Falling Skies

[privateer]

When? Where? Release Date

“Falling Skies” is due to hit TNT next June.

 

Why must we wait so long?

It won’t be out until sometime after the 2011 NBA Playoffs next June. The producers talked about how they could’ve had it ready to go by January/February, but that marketing during the playoffs is too big an opportunity to launch a show geared to a more male demographic. Plus, TNT does most of their shows during the summer.

 

How many episodes?

First Season 10 episodes, pilot included. Each season will consist of just nine or 10 episodes on TNT over the summer.

 

Season 1 Shoots

They already started this July, in Toronto.

 

Writers

Pilot scripter Robert Rodat (“Saving Private Ryan”), Graham Yost (“The Pacific,” “Justified”), Mark Verheiden (“Battlestar Galactica”), Melinda Hsu (“Lost”) and Joel Thompson.

 

Show runner?

The show has apparently not yet formally named a showrunner, even if Verheiden was the only writer on the panel.

 

Spielberg who?

According to Noah Wyle “he was incredibly involved in the casting process, the shaping of the pilot script… He watched all the dailies…. He did the storyboards himself of what he wanted the reshoots to include… He’s cut all the trailers.”

 

The Beginning.

The series picks up about six months after an unknown, incomprehensible alien race with their death machines wipe out 80 percent of the world’s population and follow the humans' efforts to survive and eventually fight back. The extraterrestrial baddies attack and destroied the world’s infrastructure, electronic communications and power grids for the most popular strategic military targets, trying to disrupt the essence of human existence. Washington D.C. is gone. The world is turned back to a sort of 19th century context. "We basically have to construct society all over again. There are no rules. There's no law, military or otherwise".

And humans have to figure out what to do because the aliens are unlike anything they’ve ever seen before.”The first step is to figure out if there a way to get back these things.”

The pilot is "about this large group of people, splitting up in hope they can beat them" with better strategy. The characters have no idea about other possible groups, who survived, just heard rumours of other pockets of resistance. They are isolated. The audience doesn't know more than the characters: they both "walk in the dark and learn as we go". They will both discover new information as the series continues.

 

History references

Noah Wyle talked about doing a lot of studying to prepare for the part. Also, he mentioned that Tom’s knowledge of military history and tactics is why he becomes one of the leaders of a group trying to survive after the alien invasion. He’s the 2nd in command of a group. Noah Wyle says he's been living in the American Revolution for the last four months and that he makes a speech in the pilot about "why we should retain hope, that there's historical precedents", and that from those examples you don't have to kill all the invaders, but just be a big nuisance for them to stay.

The American Revolution thing will come up a lot — but not as much as it could have. The show was originally going to be called Concord, after the famous Revolutionary War battle, and the Revolutionary parallels were going to be thick and fast. The producers decided to dial back on the American Revolution thing after realizing it could limit the show.

 

Aliens: how do they look?

The aliens, called “skidders,” are “very scary and very creepy” and have difficulty tracking humans when those humans congregate in numbers of less than 200.

They are awesome, terrifying, especially seen from close. "If they are standing on two of their legs, they'd be of man size". Mooblood adds that the aliens look really unique and terrifying, and they're sort of a mixture of CG and practical effects. "I think they're frightening. They did a really good job. You never know with TV CGI what it's going to be. You can't just pull out your staple alien creature, you really have to scare people."

 

Why are they here? What do they want?

For mysterious reasons, the extraterrestrials have been capturing a number of human adolescents.

And “Don’t expect an answer in the pilot but you can be very sure that there’s actually a meaning [to the invasion]. What they’re doing is very strange.”

The producers "have a really clear idea of why the aliens are here, what they want"... "The fanbase that's here won't be disappointed, and won't find moments of implausibility". The questions are gonna get answers.

 

Spaceships?

The aliens and the spaceships are gonna look great...

In the trailer we see footage of a flying saucer coming and blowing up some houses.

 

How can you kill them?

The only way to kill them is to be "extremely close" to them.

 

How can you avoid them?

