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attackfishCommentators: Michael Dante DiMartino, series co-creator, Bryan Konietzko, series co-creator, and Elsa Garagarza, background layout supervisor.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Hi, this is Bryan Konietzko, co-creator of Avatar.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: This is Mike DiMartino, the other co-creator.
ELSA GARAGARZA: And this is Elsa Garagarza, I am the background layout supervisor.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Hi Elsa, thanks for coming.
ELSA GARAGARZA: Thank you for inviting me.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: You’re like the background design supervisor.
ELSA GARAGARZA: The background design supervisor, yeah.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Which means when we have a script, a new script, we sit down and talk about ideas about like the locations, and um, since Avatar is sort of like a travel show, we don’t have a lot of re-used locations, so every episode, we have to draw all new designs for the… The backgrounds are the, are like the places, for the insides of buildings, fields, campsites, whatever. So um, Elsa heads up a couple great artists, uh do you want to tell them about the artists you work with?
ELSA GARAGARZA: Yep, yes, I have two wonderful people that I work with, excellent professionals. They are Jevon Buo and Enzo Baldi. They have been helping me out since season two. Since the end of season one- no season two. And uh, we have been… They’ve been doing a fantastic job. We have been doing all of these wonderful designs for all of these wonderful locations, as Bryan has said, and sometimes even if we’re revise new locations, we add up to all these new places that we build and revisit… It’s always interesting, because even sometimes if we revisit, there are all these new, extra little places that we uh, redesign, and it’s always full of surprises.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Yeah, sometimes we take an opportunity to improve upon a, uh, past design if we do see it again.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: And this uh, this episode was especially challenging, and this whole location of Ba Sing Se, because we knew we were going to spend multiple episodes at this place. It had to really feel like a real, real city, and which is… I think when you see it, that’s what comes across to me is how real this place feels, like all the different, you know, rings where they go in, the lower, middle, and upper rings, and all the great houses, and landscapes and everything, so great job Elsa on all the awesome background designs.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: By the way, the guy with the corn was a little tribute to uh, Invader Zim, and if you know the episode, then you get a cookie.
BRYAN KONIETZKO, MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO, and ELSA GARAGARZA: [Laughter]
ELSA GARAGARZA: Well, it was pretty interesting, beginning Ba Sing Se. And I was dreading it a lot for the longest time. I knew it was going to be a lot of work, and there was a lot of design involved, but I think it was a fantastic experience.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: This was fun to do things like subway cars and train stations, that didn’t feel too contemporary, or even futuristic. Um, it’s, it’s you know, like, I like the inclusion of the rooftops on the subway cars, like they’re little buildings, and… Even the inside, I mean it feels like a New York subway, and it’s familiar, but obviously the ancient Avatar version.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: [Indistinct noise]
BRYAN KONIETZKO: And this character… Oh, sorry were you going to say that?
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yeah, I was going to say, uh, sometimes we model characters after people we know, and uh, Joo Dee is based on our production manager, Miken Wong.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: I think she’s our line producer.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Our line producer, sorry Miken.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: And Mike and I have been working with Miken for a long time. She was my first producer in LA. So she’s always happy. Happy happy happy.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: And we’re like Sokka going, no but you didn’t hear what we had to say, and she’s like no, it’s okay, don’t worry. And we’re like we can’t finish the episode on that day!
BRYAN KONIETZKO: So this is the Lower Ring, as Joo Dee just said, and the color supervisor, Hye-Jung Kim and I talked about how we could, you know, Elsa distinguished the different rings architecturally, and then Hy-Jung and I decided, you know, we’d have a different color rooftop scheme, and like building scheme for each.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
JOO DEE: You do want to watch your step though.]
BRYAN KONIETZKO: So the Lower Ring was a lot grittier, a lot more monochromatic, not very colorful.
ELSA GARAGARZA: It was a lot of fun to design the Lower Ring, because it had a lot of flavor, of, uh… We were inspired by many towns in China, Yangtze, and the one that especially, uh, Yangtze Provence, the central part of it was a big inspiration for these marketplace areas. And it was very colorful and nice, and we, [Referring to a shot of Zuko and Iroh from above, walking down a crooked dirt road lined with buildings and rickety market stalls] especially this background particularly, that’s what we wanted to capture, the flavor. Because it is a low rung place, but it has to have some charm to identify it.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Yeah, we wanted the… In the Lower Ring, since it’s where they keep the refugees and the poor working class people, they have less trees, like it’s overpopulated, and you know, the rich people, as you go up in the rings, less buildings, more trees, and parks and rivers, and uh, so they sort of force all these lower class people to live on top of each other, and the streets are kind of organically windy, and you know, just haphazard.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
JOO DEE: This is the Middle Ring of Ba Sing Se, home to the financial district, shops and restaurants and the university.
SOKKA: Yeah, we met a Professor from Ba Sing Se University. He took us to an ancient underground library where we discovered information about the war that is absolutely crucial for the King to hear!]
BRYAN KONIETZKO: And as we go up into these districts, you start seeing more organization.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: So uh, Tim Hedrick was supposed to be here today. He’s the writer of this episode. Unfortunately he’s not here, but uh, he and the other writers and Aaron, our head writer did a great job kind of establishing this new city, you know, we knew we were going to go to Ba Sing Se, we knew this was going to be a big location in season two, but we hadn’t worked out all the political, you know, intrigue, and everything that ends up going on in Ba Sing Se. So they played a big part in shaping that, and kind of coming up with this, you know, 1984 Utopian… Seemingly Utopian society that turns out to be a little, a little creepy under the surface.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Yeah, we knew… Mike and I early on knew that there was always going to be something wrong with this city, you, you’d think oh they’re the good guys, they’re on their side in the war, and they’ll definitely help them. We knew we wanted it to be that when the kids showed up, that somehow or another they would end up being enemies of this place. Um, so often the case in the real world, there’s just a lot of shades of gray, and uh, everything’s not so cut and dried.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
JOO DEE: The Upper Ring is home to our most important citizens.]
