Image Credit: James Dittiger/TNT
It’s a sunny late September day on the Vancouver set of alien invasion series Falling Skies, and director Greg Beeman is wishing there were more wind.
The cast and crew of the TNT sci-fi show are working on a long tracking shot of the Falling Skies heroes cleaning up after a battle in their home base of Charleston, where an American flag, for now, hangs limp on a pole in the center of town.
“I want that American flag to furl,” Beeman says. “Is it ‘furl’ or ‘unfurl’?” A crew member sitting next to him in video village assures him they want the flag to unfurl. The energetic director claps and chants, “Unfurl, baby, unfurl” before adding, “Raise it really quickly so it catches the wind and flows real pretty.”
Beeman commits several takes to making that flag in the wind a cinematic opening to the long shot through Charleston, but it’s about more than making it look “pretty” — the American flag is also part of some essential imagery for a show that has, since its beginning, loosely alluded to the American Revolutionary War. Humans find themselves fighting on their own turf for independence from aliens. When various infrastructures crumble after the invasion, for the survivors whose story started in Boston, the American flag remains “an iconic and tangible symbol of who they are and what they’re fighting for,” showrunner Remi Aubuchon said.
That nod to the Revolutionary War continues to evolve in season 3 — which premieres on TNT tonight — when the show picks up seven months after the cliffhanger of last summer’s finale: A new alien species called the Vohm has arrived, and they become Falling Skies’ own version of the French. READ FULL STORY »
