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By
Suzanne

Interview with Kevin Murphy and Nathan
Richardson of "Defiance" on SyFy 3/27/13
These two executives were great to talk to, despite some
technical difficulties during the call. They were very
knowledgeable about the show and the game, and they have a
lot riding on this project. I enjoyed the call, even though
I hadn't seen the episodes yet and it sounds like everyone
else on the call had already seen them. UPDATE: I did see
the show later and I love it!
NBC UNIVERSAL
Moderator: Maureen Granados
March 27, 2013
1:00 pm CT
Operator: Ladies and Gentlemen thank you for standing by.
Welcome to the Defiance conference call.
As a reminder, this conference is being recorded Wednesday,
March 27, 2013. I would now like to turn the conference over
to Maureen Granados from Syfy. Please go ahead Ma'am.
Maureen Granados: As you all know by now, Defiance is our
highly anticipated project from Syfy and Trion Worlds. We're
very excited that the game is going to be released on April
2 and the show will premiere on April 15, Syfy Mondays at
9:00 p.m. ET.
So we're going to kick off our first conference call with
our Executive Producer and show runner for the series, Kevin
Murphy, and Trion's Vice President of Development, Nathan
Richardson for all of you gamers out there. So without
further ado I will turn it over to your questions.
Operator: And our first question comes from the line of Erin
Willard from SciFiMafia.com. Please proceed with your
question.
Erin Willard: I was at the press tour in October and I was
totally blown away by the amount of work that's gone into
the show and into the game. And Kevin, I've seen the first
four hours of this show and I am totally in. Thank you so
much for all that you've done for the show.
Kevin Murphy: Thank you for watching.
Erin Willard: Absolute treat. And it just kept getting
better, which is so exciting for me. So could one or both of
you fill us in on how this all started?
Kevin Murphy: I'll jump in on that. It's been five years in
the making. About five years ago, Dave Howe from Syfy and
Lars Butler from Trion got together because Syfy had made a
large investment in Trion and they were looking for a
project to do together.
So they looked through the various properties that, you know
that Syfy had in development and they settled on this sort
of a world. It took five years of development to get the
videogame up and running, which is not unusual for a
videogame, as I think many think, you know, can attest. And
it took that long to kind of figure out how it would work as
a television show. I came on board the project about two
years ago and kind of got us over the finish line, in terms
of the shared world.
And the big idea really was about, "How do we create a big
universe with two distinct portals that would allow you to
enter that world?" And by creating a new world it gave you
sort of an infinite sort of number of permutations of ways
to tell stories and ways to find characters.
Nathan Richardson: Yes, also part of it of course is that
it's happening in two different geographical locations so
that instead of the problems that you have with licensed
games and licensed shows, is that they're usually
restricting each other, so with geographical difference, and
also of course selecting the right kind of world and
intellectual property that actually fit for both mediums,
both parties are actually quite free to tell pretty
compelling stories.
Kevin Murphy: Yes, what's really special about this is that,
unlike an adaptation, rather than one intellectual property
being iterative of the other, the game and the show are
equals. And they're - and because they were developed
together, the mythology is seamless.
And whenever there's something that serves the needs of the
game, we work it into the mythology of the show. And if
there's something that's important for the show, the game
works it into their mythology. And that allows for, I think
a better gaming experience and a better, hopefully,
television viewing experience.
Erin Willard: Right, well I think it's actually a brilliant
concept and I can't wait to see how it all plays out. Thank
you both very much for your time.
Kevin Murphy: Thank you for the question.
Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Michelle
Alexandria from Eclipse Magazine. Please go ahead with your
question.
Michelle Alexandria: Hello, it's a pleasure to speak with
you again. I was also at the digital tour last year and I
have to agree with the previous caller that the sets are
amazing. And when you actually watch the show live, it
really brings everything into context, into focus. And I had
a surreal experience watching the show because I'm watching
it and I was all, "Wait a second, that's from the game."