BRYAN KONIETZKO: So you can see in the Upper Ring, it’s just beautiful, idyllic, it’s like pastures and parks, and… [Referring to a shot of the front gate of the wall surrounding the Earth King’s palace] This is based on the uh, south gate to the Forbidden City in Beijing, where Mike and I got to go, a year, I think a yeah and a half ago.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
JOO DEE: Inside is the Royal Palace. Those men are agents of the Dai Li.]
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yeah, we even based the doors on that, where, there’s only like certain doors that the emperor can go through, and the side doors are where everyone else has to go through, so later on in the party, I think, we have, we have the guests of the party, they’re entering through a certain, uh, side door, not the main one.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: [Referring to the guesthouse where the Gaang stays in Ba Sing Se] This is a really important location, because it’s… It’s where the kids will be living for several episodes. Which is very weird. It’s very unlike Avatar to have like a, an apartment, you know, that we keep coming back to. It’s almost like a sitcom.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
JOO DEE: Six to eight weeks, actually.]
ELSA GARAGARZA: Even if we revisit it, we visit different rooms of that same place, so…
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
JOO DEE: Isn’t it nice?]
BRYAN KONIETZKO: [Referring to the comfortable-looking interior of the guesthouse] It is pretty nice. I wouldn’t mind…
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yeah.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: I wouldn’t mind something like that.
ELSA GARAGARZA: Me neither.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
SOKKA: Can't we see the King any sooner?]
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yeah, after them kind of camping out for two seasons, it’s kind of cool that they get to…
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Yeah.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Settle down and hang out in a place.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: It was fun too, when we were doing the storyboards inside this location. You know these are sort of worldly, earthy kids who don’t have parents or teachers around, so it was fun to come up with like staging ideas, where they’re just… Aang’s lying on the banister, and Sokka has his feet on a painting, and stuff like that, like… [Referring to a cat/owl hybrid animal that chases Momo away from a pan of birdseed] There’s that weird cat-owl.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: [Laughter]
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
PET STORE OWNER: I'm sorry, but I haven't heard anything about a flying bison. I didn't even know there were any.]
BRYAN KONIETZKO: I think that’s voiced by my neighbor.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Jason Miller. I’m not sure. You might be right.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
AANG: If someone wanted to sell a stolen animal without anyone knowing, where would they go?
SOKKA: Where's the black market? Who runs it? Come on, you know!]
BRYAN KONIETZKO: It’s Jason Miller.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
PET STORE OWNER: That would be illegal.]
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Hi Jason! Uh also I mention Lauren MacMullan who directed this episode.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Fantastic job.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yeah, great job with the… Again making this place feel like a real place, a lot of the shots and the cinematography of the whole location really came out beautifully.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: And Chris Graham, one of the board artists did a really great job on a lot of these shots.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
UNIVERSITY STUDENT: I'm not a political science student. I have to get to class.
JOO DEE: Well, I'm sorry no one has seen your bison. Why don't you go get some rest? Someone will be over with dinner later.]
BRYAN KONIETZKO: So the other two board artists on this episode were Kenji Ono and Dean Kelly, uh, both classmates of mine at the Rhode Island School of Design.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
PONG: You're the Avatar. I heard you were in town. I'm Pong.
SOKKA: So Pong, what's goin' on with this city? Why is everyone here so scared to talk about the war?
PONG: War? scared What do you mean?
TOPH: I can feel you shaking.
PONG: Look, I'm just a minor government official. I've waited 3 years to get this house. I don't want to get into trouble.
KATARA: Get in trouble with who?]
BRYAN KONIETZKO: So this guy, Pong, as their wacky neighbor, was… We kind of wrote him into some subsequent episodes, but he kept getting cut out, because he was just kind of like, extra weight that we didn’t end up needing, but he became kind of an inside joke with all the writers, Pong, their wacky old neighbor.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
ZUKO: I’m sick of tea!]
BRYAN KONIETZKO: So this little subplot with Zuko and Jet is definitely one of my favorites. This is a continuation kind of from uh, the previous two episodes, where Jet met Zuko, and Zuko didn’t want to be in his gang, and Jet’s taking that very personally at this point, and trying to prove that Zuko is in fact a firebender. Jet’s one of those guys, who if you know, was around in our place and time would always be into conspiracy theories, and you know. Everyone’s against him.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yeah, and he was a good character to kind of play into this whole um, Utopian, Dystopian plot, and have him be the one who, you know, got captured, and got brainwashed and stuff.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: He’s kind of the rock star rebel.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: [Indistinct noise]
BRYAN KONIETZKO: I love this joke here about, our little inside joke about ordinary animals, because all the animals in Avatar are hybrids obviously. I never noticed, Momo’s already hanging out under the curtain there. Isn’t that him?
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yeah he’s right there.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: In a moment, he will pop up as Lord Momo of the Momo dynasty. So here’s this little booger joke, I’m pretty proud of this.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
KATARA: Excuse me? I've got no manners? You're not exactly lady fancy fingers.]
BRYAN KONIETZKO: That burp. Did Jessie do that burp?
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: I think she did!
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Jessie’s the voice, Jessie Flower is the voice of Toph. Oh here.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Here it comes. [Referring to Toph tossing a booger across the room] Doink!
BRYAN KONIETZKO: I don’t know if you noticed, but it’s hanging on the ceiling right above Sokka’s head throughout the rest of this.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Waiting to fall.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Yeah. She shot it in his general direction, but it planted on the ceiling.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
AANG: Lord Momo of the Momo dynasty.]
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: [Referring to Momo popping up from under the curtain] See?
