David Eick
I keep saying this is the last Battlestar post, but like Michael Corleone the SyFy folks keep pulling me back end. But ironically enough SyFy didn’t have anything to do with this interview; it was the fine folks who run the NAB. I just love saying SyFY (Sifee) it just puts a smile on my face. I just had a 30-minute conversation with Battlestar Galactica Producer David Eick and Chris Brown the man in charge of the National Association of Broadcasters annual Las Vegas Confab. Eick will be keynoting this year’s event which starts it’s conference program Saturday and will open up the convention floor next Monday. The show runs until next Thursday. Here are some really neat tidbits that I learned during the call.
Chris Brown
- After listening to these two speak; I now want to go to the conference.
- The Caprica Pilot was co-financed by Universal Home Video which is why the DVD is coming out in time/before the pilot. David’s not too happy about it, but had very little control over it.
- This year’s conference is designed to highlight Content creators and not so much the technology, although that will be a major part. David will be heading up a Q and A next week about all the rules that Battlestar broke on its road to success. He wouldn’t tell us what those rules were; you have to watch his keynote next week.
- When he and Ron decided to end Battlestar they had some idea what the final shots were going to be but they didn’t have a fully fleshed out plan on how the series would end when it began. The folks at SyFy were surprised and raised eyebrows when Ron and Dave announced their intention to end the series. But as he explained it they had already reached a good number for Syndication and a DVD business, so they didn’t want to overstay their welcome.
- The NAB conference will take up almost 1 million square feet of exhibit space covering three buildings of the LA Convention Center. All of the big tech companies will be there: Sony, Microsoft, Panasonic, etc. Did I mention I want to go; there will probably be some really good partays [sic].
- When talking about Caprica he says that the series isn’t about an War, it’s about People and the relationships and how fear lead to the creation of the Cylons. He said that while people know how everything ends, we don’t know the nuances that lead to them creating the Cylons.
- He loved doing the BSG Webisodes because it gave them a chance to give the younger members of the crew to get more involved. The younger writers wrote the webisodes, while the bit players had prominent parts in the web series. The SyFy digital folks were the primary drivers of the web marketing. They really wanted to use their web properties to try and extend the brand. Ron and Dave did maintain creative control over what was shot. He said at times it felt like extra homework. “We’d get finished shooting and go, oh wait we have to do the webisode now.” They approached the webisode the same way the did the series, only just another distribution channel.
- Chris is really excited about this years focus on Content they will have lots of creators at the show this year including David, Josh Schwartz (The Creator of The O.C.), Rob Cohen and others. I’ve had a chance to have lunch with Rob several years ago and he’s really good and knows his technical stuff. He hopes adding all of this star power will increase interest in this year’s show
- David will be doing Video Blogs from the beginning of Caprica filming this year. He’s really excited about the prospect of showing how a show is made from the beginning of the process.
- There will be over 500 panel discussions at next week’s event. I think they said David is scheduled to speak next Tuesday and that they will send over a transcript of the talk.
So that’s it, really good conversation, I may post the audio and full transcript of the interview later this week.