away" video (this time doing ADR with Sasha Roiz):

New BTS clip: Take Me Away, Part 1

SyFy has a new clip (part of Alessandra Torresani's video blog) with some behind-the-scenes footage from the day they filmed the opening sequence for the show.

In the clip: Alessandra, Eric Stoltz, Mark Stern, Tom Lieber

Preview for Ghosts in the Machine and new BTS clip

SyFy has a new behind-the-scenes clip with the cast & creators talking about the holoband and the virtual reality aspect of the show.

In the clip: Mark Stern, David Eick, Esai Morales, Alessandra Torresani, Magda Apanowicz, Eric Stoltz



The synopsis for episode 1x08, "Ghosts in the Machine," reads: "Daniel Graystone engages in a dangerous game to draw out his daughter's avatar." Not sure if they decided to rename it to "Ghost in the Machine" or if it's just a typo, so I'm leaving the old title.

Here is the teaser:

SyFy's Mark Stern: Caprica isn't going anywhere

SyFy exec Mark Stern has addressed the rumours about the show's future being uncertain in an interview with Airlock Alpha yesterday. He talked about the ratings, the show's pace, James Marsters' character, and SyFy's plans to use Caprica as a launch point for a new series after the mid-season break among other things. For the complete article, head over to Airlock Alpha.

Snippets: 

"We're definitely with 'Caprica' for the long haul," Syfy's EVP of original programming Mark Stern told Airlock Alpha Thursday. "There's no question about it. We knew exactly what it was not going to be, that is an easily adopted show. It's not 'Battlestar Galactica,' it's its own animal. And we definitely recognize that it's going to find its audience and it's going to grow its audience." (...)

Syfy just received the first batch of numbers this week for "Caprica" tracking viewers who recorded the second episode of the series and watched it within a week, known as Live+7. Those numbers were better than the network anticipated, Stern said, and actually propelled "Caprica" into the top 10 for cable that night.

"We're certainly not sharpening the axe by any stretch of the imagination," Stern said. "We all really believe in the show, and it has a lot of potential." (...)

The audience does have to grow, but Syfy doesn't have immediate plans to boost its marketing of "Caprica." The network does believe, however, that the series will start to sell itself beginning March 5 when "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Torchwood" alum James Marsters joins the cast as Barnabus Greeley.

"That suddenly throws that whole dynamic with Clarice in a whole new light and gives her a foil to play against," Stern said of the character played by Polly Walker that is the head of a monotheistic terror cell while at the same time running a private school. (...)

"The pace picks up," Stern said. "It was something we were talking with [executive producer Jane Espenson] and those guys about. It's not really mid-season switch, but more something we decided to do as we were getting on with the show and realizing that we need to amp this up a little more and tighten up the plotting."

That won't necessarily mean gun fights, but it could feature at least one Viper battle. Well, we're not sure if it's a "battle," but there will be Vipers. And very soon.

"There is actually a Viper sequence in the show that is coming up in the next couple of episodes," Stern said. "This isn't the kind of show where everyone is going to jump into Vipers and fight the Cylon base ship, but we are going to get out more. We're going to go to Gemenon. We're going to go to Tauron. But I think these guys [the writing staff] are basically taking their time and making sure what they do is organic."

Cast and creators talk about the Adama family

SyFy has released a new video. In it, Esai Morales, Sasha Roiz, Karen Austin, Jonas Pate, Mark Stern, and David Eick discuss the Adama family.

Caprica episode order reduced

Mo Ryan at Chicago Tribune has a lengthy new article about Caprica.

Biggest news, the episode order has been cut by an hour:

The series will premiere with a two-hour pilot that is already available as a standalone DVD. Eight additional hours of "Caprica" will air through March. Then the show will take a break and the remaining nine hours of "Caprica's" first season will air some time in the second half of 2010. (...)

[Mark] Stern said that the decision to reduce the episode order was made in consultation with the show's creative team and was driven purely by financial considerations. Quite simply, "Caprica" turned out to be more expensive than the network thought it would be, he said. The episode reduction was part of an effort to make those 19 hours as good as they could be without sacrificing the quality of the drama, a story of intrigue and family conflict that follows the Adama and Graystone clans in settings that resemble present-day Earth.

Also, it seems that SyFy has made the final choice on the official poster for the show and it is the one with Zoe holding an apple.

Here are a few snippets from the article:

The show's creators also ended up devoting more time to certain characters than they had originally planned to, and the show lined up recurring guest stars such as James Marsters and Patton Oswalt.

"This was the time to make the decision" about whether to cut an episode, Stern added. Production is underway on the thirteenth hour of the show and thus the producers have time to retool the last third of the season. "If it didn't work creatively, they weren't going to do it," Stern said.