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Wow! Yeah, that was a nice hookup.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yeah.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Good job Lauren! Or Kenji. [Referring to Aang and Sokka getting into a bowing war and eventually hitting their heads together by mistake] I think Kenji did this crazy bowing stuff.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Hey Bryan, do you want to talk about like the paintings that you see in the show, because a lot of people always comment like, oh that screen or that painting in the background is really cool.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: [Referring to the booger falling onto Sokka’s forehead] There’s the booger! Um, I don’t want to talk about those paintings, because…
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: [Laughter]
BRYAN KONIETZKO: I just don’t.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: All right. Well they’re very nice.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Sometimes they’re from Oh Seung Hyun, one of of our, our supervising director. He’s from Korea, and he has this amazing collection of beautiful paintings, originals, that he owns, and sometimes we put those in the show. [Referring to Momo walking across the floor wearing the curtain as a cloak] Ah, I love this joke.
ELSA GARAGARZA: Super Momo.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: [Referring to the music over Jet, hiding in the shadows, spying on Zuko] I like that, the music that Jeremy and Ben did. The track team. That moment was really cool for Jet.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Yeah, Jeremy, like, master of many instruments, pulled out the cello and did these like, extended techniques, for all that kind of 1970s psychological thriller score stuff for Jet. There’s just something wrong with Jet. Something deep in his brain. That theme of his reflects that.
ELSA GARAGARZA: Those, those musical themes make my hair stand on point. They’re very successful.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: And Elsa, do you find Jet handsome?
ELSA GARAGARZA: Absolutely. Absolutely.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: He divides people.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: [Laughter] Yeah, there’s two types of women, the type who think he’s very handsome, and the ones who think he’s no good. He’s trouble. They can see right through him.
ELSA GARAGARZA: They’re lying.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: That’s a bit of a generalization. There might be a third type of woman who really doesn’t care.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Doesn’t care? Oh yeah, maybe.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
JET: I’m tired of waiting! These two men are firebenders!]
BRYAN KONIETZKO: So I love this showdown between Zuko and Jet. Some of my favorite animation in the series.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
JET: I know they're firebenders!]
BRYAN KONIETZKO: It was, uh, Dean Kelly who boarded this action scene I believe. He did a great job.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
OFFICER/CUSTOMER: He works in a tea shop.
JET: He's a firebender, I'm telling you!
OFFICER/CUSTOMER: Drop your swords, boy. Nice and easy.]
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: This, what I like about Jet’s story is like, he’s going crazy, but he is actually telling the truth, so you kind of feel bad for him, because you know, Zuko is a firebender. He’s not totally crazy.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Yeah. So some of the choreography here was… The fight choreography was inspired by just the classic Hong Kong Kung Fu movies, where they really make use of like props and things that are, you know, in the room, and jumping up on the table, and then maybe someone cuts that in half, and you have to balance on it, and you know. Trying to you know, um, trying to use the environment to make the fight unique. I’d love to mention, Angella Mueller did character design on this episode. [Referring to Katara and Toph’s formal dresses and the crowds of well-dressed party guests] I, all of these costumes, these fancy costumes, are just amazing. I think they came out really great. This is Long Feng, voiced by Clancy Brown, a fantastic actor.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yeah, Long Feng ended up being a really cool villain for Season Two, I think.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Yeah, his voice acting, it just brings such a [Imitating Clancy Brown] gravitas, to the series. [Referring to a shot of Toph and Katara blowing a raspberry at the guard who wouldn’t let them into the party]. I like that. These drawings are pretty good. Oh, and this is the first time we see Bosco! The king’s bear, who… Again this kind of just ended up being a little joke in the script, but we loved it so much that we kept putting Bosco in all the subsequent shows, and we see him later with the king and stuff, so, it’s just nice that the king has a little pet to keep him company. It’s sort of… It’s a good character building thing for the king. He’s a good guy, but he’s just sort of innocent and naive, so it made sense that he just had a big kind of dumb pet.
ELSA GARAGARZA: And who wouldn’t want a bear?
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Exactly.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
LONG FENG: Don’t worry. As your escort, it would be dishonorable to abandon you ladies without finding your families first. We'll keep looking.]
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: So do you, what do you like designing more, Elsa? Interior or building stuff, or like more organic campsites and landscapes and stuff like that?
ELSA GARAGARZA: I like to design downtowns. Like the Lower Ring for me was fantastic to design. It was very interesting. I like nuances and flavors. But I do like exteriors more than interiors. Landscapes are fine though, but sometimes even they are harder to pull through to make them real, look real. [Referring to the exterior of Pao’s tea shop and the surrounding and alleyway] This area here was beautiful, this area to me was lovely.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: And I think uh, the night time VGs by Bryan Evans, and Hye-Jung Kim came out really cool. This is some of my favorite color in the whole season.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: [Referring to a shot of Zuko slicing through Jet’s grain stalk] That’s my favorite moment, when Zuko cut’s Jet’s straw. It’s just so… symbolic.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: [Laughter] [Referring to a scene of Sokka and Aang serving as waiters at the Earth King’s party] And Lauren MacMullan did a great job on this. She boarded this section.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: And notice Momo’s little tail squirming around.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: The idea is it looks sort of like the queue hairstyle that the Ba Sing Se people have.
ELSA GARAGARZA: Look at all those costumes.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Yeah, they’re amazing. JM Animation did a great job drawing all those costumes.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yeah.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: It was a lot to ask of them, but they did it. They did a great job.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
KATARA: The guy who escorted us in, won't let us out of his sight!]
BRYAN KONIETZKO: I think Katara and Toph’s makeup was a lot more successful in this episode than it was in 2.15.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: [Laughter]
BRYAN KONIETZKO: I guess the joke in 2.15 was that it was very garrish.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yeah, they got the extra treatment on that one. This is their own subtle makeup.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: [Referring to a shot of a party guest whose makeup has been ruined realizing that Aang is the Avatar] I really love how Lauren’s style came through in all these expressions, sort of mixed with JM’s animation style.
