"SERENITY." DVD Commentary.
Series | Season | Disc
Firefly | 1 | 1
Commentary By: Joss Whedon
Important Whedon Quotes & Favorite Moments * Behind the Scenes * Whedon's Humor * Acting Insights * Mistakes or Regrets * Cinematic/Directorial Choices * Technical Details
This commentary was done by both Firefly creator, Joss Whedon and star, Nathan Fillion. As the pilot episode, Serenity was shot to air in two parts and is a total of one hour, twenty-seven minutes long.
Important Whedon Quotes & Favorite Moments
"Every show I do is about created family... um, as opposed to actual family."
The dramatic camera move at the end of the crew's meeting with Badger was arranged to highlight one of Joss Whedon's favorite lines.
Malcolm: Wheel never stops turning Badger.
Badger: That only matters to the people on the rim.
Whedon studied westerns with Jeanine Basinger and said that Mal's line, "Well now. That has an affect on the landscape," was very important because the use of the word "landscape" ties the western with the action in the show.
Summer
Glau's introduction on the show, this shot revealing River in
the cryogenic chamber is one of Whedon's "favorite
shots...ever." He called it "visually stunning."
Whedon recounts that shooting a scene in the nude is an awkward
things to do, especially for a young actress on her first day.
He also comments on Summer's first comments after coming out of the
box... she asked if she looked fat.
Whedon really liked the relationship between Simon (Sean Maher) and River and was very pleased with other touching shots of them together.
The opening scene was reshot because it previously showed Mal in "the existential hell of a miserable person and why he wanted everybody to die and apparently that wasn't up enough." Joss wanted to start the show with a bang and give the audience a scene that would allow us to see why Mal became the hardened "bad guy" he was.
Whedon points out an important plot point as Malcolm Reynolds watches the ships moving away into the night sky. "the moment where Mal loses everything. It all falls apart for him. He gives up hope and becomes a Bad Man."
Kaylee (Jewel Staite) is specifically referred to by Whedon as the "heart of the show" and the "soul of the ship." When she says a person is good, the viewer accepts it. This is one reason she says "I love my captain" early on, so we know that Mal is a good guy underneath the rough exterior.
Before cutting to the companion's shuttle, Mal says "Somebody on this boat has to make an honest living." This is our introduction to Inara, her profession and the fact that it's legal in this world.
Inara was originally going to be played by Rebecca Gayheart, but the energy just wasn't right. Whedon himself was going to play the part of Badger.
Whedon says Jayne is the 'Cordelia' of the show, saying what everyone else is thinking. He also called the reavers "the greatest characters I never created."
Whedon had to ask himself "How can I get the captain to shoot a cop in the face and make it all right?" He did this with the extra moment of sadism when undercover agent, Lawrence Dobson (Carlos Jacott) beats on the already unconscious Book. This, on top of shooting Kaylee, made Dobson evil enough for Mal to shoot him. Whedon was still worried that they wouldn't get away with Mal shooting the horse during the gunfight with Precious, but the audience didn't seem to have any trouble with it.
The design of the ship and the name of the show came from Whedon's search for something with both motion and strength.
Whedon is a self proclaimed "control enthusiast" and Firefly was the first time he went with the flow of the actors more, just allowing things to go during shooting and waiting to see what worked and what didn't, even if it went outside the boundaries of his ideas. This was also his first show where he "let the characters tell [him] what they're gonna say."
Joss Whedon's never-ending self depreciating humor is heard periodically throughout the commentary. He jokes that he was stoned when he got the idea for Firefly and that it's a bad idea to be that stoned. During the first scene with Wash, we see him sitting at the bridge playing with plastic dinosaurs. Whedon says "Obviously, very low budget dinosaur sequence. We just ran out of money and we wanted to have a world with dinosaurs in it, but just, we, you know, all we had was Alan."
In
reference to Morena
Baccarin as Inara during the scene of her first meeting with
Book (Ron Glass),
Whedon jokes with Nathan Fillion.
Whedon: "If I were that beautiful, I'd just be haughty. I would be such a bitch. Don't get me wrong, I look good in that outfit, but it's different."
