'Battlestar Galactica' Season Four: A VFX Sneak Peek

Space is still looking grim for the rag-tag colony of humans running for their lives from the robotic Cylons on SCI FI Channel's series, Battlestar Galactica. After three seasons of intricate political machinations, subterfuge from the Cylons, more religious and moral quandaries than you can shake a stick at, and winning a Peabody Award, BSG is winding down for its fourth and final season set to start in April 2008. Gary Hutzel, the visual effects supervisor for the entire run of the series and the new TV movie, Battlestar Galactica: Razor, has been responsible for bringing this new breed of sci-fi drama to the screen. In our third chat with Hutzel in as many years, he tells VFXWorld the changes that have happened in the BSG vfx pipeline and his plans to for this last season to raise their already remarkably high visual effects bar one more notch.

With BSG always embracing change as a motivator for story and plot arcs, Hutzel details that season four follows suit. "This year we are brightening it up a little bit. The tone is a little bit harsher, with faster cuts and more violent action. I think that's fine for this season because the storyline lends itself to that and the writers are embracing that approach. The visual effects are being used a little bit more for structure. The writers are saying: 'We need an exciting little bit. What should we do?'"

Hutzel also explains that all of the visual effects are being done in-house now, which opens up the process for creativity and experimenting. "It's exciting for us because we don't have the tether of having to deal with it being too expensive. We can move in and elbow the live-action a little bit, to open up a sequence. It's a balance. [Exec Producer] Ron Moore and I have talked a lot about this and he's expressed his concern about traveling too far away from (season) three, as far as visual effects are concerned. We are working together to make sure that he stays in a comfortable place and the show doesn't get too flashy. There are sequences where it's handy to have vfx open it up, but there are other scenes where Ron knows we must remain understated. We are staying in touch making sure that I don't take sequences so far, but at the same time he is more than happy to see more smash and bash," Hutzel laughs.

Already into post-production for the first few episodes of the season, Hutzel reveals some tidbits about the focus of their work so far. "We know there is going to be a lot more Centurion work this year, including Centurion/human bonding. Right now, we are redeveloping the Centurion to make him more human scale and interactive. It was originally designed to be a highly stylistic robot, not functional. As it was originally designed, it was never meant to play a larger role in the show. In the fourth season, it will be playing a larger role. We will be working on that with Ron, and how much he will let us get away with," he chuckles. "In using the original series, the Centurion was a human scale robot that elicits a lot of different emotions than our Centurion. It has a human-like head and shoulders. Our Centurion is more stylized and you can do a lot more with expression with the original. I'd like to make more functional hands, because our fingers are so long and sharp, it's not functional. He's just there to kill people.

"The rest of the season they are keeping very, very quiet," Hutzel cautions. "We have been warned there will be a full-on conflict at the end of the season. We've been told to hang onto your dollars because all hell is going to break loose. Again, working in-house we have control and we know what our expenditures are going to be. It's just a matter of management. I'm looking forward to keeping everything in-house because it's much more dynamic. We can sit with everyone in a circle for ideas and then work with editorial and the writers. We are all on the same lot now. The secret to getting things done is getting a consensus and moving forward."

For all the demanding hours and sleepless nights over the past four years, Hutzel is still very sad that this will be BSG's final season. "Opportunities don't come along like this too often. It's a collection of Hollywood professionals who really knew what they wanted from the beginning and got it. This is the only show I've ever known where the pilot was born fully- grown. The characters were filled out and going right into the series, everybody was at 100% and I've never seen that. Everybody knows that they are working for a very good reason. When they see it on the air, it's worth it. Hopefully, I'll have another opportunity to do another show like this. Ron will continue to develop new shows with Universal and I hope I stay with him. The writing is key and we don't break the rules for convenience, which happens way too much and on every sci-fi show and that's not what happens here. They make it different. The writers spend time with the scripts."

Detailing their workflow, Hutzel explains, "With Galactica, no amount of planning ever prepares you for a BSG season. We are working on a batch of shows simultaneously. Production went on hiatus for six weeks. During that period, they laid off part of the editorial staff while we were still delivering Razor. Now we have a whole batch of episodes. 401 and 402 are Razor, so for us 403 is the first show of the season. We are doing previs for episode six, rendering three and four. This year we went into this doing a 20-episode season and Razor (airing Nov. 24). So we are prepared to have the first eight shows by mid-December. We feel good about that and we'll see how SCI FI schedules it. Unlike years gone by, we're not into the vfx death march, which is a new show every week. And particularly when you are supposed to develop the last two episodes, which are supposed to be gigantic, never before seen effects and also deliver fast, fast, fast, that's extremely hard. We're going into this season with more time. Ron has something spectacular planned but we have no ideas. I'm sure there will be panic," Hutzel laughs.

Tara DiLullo Bennett is an East coast-based writer whose articles have appeared in publications such as SCI FI Magazine, SFX and Lost Magazine. She is the author of the books, 300: The Art of the Film and 24: The Official Companion Guide: Seasons 1 & 2.