ELSA GARAGARZA: Nice.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Really funny.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
PARTY GUEST: The Avatar. Oh, I didn't know the Avatar would be here!]
BRYAN KONIETZKO: So this is like this society party where everyone’s all impressed, because the Avatar’s shown up, but… I like Momo.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Running out there.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
SOKKA: You keep their attention while I look for the King.
AANG: Watch this, everybody.]
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Nice goofy Aang music by Jeremy Zuckerman.
ELSA GARAGARZA: [Referring to Bosco] And he’s entertained.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: [Referring to Jet and Zuko fighting each other back to back] So Sifu Kisu and I did this choreography out in the courtyard of Nickelodeon. Someone was running around us as we were sword fighting. It was pretty crazy.
ELSA GARAGARZA: Anybody get hurt?
BRYAN KONIETZKO: I usually get hurt.
ELSA GARAGARZA: [Laughter]
BRYAN KONIETZKO: In those situations.
ELSA GARAGARZA: A lot of those are pretty… With the swords and everything?
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Don’t try it at home, kids.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
OFFICER/CUSTOMER: It's true sir. We saw the whole thing. This crazy kid attacked the finest tea maker in the city.
IROH: Oh ho ho. That's very sweet.]
BRYAN KONIETZKO: I love that Uncle blushes.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yeah, this kind of really starts the whole Uncle subplot, of uh starting working in a tea shop, and then he eventually ends up getting his own tea shop, so… It was cool to give them jobs jobs kind of, and have them employed.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Again, very un-Avatar.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yeah.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: It’s also the first time we see the Dai Li’s, uh, rock gloves, which was, uh… The idea was earthbending up to this point has been very big, and brutal, and you know, noisy and we wanted these guys to be a lot sneakier, and uh, have a more delicate stealth, stealthy kind of earthbending, so I came up with this idea that they have like little rock tiles that sort of magnetize to their hands, and then they can shoot them off and still control them so they can seize people and turn them into handcuffs and stuff.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
SOKKA: Hey, let me go!]
BRYAN KONIETZKO: So they just sort of… It’s almost like clay, I mean it, the rocks are hard, but then they fuse them together.
ELSA GARAGARZA: [Referring to a shot of Aang’s waiter hat creeping along the floor, Momo’s tail visible from underneath] Oh, Momo.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: [Laughter] He really thought he was going to get away with it.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
LONG FENG: Avatar, it is a great honor to meet you. I am Long Feng, Grand Secretary of Ba Sing Se and head of the Dai Li. I'd like to talk to you. Your friends will be waiting for us in the library.]
BRYAN KONIETZKO: I think the library is one of my favorite background designs from this episode.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
SOKKA: Why won't you let us talk to the King? We have information that could defeat the Fire Nation!]
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Want to talk about your influence on that, Elsa?
ELSA GARAGARZA: Oh, well, actually this background was done by Jevon. He did a fantastic job with it. And we were really working on that, that fireplace, because it was an important focal point, and look at all that drama that… A great focal point. So he did a fantastic job. He’s great with libraries.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: [Laughter] Yeah that’s true, we had the… He and Enzo did the crazy spirit library in 2.10. So the idea here, if you’re wondering about this fire, is that generally for Earth Kingdom locations, for light sources we don’t use torches or lamps, anything with fire. We tend to use these phosphorescent crystals, um, but for the dramatic lighting, and I don’t know, the sort of ominous presence of a fire, we thought it would be cool to have a fire, so I thought maybe there’s some sort of weird rare crystal that’s actually flammable. And um, kind of like, you know, those artificial logs that last longer?
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: [Laughter] Makes sense to me.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: So then we just made the fire green, which is a more Earth Nation, uh Earth Kingdom color, so.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: I love this, just this whole sequence at the end, where it cross cuts between Long Feng describing the, what’s going on in the city, and seeing Jet being, you know, starting the brainwashing process. I think it’s just very effective at setting up how kind of two sided this city is, like the, the Utopian side, and then the very creepy underground, mysterious side of the city.
ELSA GARAGARZA: Very dramatic.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yeah.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
KATARA: You can't keep the truth from all these people. They have to know.]
BRYAN KONIETZKO: I love Toph’s expression there. This is so painful to her.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
LONG FENG: Until now, you've been treated as our honored guest, but from now on, you will be watched every moment by Dai Li agents. If you mention the war to anyone, you will be expelled from the city. I understand you've been looking for your bison. It would be quite a shame if you were not able to complete your quest.]
BRYAN KONIETZKO: So there’s a little, little hint there, foreshadowing.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
LONG FENG: Now Joo Dee will show you home.
SECOND JOO DEE: Come with me, please.
KATARA: What happened to Joo Dee?
SECOND JOO DEE: I'm Joo Dee. I'll be your host as long as you're in our wonderful city.]
BRYAN KONIETZKO and MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: That’s not Joo Dee!
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: That’s not Joo Dee at all.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Oh Mike, we’ve been spending too much time together.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: I know. All right, great creepy ending to a fabulous episode. Thanks Tim, thanks Aaron, thanks Lauren, thanks Elsa for designing Ba Sing Se.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Supervising!
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: With all your folks.
ELSA GARAGARZA: Thank you. A lot of work, but fun work.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Yeah you guys did a great job. I was, I was dreading it myself, but then, uh, you guys knocked it out of the park. It looked great, and um.
ELSA GARAGARZA: Thank you.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Yeah.
ELSA GARAGARZA: I was dreading it because it was going to be a lot of work, but it was definitely worth all of the experiences.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Very very worth it.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: And it was worth it too, because we ended up spending the rest of the season there, so you know, it was great that it, that it…
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Yeah
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Came out as good as it did.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Awesome.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Thanks guys!
