Gary Hutzel knows a little something about building space ships. He also knows how to construct fighting robots, space stations, docking bays and intergalactic warfare. After three years of manipulating a futuristic world created by Ronald Moore, Battlestar Galactica’s Visual Effects Supervisor prepares for the fourth and final season of Galactica and discusses the changing world of CGI.
Getting Started
Hutzel began his career in the 1980s, at a time when visual effects weren’t commonly found in television shows and commercials.
"I got my start like a lot of people do, PA’ing for a commercial production house," Hutzel recalls. After spending time in the camera department and prepping camera packages, he landed a job as first assistant camera. Effects began to filter into the commercial business, and he "literally had people show up saying ’we have to do this effect and how do we do it?’ I had a knack for figuring out how to get those requests done." He learned how to operate the composite tools and dabbled with motion control.
"I got a call from a supervisor who wanted me to come over and do some motion control for him that would last a few days. I started on a Thursday and worked straight through the weekend and never left for 13 years."
That call was for "Star Trek: The Next Generation." He followed that job with "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine," rounding out his CGI experience prior to joining Battlestar Galactica.
"Up until the last few seasons of ’Deep Space’ i was still shooting miniatures. My responsibilities in doing that included the whole tamale." He would design and set up shots at the motion control facility, order and prepare the miniatures and act as the Director of Photography. It was on Deep Space nine that he began Supervising full time.
"By the time I was finished with ’Deep Space Nine,’ the industry was moving out of shooting miniatures." At this point he began mastering 3D tools and 3D modeling.
"Battlestar Galactica" is shot using virtual models exclusively; there are no physical miniatures at all. "Even some of the simplest things: a lot of the explosions, smoke, and basic effects are done in CGI now." Because some miniatures can take up to three months to build, they are unrealistic for television’s time constraints.
In addition to strict deadlines, the visual effects department has a tight budget for the series. Lightweight 3D is used rather than the more expensive Maya. Considered to be a "lower end 3D software package" in comparison to Maya, Hutzel likes the program’s speed, flexibility, and appeal amongst a variety of artists. "It’s always been very well suited to hard body objects like ships and buildings. As the years have gone by it’s proven to be a much more robust program than when I first started." Hutzel adds, "We use it for character animation, too."
Another means of controlling costs is the utilization of workstation based compositing. All compositing for the show is done on workstations. Flames, Infernos, and higher end compositing tools are not utilized.
The CGI utilized in "Battlestar Galactica"allow the visual effects team flexibility to adhere to story line changes as well as efficiently meet deadlines. Despite the need for CGI, Hutzel says there are many effects that are easy to achieve with physical miniatures that are difficult to duplicate with 3D models.
"There’s no question, if it were up to me I would have never stopped using miniatures. I love working with scale models and the Motion control artists and the miniature builders. I love every element of it."
On Board Battlestar Galactica
"From the very beginning, starting with looking at the dailies for the pilot, it was clear that it was an extraordinary show."
"Battlestar Galactica" is inspired by the premise devised in the original 1970s television series: a band of humans try to escape the forces of humanoid robots (Cylons) as they make their way to a planet called "Earth." Although Hutzel did not closely follow the original series, he’s been heavily involved with the direction of Ron Moore’s re-envisioning. Working directly for the producers of the show, he attends production meetings to assist in guiding the lore of the show in relation to standards set with the show’s characters and equipment
"It wasn’t just me helping out with the lore of the show; it is a big collaborative effort. I tend to be able to help out a little bit more because I fuss with the details a bit. I would get emails and calls from the producers asking ’can that take place on the ship’ or ’how do we go about doing that’ and ’have we ever done this before,’ that kind of stuff." In addition to lending a voice at production meetings, Hutzel would coach new writers and directors to the series on the Battlestar lore.
Hutzel sites the efforts of strong writers and an exceptionally talented cast along with a passionate crew in creating a series that is consistently evolving and improving. As the actor’s skills evolved throughout the course of the series, they were encouraged to be creative with the script and stretch their characters. Proving to be a benefit to story development, this system provides unique challenges to the creative teams.