When you - you're putting all of this together, how do you
draw the line or tell where the line is between what's going
to be strictly game focused and what's actually going to
make it off the screen, and then what's the conversation
like in terms of how those two are going to play off of each
other?
Kevin Murphy: Well one of the things that we learned early
on, that we needed, was a way to keep the mythology of the
game and the mythology of the television show up to-date and
current because we were having real trouble communicating.
Because at Trion they would do a big beautiful bible of
everything that was going on in the game, and we would use
that as a reference. And we would pull something out and -
like some creature or some political figure - and they'd
turn out say, "Oh sorry, that's not it anymore, we took that
out." And they would have the same frustration with us.
So we created the position of a mythology coordinator who
serves as kind of an editor between what goes into the game
and what goes into the television show and helps define
connections.
And make sure that there's nothing we do in the show that
contradicts the reality of the game to make sure that when
we do an episode with Hell Bugs in the television show, that
we're being accurate as to the biology and what they look
like and how they breed and what the various subclasses of
Hell Bug are.
And that everything that we're doing is exactly so that when
a gamer watches the show, they really have a feeling of
recognition that this is the same monster that they've been
having fun fighting and killing in the game world.
Nathan can speak to this too, but that's really been a big
help in terms of keeping everything straight and keeping
everything unified.
Nathan Richardson: Yes, I think that the way that this is
actually happening is that we have this repository - the
world in its entirety, but it's also simply talking quite a
lot together, to say the least.
Kevin Murphy: Yes, we're like on the phone like at least
like about like 9, 10, 11, 12 times a day.
Michelle Alexandria: Can you talk a little bit about the
original language created for this show?
Kevin Murphy: Sure, sure. So David Peterson is not only our
language creator but he's also our Cultural Consultant on
the show because he really has a mind for that sort of
nuance. And from his perspective, you can't really create a
realistic language without knowing a lot about the culture
of the language - the language creators.
David Peterson, prior to Defiance, is best known for
creating the Dothraki language on the HBO series Game of
Thrones. And this presented an even bigger challenge to him
because the Dothrakis on Game of Thrones are illiterate;
they don't have any written form of their language.
We asked them to come and not only create a spoken version
of Irathient, but also a written version; a spoken version
of Castithan; he's also done Indogene; and Liberata is a
work in process, we don't use that as much. But at this
point, last time I checked, we were at 1,962 Irathient words
and counting.
And there are complete rules for grammar, syntax, verbs, and
irregular verbs; there's an 150-page orthographic document
that he's created. And along the way there are things he's
created in terms of what our alien cultures are and who they
were on their home world that I don't even completely
understand.
Like every now and then when he was creating the Irathient
language, I would get this weird phone call from David and
he'd go, "Is it okay if the Irathient home world sky was
kind of red?" "Okay David, sure." "Great, that's going to
make everything work." And I had no idea why a red,
Irathient sky made the language work but I know that David
knows, and that's what's important.
So any time we have a question about culture… He created the
Castithan caste system, which are called liros, and all of
that is all in that magnificent brain of his.
So that's really how we do it day-to-day, and Nathan could
speak to how they do it in the videogame. But in the show we
basically write in English and we put carrots around it and
say what it is we want the character to say. David chooses
the appropriate language and then makes up the words and the
syntax and then adds it to the overall vocabulary. And the
languages get bigger and bigger and grander and grander.
Nathan Richardson: Yes I mean the way that we do it in the
game itself is essentially not to the same extent. It's more
that we pick up individual, for example, swearing and stuff
like that from different languages which add a certain type
of flavor to the conversations that are happening in the
cinematics in the game itself because obviously you aren't
required to know caste to be able to play the game.
Operator: And our next question comes from the line of Jamie
Ruby from ScifiVision.com. Please proceed with your
question.
Jamie Ruby: The one thing I wanted to ask is about how they
interact. I was curious, from what I've understood from
everything, you know, that you guys have said before, that
you know, events that happened in the game and on the show
are kind of going to cross over.
