Behind-the-scenes production of the first season of prehistoric times

The original idea of "prehistoric epoch" comes from the short play "The Road to Gondwana" written by British female screenwriter Kelly Marcel in early 2009, with only 12 pages. Kelly Marcel's agent initially wanted to sell the script to Syfy TV in Britain, but after being lobbied by AaronKaplan, the producer of Nikita, he finally sent it to Hollywood.

In order to cater to the interests of Hollywood TV networks, Kaplan hired Craig Sil Vistam, the screenwriter of Nikita, to cooperate with Kelly Marcel to adapt the script. Sil Vistam said with a smile that the miscellaneous props in the play alone may be enough for the Nikita crew to shoot a whole season. In the summer of 2009, they sent the script to four radio and television networks, and soon received the purchase intention from Fox and CBS. After weighing, Kaplan and others chose the former. This old TV company, which has successfully operated unique dramas such as Prison Break and Glee, didn't let them down: four months later, Kaplan received a phone call from Kevin Riley, president of Fox Entertainment, and the script not only passed the standard review, but also won Spielberg and Peter Serning as producers.

This film is based on the animated short film of the same name directed by aristomenis tsirbas in 2003.

Most of the films were finished in Los Angeles, where a large number of computer animators gathered.

"prehistoric epoch" means earth in Italian and Latin.

Only two softwares, Lightwave 3D and Maya, are used in the whole film.

On the website of NASA, there is a project called "New Era Project". This is the US government's plan to find a second planet suitable for human habitation in outer space.

production team

Fox thinks Spielberg is the producer of this story, which is similar to the setting of Alien ET and Jurassic Park, so he recommended the script to him, and the two sides hit it off. Subsequently, Fox Television and Film Company persuaded Peter Czernin to attend. Serning used to be the chief operating officer of News Corporation. It was his trust in James Cameron that led to the appearance of Titanic and Avatar. These two films repeatedly exceeded the shooting budget and were questioned several times, creating a box office myth in the history of movies twice, which made the producer Fox earn a lot of money.

Strangely, after entering the production process, the producer and screenwriter of the play took turns to change people like a lantern. The producer is at most 1.2 (the executive producer is at most 9), and the first two screenwriters, Kelly Marcel and Craig Sylvestam, also left the crew. Finally, brannon Braga, the famous producer of Star Trek: The New Generation and 24 Hours, settled down as executive producer. Kaplan said: "Braga confirmed that this film is a family adventure series, not an empty program like' Weekly Dinosaur Show'." Braga was a little worried about the series at first: "Frankly speaking, I am a little worried about the setting of the series. Just like giving me a particularly large canvas, let me describe the ancient past and the future in a hundred years. My first reaction was, how is this possible? "

Braga invited Rene Echevarria, a Star Trek partner and producer of A B C's Ghost Book, to be the executive producer, responsible for shooting the whole play, and he himself devoted himself to the adaptation of the script.

After the producer is decided, the next problem for the crew is to determine the shooting location. The crew thought of Florida and Louisiana, but Fox thought that swamps and rivers were not what they should be in ancient times. If you only build a studio in Los Angeles and shoot with green screen technology, the cost is too high. Hawaii is an ideal place, but it always reminds people of getting lost. In addition, Spielberg also asked the crew to give up shooting in Hawaii so as not to remind the audience of his film Jurassic Park. Finally, the crew adopted Spielberg's suggestion and filmed in Queensland, Australia, where he filmed the Pacific Ocean. Facts have proved that the idyllic geographical environment there is the most suitable for building colonial towns in prehistoric jungles.

The series was filmed in Queensland, and the screenwriter, producer and post-production team were in Los Angeles. The time difference between the two places is 17 hours, so late-night conference calls have become a common occurrence in Braga.

Spielberg brand

In addition to his decisive opinions on determining the shooting location, Spielberg's influence on the series is also reflected in many aspects. He found quite a few producers; The hero was personally selected by him; Stephen lang, who plays the villain general in Avatar, can join the cast because he answers the phone. In addition, with his unique views on dinosaurs, Spielberg put forward the concept of "creating a new dinosaur that the audience has never seen before", and invited his good friend, the consultant of Jurassic Park series films and paleontologist Jack Howell as the consultant of the play to offer suggestions for the "new shape" of dinosaurs. According to Howell's description, scientists now find that dinosaurs have many characteristics similar to birds, and their actions are more "elegant" than people think, which will be reflected in Prehistoric Times. In terms of scripts, Spielberg specifically asked the writing team to make Steven Lang's colonial leader "more ambitious" and "more elusive". In addition, he personally described the appearance of "dimension door" and "future transport vehicle" to the prop designer. It was also his idea to add a close-up of the "bright moon" when shooting the scene of the arrival of ancient humans-according to the script, the future earth will never be able to see the moon with the naked eye because of excessive air pollution. It is also Spielberg's proposal to make a trailer for this play in the mode of movie trailer.

