The Hollywood Reporter covers the 100th episode

Final Frontier
Andromeda gives flight to intergalactic
effects on a syndicated budget

By Debra Kaufman
�2005 The Hollywood Reporter

It might come as a surprise to some that the No. 1 action hour on television in 92 countries around the world is a first-run syndication show set in outer space, but that's just one of the many unusual aspects of Sci Fi Channel's Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda according to head writer and executive producer Robert Engels, who reports "huge audiences" in South America, among other locales.

The Tribune Entertainment production, which flies its 100 th mission on Friday, was propelled to global success on the strength of a character-driven and good-versus-evil-in-the-universe plotline.

Now, as the crew prepares to go dark after episode 110 and five years of production, the show presents an interesting case study in how to get a lot of visual wallop on a weekly budget -- the Holy Grail for producers of hourlong fantasy shows. In addition, the series has achieved venerated "franchise" status, spawning a slew of spinoff merchandise.

Of course, it doesn't hurt a sci-fi show to have Roddenberry's name attached. The late author's futuristic vision has, since his death in 1991, been nurtured by his widow and current executive producer, Majel Roddenberry. But that plus also equates to a huge challenge in terms of getting that vision on the screen with the quality Roddenberry's fans have come to expect.

Creating a futuristic world requires innovative and believable visual effects and makeup, and Andromeda has averaged a significant $1 million on special effects per season over the course of its run. After four campaigns, most of the effects post work was moved in-house under the guidance of visual-effects supervisor Bruce Turner, as a cost-saving measure.

An average episode has about 60-100 visual-effects shows, Turner reveals, with some episodes (including the 100 th ) exceeding that -- comparable to a visual-effects shot count for certain feature films. "Even for TV, the shot counts are pretty high," he says.

Of course, the biggest sci-fi trick is that Andromeda 's crew is able to pull this off with an in-house unit comprised of a mere 12 artists relying on off-the-shelf software with an eight-day turnaround. Turner's staff has eight noncontiguous days scheduled for each episode and is usually working on three episodes at any given time. Those eight days are stretched out over a three-week period to finish effects. "The most challenging thing is to make the show look as cool as we want given the time deadline," Turner admits. "Every eight days a new pile of work lands in our lap, and every eight days we have to deliver a pile of work back to post [production] -- but we can juggle stuff a little if we need to."

The entirely PC-based visual-effects unit uses NewTek's Lightwave as its main 3-D tool, as well as for lighting and rendering (via a 50-processor render farm). Other software includes 3-D package Studio Max, compositing with Combustion and After Effects and 3-D motion tracking with RealViz MatchMover, which enables the show to use moving cameras during visual-effects shots. In addition to the in-house unit, some shots -- mainly ones to put graphics on computer monitors and give the fiery sizzle to weapons -- are subcontracted out to Vancouver visual-effects shops including Spin, Northwest Imaging and Shaman Digital. (For Season 4, the show also used Atmosphere Visual Effects.)

With this integrated visual-effects team in place, Andromeda is able to feature some extraordinary sophisticated effects. For example, in one episode this season, the eponymous spaceship flies into a mechanical sun that has been switched off, so that the crew can service it." "The sequence I'm pretty excited about (includes) shots of the Andromeda flying around inside the sun," Turner says. "The sun is a big crystalline-carbon structure, and the model is like a big cathedral." The model even boasts "volumetric lighting," a sophisticated method for simulating a light glow (as with a streetlamp or flashlight). "It looks really pretty," Turner opines.

Adds star Kevin Sorbo, "The visual effects are a star in their own right." Sorbo, who plays the lead role of Capt. Dylan Hunt, also is one of the show's executive producers, along with Josanne Lovick, Jay Firestone and Adam Haight. "To me, visual effects are what help make or break the show."

Behind all those effects, however, is the idea generated by Roddenberry and explored by Majel Roddenberry (who also happens to be the only actor to appear in all four "Star Trek" series, if only as a computer voice in some). Tribune Entertainment president and CEO Dick Askin says that a successful collaboration between his company and Majel Roddenberry on the syndicated 1997 series "Earth: Final Conflict" led him to ask her to search her husband's archives for a new idea. "We wanted to do more of a sci-fi adventure, and I asked her to see what type of material was available," Askin recalls. Two ideas came to light, one of which was originally labeled the "Andromeda Ascendant" project. That went into development in the late-1990s with Robert Hewitt Wolfe, who became the show's first head writer.

Meanwhile, Askin had his eye on Sorbo, who was winding down from his ongoing role on the syndicated Hercules . "We felt strongly that Kevin was one of the most bankable stars in syndication," Askin says. "He'd been so successful -- we felt immediately that Kevin was really the ideal Dylan Hunt character, the captain of the Andromeda, and this would give him a chance to show a more expanded range of talent." Tribune's belief in the combination of Sorbo, a Roddenberry idea and the creative force of Wolfe prompted an order for 44 episodes at the outset. "We were willing to step up and put the money on the table, to give the project the best possible chance to succeed," Askin explains. "We were all very comfortable with that order."

Star Trek fan Sorbo was sold, and the show ultimately was produced by co-partners Tribune and Toronto-based Fireworks Entertainment. But Trekkies expecting warp speed and phasers soon found that Andromeda was a different creature. Roddenberry's show bible provided dramatic distinction between Andromeda and his iconic Star Trek franchise, which first aired on NBC in 1966. "We're over 3,000 years in the future, so that makes us much farther in the future than Star Trek ," Engels says. "We could create technology and mythology not connected to Star Trek ."

Nevertheless, Andromeda has shared some Star Trek themes -- the emphasis on character relationships and plotlines with a universal theme -- and extended that similarity into the way it approaches portraying futuristic science, relying on David Gallagher of Pasadena-based Jet Propulsion Laboratory for science accuracy.

Elsewhere, the look of the show comes from cinematographer Gordon Verheul, who provides a consistent tone and visual sense. "How we lit, how fast we could go is dependent on the DP," says Engels, who reports the series is shot with 35mm Panavision cameras and Fuji film, entirely in Vancouver. Composer Matthew McCauley's music for the show has been so successful that his requiem is now being performed in concert by the San Francisco Opera.

From Tribune's point of view, Andromeda has been a huge success. "It's been a phenomenon is syndication," Askin says. "(It) is right up there with Star Trek and Stargate (SG-1) as the three strongest sci-fi shows that have ever been brought into syndication. It has been a terrific journey for all of us."

Still, that journey is nearing its end as the fifth season closes out. "It had always been planned from the beginning as five years, 110 episodes and out," Askin says. "Unless you have an unusual situation like a world-class sitcom, once you get into your fourth or fifth year, a show starts to lose its luster. We were determined to do our best to avoid that." He adds that the marketplace for sci-fi also is changing, as sci-fi stories set in space are being preempted by more grounded Earth-based sci-fi storytelling.

But the show will continue its journey in the afterlife of syndication at Sci Fi Channel, which made a deal this month with Tribune for the cable network rights to the series. And with 4.7 million hits on the show's official Web site (www.andromedatv.com) -- a figure that doubled as Season 5 began airing -- a lot of fans will no doubt want to relive their space adventures again and again.

That fan loyalty, Sorbo says, comes from the essence of the show itself. Special effects might draw in viewers -- but they stay for the familiarity of a Roddenberry-germinated story. "We deal with issues that make sense today," he says. "What sets Andromeda apart from other sci-fi shows is that it has a lot more heart and personality."