But my question is, I assume when you buy the actual game
that there's like an endpoint. So if somebody finishes the
game right away, how do they still get kind of that
crossover content? Can you still play in world or do you got
to start over or?
Nathan Richardson: No. I'll jump in first and say like that,
there's actually a couple of angles to that question and the
answer itself, simply because that the game is based on a
main storyline, of course, which is telling the story and
getting you immersed. But it also has so many other
different aspects of the online aspect, which provides much
more longevity in game play.
What happens there is that we have the crossover elements of
course between the show and the game, but there are also
live events happening in the game itself when it all
continues. So you're still affecting the world itself, even
though the show has actually finished its last episode.
I mean what happens essentially in the game is material for
actually what would happen on Season Two. So the
opportunities, like the number of opportunities that we have
to actually work with how we play the game and how we work
with Season Two is essentially too many options.
Kevin Murphy: Yes, one of the things that's really exciting
now that we're going through the process of beginning to
think about the shape and form of Season Two, is now that
the game is actually up and running and the TV show is up
and running, we're now going to be able to really plan, you
know, things for Season Two that we can be setting up
because a lot of the game is being created as we go along
because it's constantly changing and there's new levels and
new missions being introduced.
So that's something that, you know, we're really looking
forward to, because as we move forward we're able to really
sort of make the convergence between the two even more -
even deeper and more meaningful as we get into a Season Two.
Jamie Ruby: Great. Can't wait to see it. And then I also
wanted to ask if you can you kind of just talk a bit about
how the different designs for the races came about.
Kevin Murphy: Well the - do you want me to jump on this one?
Nathan Richardson: Yes.
Kevin Murphy: Well when we were first figuring out the races
for the pilot, we had the initial sort of like idea came
from Trion, but then because we had to figure out, okay, we
could only have so many races that are CGI just because of
the limits of the budget and the limits of technology in
terms of acting.
So we knew that we were going to have to use flesh and blood
actors. So we really had to look at, "What can we do that's
cost-effective?" And some of the decisions about how the
aliens look, like for the Irathients, we decided that we
would do most of what they do with makeup and we would use a
forehead prosthetic.
And so that affected the way that Irathients look in the
game. Of course in the game you can do anything because it's
an entirely digital domain, but that's a case of the game
sort of cooperating with us.
The Castithans, we decided we would settle with contact
lenses. And we did a lot of experimentation with makeup to
make them glow, but they don't actually have any latex.
The Sensoth and the Liberata are very expensive suits, so we
see fewer of those aliens. And the Indogenes are also very
expensive because they're an entire latex head.
But we really had to look at, "How do we make it not look
like rubber suits?" We looked at sort of like the way that
we were painting the latex to make sure that it didn't shine
under stage lights. And all of this had to get sort of
reverse engineered into the look of the game. And this is a
case where the game was incredibly, you know, they were
generous and wonderful teammates in kind of adapting to our
needs.
On the other hand, one of the other things that we did was
we used - we appropriated the Volge from the videogame for
the pilot. And they appear in a couple of other episodes.
But what we discovered is, when you put them in kind of a
photo-realistic environment with, you know, with actual
flesh and blood actors, they looked a little too Buck
Rogers, they didn't look grounded.
So Gary Hutzel, who was our Visual Effects Supervisor, sort
of did some tweaks to the design and then ran it back with
the folks at Trion. And happily, the folks at Trion really
loved what, you know, what Gary did and so they incorporated
those changes into the design of the game.
And I think we ended up with something that was better than
we would have come up on the TV show on our own, and it was
better than the original first pass that Trion had and the
gamers as the beneficiary of that sort of cross-pollination
of the artists.
Nathan Richardson: This is one example of where these two
different mediums and we have something that could work
better than either of them, but actually getting better to
know each other and going back and forth like that for
example with the Volge, it ended up it being a much better
result in the end so that was kind of a pleasing surprise
for both of us I guess.