About dinosaurs in movies

Jack Howell said that although many dinosaurs in the play were "created", they were completely loyal to the big historical framework. For example, there is no Tyrannosaurus Rex in the play, because this dinosaur did not appear at that time (85 million years ago). The dinosaurs in the first episode are mainly Brachiosaurus and Niu Long. The crew did not promise that there would be dinosaurs in every episode, but promised at the animation conference that there would be at least one prehistoric creature in every episode.

"This is an ambitious commitment. Today's small screen is not the original small screen. " Justin Falvey, one of the executive producers of the drama and an executive of DreamWorks TV, said when talking about the high definition and visual effects of the film, "The audience is eager for a movie-like shocking experience, and the current drama budget can support us to do this. This is of course a money-burning TV series, but the audience can see where all our money is spent. Five years ago, it was impossible to see such dinosaurs in TV dramas. "

Other related

Pre-publicity vs premiere stranded

Terra Nova started shooting on 20 10 1 1 year1month, and was held at the press conference of American Television Critics Association on 201year1month. Not only all the cast members were present, but also a three-minute trailer was released. A few weeks later, the trailer reappeared in the American Super Bowl Finals, this time targeting not only the media, but also hundreds of millions of TV viewers.

Fox originally planned to continue the propaganda mode of "Glee" and broadcast the first two episodes in May 20 1 1. But in mid-May, due to "incomplete special effects", the broadcast time was postponed to September. Kevin Riley said in his apology statement that prehistoric times is one of the greatest TV epics in history. We use the latest special effects technology to create this prehistoric world, which requires a lot of work and investment and takes time to complete. "In addition, the interruption of filming caused by heavy rains and flash floods in Queensland and the frequent changes caused by disagreement among producers are believed to be the reasons why the premiere episode could not appear as scheduled.

In fact, all the producers are grateful for the delay in the first episode. 20 1 1 At the end of May, the crew leader returned to Australia and decided to add an important element missing from the original-an "emotional bond" that attracted most family members to watch together-after all, the schedule of the play was 8 pm. The revised script shifts the core of the plot from dinosaurs to the protagonist "settlers" Shannon's family: Elizabeth, the heroine who is a doctor, helps her husband Jim, who used to be a policeman, escape from prison and starts a new life with her three children in ancient times far from the secular world.

The production team believes: "It is irresponsible for the audience to take risks with them without knowing the origin of the characters." So, in the first episode, they added a prologue to explain the background of the Shannon family. "You can burn money desperately, but if your series doesn't have an attractive main line, the audience won't buy it."

The crew will soon have the opportunity to explore the audience's feedback. At Comic-Con, 20 1 1, F O X released the first hour of the first episode. Before that, Terra Nova only had some vague concepts such as "big investment", "prehistoric period", "dinosaur infestation" and "jungle exploration". Judging from the results of the pilot broadcast, although The Vampire Diaries and The Walking Dead have not yet formed a fixed audience, the vivid dinosaur special effects of Tairuo Village have left a deep impression on many audiences, and the pilot broadcast focused on the battle scenes between people and dinosaurs, which attracted the audience's amazement.

Is the prehistoric epoch really as grand as advertised? Is this a story about a man fighting a man-eating dinosaur? A story about time and space and the universe? Or a family adventure story? We won't know the answer until the autumn of 20 1 1. But Kaplan said he can be sure of one thing: "This is a series that viewers have never seen on TV."

Producers Braga and echeverria: Dinosaurs have just grown up.

Q: In today's economic environment, is such a big production facing severe challenges?

Braga: The core of making a play is not the scale of production, but its concept. The so-called production scale serves this concept. The concept is unique and grand enough to attract the attention of the audience. This is what we value.

Q: Who is this play for?

Braga: People of all ages can find interesting points in the play. I believe it is also a work suitable for all ages.

Echeverria: When writing the main line of the script, we will still give more consideration to the adult audience-because we know that the dinosaur elements in the movie could have firmly attracted the children's attention.

Q: How did they react when Fox Planet failed to premiere in May as scheduled?

Echeverria: If you ask them if they want the project to be perfect, the answer is yes. The premiere plan was made before the series started shooting. Of course, it is never fun to break your word in public. You see, I have to answer this question all the time.

Q: We have heard a lot about the film-like production of prehistoric times, and some people even call it "Avatar plus Jurassic Park". Isn't this a little high for a TV series?

Braga: People don't think so when they watch this series. This series is more suitable for modern TV screens, the most realistic special effects, high-definition technology and so on. , and in many ways is the highest level of collection. Frankly speaking, it can be compared with the effect of the cinema.

