After spending the last decade producing and directing TV’s sci-fi cult hit Stargate, Martin Wood is no stranger to virtual worlds.

So when Stargate collaborator Damian Kindler came to Wood last year with a new script—in which an ass-kicking mother-daughter team chases a bald-headed bad guy through a world rife with mutant creatures, labyrinthine underground hideouts and time-travel portals—the director immediately saw a videogame look and feel for the project.

Add to the mix Vancouver, B.C.-based Stage 3 Media, a new media design firm, along with a few visionary production partners, and Sanctuary was destined to become the biggest-budget direct-to-Web series to date.

Wood notes that a traditional live-action production could have burned through the series’ multi-million dollar budget in the blink of an eye. “To make Sanctuary look as big as it needed to, we couldn’t do it traditionally, [building] massive sets and [shooting on] locations. You can blow $100,000 on constructing a set, and people would never know.” Instead, Sanctuary would integrate real actors into a virtual world, somewhat in the style of a 300 or Sin City. Stage 3 completed some two hours of HD sequences featuring monstrous CG beings, period settings, and a cavernous virtual church for $4.5 million CDN (about US$4.3 million).

Wood began production with a prototype 3D Inserter pre-visualization system from UK-based Mo-sys, building avatars with Ron Martin, Stage 3’s VFX supervisor, for two months. The Mo-sys pre-viz tool “was just in its infancy as we started out,” Wood remembers—but after a round of marathon code-writing sessions, integration between compositors and live-action was as transparent as “set up a dolly shot and shoot.”

Click To Enlarge Amanda Tapping, longtime headliner of the hit series Stargate, leads Sanctuary as Dr. Helen Magnus.

Led by cinematographer James Alfred Menard—Wood’s longtime Stargate DP—the Vancouver-based production shot in 24p with a Panasonic HDX900 outfitted with a B4 adapter for two Canon zooms. “The VFX guys are used to prime lenses to get an accurate measurement when they go to composite and model,” Wood says. “Originally, the zooms freaked them out—the wider lenses tend to give you a bit of weird parallax to the side when you’re panning with them” that in turn distorts VFX. But with the zoom lens specs entered into the Mo-sys, Stage 3’s compositors kept cool and model movement remained clean.

The heavy CG content did add a dimension to the crew’s otherwise-standard greenscreen lighting approach. “We’re matching up more closely the models to what we’re shooting on set,” Wood says, so that virtual and actual sources alike light the action. In future shoots, a CG lighting specialist will join Menard on set.

The crew recorded audio and video both directly to camera-mounted FireStore hard drives—a workflow first for all involved. Sound traveled wirelessly from Sanken COSS 11 mics to a Cooper CS107 mixer and finally, a Micron Wireless receiver on the camera head. As each of the Focus Enhancements FireStores filled up, the crew would swap it out for a fresh drive, download the contents of the full FireStore to a computer on set, and run it across the street to the Final Cut Pro-based post. Everyone on set had to turn their cell phones off, as their signals caused audio dropouts; Wood also recalls the crew referring to the camera-recorded tape backup a handful of times. But for those minor snags, the director estimates the tapeless production saved $5,000-$10,000 in transfer costs.

Just as he’s established a shorthand with Menard and other crew over years of collaboration, Wood has a vocabulary to describe virtual scene elements with his actors, like show star Amanda Tapping (also a Stargate veteran, who came aboard Sanctuary early on as one of its executive producers). “I’m always watching the action with the model or the background in my head,” he notes. “The actors may not see it, but I can always tweak their performance to get to that point.”

Click To Enlarge Director Martin Wood (left) confers with Emilie Ullerup (Ashley Magnus) and Christopher Heyerdahl (John Druitt).

The director is confident that with eight completed Webisodes under their belts, cast and crew alike will move more comfortably about Sanctuary’s sets when shooting for the series’ third hour commences this fall.

The CG sets have been built to last. Production designer Todd Van Hulzen (Girl with a Pearl Earring) insisted on making Sanctuary “as anatomically correct as it could be,” Wood notes. “As a television director and producer, I’m used to saying to set designers, ‘Let’s have a hall here,’ and they’ll go, ‘OK.’ With Todd, he’ll often say, ‘You can’t have a hall here, because it doesn’t attach to there.’ I’m like, ‘It doesn’t attach to anything—it’s in a virtual world.’ And he’ll say, “No, I’m not going to do that!” It’s cool—it’s as if I’m talking to a location manager.” Rather than waste resources rendering one-time-use rooms, Wood and Van Hulzen designed the halls of Sanctuary such that they can return to them in future Webisodes, like navigating levels of a videogame.

Speaking of games, Wood adds that the sets are as open-source in their design as possible, in the hopes that game developers—when they come aboard—will be able to simply repurpose the existing environment. “All of this information and data will be available to them,” Wood says, “so that they can move through the same Sanctuary that we move through.”

For now, the world of Sanctuary remains online—and beginning with the fifth 15-minute Webisode, the show’s producers are asking viewers to pony up $2.49 for a high-def download. (In addition to buying downloads from the Sanctuaryforall.com Web site, viewers also could catch the first four Webisodes for free on the likes of YouTube.) Wood estimates that nearly 300,000 people need to buy each Webisode to cover its production—a tall order, even if the show concedes some of its precious funds to banner advertising and other online marketing.

Following its Internet run, the series may very well make its way onto traditional TV and DVD media. The online business model may yet prove itself, but nevertheless, the Canadian director claims a victory in simply getting Sanctuary to a mass audience without the help of a studio in the U.S.

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