Jamie Ruby: Okay cool. Well I really love all the visuals,
and especially the Indogene because it was really cool; we
got to see that close-up at the press tour, it's I don't
know, kind of amazing, so thanks.
Kevin Murphy: Yes, that was the costume parade.
Jamie Ruby: Yes.
Kevin Murphy: That was - what she's referring to, for
everyone else that's on the call is in - for anyone who
wasn't at the press tour, is we did a costume parade with
all of the aliens done up in their makeup under lights so
everyone would get a really great look. It was like the
world's most elaborate episode of Face Off.
Jamie Ruby: It was really awesome. So thanks for doing that;
that was really cool.
Kevin Murphy: That was fun to do.
Operator: And our next question comes from the line of Tony
Tellado from Sci-Fi Talk. Please proceed with your question.
Tony Tellado: Hi gentlemen, great to talk to you. Very
excited. I wasn't at the press tour but I was in San Diego
where we had breakfast, and that was really neat with the
actors and everything, really enjoyed that.
I want to ask you, as far as crossover is concerned, how
much crossover will there be during the first season from
characters in the series into the other city and the other -
in the actual game?
Kevin Murphy: There's a fair bet. I'm going to be a little
coy about it because I also don't want to - I don't want to
lay it all out and create a situation where we have
spoilers.
Tony Tellado: Sure.
Kevin Murphy: But we are passing several characters back and
forth in both directions. And one of the things that we have
to be very careful about is, I like to - if you remember
from like old like high school probability class or
whatever, where you had the Vin diagram where you would have
the two big circles with the intersecting middle.
If you imagine that there's one circle that is - that's
gamers, and another circle which is television viewers, and
you look at the point where they intersect, those are sort
of our super-fans, our people who are going to immerse
themselves completely in the world.
And what we want to do is create an amazing experience for
all of our immersive super-fans, while at the same time
making this enterprise accessible to the people who are just
interested in the television show or just interested in
playing the game. And hopefully over time we intrigue them
and tickle their curiosity and get, you know, them to you
know, get a bigger and bigger sample and create more
super-fans.
But to do that we have to be very, very tricksey (sic) in
how we go about creating our crossovers because we have to
make sure that when we do a crossover element that the, you
know that the one side doesn't feel that they've missed a
chapter or they don't feel frustrated or, "I can't enjoy
this television show if I'm not also playing the game so I'm
not going to bother watching the television show."
So like to give you a for-instance, because I think a lot of
you have seen the pilot, if you - when Nolan and Irisa get
the terra-spire at the beginning of the pilot, they take out
a glowing little GEM, which is not really commented upon.
Nolan refers to it as a whatchamacallit and - or, "Do you
have the whatsit?" And they put it into the terra-spire and
that's what allows them to get the Terrasphere, which is the
big deal later in the pilot.
If you're a television viewer, that moment will probably
pass by you without incident. But if you're a gamer, you're
going to have a huge emotional connection for that because
that is a big part of a mission in the game that the players
will be playing.
And that before Irisa crossed from the game into the show,
that is - that's the piece of loot that they - that Nolan
and Irisa help (unintelligible) get. And Nolan and Irisa
appropriate it from the player at the end of the session
before they come into the game.
So if you're a gamer, your reaction to that is going to be
like, "Oh my god, those bastards stole that from me. I'm mad
about that." But - and I've got this emotional connection to
the object so later, when the object gets stolen again from
Nolan and Irisa, it's kind of cool for the gamer. But again
for the television viewer it's not - they don't feel that
they've missed a chapter.
So we've had to be really, really careful at making sure
that our crossovers are done in a way that they work on two
levels, that they work for (unintelligible) viewer and the
super-fan.
Nathan Richardson: Yes, I also think that the crossover
simply is a very good descriptive word for it because we
literally are crossing over the storyline back and forth
between certain elements there.
And it's important to emphasize that you don't have to play
the game to watch the show. The individual on each side will
- won't be without context for you.
