Friday, August 15, 2008

A peek onto the VIRTUALITY set

Sci Fi Wire's John Sullivan is up in Vancouver on the VIRTUALITY pilot shoot set, and has a report for us:

Virtuality is a backdoor pilot created by Ron Moore and Michael Taylor (Battlestar Galactica) and directed by Peter Berg (Hancock).

The main set is a single module, which will be redressed to represent various ship modules that serve different purposes. While I was there earlier this week, the module was filled with plants, in beds and on racks on the walls. The overall effect was something like a cross between the International Space Station and a mall common area.

Like the sets, the show's costumes reflect the time period, only 30 years in the future. The crew's uniforms consist of gray jackets and pants with white piping and shoulder patches, more like current warmup gear than Starfleet uniforms. Under the jackets, cast members wear street clothes; as most are scientists, they wear T-shirts with the names of colleges. The entire cast could walk down the street in costume and not get a second look. (The cast includes Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Clea DuVall and Sienna Guillory.)

"Six months into this voyage, as they're about to reach the point of no return, fire up the big engines and head for the star they're headed for, something has started going wrong with these virtual modules," Taylor said, adding coyly: "It's something that will unnerve them and something that portends serious trouble down the road for this crew."

The smallish sets and large cast seem designed to make the space feel crowded, to ramp up the pressure on the characters as things get out of control.

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