Q: There are only 13 episodes in the first season of prehistoric times. Do you think the scale and prospect of the play can get an appointment for 22 episodes next season?

Braga: Of course. How to make the drama evergreen is our greatest concern. As for whether we can shoot 100 episode-we are working towards this goal every week.

Echeverria: This drama will be broadcast not only on Fox Channel, but also on TV channels in other countries and regions. And the audience can directly see where this drama is much more expensive than the traditional crime drama.

Several data of prehistoric epoch

250 people: including construction workers, artists and office clerks of production companies. The crew has 250 staff.

150: drama * * * fixed actors 150, except for recruiting extras from Australia every day.

At the American Super Bowl Finals of 1. 1 1: 2011,about1.10/100 million TV viewers watched the trailer of the play.

85 million: The two timelines in the story are 85 million years apart.

9: There are 9 executive producers, including Spielberg and Peter Czernin.

4. The location base of the play is located in Queensland, Australia, covering an area of 4 acres (about 6.5438+0.6 million square meters).

be in the background

Speaking of the creative inspiration of Terra Nova, it can be traced back to the time when Canadian filmmaker Aristos Tesser Bass was a dream-chasing teenager. After reading The War of the Worlds written by H G Wells, this child born and raised in Montreal suddenly came up with an idea that requires reverse thinking, that is, what kind of story will be derived by switching all the characters in the story and letting human beings invade other planets and seize the living environment resources? Tesser Bass still remembers that when he was reading a novel, he was completely attracted by the concept of "invasion" described in it-aliens showed the same imperialist hegemonic acts that had happened in human history, including aggression, colonization and forced territorial expansion by violent means, but their motivation for doing so was that they did not have any deep basic needs. After comprehensively observing and testing such stories about "alien invasion", Tesser Bass came up with an idea to break the established dogma. He said, "I find that I seem to be more interested in the motivation of alien invasion than the human response to one crisis or another ... If the aliens in these stories have similar behaviors and wisdom with us, then why can't we switch their relationship? Let the aliens show a social feature as much as possible, and then what will they think when they experience an invasion from the earth? The most important part of this story is to give the invaders-that is, we humans-some profound reasons or purposes, rather than simply describing them as bad people with inflated selfish desires. "

Aristo Mnis Tesser Bass immediately recorded the general structural framework of the story and wrote an outline. Thubas devoted all his energy to the production of short films and the specialization of visual effects, hoping to realize his wish to put Terra Nova on the big screen one day.

In 2003, the animated short film The Good Earth, written and directed by Mnis Tesser Bass of Aristol, won several short film awards including the audience award of Palm Springs International Film Festival, which quickly attracted the attention of producer Keith Calder. At that time, he happened to be looking for an animated work for Snoot Entertainment, a production company specializing in shooting live-action movies. Calder recalled: "We reviewed the winners of all the short films in the film festival, and then saw the short film Earth made by Tesser Bass ... We all agreed that the idea of exchanging aggression and attack positions between humans and aliens had a strong influence, and this short film was different from what we saw in the past.

After being incorporated by Snoop Entertainment, Aristo Mnis Tesser Bass and Keith Calder-including Dane Allen Smith, Jessica Wu and Ryan Corucci and other producers, * * * With the initial short film developing into a complete animated feature film, Jessica Wu Shuo: "We all liked the script outline written by Tesser Bass before, and then we hired the screenwriter Evan Spiliotopoulos, who brought it to us. When he was at Disney, Spirio Tupoulos had accumulated a lot of experience in writing scripts for cartoons, so he brought us not only an amazing script, but also his professional attitude and unparalleled tolerance. "

After discussion, several filmmakers decided to define the basic story concept of Terra planet as the action adventure field of "saving the family", and then conveyed the equally powerful potential social and environmental information: the reason why human beings have the desire to seize Terra planet-"Terra" means "earth" in Latin is because they not only destroyed the ecological environment on the earth, but also were colonized by human beings. There are also large-scale civil wars between galaxies. Aristo Mnis Tesser Bass explained: "In the film, one of the reasons why humans are forced to give up the earth is that they have exhausted all the natural resources on this planet ... I think when Terra Planet finally goes to the cinema, a large part of its audience will be children, so it is also a very important content for me to include. We must warn our next generation-and these have been verified by the most respected scientists, that is, human beings' purposeful transformation of the natural environment will lead to very dangerous consequences sooner or later. Terra Planet shows a hypothesis, which represents the worst possible future: the earth is no longer suitable for living, and humans have to go to other planets to find another home. " According to producer Keith Calder, he thinks the best science fiction works are stories that can make people have real connections. Calder said: "We have always regarded Planet Terra as an animated film related to family, and I think the principle of protecting our planet advocated by it is a very important topic for any family in the world."