Triad Pictures

The Saga Part 12: Endgame from Nate Atkinson on Vimeo.

The series finale. Nic is being held captive by Nathan and Kahn, and it is up to Tim and David Igby to free him and the three of them will embark on their final fight.

I guess the main style I was trying for with this episode was The Matrix.

The orange hood Nic is wearing is the same as the one Ghost wears in Part 11.

Oh my God, Kahn the bad guy is Marshella, the guy we thought was the good guy. We kept it a secret for 13 episodes. If this was a surprise to you, I guess you weren't watching close enough.

I've always wanted to see a bad guy sing and dance before he killed someone. I'm not sure if I saw it in another movie, but I just like the idea.

We weren't sure of the lyrics, so we listened to the song on Nathan's computer and then went out and film Nick singing it. The problem was that the version I had was a little different, that's the only reason why Nick is off beat with the song. I think it almost makes it better though.

I love the second shot of Nic's face when Blough is singing because it almost looks like Nic is really liking the song and dance that Blough has. I also liked the scene where Nic turned is head to listen, not even paying attention to Blough, but Blough is so into the song that he doesn't notice.

I also really like how after we know that Tim and David Igby are going to save Nic, and that a lot of stuff is about to happen, when we cut back to Nick, he is still dancing, but with even more effort now.

All of the sound effects for this episode were either re-dubbed or specifically made.

Jordan, Emu, and Nick all got hit in the balls while filming, Eric was hit by Blough on the first scene, and then he hit himself trying to demonstrate a move. Nick racked himself while performing his first move with the stick, and Jordan just about impaled himself.

Nathan fighting Nic and the Jordan and Emu fighting Nick were both filmed at separate times, like a couple of weeks apart. Even Nic and Nathan's fight was separated into two scenes that we filmed separately. So the continuity was challenging. You should notice that if you watch the background carefully, you will see that at the beginning, there is some vegetation, in the middle, there is a little more, during the duel there is very little, and at the end there is a lot. This just shows what order we filmed the scenes in.

A good-old-fashioned duel was something that I wanted to do early on. It was not intended to be the last main fight though, there were about 2 or 3 major scenes left to be filmed, but due to a lack of time and enthusiasm, we all agreed to cut them out. We did film most of one of the scenes, and we did save it.

With the duel, I was mainly looking to film something that was almost symmetrically perfect.

The inserts we have of the coin were filmed at least a month and a half after we filmed the original scene.

The final montage: A remembering the old times before Nathan became evil. I really like that scene just because the footage is from the first couple of episodes and it helps to put the whole series into perspective, especially for us since we filmed it almost a year ago. I'm not going to cry when I watch it, but I think it is kinda sad to see what happened to Nathan.

The main reason why I had Nic have the flashbacks was to show that he wasn't just another hero, that he was a regular guy and that he did have feelings. He was sad when Josh died, and he was also sad about Nathan as well.

At one point, I though it would be cool if instead of fading away, Nathan disappeared in the pixelating way with the electricity sound effect, to suggest that he may or may not be dead, and that he is being transported somewhere. But I thought the audience would need at least a little closure with the character, so I just had him fade away, he's dead forever.

The end of the Saga seems to confuse some people. Basically, after Nic says there's been enough fighting and leaves Jordan and Emu, I wanted the viewer to be a little confused. The next shots are of Jordan and Emu (still working together) making a deal with this guy for some guns. It's obviously an illegal deal since they are dealing in the middle of nowhere and out of this guys trunk. So at this point, I wanted the viewer to think that maybe Jordan and Emu became somewhat bad guys because they didn't have anything to do, and Tim is obviously a bad guy. Next, Tim pulls a gun and Emu jumps right in, which should suggest that both Tim the tennis pro and David Igby are at least prepared for some bad stuff to go down. Jordan then says he's got to check it with the boss who we find out is Nic. Jordan asks him if he is ready. When they pull the guns out and point them in the direction of Tim, I though it was clear that the whole thing was basically a sting and that they really are going to continue to fight. Since nic is the ultimate good guy and Jordan and Emu are still working with him, I though that people would understand when the good guys point the gun at the bad guy, it turns out the whole thing was just staged, but I guess it just went over some people's heads, which is my fault.

We started filming The Saga at the beginning of June of 2004, just shortly after graduation. It took us just over a year to complete it. I had a lot of fun and The Saga was a good creative outlet for me.

Nic, Nathan, Andy, Nick, Jordan, Pat, Taylor, Emu, and Tim were all a lot of fun to film with and I miss not filming The Saga with them.