Атлантида: Создание города из "Звёздные врата"

Atlantis is a fictional starship and city in the Stargate television franchise. It is the primary setting of the television series Stargate Atlantis (2004 2009), and it has been depicted in Stargate SG 1 as well as various spin off fiction and products. In the show, Atlantis was constructed millions of years ago by the Ancients, who eventually abandoned the city in the distant Pegasus Galaxy. In 2004, after SG 1 uncover the location of the city, Elizabeth Weir led a civilian and military expedition, setting up a base of operation in the city. The shows production designer Bridget McGuire oversaw the interior set design of Atlantis, with James Robbins adding to it after taking over the role in the third season of Stargate Atlantis. McGuire and Robbins also worked on the exterior look of the city, collaborating with, amongst others, visual effects supervisor John Gajdecki and concept artist Chris Wren.

Stargate SG 1 co creator and executive producer first began developing an Atlantis spin off around 2001 during SG 1's fifth season. The project went through a number of changes. At one stage, Atlantis would have been discovered beneath the ice in Antarctica in a Stargate SG 1 feature film. This would have setup an Atlantis spin off series, which would have replaced Stargate SG 1 and taken place on Earth. Subsequently, after SG 1 was renewed for a sixth and then a seventh season, Atlantis was redeveloped as a Stargate feature film. After SG 1 was renewed once again for an eighth season and a TV series of Stargate Atlantis was also ordered, it was decided that the show would instead take place in the Pegasus Galaxy. Following completing work on Stargate SG 1 season seven, Bridget McGuire and her art department were on hiatus. Stargate SG 1 had been confirmed for an eighth season in July 2003, but with no series order for Stargate Atlantis, McGuire assumed the show would not go ahead that year. Stargate Atlantis was given the green light on November 17 2003 and according to McGuire the day after meeting with executive producer John Smith, McGuire was back at work designing Atlantis. Wright imagined Atlantis as being a city that had been created by a fictional race of beings called the Ancients, who had previously been established in Stargate SG 1. Having abandoned the city a long time ago, Wright and Cooper's story followed a joint civilian military expeditionary team, who would discover the city of Atlantis "pristine and untouched", underwater on a planet in the Pegasus Galaxy. Whilst the city and its discovery were mostly built around the franchise's own mythology, some aspects of the Ancient Greek Plato myth of Atlantis were incorporated into elements of the story.

During season seven of Stargate SG 1, production designer Bridget McGuire began developing design motifs that would be carried across to the City of Atlantis. Although it was ultimately decided that Atlantis would not be seen in "Lost City", the season seven finale, McGuire was mindful that the look of the Ancient Outpost discovered by SG 1 in the episode should "tie in" to Atlantis, should the series be made. In developing design motifs for the Ancient Outpost, McGuire was researching crystalline structures when she "came across electron microscopic images of snowflakes". McGuire felt these images "looked more like spaceships rather than snowflakes" and began incorporating them into her designs for the outpost. In designing the Atlantis, according to McGuire there were certain requirements for the set. Similarly to the Stargate Command set used on Stargate SG 1 there needed to be a Stargate, a control area, a conference room and some multi purpose spaces that could become laboratories and other rooms as and when required. According to Wright, the Atlantis gate room "had to be big and have plenty of scope" imagining that Atlantis was "built as a base for Space exploration". The work and architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright played a major influence in both the interior and exterior design of Atlantis. Brad Wright decided on a copper colour pallet to be used throughout the sets of Atlantis, with bright reds to blue green variations, based around copper oxidizing used.

The main Atlantis set, consisting of the gateroom, control area, briefing room, Weir's office and multi purpose rooms were constructed on Stage 6 at The Bridge Studios in Burnaby, Canada. Having been given the greenlight on November 17, 2003, McGuire had less than 3 months to design and build the Atlantis set in time for filming to commence in February 2004. Although Wright and Cooper had an outline for Stargate Atlantis, they were still writing the script until the end of December 2003. McGuire and her team spent two weeks coming up with "The floor plan and general approach" as well as the costing for the set. Construction then commenced whilst the set continued to be designed and the script written. In designing the sets for Atlantis, McGuire was mindful that production should be able to repurpose spaces and sets. McGuire recognised that the Stargate Command gateroom on Stargate SG 1 was a "giant set" which could not be easily reconfigured for any other uses, due to the Stargate prop being fixed. According to Wright, McGuire had designed the control room set to feature a spiral staircase, however during construction it was incorrectly installed behind a set wall and therefore only ended up being used for crew access. In addition to the Atlantis sets designed and build specifically for the first season of the show, production also inherited a large set built for the 2004 film Blade: Trinity. Originally constructed on the effects stage at The Bridge Studios, McGuire described it as "a big metal frame structure", built across multiple levels, with numerous rooms, staircases and balconies. The set also included an arched metal bridge, constructed way above the main set. According to director Martin Wood the set cost Blade: Trinity nearly 2 million dollars to construct. Production tried "not to feature the set itself too much" until Blade: Trinity had come out, with the set being relied upon from the mid first season two parter episodes "The Storm" & "The Eye". As the Blade set was so enormous, according to Wright it took "five years to eventually fill" as production "could only do sections at a time" of decoration and set dress. The effects stage was also used to build the Atlantis prison cell. Some sets, such as the launch bay housing the Puddle Jumpers were created almost entirely digitally, with just a single set wall with a doorway built. Texture photographs of different walls from around the physical set were taken and with variations created by digitally altering the images, with artist Tom Brydon then building the set digitally. During the first season of the show, Brad Wright was frustrated due to the lack of money available, often finding himself having to remove visual effects scenes with windows in Atlantis, venting "It's supposed to be this majestic city and you're really in closet after closet after closet". NEC Mitsubishi provided flat screen LCD displays for the Atlantis set, as well as refitting the Stargate Command set. The set had been left up for some time after Stargate Atlantis was cancelled, with the intention that it would be used for the planned Stargate: Extinction spin off film, however it was ultimately struck in early 2010.