The show recently took a two-week break to retool scripts and recalibrate where "Caprica" was heading, and Kevin Murphy, a veteran of "Desperate Housewives," has joined the show. He, along with Eick, Moore and Espenson, is an executive producer of "Caprica" and Murphy has been taking the lead on breaking stories.

"Ron, Jane and David are still very much in that mix," Stern said. "Every show has to find its voice and figure out what it wants to be. Every show has to find out which characters pop and which story lines play. There were some growing pains as they found the right balance of stories and characters."

"The thing that 'Caprica' has that the 'Battlestar' viewer will recognize -- aside from the obvious little winks and nods [to the saga of the rag-tag fleet] -- is that 'Caprica' is, at its core, a strong character drama about people going through situations in extremis," Stern said. "There are characters who are driven to do things that are morally ambiguous because of the situations that they're put in. And yet tonally, it's not as dark, it's not as grim. Because [the characters] are not on the run, having had their whole world destroyed, that allows more opportunities for poignancy and joy and celebration.

"There's definitely more of that than there was in 'Battlestar.' It's not about someone getting their jaw broken every other episode," Stern said with a laugh. "But there are elements of that kind of extremity in this that I think will attract 'Battlestar' viewers. And yet our hope is, because it is dealing with world that is more familiar to us and dealing with issues that are maybe a little more germane to our daily lives, that it will attract a broader audience."

Source: The Watcher

Caprica set tour reports, interviews & pictures

Several TV sites have posted their reports from SyFy's Caprica set tour earlier this week.

SpoilerTV has a bunch of pictures here.

CinemaSpy has an extensive report with behind-the-scenes pics and information about the sets they got from production designer Richard Hudolin. Beyond that, they also have the highlights from the Q&A session with Sasha Roiz, Esai Morales, Paula Malcomson, Eric Stoltz, Alessandra Torresani, Magda Apanowicz, Polly Walker and Mark Stern.

IESB.net will be posting their report in the coming days. Here is a preview:

Caprica is the real estate sci-fi geek dreams are made of. Graystone Manor was shot on location for the pilot, which left the set designers no alternative but to recreate a $12 million West Vancouver home on the studio set once the series was given the go-ahead. Cold, austere and impeccably accessorized, Graystone Manor is the perfect environmental foil to the warm, personal and cozy space of the Adama residence. The cast members recognize their set as "like a whole other person" as Magda Apanowicz (Lacy) put it during the Q&A, informing their scenes, setting the tone, and infusing new meanings to the personalities of the series' families and relationships. Building on the history and lore of Battlestar Galactica has been both daunting and invigorating for this cast but Paula Malcolmson is quick to point out that they, Caprica, come before and, therefore, it is a whole other world and existence from BSG. Like BSG, Caprica's story begins in tragedy but these characters are given time to mourn and choose their paths of recovery which leads to a much more intricate and internally-motivated story development than the refugee Colony Fleet was allowed.

In related news, the rumours about production delays resurfaced this week when CinemaSpy posted an update on the story that the delays were caused by problems with the scripts. They quoted SyFy exec Mark Stern as saying:

"Trying to find [the] journey with these characters has been really interesting. I know for the writers — in terms of where you think you're going to go — turns out to be, not exactly where you ... there are things that have been pitched out ... this, episode 8, we're going to do this, and it's going to be a whole torture sequence on this other planet, and it's like 'no, actually that doesn't work in terms of where the stories have taken us'. And we actually took a break. We shut down for a few weeks so that we could, at the mid-point ... so that we could regroup and say, 'OK, what have we learned from the first ten; where do we want to go from here?'"

AirlockAlpha promptly dismissed their report as an exaggeration. A few snippets from the article: :

Where most other Syfy shows get a decent-sized hiatus during the mid-point of its production schedule, "Caprica" didn't get that luxury because of the Olympics, and had been pushing work at break-neck speed to be done ahead of the Olympics. (...)


"Some people want to make more out of this than what it is," the source said. "We're talking about a brand-new series with a concept we've never really tried before. It's something that would normally be worked out slowly, but 'Caprica' never got that luxury. Even with the break, this show has burned through production far faster than most other 20-episode orders, and breaks are sometimes part of the game. Syfy isn't even dreaming about canceling this show yet, not before they even have a chance to air a single episode." (...)


"Production in general is really just laying track ahead of a train," [Mark Stern] said. "What you see in this show is something that's really working and special. If it weren't for the Olympics, there wouldn't even be a discussion. But because of the Olympics, we have been really up against that, and we really have to be out of production [by then]. What would be an easy decision of 'let's take a hiatus' became a very difficult and expensive proposition, but we did it anyway because it was worth it."