Matt Sernaker got a chance to talk with Amanda Tapping at the recently held Comic Con in San Diego (July 26-29) and has provided a transcript of the interview, plus a photo he had taken with her, at the ComicsOnline.com website. Tapping discussed her transition to the cast of Stargate Atlantis for its fourth season (currently in production in Vancouver) and the two new direct-to-DVD movies, Stargate: The Ark of Truth and Stargate: Continuum, both of which will be released world-wide in 2008.
The movies were given close to $7 million each to produce and were shot on film versus in HD, and Tapping said that the experience was much more like making a major motion picture, especially when she shot scenes for Continuum:
The shooting is completely different. We are taking a lot longer to get the shots we want. The sets are bigger and the scopes are bigger. When you are sitting in an F-15, waiting to do these flying sequences and you have a whole battalion of Air Force pilots behind you, you realize this is just huge. When a nuclear submarine is coming up through the ice and your camera is on it you realize “THIS IS HUGE”.
Tapping didn’t provide much detail as to the plots of the movies, but still offered a few tidbits as to their feel:
The Ark of Truth
What would have been Season Eleven of Stargate SG-1 has been condensed into the movie Stargate: The Ark of Truth, written and directed by Robert C. Cooper. Even though the story was compressed into the one movie, Tapping said that it “is huge” and “really finishes out the Ori storyline. It just really is massive in scope. Rob directed a huge movie.”
Continuum
Tapping talked about the eight days she spent in the Arctic shooting scenes for Brad Wright’s Continuum, directed by Martin Wood, and how the experience was “unbelievably life altering.” She then went on to describe the movie: “Continuum is a stand alone which really is a romp. We bring back an old bad guy, Ba’al, who comes back and is badder than ever…and then we go back [in] time and everything goes crazy.”
As far as getting a chance to see old friends, she said, “Not a lot. I think people were hoping to see Janet Fraiser… but it doesn’t go back in time in that same sense.”
Fans have compared the premise of the movie with that of “Moebius” (from Season Eight), and Tapping admits there is some similarity, “but it really does feel different because its just so big.”
To read the full interview, visit ComicsOnline.com. Matt Sernaker promises that more interviews with the cast and crew of Stargate will be published soon.