Although it was ultimately not featured in the finished episode, McGuire had art director James Robbins develop concept drawings of the exterior of Atlantis during pre production of the Stargate SG 1 season seven finale, "Lost City". The drawings depict an earlier version of the story, which would have seen Atlantis discovered in Antarctica on Earth. Whilst the sets were being constructed, concept artist Chris Wren was hired to work on the exterior design of the city. McGuire, Wright and Cooper had already established the general shape and structure of the city, as well as outlaying the technology present and "how the various sections interacted". Wren would go back and forth with his ideas to Cooper and Wright, working in a variety of mediums to produce concept art, which included quick pencil drawings, which he would then expanding into full colour artwork. Wren would also build scenes "with very basic primitive shapes" to help under composition and perspective and then go on to "paint over the render in Photoshop, adding all the ambient lighting and details". These drawings would be fed onto John Gajdecki and the visual effects team at Rainmaker, who were developing the visual effects model of Atlantis.

At least two full models of Atlantis were created over the course of the show. According to visual effects supervisor Bruce Woloshyn, approximately 108 hours were spent on design modelling and a further 1,300 hours were modelling and texturing the main city model. Due to the cost of completing visual effect shots in at a higher resolution for high definition television and in order to create as many visual effects shots as possible for the pilot episode, all of the visual effects, including those of Atlantis, were created in "standard definition" and were instead upscaled to fit a higher resolution. Rainmaker used Lightwave for creating the city, water and sky, whilst Autodesk Maya was used to create the water particle splash dynamics, developing a pipeline to move elements back and forth between the two programs. Production physically recreated Atlantis' 'pier e' out of industrial strength steel. Additionally, water particles were filmed against a number of different backdrops to be added into various visual effects shots of the city. During the break between season one and two, executive producer Brad Wright decided to create a dedicated Stargate visual effects department, hiring former Stargate SG 1 visual effects supervisor James Tichenor to help set it up. According to visual effects supervisor Mark Savela, part of the reason for creating a dedicated in house department was so that more of the models for both Stargate Atlantis and Stargate SG 1 could be created and controlled in house and then far more easily be distributed to other visual effects vendors, allowing for more consistency between effects shots. Stargate Atlantis continued to use different variations of the original Rainmaker model, as well as the in house model across all of the subsequent seasons of the show. In the episode "Lost City", SG 1 travel to the planet Praclarush Taonas where they discover an Ancient outpost and learn that the Lost City is called Atlantis. SG 1 are directed back to earth where they discover another Ancient outpost. In the Stargate Atlantis episode "Rising", after studying the Ancient outpost discovered on earth, a Stargate address for Atlantis in the distant Pegasus galaxy is uncovered. Dr. Elizabeth Weir leads an expedition team through the Stargate where they uncover the Atlantis on the bottom of the ocean. As the city runs out of power, it rises to the surface and subsequently becomes a human base of operations. In the episodes "The Storm" and "The Eye", after evacuating most personnel due to an approaching storm, the Genii, led by Commander Acastus Kolya take over Atlantis, until Major Shepherd is able to force them to retreat back through the Stargate. In 2005, two Wraith Hive Ships arrive in orbit of Atlantis and launch an air, then a ground attack against the city. The new Earth ship Daedalus commanded by Colonel Steven Caldwell arrives, staving off the Wraith in "The Siege". After coming across their ship, a group of Ancient are returned to Atlantis and control of the city is given to their leader, Helia, before the Asurans siege the city, and kill her in "The Return". Colonel Samantha Carter takes over the command of Atlantis in 2007 in the episode "Reunion". A year later she is replaced by Richard Woolsey in the episode "Search and Rescue". In 2009, an enhanced Wraith Hive Ship heads to Earth to feed upon the human race. With Earth ships unable to defeat the ship, Atlantis leaves the Pegasus Galaxy and returns to Earth. After destroying the Wraith ship, Atlantis lands in San Francisco Bay, overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge in the episode "Enemy at the Gate".