Tony Tellado: Very cool. I think what's also appealing is
the storyline, the father and daughter. Also a Romeo and
Juliet kind of storyline, and you know, two families kind of
going at each other. And this - just all of that. The
planning stage must have taken...
Kevin Murphy: The father - you mentioned the father and
daughter, the inspiration of that - for that was actually
one of my favorite movies, is Peter Bogdanovich's Paper
Moon.
Tony Tellado: Cool.
Kevin Murphy: And that's kind of who I based the Nolan/Irisa
relationship on, was Ryan and Tatum O'Neal's' characters.
Tony Tellado: That's really cool. The planning must have
taken like months to get all that storyline - all those
storylines, kind of probably spending a few nights in the
writer's room getting all that together.
Kevin Murphy: Absolutely. I'm standing on the shoulders of a
lot of really, really talented writers and creative people
that came before me. And it's - and it was - it just you
know, getting this right was really, really important. And
it took - you know, we did not squander the five years it
took.
Tony Tellado: That's great guys. My - so far the character
that I like is the doctor. I just love her sarcasm.
Kevin Murphy: I love her. That was - a little bit of story
about the (unintelligible) and she was actually the - worked
for the Casting Director and she was the person who read the
off-camera lines against the people who were auditioning.
And she really, really wanted to have a shot at a role. So I
said, "Okay, we can read her."
And she went through many, many, many auditions because the
network was very dubious. She didn't really have any
credits. She was a newbie, she was unknown, she was the girl
who read the casting sides and she really stuck with all the
auditions. And I was so proud of her when she got the part.
And she is - I agree, I think Trenna is a big standout in
the show. And I'm happy.
Tony Tellado: Thank you gentlemen, really appreciate your
time.
Kevin Murphy: Great.
Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Christina
Couch with GetInMedia. Please proceed with your question.
Christina Couch: Hi. I saw your presentation at the South by
Southwest Interactive Festival. During the presentation Nick
from Trion Worlds mentioned that there were a number of
compromises that were made in terms of translation from the
videogame to the television - to the TV series and
vice-versa.
He mentioned for example, that originally the TV series
wanted to have everyone on horses. But for a first person
shooter, having people on horses is pretty much a moving
target. I wanted to ask, you know, what other compromises
did, you know, both sides make in order to make this project
really effective?
Kevin Murphy: So flying is one example. That was something
that could have been cool in the game. And for us to do that
my fear was that it would make everything feel a little too
Buck Rogers to have like flying cars. So we decided that we
were not going to have that. And that there's a
Stratocarrier that you enter the game in, but it crashes.
Nathan Richardson: Yes, like Kevin was saying is that flight
was one of them. And I mean we are even still now exploring,
like when we were thinking about, "What do we actually have
in our expansions to Defiance," because you have an
aggressive schedule of expansions post-launch. So we're - we
have planting of seeds.
We're asking ourselves like okay, "What could actually fit
here," and then we also have to take into consideration what
could - with the show, what could merge well together and
actually create more compelling stories.
Because when we look at how want to move the game forward,
whether we're doing crossovers at that point in time or
whether we're just thinking forward, we don't want to paint
ourselves into a corner. So that's kind of like a - it's a
relationship like every other, that you have to be
well-aware of each other.
Christina Couch: Okay, thank you very much.
Operator: And our next question comes from the line of Tim
Holquinn with TV Over Mind. Please proceed with your
question.
Tim Holquinn: So I have a few questions I could direct
specifically towards you. I was wondering the ratio of
vehicle and equipment design. Do the live action people
mostly do that, or is that done from the game first and then
they get onto the live action side?
Nathan Richardson: It's from both. Tthe vehicles they come
from both sides. As with the television show, in many cases
you would like to at least base them on something that's
currently available or close to, which you would modify. We
don't have that restriction inside the game, of course; we
can go pretty much everywhere.
But I mean in terms of which one is more contributing, I
think it's pretty similar even though the reason that people
see less in the TV show is simply that it's a different type
of story that's being told. In Defiance a lot of your travel
is vehicle-based. So we have everything from quads up to
trucks and stuff like that.
