00:00 [dramatic music]
00:02 - There have been rumors of an alliance
00:04 at the edge of the galaxy.
00:05 - There's a tremendous amount of detail
00:07 that's required in bringing Foundation to life.
00:09 - This season is a lot bigger than the first season
00:12 in scale and scope.
00:13 - Everything's so detailed.
00:14 Everything's put together so well.
00:16 It's insane.
00:17 - The wardrobe, the set designs,
00:20 they're all completely brilliant.
00:22 - We show this factory progression of technology.
00:26 - Roughly speaking, it takes us two years
00:28 to make a season.
00:29 Figure six months for pre-production,
00:31 seven to eight months of filming,
00:33 and then close to a year post-production
00:36 because we have so many visual effects.
00:38 - Our real goal on the show is to give people
00:40 that scope that they don't expect on television.
00:43 [dramatic music]
00:44 - Hang on!
00:45 [screaming]
00:47 [dramatic music]
00:50 ♪ ♪
00:55 - And action.
00:57 - When I started Foundation,
00:58 I decided that I want to film as much of it
01:00 on location as possible.
01:01 I want the crew and the actors to feel the heat,
01:05 to feel the wind,
01:06 because I felt that it would just make everything
01:09 feel more real.
01:11 - Smart boy.
01:12 - Season two is very much a story
01:14 of asymmetrical warfare.
01:16 The Foundation, compared to Empire,
01:18 is a speck, but slowly but surely,
01:21 the Foundation is gaining influence.
01:24 - They've grown,
01:25 and they've taken over the outskirts of the galaxy.
01:30 - The sets and the locations that we've been on
01:33 for both seasons
01:34 have been picked out so incredibly.
01:36 It helps us create the world,
01:38 and it makes it so much easier to be in the moment.
01:42 - Season two goes all over the place.
01:44 There are a lot of new worlds,
01:45 and they're all very different.
01:47 - We were able to find all these new planets
01:49 and give them a unique look.
01:52 - We're gonna return to Trantor.
01:55 In Ireland, we had the main palace sets,
01:57 the original Mural of Souls,
01:58 and we built a new clone tank set.
02:01 We're also back in a different Synex.
02:03 A Synex that's completely covered in water.
02:07 The world of Ignis,
02:08 we had the jungle in the Czech Republic,
02:11 but there are oceans in Ignis,
02:12 so those scenes were shot in the Canaries.
02:15 - I spent three days on sand dunes,
02:17 and it was miles away from everywhere else,
02:20 but we have so much fun on set.
02:23 I love every second of it.
02:26 - We're in the Summer Palace.
02:28 We wanted the elements in this set
02:29 to make it feel like you were in this
02:31 Angkor Wat type of jungle palace.
02:34 Whoever's in charge,
02:35 please could we end this charade?
02:37 - I thought you might be the one to notice.
02:40 - Terminus, where the Church of Selden is,
02:42 was actually shot in the old Skoda factory
02:45 in the Czech Republic.
02:46 - Terminus City is in Forteventura,
02:48 and it's just so real.
02:50 It's in the middle of an empty space,
02:53 and they've built a village.
02:54 It's not difficult to imagine you're on a barren planet.
02:58 - A lot of the locations that we've chosen,
03:00 the population in North America have not seen
03:03 or don't know about,
03:04 so it lets us spend more time in those locations
03:07 as our backdrops for all of the storytelling
03:10 as if it's an alien world.
03:11 We're always trying to push the look of the show.
03:15 [gunshot]
03:17 - Wow.
03:19 Look at you.
03:21 - The fashion in season two is just fantastic.
03:26 - Our costume designer, Jane Petrie,
03:28 she and her team had to come up with
03:30 thousands upon thousands of costumes.
03:32 - We're flying through nine planets,
03:34 and there's no through thread,
03:35 so we have to come up with a whole new concept
03:37 for each planet and a new backstory
03:39 for where the costumes have come from.
03:41 - One of the things that we really wanted to do
03:43 with season two with our costumes
03:45 was just explode the color palette.
03:47 We've got these wonderfully lush reds
03:49 that are embodied by the Church of the Galactic Spirit.
03:52 We've got these kind of rainbow colors
03:54 that are embodied by Cloud Dominion.
03:56 - Compared to season one,
03:58 it's been really good to get outside more.
04:01 It's a little bit brighter.
04:02 We go to more planets, so there's a lot more variety.
04:06 - Welcome to Trenter.
04:09 This season's day is completely different
04:12 than last season's.
04:13 - Day has turned in his blue armor.
04:15 He's gotten a little bit more flamboyant.
04:17 Lee's wearing chain mail this season.
04:19 - Soldiers!
04:21 - Allow me to present the Doyen of the Trade Leagues,
04:25 Sereth the First, sole descendant of Dominion.
