“Da Vinci’s Demons” is back for a second season. It picks up where the first season left off, but right away jumps ahead to show us where it’s going. In the first few episodes this season, we’re going to see da Vinci have more adventures, meet Amerigo Vespucci and experiment with then unheard of medical procedures.
David S. Goyer is back running the show and we got the latest “Da Vinci” scoop from him at this year’s Television Critics Association winter press tour.
CraveOnline: I have been waiting since last year to ask you this. Have you seen Hudson Hawk yet?
David Goyer: I still have never seen Hudson Hawk.
You still haven’t? Even after our last interview?
I know. I think you asked me last year.
If I can get one person to see Hudson Hawk…
Do you like Hudson Hawk?
I love Hudson Hawk. Loved it back in 1991.
They build a flying machine, right?
A lot of Da Vinci artifacts.
Oh crap, I’m sorry.
Now you know I’m going to ask you every time until you see it.
Okay, until I finally see it.
And I hope you like it because it’s a fun movie. So you ended “Da Vinci’s Demons” Season 1 on a cliffhanger. Before you even resolved that cliffhanger you start a new one?
Yes, I just thought it would be fun to do. Originally we were going to begin season two exactly where season one left off and I said, “You know, let’s not. Let’s do something different.” Since we’d been experimenting with nonlinear storytelling in the show anyway, I just thought it would be something really fun to do. So yes, before we even resolve the one cliffhanger, we give the audience another cliffhanger.
Well played.
Although both cliffhangers will be resolved this season.
Well, the first one already is, right? We see the aftermath.
By the end of the first three episodes, yes.
When does the new cliffhanger resolve?
Not in three episodes, but not in episode 10. It’s before episode 10.
Are you directing this season?
I did some second unit this season but I did not have as much time to be on set. First season I was on set about seven months. This time not nearly as much, I fully admit.
Was that because of other work on “Da Vinci’s Demons” or your screenwriting duties?
It was other work on “Da Vinci.” A lot of the post is done here. I was doing press on Man of Steel for almost a month and also press on “Da Vinci.” Between the two of them, I was doing press for almost two months entirely while we were prepping and beginning to shoot the second season of Da Vinci. We have a young son that I wanted to spend some time with. It was just a bunch of things.
Did Leonardo da Vinci invent blood transfusions as we see him perform this season?
Not that I know of, although what was interesting was the Muslim scholar that he references appears to have experimented with blood transfusions in the 11th or 12th century, so that’s kind of one of the sub-themes of the show. Just because we know invention X or process X was discovered in this period doesn’t mean someone else on the other side of the world didn’t invent it or uncover it 300-400 years earlier.
Will we see Amerigo Vespucci discover America as we approach the 1490s?
Maybe, maybe. See episode five of this season.
What is the spinning tooth? Is that something we’ve seen before?
It’s the first time we’ve seen it. It alludes to King Ferrante’s macabre interests. If you google him, he’s famous for what was called The Black Museum. He would embalm the corpses of his enemies in his dungeon and had them on display, sort of like an early version of the wax museum.
The sweeping transitions over the castle and city are all visual effects. Are those easy to do on a TV budget? How is that a way to make it feel bigger?
Look, we have a fairly sizable visual effects budget and we got nominated for a visual effects Emmy last season. Fortunately one of the gratifying things about doing a second season is I think we earned Starz’s trust and did fairly well for them so they gave us more money. That extended into visual effects, but one of the other things that’s nice with some of your sets and even visual effects is some of our sets have already been built, so we can build new ones. We spent $300,000 digitally building Florence. That was all built so we didn’t have to re-spend that money in season two. We could do new stuff with it and that’s how we were able to do some of those flyovers.
Is the “da Vinci vision” an easy visual effect to do?
No, it’s not and it’s an expensive visual effect. We always want to do more than we can afford. We debate how many frames we can afford per episode. Everybody loves it. It’s just really expensive to do.
What makes it so complicated?
It’s hand animated in the old fashioned Disney animation way, it’s not computer generated, by a really talented group of animators. It’s really labor intensive and if you want to make changes, it’s not like a computer where you can just plug in “make it 10% bigger.” They have to hand animate it again so it takes a really long time and it’s really labor intensive.
You axe a guy in the face. That’s pretty brutal. Is the whole season going to be that brutal?
Well, did you think the first season was brutal?
I don’t remember if I had that overall reaction. I just reacted to seeing a guy get axed in the face this time. I saw these episodes a few nights ago.
Not every episode but brutality was part of that world. Some pretty brutal things happen in episode five and six I would say.
I have one Superman question I think you can answer. When you got hired to do the sequel, did they say, “Could you incorporate Batman and other characters?”
They did not. They said, “Will you do another one?” and Zack and I proposed what we proposed.
