Next weekend the primetime Emmy Awards will be handed out, but tonight the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences handed out the Creative Arts Emmys in Los Angeles. Many Trek alumni walked away as winners, including a team of Trek vets led by Gary Hutzel who took home statuettes for their work on Ron Moore’s Battlestar Galactica.
Battlestar brings home the gold
Former Star Trek TNG era visual artist and current Battlestar Galactica visual effects supervisor Gary Hutzel took home the award for Outstanding Visual Effects, along with eight members of his team, six of which are also Trek vets (Doug Drexler, David Takemura, Kyle Toucher, Sean Jackson, Pierre Drolet, and Derek Ledbetter). Drexler and Hutzel won the same award last year and have been nominated many times before (including for their work on Star Trek). The episode that won them the Emmy was the fourth season opener “He That Believeth In Me.” Here is the recap that shows some of the vfx.
In addition to the vfx award, Battlestar Galactica also took home the Emmy for short-format live-action entertainment program for fourth online featurette for Battlestar Galactica: Razor. Executive producer Ronald Moore, himself a Trek vet, was among those who picked up this award.
And the list goes on…
Several Trek vets walked away with Emmys for their work on the HBO mini-series John Adams. Robert Stromberg, a matte artist on TNG, Voyager, and Star Trek: First Contact, won for designing the show’s visual effects, while the others (Motion Picture and Voyage Home sound editor Stephen Hunter Flick, Wrath of Khan sound editor Curt Schulkey, Voyage Home and Final Frontier foley editor Solange S. Schwalbe, Enterprise foley artist Hilda Hodges, and Trek movie foley artist David Fein) all won in the outstanding mini-series sound editing category.
But wait, there’s more! DS9 and Enterprise hair stylist Gloria Pasqua Casny won an Emmy for her work on Mad Men; Star Trek Generations stunt performer Merritt Yohnka won as stunt coordinator on Chuck; and Star Trek Nemesis sound fx editor won for Tony Bennett: The Music Never Ends. Perhaps the most amusing Trek-related win of the evening was Voyager guest star Sarah Silverman (Rain Robinson in “Future’s End”) nabbing an Emmy for writing and composing the song “I’m F***ing Matt Damon” for Jimmy Kimmel Live.
The prime time Emmy Awards airs next Sunday on ABC, and many Trek vets are up for awards including Bryan Fuller and William Shatner (see previous TrekMovie article). A full list of Creative Arts Emmys is available at emmys.tv.
Yay! I don’t like the new BSG, but the special effects in it are awesome, he deserves this award.
Congratulations to all the winners. Cheers!
The BSG VFX are a sight to behold!
Galactica’s amazing FX are part of what makes it the best show on TV. I honestly believe Galactica is the true successor to the original Star Trek.
The BSG FX are utterly mindblowing and deserve the accolade.
BSG is truly awesome in all aspects!!
Bring on the second half of season 4!
I shall be living in NZ when it comes out.
Being in NZ might mean that I’ll be able to see Trek before the rest of the world when it comes out.
That too is truly awesome!!
Congratulations. I wish you guys has been involved in the TOS Remastering project on some of the shots….
Cervantes, oh what could have been…….
Atmosphere Visual Effects is a very capable company and their work stands with the best of them. Good job guys.
You left out the name of the NEM sound-FX editor who won for the Tony Bennett thing.
Ah, how far we’ve come…
Gene Roddenberry couldn’t show a navel in TOS, but now we are handing out Emmy’s for a song with the ‘F’-word in the title.
…Anyone who’s seen John Adams knows Stromberg earned his award and it’s almost an understatement. The matte work he did especially for the first episode’s Boston Harbor scenes, and the Inauguration scenes in the third episode, were so damn flawless that even an FX historian like me had a *VERY* difficult time trying to determine where reality met CGI. Stromberg clearly deserved this award!
GO BSG!!! They deserve everything they get. It is the best science fiction show ever!!! Whats this? Best ever? Yes I say this… an avid Trekkie. In my opinion BSG beats out any single one of the trek shows with DS9 coming in really close to a tie… Now if you compare Trek as a franchise all together against BSG then Trek has to win of course.
Can we get a timer for Jan 9th and BSG’s return???? Final TEN episodes!!! ALL WILL BE REVEALED!
GET IT IN HD FOR FREE: The Emmy-winning special-effects BSG episode, “He That Believeth In Me” is currently available for free legal download to promote the debut of HD TV shows on iTunes.
Congratulations to the BSG FX team for a well-deserved Emmy victory. The FX on that show have been astonishing since day one. They are as compelling to watch as the live-action scenes and compliment the storylines perfectly.
Excellent work, everyone! My hat’s off to you!
BSG the best show on TV, it will be a bummer when 4.5 ends. The SFX are outstanding, and are right up there with any movie I have seen. Hopefully Caprica gets a green light for a full season, or has it been already?
Buckaroohawk
I’ve been (was) watching the episodes on Universal HD. Absolutely spectacular and glorious on my big screen. I’ve got all of the episodes on
DVD, but they are only “upscalable”. If you haven’t seen this show in HD, do yourself a favor. The visuals are really wonderful.
And I really love this show. I am so jonesing for the new episodes to star.
“episodes to start.”
Frakkin’ Typonians!
#10 – I believe it will be 10 episodes but 11 hours. I think I read that the finale will be 2 hours because they couldn’t fit everything in and they need an extra hour.
I totally agree THX they look beautiful in HD…. Lets just hope that the new Star Trek movie has effects as good or better than BSG.
BSG, sadly, deserved to win on a lot more than the technical/FX side; for the producers of this landmark show this win represents a consolation prize at best. Still, congratulations to those who got to take home those well-deserved trophies today.
Man I wish that Atmosphere had done the FX on TOS-R. They’re an amazing team, and many are Trek alums, so it would have made sense. Hutzel even said in an interview (about one year before we’d even heard of TOS-R) that he’d had a meeting with the higher-ups at CBS and was requested to show some renders he did of TOS ships. Guess CBS didn’t wanna foot the bill for a master like Hutzel…
20:Chryse87,
They they were the third of the 3 companies that bid. You are correct. That makes sense now. Atmosphere (Canada) and EdenFX (Hollywood) bid along side CBS-D. CBS got it probably based on cost. Sad. Their work and skill are nothing compared to this.
“I believe it will be 10 episodes but 11 hours. I think I read that the finale will be 2 hours because they couldn’t fit everything in and they need an extra hour.”
…That’s because Ron Moore has to tie up all those dangling plot threads so nobody cares that he’s forgotten exactly what the “Cylon Master Plan” was supposed to be :-P :-P
The Galactica visual team deserves every award they can get. It’s they who kept the show watchable long after the storytelling became incredibly silly.
Congrats to all those “unsong heroes” of the movie industry…and very well deserved.
I personally love BSG and what I truly love about the visual effects….the scenes depicting space, the ships, etc. in particular, is that they have a “handheld camera” feel to them. As someone who has worked in local television and has dabbled in and studied special effects, this is no easy feat. A very realistic look it has…again, kudos!
Yay for the linkage! Boo for me not finding a better source video for that particular award-winning episode! (If only I had known.)
Congrats to all the winners!