"It’s not standard television fare in the sense that you don’t just shoot talking dialogue and then put it together from the script. In Battlestar, the script is a loose guideline. The dialogue is frequently only similar to the script. What that means is that when we get into post, what may have been a principle setup piece for visual effects may vanish from the show entirely and be replaced by something completely different."
To overcome the challenge of quickly creating intricate effects with minimal budget, Hutzel gathered a team of computer artists who work on the Universal lot specifically for the show. The in-house crew allows for greater flexibility in handling changes as well as the ability to focus on creative enhancements that are not directly related to storylines.
"As the series wore on I continued to age all the ships in the fleet, so if you looked at the ships at the beginning of season one to season four, you’ll see a dramatic difference: they’ve gotten very beaten up and picked up a lot of war damage."
His in house crew was also able to update and modify the Cylon Centurions. "They are very subtle differences, but if you compare them back to back you’d notice the differences immediately." The Centurions were given more functionality through the passage of time: their hands developed flexibility, their physical appearance was slimmed down and a meaner "expression" was developed for the face, and going into season four, the feet have been redesigned so the Cylons may run greater distances.
Hutzel feels the CGI is completely interwoven into the drama created by Galactica’s collaborative effort: from the directors, writers, actors, and creative crew. However, the Galactica ship itself is something of a CGI highlight.
"The Galactica itself was an unusual process in development. Galactica was built fully articulated, fully photographical and approachable from every angle. The Galactica was detailed to the extreme limit of the software. Literally half the time you would load it, the virtual model would actually crash the program. In developing that, there was something fun and amusing about pushing the software to its complete and utter limit."
Generally television shows will only create areas of the craft that will be photographed. Theses elements are reserved as stock footage and reused whenever necessary. The Galactica has no stock footage. The shots are rendered uniquely, to avoid compromising any element of the ships use in the story.
"I am most proud of the language we created with these ships and our visual effects and the story we’re able to tell with them."
Heading into the fourth season Hutzel and his team had the challenge of working with a reduced budget. Millions of dollars were lost due to the exchange rate from Galactica’s Canadian production location when the economy dipped. This unforeseen circumstance resulted in budget cuts throughout all departments of the show.
"The finale wrapped 6 months ago, but extra attention has been payed to it in editorial, and we now have the task of completing over 200 visual effects in the next 6 weeks. That should be interesting!"
A New Frontier
With Galactica winding down, Hutzel’s next project will reteam him with Ron Moore and David Eich on "Caprica"; a series involving dueling families and killer robots, slated to shoot in June. With a riveting pilot, Hutzel’s excited to reteam with Galactica’s producers. However, there is another pilot he worked on that he hopes will be discovered.
"I rather liked the ’Virtuality’ pilot; it’s something I’ve been wanting to do for a while now, which is creating virtual backgrounds for live action scenes."
"Virtuality" involves individuals who become overly entwined in their high tech, gaming lives blurring the boundaries of reality and fiction. Hutzel enjoyed the experience of working on this pilot, and sees a great future in this style of CGI.
"We had to do 300 blue screens comps in four weeks. We used combustion for that, and it was very fast and very effective. I think there is a whole future in entertainment where not only do you have the actors’ performance, but you also have a performance from the set."
Hutzel believes there is great capacity for this type of effect work in the future, and generally feels that post production will continue to have larger roles in television series. As technology and programs continue to advance, this work will become more feasible and less expensive to incorporate.
With two Emmy wins and multiple nominations for his work on "Battlestar Galactica," Hutzel prepares to bid farewell to this series. He offers these words on the final season:
"Certainly the back half of the fourth season is going to be a very, very surprising ending to the series. It’s not what one expects; every episode is going to leave you saying ’WHAAAT?’ Trust me, as you arrive at the end, it’s a worthy finale for a terrific science fiction series, but even more so, a fitting conclusion to one of the best drama’s on television."
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