DEFIANCE - STARRY CONSTELLATION MAGAZINE: GRANT BOWLER AND STEPHANIE LEONIDAS INTERVIEW
Premise: A war between humans and aliens has left Earth forever changed in this futuristic drama, which follows a group of survivors as they struggle to rebuild and live together in peace.
Defiance cast includes Tony Curran, Jaime Murray, Julie Benz, Mia Kirshner, Grant Bowler, Stephanie Leonidas and Graham Greene.
Defiance premieres with a two-hour pilot episode on Monday, April 15, 2013 at 9/8C on Syfy.
... Q) I wanted to ask you about one thing we didn't cover was special effects and what's it like for you both to kind of act to things that aren't there?
Grant Bowler: "Well you know sometimes you have that experience anyway with people that are there."
Stephanie Leonidas: "Thanks, Grant. Am I that bad?"
Grant: "Acting's a process of - as a professional actor you don't say to the other actor okay now you have to create a performance that I believe so that then I can just stand there and react to you. As an actor what you do is you believe the other person no matter what they say. If Stephanie's there with a rubber forehead and a bunch of paint and a clown wig -- sorry Steph."
Stephanie: "That's a bit harsh."
Grant: "It's a bit harsh. But hey listen it's nothing nowhere near as ugly as what's on the other side. It's my job to believe it, just go okay she's an alien and vice versa with her, you know? So the green screen stuff which I think is what you're getting at, the key to green screen and this is where Gary Hutzel and his team have been phenomenal, is that it's one thing to believe what's in front of you it's another thing when there's nothing there to have something to believe in. And those guys have been great. They're exhaustive in they provide a storyboard. They generally do rough renders of the scene for us with 3D animation so that we have some idea what these things are going to look like, what the vista is going to be. And then it's a process of all of us getting together and going okay well there's a tall tower, where's that and someone sticks a tennis ball where the tall tower is, and where's the nuclear, I don't know, main nuclear power plant and where's the park and where's the horrid alien and how tall is the horrid alien and how fast it coming towards us. And then once we map all of that out then it's kind of like being a kid again, you're just playing make believe. I find it kind of gorgeous as long as we're all looking in the same direction. When you're not looking in the same direction it gets very awkward very fast."
Stephanie: "Yes I agree. I mean the green screen were always the longest days to shoot. They were kind of the days you had to really kind of be with it before. But like Grant said we had the storyboard were incredible so it wasn't like we didn't have any idea what they were going to do with it afterwards. And I guess I was kind of lucky I've done some green screen before Defiance which really helped so I didn't feel like I'd been thrown completely into the deep end with it. But yes I feel yes we're really lucky with all the storyboards and kind of everyone around that. It's just yes given us a great idea of what it's all going to look like in the end. I mean I guess they could do anything. They could put the Muppets in there for all we know but yes it was - they were long days but I think they'll be worth it in the end definitely..."