“The aliens have the ability to target large groups of people… so large groups of 1,000 and 2,000 have been targeted for decimation. The idea of the pilot is we’ll split up into groups of 300 civilians and 100 fighters, and each of these units will take off in a different direction. We meet up later on to form some scale of larger resistance.”

 

Not just the aliens are evil….

“There are some people who are taking advantage of the situation. They love the chaos. It’s not just fighting against the aliens; it’s fighting against everyone.”

 

Alien vs Humans or CIvilians vs regular Soldiers?

there will be a struggle for leadership. There will, indeed, be drama in this area, coming from the conflict between the regular people and those who are in charge. In “Falling Skies,” Tom is the leader of the civilians and the fact that he often finds conflict with military leaders will be a basis for some of the action. So how do you maintain a large group of people — 100 fighters, 200 civilians — and what are the rights of each?... So it's not just the conflict of trying to figure out how to fight the aliens. It's the trying to figure out how to bring very disparate, very desperate people together for a common [goal]." And the group can only move as fast as its slowest civilian, so there's a lot of debate over whether the herd should be thinned for a greater good.

Another theme will be the miracle of people pulling together, and the humanity that people in a difficult situation can find within each other.

 

Characters:

The characters are still discovering each others personalities in the first few episodes. Combat with the aliens will get up-close and personal.

 

Anne Glass

Moon Bloodgood’s character is a pediatrician who “lost” her husband and daughter during the invasion.

She looks after the children among the hundreds of survivors, plus she patches up the fighters when they return from missions against the alien occupying force. "She's a mother type, very empathetic. Always wanting more peace than violence," said Bloodgood.

She and Tom are bonding through similar losses. She stays with kids, and the shows is about the civilians too, not only the fighters.

She more or less levels Tom out and keeps him balanced but she isn’t a fighter – yet. She is much less of a fighter at the beginning of the show and slowly grows into it. Her character doesn’t want to fight and would rather run and hide to survive but Wyle said that we will some interesting developments in her character as the season progresses. Bloodgood said her character has been running away from her life for so long that if she had to face what she has lost she might die. So she puts herself into the relationship with Tom.

Right now the character is not fully developed yet.

 

Tom Mason

Noah Wyle’s character, widower Tom Mason, was a tenured history professor at Boston University whose adolescent son was captured by the extraterrestrials. He’s the 2nd in comand of a group of citizen soldiers who have banded together to fight the aliens.

His study of the American Revolution has left him with a deep understanding of the sort of military tactics that an out-gunned force can use against invaders. And this comes especially handy since the aliens have taken out the power grid and knocked the human race back to a 19th century level of technology.

He's truly an academic. He's a guy who leads with his intellect."

He has 'the longest road', with changing from being in academia to becoming a soldier and a "potential killer". The "deficiencies" of each character come out when facing fights for instance. For Tom character it's the "fear of cowardice that he has to confront every time he goes out". It's all "character specific"

But as Tom finds himself thrown into this very desperate situation, he finds not just the courage to fight back, but also hope and love.”

And it's that belief, that there's historical precedent for a small, committed group of resistance forces being able to repel a larger invading force that I think allows him to maintain a pocket of hope."

Wyle said that as long as Tom has something to live for, like his family, he will never consider giving up.

 

Love

A romance between Anne and Tom is obvious, but the relationship works against their instincts, as they feel they should be grieving for their lost loved ones.

 

 

Being realistic in a Sci-fi series…

“OUR job is to make the sure the bit to bit human moments unfold in a plausible, sort of 'as if' scenario, that anybody could relate to. If this was happening, this is exactly how we would behave, both on a micro-level, trying to keep your family together, and on the macro-level trying to keep whoever has been able to survive alive." "You sort of have to go outside your realm of life experience". Noah Wyle talks about a documentary about a unit in Afghanistan, very dangerous spot, people living on the "edge of anxiety all the time, but at the same time, they tell each other jokes, they wrestle, they play video games. They retain aspects of their personality, and their humanity in the face of these obstacles".