Some of them actually have made ourselves. But a good
example is that in the pilot, the car that Nolan and Irisa
are driving, it actually didn't exist in the game itself and
it's actually be - just being finished as we speak.
Tim Holquinn: Okay, I just wondered because I knew that they
had to physically build those vehicles and props, and I
thought there might be some restrictions.
Nathan Richardson: There are restrictions. For example you
will see that we have Dodge Challengers and stuff like that.
And that's not just because they're good partners and
sponsors, it's because that it fit very well with the
universe. Because you want to have a certain amount of
alien, futuristic views of it, but you also have to have a
certain amount of familiarity to the world.
Tim Holquinn: Right. Okay, and one quick follow-up here.
Will there be DLCs that go back in time to deal with the
humanity or the earliest days of the Pale Wars?
Nathan Richardson: No, they aren't planned. We are very much
going from the perspective that you are turning a living
world which moves forward. And we're not going to time
travel, at least for - not for now. But no flashbacks.
Kevin Murphy: In the TV series though, because the past does
have a big effect on the characters, we do have a number of
episodes where we go back and visit moments from the past,
things like that.
Tim Holquinn: Okay, and thanks for that. And Kevin, if I
could just squeeze in one question here before getting back
in line since you're back on, you know, I was wondering if
you know for a fact or have any timetable for when there
would be a soundtrack release for Defiance?
I'm a big fan of Bear McCreary's. And I was wondering, did
he score the game as well?
Kevin Murphy: Yes, he scored the game. And yes, our hope is
to do a soundtrack. I don't - there's not a specific release
planned, but Bear has actually created a lot of music for
this. And he's also created pop songs. And he's created pop
songs that are in the various alien languages.
There's actually a - for example, the - if anyone's seen the
pilot when the Castithan teenagers are dancing, that Groovy
song that's playing is a Bear McCreary original composition
that he wrote and recorded. That will be on a soundtrack
album.
Sometimes we'll do things like we'll come up with this
imaginary scenario where we decided that Castithans for some
reason, they really liked Frank Sinatra music so they sing
their own sort of Castithan version of Rat Pack Swing Music
that we hear as source music in the show.
We hear - you know, there's - we've got another piece of
music where the idea is that Alak, who is Datak's son, will
introduce at the top of the arch, he runs kind of the
Defiance radio station, sort of like Chris in the Morning on
the old Northern Exposure show, and played all kinds of like
cutting-edge music, which can be Earth and alien music
mashup, it could be old work vinyl or it can be something
entirely new done by like a local Defiance garage band.
So music is a huge character in the show. And there's a lot
of Bear McCreary music. There's Bear McCreary covers of
popular songs that we'll be hearing. So it would be a crime
against nature for us not to have a soundtrack album because
it'll be awesome.
Operator: Our next question is a follow-up question, comes
from the line of Christina Couch from GetInMedia. Please
proceed with your question.
Christina Couch: What was your biggest challenge in creating
a project like this?
Kevin Murphy: I think the biggest challenge is figuring out
each other's sort of like nomenclature and process.
Nathan Richardson: Yes.
Kevin Murphy: Coming into this, I didn't know anything about
how a videogame is put together.
And I think on the Trion side they didn't have any idea of
how a TV show is put together. Like it was - the truth is
for this sort of television, the idea for the episode
usually is, you know, you're breaking the story maybe six
weeks before you actually go before a camera, which seems
really, really fast.
And I think it was a little shocking for our partners at
Trion when they were saying, "Yes, well we don't know that
because we haven't gotten to breaking that episode yet." And
then it's suddenly, "Okay, now we're breaking the episode.
Sorry, we shot it." It just seems incredibly lightning fast.
And for us, you know, the amount of lead time that's
required because every single thing that is in the game has
to be lovingly created and digitally rendered. It's very
difficult for them to make a small change.