Fillion: "It is, it is different. It doesn't hang on you the same way... it's a great color for you."
Whedon: "That's true. It brings out my chins."
Fillion mentions that having to learn Chinese was a bit rough, but there were fun and interesting lines assigned to them in Chinese. Whedon says that one of Alan Tudyk (Wash's) lines was "mother of god and all her wacky nephews."
Nathan Fillion and Joss Whedon discussed Mal's connection to the other characters and Fillion said "I always had it in my head that crew members on Serenity represented for Mal bits of himself that he has lost or he needs, ah, that he can't have. Kaylee being his... his light side, his happy side."
At one point, Whedon thought Nathan Fillion's contacts were causing a reflection problem with the lights, but later realized that it was just his acting, "you were emoting."
Whedon mentions very few regrets or mistakes in this commentary, possibly because they had 24 days to shoot the 87 minutes of footage. He does say that he regrets not getting a shot from behind Kaylee as she looks out over Persephone just before her "all aboard" line. The one real mistake mentioned in the commentary occurred near the end of the second hour, just after the crew escaped the reavers. The shot on the bridge where everyone is expressing their relief at escaping required Alan's chair to be moved back in order to get them all in the frame. Unfortunately, the shot clearly shows that Alan is not holding anything but is in fact miming holding the steering wheel. They used the shot anyway and Whedon laughs about it and calls himself stupid for not catching it.
The early sequences are set up to give the viewer the layout of the ship.
Whedon talks about sneaking the two-shot of Simon and Mal (just after Kaylee was shot) by panning quickly from Zoe (Gina Torres). He did it that way so he could get the angle and image he wanted without it looking artsy.
During the surgery scene on Kaylee's stomach wound, Whedon chose the close up of the teddy bear on her pants and kept Kaylee out of focus because the bear represents her but she's really the most important thing in the shot. He comments that he liked the way Mal and Inara were not seeing that they were looking at each other. Jayne watching from the hallway unbeknownst to the rest of the crew was a last minute add in which revealed more of Adam Baldwin's character.
Whedon
chose half light for Inara and Book's scene to highlight the
"prostitute giving the priest benediction" and then
dropped back to silhouette for effect. He comments on how it's
such an emotional moment, but is accented by the very sumptuous set.
Book: I think I'm on the wrong ship.
Inara: Maybe. Or maybe you're exactly where you ought to be.
Nathan Fillion remembers trying not to blink while the ships were leaving. Whedon says he did actually blink once, but the CG department took it out. He also mentions that the same thing was done for Kristine Sutherland in the Buffy episode, "The Body" because she blinked once as they were zipping the body bag.
It took approximately nine passes to get the coffee can "crybaby" shot just right. The CG people wanted to do a lot with background scenery for it which made it more complicated.
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Set director, David Koneff and his crew were so particular about the sets that they placed tiny details for added significance. Whedon points out one example of this on the pedestal for the floating hour glass in Inara's shuttle. There is a Chinese symbol on it meaning "short interval." |
The sponge bath scene with Inara was reshot because the first time was filtered and came out looking "like a Calgon commercial" according to Whedon. |
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Just after finding out that the reavers were out there, Joss wanted a couple seconds of black on screen to give the audience a pause before commercial, but the machines at FOX stations will automatically go to commercial if there is nothing but black. To get around this, they tricked the machines by going to a shot of the darkest color that would read just above black.
Upon arriving on Whitefall, they used a dissolve in going from "stage sand" to "real sand" so that the audience couldn't easily tell the difference. Whedon also mentions that David Boyd, cinematographer, sent back the new, state of the art lens pack and got an older set of lenses that would offer more flare because Whedon was looking for a 70s docu-style feel. The engine shot as they're escaping the reavers was run at six frames per second in order to speed up the image and light it.
During the dinner scene, Whedon was very specific about the lighting he wanted. He was looking for a warm effect and wanted the light source on the actors' faces to appear as if it were coming only from the light in the middle of the dinner table. The crew did an excellent job creating this look. The first picture above shows the dinner table with the light in the middle. The other two images are samples of how that light source looked on individual characters.