 

Essence of the show…

Producers said while the series is filled with action, its story is about humanity. The survivors are grappling both with a radically different world and the threat of another invasion.

The story is also about people holding on to their humanity when faced with insurmountable odds. In this way, the aliens may not come across as scary elements on their own, but they provide a device with which to explore the characters through conflict. If the humans lose their humanity then the aliens win.

"It's not gonna be a bleak show, it's not gonna be a downer show. It's really a try for the humand spirit kind of show, about the resiliance of these people who have survived and their unwillingness to sort of bow under the beating force".

The main take-away message from the panel and roundtables, in general, was that this show will be uplifting, and not as depressing as BSG could be at times. Yes, genocide and hardship will bring out the worst in people, and people will do things they never thought they'd be capable of - but we'll also see how it brings out the best in people. "It's not a show about people tearing each other apart. That's not a show we wanted to do". The series does have dark themes but a main focus is hope.

 

 

Issues you'd expect will be explored in this show

How do you reconstruct society after it's been destroyed? Are there things about the old social order that you don't want to preserve? Should you cling to social institutions when society is all but gone?

The show explores living without the constraints of civilization. "These people become the new architects of the Constitution, the writers of the next Gospels. If something hit the reset button, what are the aspects we'd want to retain from the life before?"

How young is too young for a child to start carrying a gun? Sixteen? Seventeen? Or is it anyone who can pick up a gun? What's more important: teaching a child to protect him/herself, or trying to let him/her stay a child a little longer? Is it fair not to teach your children to kill the aliens? Or is it taking away that innocence?

Having children fighting in "Falling Skies" offers the show new areas to explore, Verheiden noted.

Tom’s youngest child is 8, so this is a theme that quickly becomes important.

Also Verheiden and Wyle stated that aside from creating tension the abduction of Tom Mason’s son is tied into the alien’s research and interest in human adolescence.

 

ENDPOINT?

Writers have an endpoint for the series in mind, even if they don't know every detail of how they'll get there just yet, since they have to see how the characters develop.

 

Trailer: Few Saw, Many Complained And Nobody Agreed.

Much of the trailer focused on a little girl talking about and drawing descriptions of the alien ships that invaded her home.

The clip began with two Alien space craft darting across the evening sky and dumping what looked like orbs of plasma into the city below and with a child's voiceover narrating the horrible events of the alien attack, interspersed with some gray-tinged footage of the real thing. The child says that he/she was in school when the aliens arrived - and the aliens did not want to be friends. We see footage of a flying saucer coming and blowing up some houses, intercut with a child's drawing of several flying saucers coming down. There's also a child's drawing of jagged-toothed green aliens swarming. There were millions of these aliens, the child says, and they blew up all the big cities as well as the army bases. Show runner Mark Verhein stated that rather than show the alien invasion, the children’s drawings and narration would act as an expositional recounting of it.

There are lots of glimpses of dark evil aliens attacking, intercut with explosions and quick cuts of action scenes. Cuts were quick so it didn’t include a clear view of the aliens but they appeared to be large, mobile, and arriving from ships. I saw one clear shot of metal feet stomping past as someone cowered in hiding, and there were quick cuts of a scene where Noah Wyle and a friend take on a monster in a storage facility or supermarket storeroom, and I thought I could see a ridged head. The footage never displayed a full good look at the creature, but it definitely stood bigger than a human and looked like a cross between a predator and a prawn (from District 9). While it was never fully seen, it appeared that the invading aliens used some type of bi-pedal mech to patrol the streets of Massachusetts where the show is set.

We see Noah Wyle talking to one of his kids, who says he just wants everything back the way it was, with his house and his bike and his room. Wyle responds that it's going to get better.

We also see the resistance's military leader, played by Will Patton, saying the cities are a loss, and everybody needs to split up and hide, so they can survive. Noah Wyle, who plays a history professor, says that history is full of cases where a smaller, less well-armed force made so much trouble for an invading army that the invaders had to leave. Noah also pushes a guy on the ground and shouts, in his best Christian Bale voice, "We either do this the right way, OR WE DIE!" Combat looked frenetic but also sometimes avoidable as much of the action included people running away. It depicted motorcycles and spaceships blowing things up.