BRYAN KONIETZKO: [Whispers] Awesome!
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Hi, this is Bryan Konietzko, co-creator of Avatar.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: This is Mike DiMartino, the other co-creator.
ELSA GARAGARZA: And this is Elsa Garagarza, I am the background layout supervisor.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Hi Elsa, thanks for coming.
ELSA GARAGARZA: Thank you for inviting me.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: You’re like the background design supervisor.
ELSA GARAGARZA: The background design supervisor, yeah.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Which means when we have a script, a new script, we sit down and talk about ideas about like the locations, and um, since Avatar is sort of like a travel show, we don’t have a lot of re-used locations, so every episode, we have to draw all new designs for the… The backgrounds are the, are like the places, for the insides of buildings, fields, campsites, whatever. So um, Elsa heads up a couple great artists, uh do you want to tell them about the artists you work with?
ELSA GARAGARZA: Yep, yes, I have two wonderful people that I work with, excellent professionals. They are Jevon Buo and Enzo Baldi. They have been helping me out since season two. Since the end of season one- no season two. And uh, we have been… They’ve been doing a fantastic job. We have been doing all of these wonderful designs for all of these wonderful locations, as Bryan has said, and sometimes even if we’re revise new locations, we add up to all these new places that we build and revisit… It’s always interesting, because even sometimes if we revisit, there are all these new, extra little places that we uh, redesign, and it’s always full of surprises.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Yeah, sometimes we take an opportunity to improve upon a, uh, past design if we do see it again.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: And this uh, this episode was especially challenging, and this whole location of Ba Sing Se, because we knew we were going to spend multiple episodes at this place. It had to really feel like a real, real city, and which is… I think when you see it, that’s what comes across to me is how real this place feels, like all the different, you know, rings where they go in, the lower, middle, and upper rings, and all the great houses, and landscapes and everything, so great job Elsa on all the awesome background designs.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: By the way, the guy with the corn was a little tribute to uh, Invader Zim, and if you know the episode, then you get a cookie.
BRYAN KONIETZKO, MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO, and ELSA GARAGARZA: [Laughter]
ELSA GARAGARZA: Well, it was pretty interesting, beginning Ba Sing Se. And I was dreading it a lot for the longest time. I knew it was going to be a lot of work, and there was a lot of design involved, but I think it was a fantastic experience.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: This was fun to do things like subway cars and train stations, that didn’t feel too contemporary, or even futuristic. Um, it’s, it’s you know, like, I like the inclusion of the rooftops on the subway cars, like they’re little buildings, and… Even the inside, I mean it feels like a New York subway, and it’s familiar, but obviously the ancient Avatar version.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: [Indistinct noise]
BRYAN KONIETZKO: And this character… Oh, sorry were you going to say that?
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yeah, I was going to say, uh, sometimes we model characters after people we know, and uh, Joo Dee is based on our production manager, Miken Wong.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: I think she’s our line producer.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Our line producer, sorry Miken.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: And Mike and I have been working with Miken for a long time. She was my first producer in LA. So she’s always happy. Happy happy happy.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: And we’re like Sokka going, no but you didn’t hear what we had to say, and she’s like no, it’s okay, don’t worry. And we’re like we can’t finish the episode on that day!
BRYAN KONIETZKO: So this is the Lower Ring, as Joo Dee just said, and the color supervisor, Hye-Jung Kim and I talked about how we could, you know, Elsa distinguished the different rings architecturally, and then Hy-Jung and I decided, you know, we’d have a different color rooftop scheme, and like building scheme for each.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
JOO DEE: You do want to watch your step though.]
BRYAN KONIETZKO: So the Lower Ring was a lot grittier, a lot more monochromatic, not very colorful.
ELSA GARAGARZA: It was a lot of fun to design the Lower Ring, because it had a lot of flavor, of, uh… We were inspired by many towns in China, Yangtze, and the one that especially, uh, Yangtze Provence, the central part of it was a big inspiration for these marketplace areas. And it was very colorful and nice, and we, [Referring to a shot of Zuko and Iroh from above, walking down a crooked dirt road lined with buildings and rickety market stalls] especially this background particularly, that’s what we wanted to capture, the flavor. Because it is a low rung place, but it has to have some charm to identify it.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Yeah, we wanted the… In the Lower Ring, since it’s where they keep the refugees and the poor working class people, they have less trees, like it’s overpopulated, and you know, the rich people, as you go up in the rings, less buildings, more trees, and parks and rivers, and uh, so they sort of force all these lower class people to live on top of each other, and the streets are kind of organically windy, and you know, just haphazard.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
JOO DEE: This is the Middle Ring of Ba Sing Se, home to the financial district, shops and restaurants and the university.
SOKKA: Yeah, we met a Professor from Ba Sing Se University. He took us to an ancient underground library where we discovered information about the war that is absolutely crucial for the King to hear!]
BRYAN KONIETZKO: And as we go up into these districts, you start seeing more organization.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: So uh, Tim Hedrick was supposed to be here today. He’s the writer of this episode. Unfortunately he’s not here, but uh, he and the other writers and Aaron, our head writer did a great job kind of establishing this new city, you know, we knew we were going to go to Ba Sing Se, we knew this was going to be a big location in season two, but we hadn’t worked out all the political, you know, intrigue, and everything that ends up going on in Ba Sing Se. So they played a big part in shaping that, and kind of coming up with this, you know, 1984 Utopian… Seemingly Utopian society that turns out to be a little, a little creepy under the surface.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Yeah, we knew… Mike and I early on knew that there was always going to be something wrong with this city, you, you’d think oh they’re the good guys, they’re on their side in the war, and they’ll definitely help them. We knew we wanted it to be that when the kids showed up, that somehow or another they would end up being enemies of this place. Um, so often the case in the real world, there’s just a lot of shades of gray, and uh, everything’s not so cut and dried.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
JOO DEE: The Upper Ring is home to our most important citizens.]
