By Scifi Channel, NBC/Universal
2003

Richard Hudolin talks about the Set Design for Battlestar Galactica. Segments of this interview are used in the Scifi Channel's behind-the-scenes featurettes included in the season one DVD. Below is the transcript of Richard's interview. This transcribed interview was made possible by Intersun Luxury Liners, Caprica City, Caprica.

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What does the Production Designer Do?

(chuckle) I come up with the visual concepts that you see on the show. The design of the ship, the interiors, what the overall look of the whole thing is, all the colorations, the texture, the tone. All of the visual elements that you see, ultimately come through me or come across my desk in conjunction with other departments. When we started the Mini-Series I flew and meet the producers -- they hired me -- I stayed with them for two days. I'd called back to my art director here, got four people lined up for when I returned, cause the two days that I spent with the director and producer were getting us all on the same page as to where we were going in designing this thing. So when I got back we worked over a Christmas and into the New Year just to do the concept work.

What is involved in Production Design?

We have breakdowns, we have specific sets we are going to do, we have a whole team of people working with us, we have art directors, illustrators, drafts people, graphics people. The art department is somewhere that's like the center, a lot of the other departments come to us because it generates all this other design and work. So, I'm the guy that every-one's asking "Do you like this?" or "Where do you want us to go with this approach or that idea?". I'm always trying to think of how I maintain the look of this show. So, there's drawing, there's sketching, there's a lot of meetings, lot of meetings, a lot of budgeting, and a lot of throwing ideas back and forth and see who's going to do what, or what sticks, or what develops, and you're always looking for new approaches and new ways of doing things.

Who else is involved in the Art Department?

There's a group of people behind me that are very talented. It's a very complex job. It's not just "me, me, me, I, I, I," it's a lot of "we" in there. A lot of talented painters and construction people and visual effects people. There's a great group of people on the show Battlestar and a great group of actors and I'm sure that what I'm seeing in the dailies and the cuts, that are coming through, it's fabulous.

What is your favorite set?

I don't have a favorite set actually, they're all interesting, they're all a challenge to me. My biggest charge comes when we light it up the first time and we shoot our tests and when the actors come in. This is a great thing on this show as well is that we have a great group of actors. As it was being built, all of the key actors would come in a look at the sets way before they were dressed or painted. They'd start to see the basic shapes and I would be explaining to them where Dualla would be living, and that's your space, and Adama would be over here, and I got their inputs as well. They're a fabulous group of people. Some of the comments they would make, from their point-of-view, I tried to integrate into what I'm doing, because ultimately they're the ones that have to live here not me. It's like, I try and provide something that makes them really comfortable and allows them to like really get-right-into-it. If you go up to any of these consoles and flip a switch something happens -- a light turns on or something happens over there. There's a lot interactively that's built into this set and they love it. They can go to any spot and something will happen that doesn't break their concentration.

What are your sets designed on?

This control room set is based more on an operating theater, where Adama is like a doctor doing an operation and you have the upper gallery where people can be looking down into that and seeing what he's doing. He doesn't have a chair he sits in he goes from station to station to station. So it's kind of his arena, his ring down here and every-body's around him and he's the center of all attention and all attraction. If you look at some of the dressing there's the older style telephones -- 1940's actually -- and they actually are out of a submarine or been in battleships. So it's what ever you want to make it sometimes.

Did you design to look old?

That kind of came as a natural extension of the design to have kind of a retro feel and it wasn't super slick it just was... it had a nice worn "chipped" kind of look to it. If you look around the set you'll see that the aging looks like to the naked eye, it actually looks dirty, but when we film it, its just got a nice aged patina. Much like in any navy everything is well maintained even though the ship may be fifty year old. You can go on that ship and it's got layers, and layers, and layers of paint but it's not dirty right. It's still functional. It'll still do today what it was design to do fifty years ago.

How did you design the set to look old?

You've got the older style telephones, you've got ahh.. you look at some of the details on the columns it's based on wiring systems and on... If you look at your arm on a human arm you can actually see the muscles under your skin. So, we're trying to bring the inside of the ship kind of a little more foreground, more visual to the eye so it like the musculature of the ship that you're seeing in the textures. The design of it is... it's got big broad details there's not a lot of finicky parts to it. If you look back to anything that's retro there's a certain elegance to it. There's a nice proportion and elegance where ever you look in this ship it. Everything kind of frames out quite nicely and it's all kind of worked out in great detail.