We can see multiple clips of civilians and military personnel bantering, bickering and cautiously sneaking about the decimated urban setting.

The trailer was brief so it was hard to judge quality but a War of the Worlds influence was easily felt, as was the human element described in the interviews. It looks pretty lavish and wide-screen, and this is all just from the pilot, since that's all they've shot so far.

The whole thing had a very heavy War of the Worlds feel but more like the 1988 TV show rather than the 2005 blockbuster movie. The show also draws from several other films including the Predator-style weapons and look of the aliens.

The production values are above par, closer to a motion picture than a cable series.

 

It sounds like this, it sounds like that….or it sounds like something else?

 

“It certainly isn’t ‘V,’” Wyle says, referring to the ABC series. “It certainly isn’t any of the other science fiction shows I’ve seen. These aren’t morality tales cloaked in science fiction. This show isn't as dark as Battlestar Galactica, or as bleak as The Road, says Wyle. Nor is it as slick as V. It's somewhere in the middle — a compelling human drama against a science fiction backdrop and a lot of action. I don’t think I’ve done as much action in my entire career as I’ve done in the pilot. It’s closer to [the feature film] ‘Children of Men.’” Franks in turn deems ‘Falling Skies’ “as much of a family show as it is a science fiction show. What would you do if you never picked up a gun before but your son was in danger and your wife was killed? What would you do to protect your family? Whether you like sci-fi or not, anybody can relate to this.”

Making it scary isn't the hard part," Verheiden said. "Making it fresh and fun is. It's also about these people making sure they don't lose their humanity while they do what they do."

Producer Marc Bernadin says that most alien invasion movies focus on the actual invasion but Falling Skies focuses more on the aftermath of the invasion and the day-to-day survival efforts of the remaining human population. The survivors must try and pull their lives together and rebuild their infrastructure, while still trying to stay out of the way of the aliens who are hunting them down.

The family element to the series is very important. The show is very character focused but still contains action in each episode. Since the resistance fighters are normal civilians, they will behave more like average people and less like the military. Each episode will focus on a mission or battle while still developing the mythology of the show.

 

Do we really need many "impressive" special effects?

The TNT drama “is not technologically based. It’s not spaceships. There are no ray-guns. [The humans] are up against a very deadly enemy. That aspect is science fiction.

The visual effects will be spectacular when need to be but they will generally act to build toward something rather than just being visually exciting for the sake of itself.

 

Viral

"Revolving around a group of human resistance fighters, the show named this group “2nd Mass” and has been promoting it in weird ways. In addition to the mangled Flip Cam that was sent to me before the con, signs and handouts for 2nd Mass surrounded the convention center on the Thursday and Friday leading up to the panel. The most interesting part of this marketing was the people dressed as homeless men on the streets around the Gaslamp. They held up 2nd Mass signs, had tattoos on their face with the logo, and truly made the viral feel realistic and interesting. All of these advertisements included QR codes that when scanned with a camera phone would bring you to the 2nd Mass site. This site would give you details on the panel, but more on that later. Overall, the viral helped peak people’s interest in a year when alien invasion themes were everywhere at Comic-Con."

[Evilsmile]

συμφωνω απολυτα. μεταφραση παιζει δεν;

[marantonis]

Βαριεμαι να διαβασω ολο το κειμενο αλλα φαινεται ενδιαφερουσα σειρα. Θα δουμε.

[PeLLaRaS]

“It certainly isn’t ‘V,’”

we hope not!

 

Κατά τα άλλα ακούγεται ενδιαφέρων! Για να δούμε!

[mrfan]

Οι σειρες που παιζουν καλοκαιρι παιζουν το καλοκαιρι γιατι δεν αξιζουν να παιζουν την υπολοιπη σαιζον.Μην περιμεντε τιποτα φοβερο