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We are Deep Six, a hard science sci-fi series. Co-creator Davin Lengyel (Pure Pwnage, Space Janitors), Jaymie Matthews (UBC Astrophysicist) and Robert Godwin (Author or publisher of over 100 books, including several with Stanley Kubrik's technical...
Hello! We are some of the core team working on Deep Six - a Sci-Fi Web Series using Practical FX, Miniatures, Rear Projection, Models and other old school techniques, and we're also aiming to creating the most scientifically accurate Sci-Fi show since 2001: A Space Odyssey. Here to answer your questions about the show, or anything else you'd like to know, are:
DAVIN LENGYEL: Davin grew up in Saskatchewan, earning a B.Ed, B.Sc and B.Eng. More importantly, he made 6 ninja films. Moving to Toronto for law school at UofT, he fell in love with the idea of producing shows for a living. He left the law firm to help friends bring the web series Pure Pwnage to television. Since then, he has worked on dozens of web series, including “Space Janitors” which won the 2013 Canadian Comedy Award and 2014 Canadian Screen Award for best series. His work has been seen by over 10,000,000 viewers.
JAYMIE MATTHEWS: Jaymie Matthews is an astro-paparazzo revealing the hidden lives of stars by eavesdropping on their music broadcasts. His interstellar iPod is Canada’s first space telescope, MOST (Microvariability & Oscillations of STars), monitoring tiny vibrations in the light of ringing stars. His research sounds more like astromedicine than astrophysics: “ultrasound” images of stellar embryos, diagnosing hyperactivity in pre-teen suns, and taking the pulses of “zoomer” stars. Prof. Matthews is also an astrometeorologist forecasting weather on distant exoplanets.
His day job: Professor of Astrophysics at the University of British Columbia. In addition to MOST, Prof. Matthews is on Science Teams for NEOSSat – a Canadian asteroid-hunting mission – and BRITE Constellation – a Canadian-Austrian-Polish mission to study the brightest stars in the night sky. He’s Co-Investigator for the French CoRoT satellite, and on the Asteroseismic Science Consortium for NASA’s Kepler mission hunting for alien Earths.
In 2006, Dr. Matthews was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada.
ROBERT GODWIN: World renowned Author and Space Historian Robert Godwin graced our production set with his presence to consult, inform and delight us with stories of Apollo 13, Neil Armstrong and, of course, 2001: A Space Odyssey.
In addition to the 130+ books that Godwin has either written, edited and/or published, he was also Space Curator at the Canadian Air and Space Museum in Toronto from 2008 - 2011 and had a main belt asteroid, 4252 Godwin, named in his sake for his efforts in documenting space history and raising awareness about Near Earth objects, with his brother Richard. He released the first time synchronized multi-camera video of the Apollo 11 moonwalk, created the first digital VR panoramas from the Apollo lunar missions and also co-authored 2001 The Heritage and Legacy of the Space Odyssey with Frederick I. Ordway III, technical adviser to Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey.
FIRST EDIT Keep those great questions coming Redditors. Here's a video we filmed with Jaymie Matthews giving us an exclusive tour of UTIAS - University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies. Jaymie shows us the science that will one day make the Fiction of Deep Six... reality!
SECOND EDIT Here's our social media links for the show. Wow! We can't even begin to thank you enough for all these great questions, positive vibes and support for our little show that could. Believe it or not, in this day and age an online fan base can be the difference between getting a TV series or not... so with that in mind, please:
and use #DeepSixSeries out there kids. Tag us and we'll RT. Open to any and all Cross Promotion opportunities, media, blogs, podcasts, interviews, and Davin will do a personalized video live from set for pretty much anyone who helps us in any way! (May or may not be true once we're filming... but he'll do some). If you want to get in touch, please feel free to email [email protected].
THIRD EDIT Well we powered through a good 7 hours here folks, Rob and Jaymie and I are nursing hangovers, Davin hasn't slept since he decided to do this show... but they'll be back! Just on a little break. Please keep asking questions, even for next couple days, and we'll answer them all. I'm the producer on the project and can answer some of these, but please keep the questions coming for Davin, Rob and Jaymie and SHARE THIS THREAD ON YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA SO MORE PEOPLE CAN READ THIS FANTASTIC AMA! THANK YOU SO MUCH!!! I've done about 10 of these but this one was really special. Great questions, hugely entertaining and informative. Cheers Reddit.