So when we call and say, "Oh can you just maybe tweak this
one thing or this one look or this one color," and they
would look at us like, "You're crazy." And then we realized,
"No, I guess they really can't." And I think that
educational process for me I think was the biggest
challenge.
Nathan Richardson: Yes it's very much that understanding
because like we've just gone through in some of the previous
questions is that they rely a lot on actually learning about
each other and how we actually do things because if we turn
this around in terms of a television show and how that is
made versus how a game is made is that you do a lot of the
shooting in a TV show, and then you do a lot of
post-processing.
With a game, there is no pre and post-processing as such,
that's the - just done runtime in the game itself. We are
always creating the full 3D assets. That takes considerable
a lot of time, especially when you have a lot of terrain.
Like recreating the - lots of parts of the San Francisco Bay
area.
But secondly, I'd also say that one of the challenges,
especially for me coming into this, is that creating a
television and a game, which is not only just a game, it's a
massive online game on Xbox, PlayStation 3 and PC, and
they're all connected together. This is the kind of mild
insanity that intrigues me.
Christina Couch: Thank you.
Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Suzanne
Lanoue from The TV MegaSite. Please proceed with your
question.
Suzanne Lanoue: Hi. I haven't seen any of the episodes yet
but I'm looking forward to it with all the information that
Syfy's been sending us.
Nathan Richardson: I hear it's pretty good.
Suzanne Lanoue: It seems like a very ambitious project and a
lot of - two companies at least, two or three companies
behind it, a lot of publicity. I was wondering how many
episodes or seasons has Syfy committed to for the television
show?
Kevin Murphy: They've committed to Season 1, and we are now
in the process of like - of sort of like story breaks for
Season 2. But we won't actually get a Season 2 pickup until
after the first episode has aired. And we expect that
probably the date that you will probably get the word of it
around mid-May.
Suzanne Lanoue: Okay, so I was - what I was wondering was
the tie-in with the game, how will that effect - if say I
mean I don't want to jinx anything, but if the TV show
doesn't last more than a season or two, how will that affect
the game?
Kevin Murphy: You're killing me here.
Suzanne Lanoue: Sorry. I hope it lasts a long time.
Nathan Richardson: So part of why these both are like
additive experiences in terms of if you watch the show, you
don't have to be playing the game to get the entire context.
That's just a part of a business decision for both of us in
terms of that we are not inherently tied to each other on
that level. The thing is that, like now we're going through
Season 2, even though it's not fully green-lit, what we're
doing is still compelling storylines on both sides.
And the moment that we're green-lit, because I have no doubt
in my mind of course, is that preparation work and all the
stuff that we're doing now, it will be fully contextual
still and relevant and immersive.
Suzanne Lanoue: So the game will continue on?
Nathan Richardson: Yes, absolutely.
Operator: And our next question comes from the line of
(Fidel Orantus) please - from (Reformer) newspaper. Please
proceed with your question.
Fidel Orantus: Hi guys, thank you for your time. My
question is, "It's a big challenge to create, let's call it
a franchise, between the game and the TV show, why did you
decide to do both things at the same time?"
Kevin Murphy: Well I think one - the big reason is because
no one's ever done it before. And one of the big challenges,
as we move into sort of what many people are calling a
golden age of television and of gaming, is people are really
looking for what - you know, you hear a lot of talk about
second screen applications and experiences.
So the idea here is to take that idea of a second screen
presence and building it into the DNA of the actual project.
And I think that that creates a form of entertainment that
is not available elsewhere. And I think that with so many
great games and so many great television shows on right now,
creating something that sort of cuts through the clutter and
noise is something that no one has ever seen before.
And that's one of the reasons that I was attracted to be
involved with the project because I love this particular
challenge of figuring out how to make it work.
Nathan Richardson: Yes I mean, it's definitely the
challenge. And it's - even people often ask like, "Why would
you try to start a new franchise," and think about it that
way.