What was the aim in the look of the set?

Because we're shooting this in hi-definition television, it's very crisp, it really pops colors and you have to be very aware it doesn't get too music video looking. So, we've aged this thing incredibly. To the extent where you look at the screens, when the screen comes up, it's obviously projecting something and we've taken waxes and paints and literally gone over all of the screens to knock the brightness back. Everywhere you look you'll see where people's hands would have touched something or the wear and tear around a light switch or a phone. There's an enormous amount of attention-to-detail paid in the paint finish because that's the last opportunity you have to make it credible.

Is it a challenge to create a believable set in a fantasy world?

The correlation of something that you give people to relate to as opposed to something totally unique, yeah, there's a very fine line that you have to draw. There are a lot of ways we can accommodate that with the exterior of the ship and the interior of the ship and when we're doing the show. We're creating a vision, an environment. We're telling you what this world is and we have to make you believe it. You have to be very careful just not to cross over that line where people say "Oh, that's phony" or "that's fake." This goes back to researching what the functions of the ship are, what the areas are and doing your homework and having a credible base to build your designs and your stories on. And if you've got that, then you're fine. It's like anything in life; if you're talking with somebody and you say "Oh, that person they don't know what the hell they're talking about" you'll just ignore them because they're not credible, or they're talking... because there's no basis in fact or there's no basis in truth in what they are saying, and that shows through very quickly. So, that's why we do all this research and try and give people the old style phones to hang on to. There's no flip phones or cell phones in this ship. You got to go to the wall and crank this thing. You know, it's kinda... Think about it, it sounds funny but it's really believable

Do you think we could be living on space crafts in the future?

Yeah absolutely, yeah. There's no reason why we can't. We have the technology it's all about the money right now. It's like I was saying, you have the idea, you have the technology, now how do you make it happen. Man has the basic technology to go and do that. It's phenomenal what we can accomplish. I sometimes... hope for something, for a conflict in life, because it actually makes people better. It makes them think, it makes them smarter, they go for the solutions that are... ahh, they'll reach for the moon or go the stars and they'll accomplish something only because there's a challenge. You know, people say there's an oil shortage or there's this and there's that. When there is, you'll find that people really pull together and find alternate ways of doing things. So, I don't see an oil shortage as being a negative thing. I see it as... there's a silver lining in there somewhere that we're not really paying too much attention to right now cause every-body's going "Oh no, oh no." But ultimately, we will have a better way of transport, we'll find a way better solution to get us around. I'm seeing electric cars and hybrids. And, I'm hearing people say "my next car is going to be one of those." All of a sudden now people are more environmentally aware, and they are aware because of what was a so-called "problem." It's an awkward thing I'm trying to say, but in the negative there is a real positive that can come out of it, and so space life is achievable, it's achievable now.

Did you take CGI scenes into account when designing the sets?

Yeah, things like the space jump... we designed our set in such a way that we can get a viper from it's standing position into a launch tube. We've put windows into the launch tube so you can now see the Viper as well as the pilot. We then yank it, physically pull it, for maybe twenty feet or so, which begins the shot down the tube, which then, is taken over by visual effects. So, the [set] extension is basically an extension of what we've designed and provided for in reality. And, once it starts then it's into the CGI world.

What are the centurions in CGI?

Ahh... I had very little to do with the design of that. Our visual effects supervisor was involved with that, Gary Hutzel, who's done great work. The decision to do it completely CGI was that you could control and make them look totally unique, again following the thought process of we want something totally different. If you use a person, your hip no matter how thin you are, is still going to be an 18 inch waist or 20 inch waist or whatever. You will always have that human aspect to your centurion. So the decision was made to go totally CGI, where you can create something that's basically running on a ball joint at it's hip. I mean they look fantastic because they're total creations.

How does working with CGI affect set design?

The split between actual design and CGI is almost blended now because it's... CGI is, it's just a part of the design process now. Quite often we'll design a set and we'll just build a partial set and we'll do what's called a matte extension in conjunction with CGI. We'll design the whole thing, we'll do the illustration, we'll say this is what it ultimately should look like but we're only going to build this much of it you'll get these shots and the rest is over to the CGI world. Quite often it's a financial decision or it's just the best way to do it. There's no point of building this kind of set if you're only going to take three shots of it. It's much better to do some things in CGI. It doesn't mean that you're building anything smaller or less in term of quality. It's just another tool that you use. We use that all the time in the hanger bay, that's one area where we can get the vastness of the ship. As I say the set it's self is a hundred feet by 100 feet by forty feet high which is no small piece and then we do matte extension beyond that which make the ship look enormous we get tons of background and it's how the Vipers and Raptors come into the holds. So, the decision is quite often based on finances and practicality or the look.

