This is later with Lee Matthews the Lee Matthews Podcast more what You Hear weekday
Afternoons on the Drive, and he do it again. Frank Dolger, six
time Emmy Award winning showrunner whose credits include Game of Thrones, John Adams and
Rome, is now adapting Frank Shatzing's nine hundred page novel The Swarm to an
eight page ego thriller. Frank is joining us now to talk about The Swarm.
Frank, this must have been a daunting task because I read the book
and there's a lot of science that you're going to have to explain. Well,
when I first read the book, and I'm not a scientist, I
was hopelessly lost. I have to admit. I called interview friends who explained
everything to me, and I realized for my own reading that I had to
make sure to somehow boil it all down to things that were understandable and also
the minimum of what we need did the audience understand. The other thing we
did, which I'm hoping helped, was in the novel. As you know,
most of the main characters world class scientists. They're older, they've been
around, and so we've lowered the age We've made a lot of the scientists
graduate students studying the scientists, so there's a lot of stuff that they don't
know they're learning, and they could explain it to each other, and makes
it easier for them to explain it to the audience as well. Yeah,
kind of take the audience along for the ride. Let's talk about the central
plot here, and this is something that is hitting home because we're all thinking
about green energy and what we need to do to preserve our planet very much.
So you know, when I was growing up and there was a conversation
about the toll that we were all taking on the planet, we all companied
ourselves by thinking, Okay, we're doing a lot of damage to the planets.
The oceans are so vast, there's no way that we can pollute those,
and we can destroy those. And unfortunately that's no longer true, and
I think scientists have realized we're actually on the brink of killing the oceans.
And one of our characters says very simply towards the end of the series that
if the oceans die, we die. And that's what the drama really is
about, and what we explore is how we've done that and maybe hoping it's
not too late, and how we can reverse course and maybe save the oceans.
Frank Dolger is with us, and he is you know him from Game
of Thrones, but he's got a new CW eight part series, The Swarm,
which is on the CW. A lot of this does take place beneath
the oceans. When you were shooting this, did you use real water?
Are you employing some computer generated water? You know, shooting on the water
is one of the most difficult things, primarily because of the safety issues involved.
As difficult as it is because of lighting and the movement, you always
have to secure the actors and obviously the crew. So we most productions follow
this rule of anything that's safe you try to do on the real water.
Anything that could possibly endanger the actors or the crew underwater you either do in
a tank or you do computer generated effects. Unfortunately, in the years since
I've been doing this, things that were very tough to do on Game of
Thrones ten years ago have become much easier and much more effective. But again
it takes at least twice as long. And yeah, it's a key part
of the story, and so we used all three big tank lots of stuff
on the water and then wherever we can get away with it, some computer
generated effects as well as a diver. I do some underwater video and I've
the first thing I've learned is light is very difficult at certain depths. So
yeah, usually you have to shoot things if you want them well lit,
You're gonna have to shoot them in pretty shallow water. You know you do.
And also we take a little bit of a dramatic license. I think
most people will buy the convention that if you're a little bit deeper and you
need to see things, we try to filter the sunlight. We try to
give the a sense of light and shadow. But you know, the reality
was unless you have spotlights back that you're not going to see anything. So
we do have scenes and we have SUBMERSI about vehicles, and we try to
keep that as realistic as possible. When we need to suspend the leaf a
little bit, we try to suggest a little bit enough light filtering from above,
because you're right, you get to a certain depth and it's really dark,
you can't see anything. Frank Dolger's with us, so you know him
from Game of Thrones, John Adams Rome and more. His newest creation is
an adaptation of the novel The Swarm into an eight part eco thriller, and
it's available on the CW the The the villain here is, and without giving
too much away, the villain here is, we're led to believe it's it's
a monster, but it's a different kind of monster. It's definitely a different
kind of monster. And I think that one of the things the audience will
discover that actually the monster in the piece is us. That the supposed monster
isn't quite what you think it's going to be. And also he's acting.
It's acting out of self defense, so you know, it's very much how
do you feel about a killer who is killing to save the people he loves
as compared to someone who is endangering that creature itself. So it's a little
bit of a twist on a monster movie and that's a little bit of the
fun of it is when our characters in our audience will discover the monster is
not at all what they're expecting, and the alien life form is not extraterrestrial.
I would say it's intra terrestrial. Yeah, if that's a word,
it definitely is. Our expanding English language Frank Olger's with us. You know
him from Game of Thrones. Of the Swarm available on the CW and eight
part Eco Thriller. Had you read this book long ago and just were aching
to make a film about it? Or did somebody bring it to your attention?
It was brought to my attention. I had heard about the novel.
Again. It seemed intriguing. I knew had been a big success and had
a devoted readership. But again, science was not my strong suit. So
actually I never read it, and actually I read it twice. I read
it the first time and I told the people who had brought it to me
that it wasn't for me. I didn't really think there was a series there.
And then something about it stayed with me, and I went back and
took another look. And I think again, when I figured out the genre,
I think the novel it's pretty much a disaster movie. For those people
have read it, it's quite a different lot of genres, but it ends
up being very much a disaster movie. And I thought that wasn't interesting.
And as I said, when I figured out, maybe the thing to do
was to make a monster movie, you know, and my inspiration was partly
Jaws partly the HBO series Chernobyl, taking elements of scary movies. When there's
something out there threatening, what is it? What are you going to do
about it? I sort of thought maybe that was the way in so I
finally decided to jump into it. And the other thing about it was when
it was written, you know, twenty twenty five years ago, the cas
weren't particularly diverse, particularly interesting, and so we tried to bring them into
the present. What I wasn't expecting is some of the things that were seemed
fantasy, like twenty years ago, Wales attacking ships, you know, pathogen
killing people, other seaborne disasters. Suddenly they're no longer fantasy. Unfortunately,
they've called up with us and the things that we're all experiencing now. Yeah,
a lot can change technologically in twenty years, very much so. Yeah.
Frank Olger, the name of the series is The Swarm. It's an
eight part eco thriller available on the CW. You know him from Game of
Thrones. Frank Olger, thank you for bringing us the story and joining us
today. Thank you very much and I hope you all enjoy it. Thanks
for listening to Later with Lee Matthews, The Lee Matthews Podcast and remember to
listen to The Drive Live weekday afternoons from five to seven and iHeartMedia presentation