But you really should be thinking from a different version,
is like if nobody starts trying to kickoff new franchises,
new intellectual properties and worlds, we'll be watching
like Call of Duty 9 and Rambo 13 in a couple of years. And I
don't - for me that's not a very compelling future.
So I mean, everybody is trying to - like find and figure,
"What is the new form of entertainment which is going to be
interesting to people," and this is one approach. I believe
it's a good approach. It's risky of course. That's the
reason why people haven't taken it on. But I think we're
going to do - we're going to be doing some amazing things.
Fidel Orantus: Okay. And there's just been a lot of TV
shows about alien invasion. Some of them have success and
some of them didn't. But what makes you think that Defiance
is going to be a success in the game and in the TV show?
Nathan Richardson: We have more aliens and some of them love
each other.
Kevin Murphy: The other thing is that what's sort of unusual
about this I think is maybe a reason why, you know, if it
you know, no one ever knows why anything is or is not
successful, but my thinking is that this is not simply an
alien invasion show.
This is really more of a melting pot immigrant drama, in
that these aliens, the Votans, seven different races, they
don't necessarily like one another. They - back on their
home world they may have been enemies, one race may have
conquered the other. They came together out of necessity
because their own solar system was about to be destroyed and
it was, "Come together or die."
So we are in a world where old millennia long prejudices
exist within the Votans. Humans are now in the mix. And
everyone's got shared history, shared alliances, shared
cultures. And it's really about, "How do you get together in
a new world with all of these different perspectives and
musical and cultural perspectives."
So that's very different from like an alien invasion show or
something like Falling Skies. And you know, and we're hoping
to kind of stick out. And I think Falling Skies is a perfect
show. And two of our writers, (Weddow) and (Thompson)
actually worked on Falling Skies.
But we're trying to do something that's kind of in a
different sandbox. I think doing something different is the
best way to be successful with an audience. So that's the
plan at least, and I'm sticking to it.
Fidel Orantus: And why did you decide to broadcast the
show in many countries just one day after the show is going
to be on TV - in the U.S. TV?
Nathan Richardson: That’s just one of the reasons why we
have crossover lens and why it is an interconnected
experience for people, is that there is a certain timeline
in the world which both the TV and the game exists. So if
you would see the - one of the episodes too late, they would
have clashed and already moved on in the game world.
Fidel Orantus: Okay. So it's - the game going to affect
too much to the TV show?
Nathan Richardson: No, no, it's more that it - we share a
common timeline as such.
Operator: And our last question comes from the line of Laura
Mastantuono from SpoilerTV. Please proceed with your
question.
Laura Mastantuono: Hi, my question was for Kevin mainly I
think, it was related to the production, how much time does
it take to - between the filming of each episode and the
filming going to the editing room and the challenge in
between.
Nathan Richardson: Okay, I would love to answer, but I was
not the person that made the TV shows. Is Kevin on?
Laura Mastantuono: Yes, I'm sorry.
Nathan Richardson: No, no, it's nothing to be sorry about.
But I mean, I can tell you that I believe the TV show
finished filming in, was it November? Then the
post-processing starts. Before that, as I understood it from
the various crew and cast members is that the TV show was
filmed in a pretty fast way and over a short period of time.
But it's been a really rapid process in the last year or so,
especially because that's when we've been solidifying also,
the crossover events and solidifying the timeline in the
story.
Laura Mastantuono: Okay, perfect. So they film all the
episodes first and then did a post-production of everything
together?
Nathan Richardson: Yes. Yes, I mean that's usually how they
do TV shows. And then of course the month before that we are
working out of the stories that we're telling and making
sure they fit each other, like he said earlier that I mean,
"We have people talking together nine or ten times a day."
Laura Mastantuono: Okay, thank you.
Maureen Granados: Great, so I think we will wrap it up for
this call. Thank you everyone so much for your questions.
And apologies for our little tech issues. Nathan, thank you
for taking that last question, it was exactly correct.
Nathan Richardson: Sure, no problem.
Review of
"Defiance"
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