What were your guidelines when designing a ship?

When they first hired me to do Galactica their only mandate was "show me something that we've never seen before." Which was, when you think about it, is a dream on one hand and a nightmare in the other because you have no reference points. So, it was a wide open slate and the farther out, as far as they were concerned, the better that was.

Did you design the ships based on the original show?

We didn't want to keep any of the elements from the 70's show. We wound up keeping the Mark two Viper because it was such a great design as well as it was a link to the previous show. Other than that, we had carte blanche. I'd only seen the other show once or twice and I looked at the show from that period but we never really relied on that for our design themes.

Did function play a part in design?

A lot of it's based in fact, it gives myself and the art department a grounded point to talk about as well with the writers. We kind of looked at an aircraft carrier, and said "that's a city onto it's self", and how do they get ships from this level to that level. There's all of the logic and all of the functionality that has to go along with what may look cool on the camera you know. You have to have a back story. You have to have a reason for it. And, if you look around this room everything is laid out and delineated as to what function that room is, as opposed to that room, or that area, where the helmsman are. So, the functionality does play a big part, but once you got that, then you can make up what ever you want because it's sci-fi. People can say "What's the logic of a certain sequence?" and I can say there isn't any because sci-fi keeps changing as well. I mean, I was reading an article where Steven Hawking is now saying black holes do not just suck every thing into them, there's the possibility that they don't do that. Which is a huge thing for sci-fi fans because we've always counted on, you know, go to the black hole and it's all gone and disappears forever, but that theory is now no longer valid.

Is it fun having such challenges?

We tried a number of different designs. This wasn't the only on that you come up with because you can't, you can't just present one because if it's not going to fly you have to have plan B, C and D so. But, this is the one that accomplished the most and gave us the greatest visual. We had some designs that were way out there but some of those designs we'd still be drawing trying to figure out how to build it.

Was it hard to design unique sci-fi ships?

You look at all of the conventions of sci-fi and what you normally expect to see in those shows so you do a lot of research. I particularly don't watch a lot of sci-fi, I mean I'll watch anything but I wouldn't say that I know all there is to know about other shows in terms of sci-fi. So, it's like all new research for me and I can pin point things that are a commonality and then you avoid them. This room, the control room, does not have big view window. Most ships in the control room you're able to look out into space. This one you have the control room, the center control room and the peri... what I call the periscope that comes down and brings information into the ship like that. And, this control room is embedded inside the ship as opposed to being on the outer nose of it or the leading edge of it.

What was the challenges in constructing the sets?

When they first hired me and we did the breakdown they had budgeted for an art... kind of answer you question, they had budgeted for an art department of about three people, we wound up with an art department of about thirteen people. That's the scope of what we had to design in a very short period of time. Design and build. The number of sets we had? (pfff...) four or five stages, over all must of had twenty five maybe thirty different sets. The biggest ones were the CIC room which you're in now connected to a whole series of hallways leading to Adama's quarters. In the Miniseries there's a three minute steady cam shot that's in one set and there are no cuts. So, that guy is operating in one set. That set was like two hundred feet long and a hundred feet wide and maybe forty feet high so that's a lot of scenery. The other set was the hanger bay which was... again that was like a hundred by a hundred ending at floor to ceiling and wall to wall in the stage. Another one was, oh god uh... we had a couple of swing stages and there were a number of other smaller sets but those were the biggest ones. And, when I was building 'em people would walk into the studio and I'd put up the first test flats to make sure our size and proportion was going to be right because everything was being built at once, we didn't have the option of having the Viper, put it in a space, and look at it. It's kind of like flying a jet plane and building the runway at the same time, the whole thing gets done before you get there. So, they would look at the scale of these things and say "That's really big" and I'd say "It's not really big cause you have to keep in mind the scale of Galactica, right. It's like thousands and thousands of people on this ship." And if you go to any of the other stages now and have a look, you know it feels right. When you're walking you feel like you're in this monster city right, this huge flying fortress and everything is in the proper proportion and scale.

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