Shelton
Goliath Season 4 breakdown
In the years since Goliath ended, I’ve often looked back on that time with equal parts exuberance and heartache. I miss it, and all the people that were a part of that history. Both at Pixomondo, and the Filmmaking family that made Goliath.
I was eager to start Season 4 as I would be starting the new season on day 1. We had finished strong on Season 3, pulling off some really spectacular effects and I was eager to reunite with the production crew. There was a familiarity now, and everyone knew the high level of work we brought to the project.
I would again be teamed up with my amazing counterpart at our Toronto Studio, Bojan Zoric. With many of the same team members returning, I was ready to drop the gloves and go big on Season 4. So off I went to San Francisco where we would be filming for the first half of the schedule, completely unaware of the major plot twist in life that was coming.
Season 4 was not slated to be a heavy vfx show, certainly nothing like the water tunnel from the previous season. It was mostly set extensions and the usual fix it shots that pop up. My daily to do list for planned vfx work wasn’t all that taxing so I stayed close to the monitors, grabbing some behind the scenes pictures and noting camera positions and lighting set ups out of habit. Our DP Jeff Greeley was phenomenal. And just a good human like everyone attached to the project. Because I’m such a cinematography geek, I loved watching him work.
The by product of my loitering on set even on my off days is I had amassed a lot of imagery and data that would become critically important down the road.
We returned back to Los Angeles with a stop at Universal to shoot out some scenes in the Western Town as well as a return to the mesa in Santa Clarita for shots of the train station. Interestingly enough the train used was the same train used in Perry Mason and we shot the WW1 battle scenes not far from the same location.
We were adding onto the train cars and extending the travel of the track so much of my day was shooting texture reference, measuring and spinning up the lidar robot. A train takes awhile.
After wrapping location shooting it was back to the cozy confines of the Goliath stages in Valencia across from Magic Mountain. Waiting for us would be the nearly completed sets designed by our incredible Production Designer, Julie Zahn.
To be continued…..