BRYAN KONIETZKO: So you can see in the Upper Ring, it’s just beautiful, idyllic, it’s like pastures and parks, and… [Referring to a shot of the front gate of the wall surrounding the Earth King’s palace] This is based on the uh, south gate to the Forbidden City in Beijing, where Mike and I got to go, a year, I think a yeah and a half ago.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
JOO DEE: Inside is the Royal Palace. Those men are agents of the Dai Li.]
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yeah, we even based the doors on that, where, there’s only like certain doors that the emperor can go through, and the side doors are where everyone else has to go through, so later on in the party, I think, we have, we have the guests of the party, they’re entering through a certain, uh, side door, not the main one.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: [Referring to the guesthouse where the Gaang stays in Ba Sing Se] This is a really important location, because it’s… It’s where the kids will be living for several episodes. Which is very weird. It’s very unlike Avatar to have like a, an apartment, you know, that we keep coming back to. It’s almost like a sitcom.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
JOO DEE: Six to eight weeks, actually.]
ELSA GARAGARZA: Even if we revisit it, we visit different rooms of that same place, so…
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
JOO DEE: Isn’t it nice?]
BRYAN KONIETZKO: [Referring to the comfortable-looking interior of the guesthouse] It is pretty nice. I wouldn’t mind…
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yeah.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: I wouldn’t mind something like that.
ELSA GARAGARZA: Me neither.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
SOKKA: Can't we see the King any sooner?]
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yeah, after them kind of camping out for two seasons, it’s kind of cool that they get to…
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Yeah.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Settle down and hang out in a place.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: It was fun too, when we were doing the storyboards inside this location. You know these are sort of worldly, earthy kids who don’t have parents or teachers around, so it was fun to come up with like staging ideas, where they’re just… Aang’s lying on the banister, and Sokka has his feet on a painting, and stuff like that, like… [Referring to a cat/owl hybrid animal that chases Momo away from a pan of birdseed] There’s that weird cat-owl.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: [Laughter]
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
PET STORE OWNER: I'm sorry, but I haven't heard anything about a flying bison. I didn't even know there were any.]
BRYAN KONIETZKO: I think that’s voiced by my neighbor.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Jason Miller. I’m not sure. You might be right.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
AANG: If someone wanted to sell a stolen animal without anyone knowing, where would they go?
SOKKA: Where's the black market? Who runs it? Come on, you know!]
BRYAN KONIETZKO: It’s Jason Miller.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
PET STORE OWNER: That would be illegal.]
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Hi Jason! Uh also I mention Lauren MacMullan who directed this episode.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Fantastic job.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yeah, great job with the… Again making this place feel like a real place, a lot of the shots and the cinematography of the whole location really came out beautifully.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: And Chris Graham, one of the board artists did a really great job on a lot of these shots.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
UNIVERSITY STUDENT: I'm not a political science student. I have to get to class.
JOO DEE: Well, I'm sorry no one has seen your bison. Why don't you go get some rest? Someone will be over with dinner later.]
BRYAN KONIETZKO: So the other two board artists on this episode were Kenji Ono and Dean Kelly, uh, both classmates of mine at the Rhode Island School of Design.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
PONG: You're the Avatar. I heard you were in town. I'm Pong.
SOKKA: So Pong, what's goin' on with this city? Why is everyone here so scared to talk about the war?
PONG: War? scared What do you mean?
TOPH: I can feel you shaking.
PONG: Look, I'm just a minor government official. I've waited 3 years to get this house. I don't want to get into trouble.
KATARA: Get in trouble with who?]
BRYAN KONIETZKO: So this guy, Pong, as their wacky neighbor, was… We kind of wrote him into some subsequent episodes, but he kept getting cut out, because he was just kind of like, extra weight that we didn’t end up needing, but he became kind of an inside joke with all the writers, Pong, their wacky old neighbor.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
ZUKO: I’m sick of tea!]
BRYAN KONIETZKO: So this little subplot with Zuko and Jet is definitely one of my favorites. This is a continuation kind of from uh, the previous two episodes, where Jet met Zuko, and Zuko didn’t want to be in his gang, and Jet’s taking that very personally at this point, and trying to prove that Zuko is in fact a firebender. Jet’s one of those guys, who if you know, was around in our place and time would always be into conspiracy theories, and you know. Everyone’s against him.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yeah, and he was a good character to kind of play into this whole um, Utopian, Dystopian plot, and have him be the one who, you know, got captured, and got brainwashed and stuff.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: He’s kind of the rock star rebel.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: [Indistinct noise]
BRYAN KONIETZKO: I love this joke here about, our little inside joke about ordinary animals, because all the animals in Avatar are hybrids obviously. I never noticed, Momo’s already hanging out under the curtain there. Isn’t that him?
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yeah he’s right there.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: In a moment, he will pop up as Lord Momo of the Momo dynasty. So here’s this little booger joke, I’m pretty proud of this.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
KATARA: Excuse me? I've got no manners? You're not exactly lady fancy fingers.]
BRYAN KONIETZKO: That burp. Did Jessie do that burp?
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: I think she did!
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Jessie’s the voice, Jessie Flower is the voice of Toph. Oh here.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Here it comes. [Referring to Toph tossing a booger across the room] Doink!
BRYAN KONIETZKO: I don’t know if you noticed, but it’s hanging on the ceiling right above Sokka’s head throughout the rest of this.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Waiting to fall.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Yeah. She shot it in his general direction, but it planted on the ceiling.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
AANG: Lord Momo of the Momo dynasty.]
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: [Referring to Momo popping up from under the curtain] See?