04:29 - Cloud Dominion.
04:32 They come from a place where they produce
04:34 the best pigments in the galaxy.
04:36 - All the Imperial Blues in pure form.
04:39 - We took slices of agate and worked them into a print,
04:42 and we had these big billowing robes.
04:45 The look of Queen Sereth and Enjoiner Rue
04:47 and all of the Cloud Dominion is different
04:49 to anything I've ever seen.
04:50 - Cloud Dominion is the exact opposite of what Trentor is,
04:54 which is blues, classics, and everything is so strict,
04:56 and then you have these women come into this universe,
04:59 and everything is billowy and feminine.
05:02 - What brings you to our world?
05:05 - For season two, the location that really
05:07 has embedded itself in costumes would be Ignis.
05:11 There's an awful lot of the environment around them
05:13 that I felt would really be part of their clothing.
05:16 And then we worked with all of the colors
05:18 of the plant life and the vegetation.
05:21 - They need your help.
05:22 - I like my plan, wherein we keep to ourselves.
05:26 - Foundation is the most complex show
05:32 in terms of post-production of any project
05:34 I've ever been involved in.
05:36 On average, we have about 4,000 visual effects shots
05:39 per season.
05:41 The goal is to get everything photo-real,
05:45 to get the spaceships to move like we think
05:47 spaceships would really move, to get our creatures
05:50 to have the same kind of fidelity
05:51 that any kind of animal would in our world.
05:54 - I have stories in me, many stories.
05:57 Would you like to hear one?
05:59 - Demerzel's dungeon and how she's been split into pieces
06:02 was based on the idea that she can heal herself
06:05 and make herself whole at any point.
06:07 So the prison had to reflect that she could be kept
06:10 separated by glass panes, and her circuitry
06:13 was then sandwiched between them.
06:15 And then on the outer slices was her human form
06:18 front and back, and painted her circuitry
06:20 onto these glass panes with LED lighting
06:23 to make it feel physical.
06:24 And then my team will go back in and we'll augment
06:27 and give it that little bit of extra love
06:30 to make it feel real.
06:32 - We probably spend a couple of weeks coloring each episode,
06:37 going through it shot by shot,
06:39 trying to make everything as artful as possible.
06:42 - It's a highly technical process.
06:43 You can change the mood of the scene
06:45 by making it darker and blue.
06:47 Sometimes they're shooting over three days,
06:49 which one day it's raining, and the next day it's not.
06:52 So integrating all of those shots back together
06:54 with visual effects shots requires a level
06:57 of intricacy and detail.
07:00 [splashing]
07:02 And then you've got sound.
07:06 We've got a sound team called Sound Dogs
07:08 who are incredible.
07:09 - Our job is to help supplement and exaggerate
07:12 a lot of the visuals that we're seeing.
07:14 - I think just a little at the head,
07:16 and then you're good.
07:17 - This year there's beaches,
07:18 and now you're dealing with waves and sounds
07:20 that are clobbering the dialogue a bit,
07:22 so you're trying to clean all that up.
07:23 For Tyler's part and his crew, they're creating sounds
07:26 of ships that don't really exist,
07:28 creatures that don't exist.
07:30 You're building a sound world from scratch.
07:32 - There's always a sense of discovery in this process.
07:35 I believe that post-production are one of the things
07:39 that really makes Foundation feel different
07:41 and more cinematic than your average show.
07:44 - I think it's kind of cool. - Yeah.
07:45 - Nice job, guys.
07:46 - Only Empire commands the stars.
07:49 Crush them.
07:50 Now. Shows forward.
07:52 - I can't wrap my head around the craftsmanship
07:55 on this show.
07:56 The attention to detail is just extraordinary
07:59 that you could only really get on a production like this.
08:02 - Action!
08:03 - The stakes are much higher in season two.
08:06 - The galaxy is countless number of planets,
08:08 10,000 inhabited worlds,
08:10 so we see more of them this season.
08:12 - I didn't think that it could get any more vast,
08:16 and somehow, someway,
08:18 the team has made it even bigger.
08:21 - In season two, the rocket takes off,
08:23 and we've been having an absolute blast.
08:25 [explosion]
08:27 It's such an incredible spectacle,
08:29 and I've never seen anything like it.
08:32 - Fuck Empire.
08:33 - And a reckoning.
08:35 - I am so grateful and lucky
08:37 that I get to be a part of this.
08:39 - I think we really succeeded in season two,
08:41 and it was a real treat bringing it to life.
08:44 - Get us out of here!
08:46 [explosion]
08:47 - Whoo!
08:49 [explosion]
08:52 [explosion]
08:54 [explosion]
08:57 [explosion]
08:58 [silence]
09:01 [silence]
09:04 [BLANK_AUDIO]
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