http://www.canada.com/northshorenews/news/pulse/story.html?id=d459e32b-af2d-4dc2-9de8-7b3a3b577d69
(Please follow the link for the complete two-page article.)
Gifted group behind Stargate's success
Rosalind Duane, North Shore News
Published: Friday, March 07, 2008
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Finding remnants of TV and film productions about town is nothing new, and odds are you or someone you know has a tale to tell about Stargate. The long running, popular sci-fi drama has been shooting here for more than a decade -- starting with Stargate SG-1 and continuing with Stargate Atlantis -- and one of the show's stars, West Vancouver resident Amanda Tapping, says that's a good thing.
"Aside from the fact that our funding comes from the United States and our first-window broadcaster is in the U.S., other than that it's fully Canadian. This is really a local show. And all the ancillary, all the post-production is done here. Over the course of 11 years now that the Stargate franchise has been operating in Vancouver, it has employed a lot of people. I'm pretty proud of that," she says.
Currently shooting season 5 of Stargate Atlantis at The Bridge Studios in Burnaby, Tapping finds a short window of time between scenes to talk about the longevity of the show. She attributes its success to a gifted group of writers, who "wove this amazing mythology," and who have managed to keep the storylines fresh over the years.
"The show held up its production value, the quality was great and we had so much fun making it, and I think as hokey as that may sound it translated onto the screen, and it made it enjoyable to watch," she says of SG-1.
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Tapping then reprised her role for a full season of Atlantis, and is returning for a few of episodes in Season 5. She also appears in the straight-to-DVD feature Stargate: The Ark of Truth, being released Tuesday, March 11. The DVD (along with a second feature to be released in the summer) wraps up a major storyline (the Ori arc) from seasons nine and 10 of SG-1. The resolution of the storyline will allow for future stand-alone movies that don't have to keep reaching back into the mythology of the show, explains Tapping.
She adds that it was "a blast" reuniting with the SG-1 cast.
**snippage**
Tapping played the role for the run of the show's 10 years, and is appearing in only a few episodes of Atlantis this season.
She is scheduled to start shooting 13 episodes of a new show called Sanctuary, also a sci-fi series, at the end of March. She also serves as executive producer for the show, which had its premiere on the Internet last May, and has since been picked up by the Sci-Fi Channel and TMN. With a $4 million budget for the pilot, Sanctuary earned a nod from the Guinness Book of World Records for having the highest cost for a web-produced show.
"It's such an interesting model. And I think it is the way that things are going to be going. We were riding the crest of that wave," says Tapping of using the web to broadcast the pilot. "And I'm not going to say that TV will ever become obsolete because I don't think that it will, but a lot of people are going to the web for their entertainment. We just wanted to try it out."
After three sci-fi series, Tapping is looking forward to possibly more Stargate features, and says she is also itching to do a period piece.
"I'd love to do a period drama. Starting out on stage and doing a lot of classic theatre, I'd love to get back to that."
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