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Wow! Yeah, that was a nice hookup.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yeah.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Good job Lauren! Or Kenji. [Referring to Aang and Sokka getting into a bowing war and eventually hitting their heads together by mistake] I think Kenji did this crazy bowing stuff.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Hey Bryan, do you want to talk about like the paintings that you see in the show, because a lot of people always comment like, oh that screen or that painting in the background is really cool.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: [Referring to the booger falling onto Sokka’s forehead] There’s the booger! Um, I don’t want to talk about those paintings, because…
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: [Laughter]
BRYAN KONIETZKO: I just don’t.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: All right. Well they’re very nice.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Sometimes they’re from Oh Seung Hyun, one of of our, our supervising director. He’s from Korea, and he has this amazing collection of beautiful paintings, originals, that he owns, and sometimes we put those in the show. [Referring to Momo walking across the floor wearing the curtain as a cloak] Ah, I love this joke.
ELSA GARAGARZA: Super Momo.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: [Referring to the music over Jet, hiding in the shadows, spying on Zuko] I like that, the music that Jeremy and Ben did. The track team. That moment was really cool for Jet.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Yeah, Jeremy, like, master of many instruments, pulled out the cello and did these like, extended techniques, for all that kind of 1970s psychological thriller score stuff for Jet. There’s just something wrong with Jet. Something deep in his brain. That theme of his reflects that.
ELSA GARAGARZA: Those, those musical themes make my hair stand on point. They’re very successful.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: And Elsa, do you find Jet handsome?
ELSA GARAGARZA: Absolutely. Absolutely.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: He divides people.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: [Laughter] Yeah, there’s two types of women, the type who think he’s very handsome, and the ones who think he’s no good. He’s trouble. They can see right through him.
ELSA GARAGARZA: They’re lying.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: That’s a bit of a generalization. There might be a third type of woman who really doesn’t care.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Doesn’t care? Oh yeah, maybe.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
JET: I’m tired of waiting! These two men are firebenders!]
BRYAN KONIETZKO: So I love this showdown between Zuko and Jet. Some of my favorite animation in the series.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
JET: I know they're firebenders!]
BRYAN KONIETZKO: It was, uh, Dean Kelly who boarded this action scene I believe. He did a great job.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
OFFICER/CUSTOMER: He works in a tea shop.
JET: He's a firebender, I'm telling you!
OFFICER/CUSTOMER: Drop your swords, boy. Nice and easy.]
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: This, what I like about Jet’s story is like, he’s going crazy, but he is actually telling the truth, so you kind of feel bad for him, because you know, Zuko is a firebender. He’s not totally crazy.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Yeah. So some of the choreography here was… The fight choreography was inspired by just the classic Hong Kong Kung Fu movies, where they really make use of like props and things that are, you know, in the room, and jumping up on the table, and then maybe someone cuts that in half, and you have to balance on it, and you know. Trying to you know, um, trying to use the environment to make the fight unique. I’d love to mention, Angella Mueller did character design on this episode. [Referring to Katara and Toph’s formal dresses and the crowds of well-dressed party guests] I, all of these costumes, these fancy costumes, are just amazing. I think they came out really great. This is Long Feng, voiced by Clancy Brown, a fantastic actor.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yeah, Long Feng ended up being a really cool villain for Season Two, I think.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Yeah, his voice acting, it just brings such a [Imitating Clancy Brown] gravitas, to the series. [Referring to a shot of Toph and Katara blowing a raspberry at the guard who wouldn’t let them into the party]. I like that. These drawings are pretty good. Oh, and this is the first time we see Bosco! The king’s bear, who… Again this kind of just ended up being a little joke in the script, but we loved it so much that we kept putting Bosco in all the subsequent shows, and we see him later with the king and stuff, so, it’s just nice that the king has a little pet to keep him company. It’s sort of… It’s a good character building thing for the king. He’s a good guy, but he’s just sort of innocent and naive, so it made sense that he just had a big kind of dumb pet.
ELSA GARAGARZA: And who wouldn’t want a bear?
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Exactly.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
LONG FENG: Don’t worry. As your escort, it would be dishonorable to abandon you ladies without finding your families first. We'll keep looking.]
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: So do you, what do you like designing more, Elsa? Interior or building stuff, or like more organic campsites and landscapes and stuff like that?
ELSA GARAGARZA: I like to design downtowns. Like the Lower Ring for me was fantastic to design. It was very interesting. I like nuances and flavors. But I do like exteriors more than interiors. Landscapes are fine though, but sometimes even they are harder to pull through to make them real, look real. [Referring to the exterior of Pao’s tea shop and the surrounding and alleyway] This area here was beautiful, this area to me was lovely.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: And I think uh, the night time VGs by Bryan Evans, and Hye-Jung Kim came out really cool. This is some of my favorite color in the whole season.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: [Referring to a shot of Zuko slicing through Jet’s grain stalk] That’s my favorite moment, when Zuko cut’s Jet’s straw. It’s just so… symbolic.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: [Laughter] [Referring to a scene of Sokka and Aang serving as waiters at the Earth King’s party] And Lauren MacMullan did a great job on this. She boarded this section.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: And notice Momo’s little tail squirming around.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: The idea is it looks sort of like the queue hairstyle that the Ba Sing Se people have.
ELSA GARAGARZA: Look at all those costumes.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Yeah, they’re amazing. JM Animation did a great job drawing all those costumes.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yeah.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: It was a lot to ask of them, but they did it. They did a great job.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
KATARA: The guy who escorted us in, won't let us out of his sight!]
BRYAN KONIETZKO: I think Katara and Toph’s makeup was a lot more successful in this episode than it was in 2.15.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: [Laughter]
BRYAN KONIETZKO: I guess the joke in 2.15 was that it was very garrish.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yeah, they got the extra treatment on that one. This is their own subtle makeup.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: [Referring to a shot of a party guest whose makeup has been ruined realizing that Aang is the Avatar] I really love how Lauren’s style came through in all these expressions, sort of mixed with JM’s animation style.