FOURTH EDIT - January 2nd, 1pm - In order to keep answering questions, as Davin is supremely tied up getting our rear projection images prepped and storyboards and working with actors and all kinds of other fun stuff, we're joined today by co-creator Mika Collins - answering from https://www.reddit.com/user/MikaCollins - she just landed back in Canada from South Africa. Not only is Mika the Co-Creator of Deep Six, she's also one of our primary Cast Members!
DeepSixSeries100 karma
Foundation. No wait, Foundation and Empire... nah, it's gotta be Second Foundation. Or maybe it's Foundations Edge. Or Prelude to Foundation.
The real question is, when is somebody going to throw $100 Billion on the complete Foundation Series as an epic TV series to end all epic TV series?
Keyframe21 karma
I have a few question, since I have some experience with this.
Are you using motion control for shooting miniatures? I see a ronin on BTS, but eh.. not repeatable much? Also, which frame rates and shutter speeds do you use / what's your plan in order to convey scale?
How do you light models? From limited BTS footage, I see direct(!) lighting on models. Even if it's bounced, should't space have hard shadows with (almost) no penumbra?
Congrats on bravery for this huge undertaking! Wish you guys all the best!
DeepSixSeries2 karma
Got an answer for you from our DOP, Dave Lam
"No motion control, we didn't require repeated moves. It was shot at 60fps to give us more smoothing options, and everything in space just feels like it's in slow motion anyway haha. Our shutter angle was at 180 degrees. Because this is used mostly for the projection, the scale of the model can be cropped to be zoomed in or further away to our desire, we shot it at 4K so there's lots of wiggle room for the projection (which is only 1080).
In terms of light, yes. The miniature SHOULD be pretty dark/black on one side, because of the single motivated light, but it's a movie, and we tried to retain some light on all sides for detail. It can always be crushed in post to complete darkness. We did use a single LED fresnel as our star, a bounce board to represent the planet below, and used some of the green screen lighting to backlight the model a bit."
DeepSixSeries7 karma
Couple questions from the Producer here:
Jaymie! Can you tell us more about the MOST Satellite, aka Canada's "Humble" Telescope?
Rob! Can you tell us about a certain Perk that might be coming up and also any of those stories you told us on set?
You two are literally the coolest people in the world!
Davin! How did we get so lucky having these guys join our project?
neugo2 karma
Did you notice that the very first thing in the first video is 'a hard-science web-series with no green-screen' - then, the production-video right below it shows you filming literally everything on a green-screen?
DeepSixSeries7 karma
Great question... the answer is simple however. The green screen shooting that you saw was actually filming Miniatures, so that they could be composited and projected onto a screen using rear projection. So our actors won't be acting in front of a green screen, when they look out their space ship window they will be seeing and engaging with live images of space, planets and other ships.
When we say no green screen, what we mean is virtually no VFX, because all of the images are being projected live while we're filming. It's a bit inside baseball but that's the gist of it. We're going back to the techniques used by Kubrik, or in Star Wars, and Alien... old school, practical FX.
Davin and Sebastien, our production designer, are both extremely skilled VFX artists, but the aesthetic of this show is to be as real as possible and as true to the classic SciFi we all grew up with and loved. And the theory is, that things are far too computer generated these days, and we're losing a little something that used to be there in those old films by doing all the special effects with a green screen and a computer.
-- The Producer (But Davin / Rob / Jaymie might have more to say on this)
TistelTech2 karma
Looking forward to it. Did you ever consider pitching to Netflix or Amazon video? They seem pretty keen for content. Do you need any volunteers to build stuff in GTA?
DeepSixSeries2 karma
Netflix / Amazon: No comment :) Our long-term ambition is definitely a long form series. Those are both lovely content distributors and producers. What we're filming beginning this week is a prelude to the TV Series. Essentially world building. It will be a multi-part digital series and that's our focus right now. But yes, long term, Deep Six is looking evolve into a broadcast series.
DeepSixSeries2 karma
Jaymie is literally the coolest guy in the world. He never wears the same outfit twice, and sports a revolving cornucopia of gigantic, functional, compass rings, and other gadget/jewellery/trinkets etc., plus the greatest wardrobe you ever did see.
Oh, he's also just a super nice guy, and obviously a hyper genius. And can discuss any subject at great length.
We went to see my buddy Danny Perez's film ANTIBIRTH - shameless plug and Jaymie talked genre filmmaking and film history and acting and all the nuances of my industry as well or better than most people who work in it.
He's just an absolute gem.
iulioh33 karma
Favorite Asimov book or/and short story?
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