ELSA GARAGARZA: Nice.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Really funny.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
PARTY GUEST: The Avatar. Oh, I didn't know the Avatar would be here!]
BRYAN KONIETZKO: So this is like this society party where everyone’s all impressed, because the Avatar’s shown up, but… I like Momo.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Running out there.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
SOKKA: You keep their attention while I look for the King.
AANG: Watch this, everybody.]
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Nice goofy Aang music by Jeremy Zuckerman.
ELSA GARAGARZA: [Referring to Bosco] And he’s entertained.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: [Referring to Jet and Zuko fighting each other back to back] So Sifu Kisu and I did this choreography out in the courtyard of Nickelodeon. Someone was running around us as we were sword fighting. It was pretty crazy.
ELSA GARAGARZA: Anybody get hurt?
BRYAN KONIETZKO: I usually get hurt.
ELSA GARAGARZA: [Laughter]
BRYAN KONIETZKO: In those situations.
ELSA GARAGARZA: A lot of those are pretty… With the swords and everything?
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Don’t try it at home, kids.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
OFFICER/CUSTOMER: It's true sir. We saw the whole thing. This crazy kid attacked the finest tea maker in the city.
IROH: Oh ho ho. That's very sweet.]
BRYAN KONIETZKO: I love that Uncle blushes.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yeah, this kind of really starts the whole Uncle subplot, of uh starting working in a tea shop, and then he eventually ends up getting his own tea shop, so… It was cool to give them jobs jobs kind of, and have them employed.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Again, very un-Avatar.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yeah.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: It’s also the first time we see the Dai Li’s, uh, rock gloves, which was, uh… The idea was earthbending up to this point has been very big, and brutal, and you know, noisy and we wanted these guys to be a lot sneakier, and uh, have a more delicate stealth, stealthy kind of earthbending, so I came up with this idea that they have like little rock tiles that sort of magnetize to their hands, and then they can shoot them off and still control them so they can seize people and turn them into handcuffs and stuff.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
SOKKA: Hey, let me go!]
BRYAN KONIETZKO: So they just sort of… It’s almost like clay, I mean it, the rocks are hard, but then they fuse them together.
ELSA GARAGARZA: [Referring to a shot of Aang’s waiter hat creeping along the floor, Momo’s tail visible from underneath] Oh, Momo.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: [Laughter] He really thought he was going to get away with it.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
LONG FENG: Avatar, it is a great honor to meet you. I am Long Feng, Grand Secretary of Ba Sing Se and head of the Dai Li. I'd like to talk to you. Your friends will be waiting for us in the library.]
BRYAN KONIETZKO: I think the library is one of my favorite background designs from this episode.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
SOKKA: Why won't you let us talk to the King? We have information that could defeat the Fire Nation!]
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Want to talk about your influence on that, Elsa?
ELSA GARAGARZA: Oh, well, actually this background was done by Jevon. He did a fantastic job with it. And we were really working on that, that fireplace, because it was an important focal point, and look at all that drama that… A great focal point. So he did a fantastic job. He’s great with libraries.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: [Laughter] Yeah that’s true, we had the… He and Enzo did the crazy spirit library in 2.10. So the idea here, if you’re wondering about this fire, is that generally for Earth Kingdom locations, for light sources we don’t use torches or lamps, anything with fire. We tend to use these phosphorescent crystals, um, but for the dramatic lighting, and I don’t know, the sort of ominous presence of a fire, we thought it would be cool to have a fire, so I thought maybe there’s some sort of weird rare crystal that’s actually flammable. And um, kind of like, you know, those artificial logs that last longer?
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: [Laughter] Makes sense to me.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: So then we just made the fire green, which is a more Earth Nation, uh Earth Kingdom color, so.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: I love this, just this whole sequence at the end, where it cross cuts between Long Feng describing the, what’s going on in the city, and seeing Jet being, you know, starting the brainwashing process. I think it’s just very effective at setting up how kind of two sided this city is, like the, the Utopian side, and then the very creepy underground, mysterious side of the city.
ELSA GARAGARZA: Very dramatic.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yeah.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
KATARA: You can't keep the truth from all these people. They have to know.]
BRYAN KONIETZKO: I love Toph’s expression there. This is so painful to her.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
LONG FENG: Until now, you've been treated as our honored guest, but from now on, you will be watched every moment by Dai Li agents. If you mention the war to anyone, you will be expelled from the city. I understand you've been looking for your bison. It would be quite a shame if you were not able to complete your quest.]
BRYAN KONIETZKO: So there’s a little, little hint there, foreshadowing.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
LONG FENG: Now Joo Dee will show you home.
SECOND JOO DEE: Come with me, please.
KATARA: What happened to Joo Dee?
SECOND JOO DEE: I'm Joo Dee. I'll be your host as long as you're in our wonderful city.]
BRYAN KONIETZKO and MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: That’s not Joo Dee!
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: That’s not Joo Dee at all.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Oh Mike, we’ve been spending too much time together.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: I know. All right, great creepy ending to a fabulous episode. Thanks Tim, thanks Aaron, thanks Lauren, thanks Elsa for designing Ba Sing Se.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Supervising!
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: With all your folks.
ELSA GARAGARZA: Thank you. A lot of work, but fun work.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Yeah you guys did a great job. I was, I was dreading it myself, but then, uh, you guys knocked it out of the park. It looked great, and um.
ELSA GARAGARZA: Thank you.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Yeah.
ELSA GARAGARZA: I was dreading it because it was going to be a lot of work, but it was definitely worth all of the experiences.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Very very worth it.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: And it was worth it too, because we ended up spending the rest of the season there, so you know, it was great that it, that it…
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Yeah
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Came out as good as it did.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Awesome.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Thanks guys!
BRYAN KONIETZKO: [Whispers] Awesome!
