Through the magic and influence of Paul Davidson, who works with Zune in getting all of the great video content that you see in Zune Marketplace, Zune was able to sponsor one of the Paleyfest events. Paleyfest is a 2-week event that brings together the cast and producers of some the hot and favorite shows currently in production. This year’s crop included “Desparate Housewives”, “The Hills”, “Fringe” and others.

Zune was a sponsor for the event that revolved around the show “Caprica” which is a show that takes place in the Battlestar Galactica universe, 58 years before the events of BSG. This particular event offered a screening of the pilot episode (the first screening for any members of the viewing public), a Q&A with some of the actors of both BSG and Caprica, followed by a reception on the second floor of the ArcLight Hollywood Theatre.

Brian Seitz, Marketing Manager for Zune was able to get me a couple of tickets for the event. What I ended up finding out when I got there was that these particular tickets were press tickets, meaning that I was sitting about 5-6 rows front/center – great view of both the screen and the actors as they were discussing the show.
I’m never one for doing a great job recapping play-by-play of an event so bear with me for the next few moments while I try to highlight what I can…ready?



The screening began with a montage of the television shows that were doing panels as part of this year’s event. I found it quite funny that everyone booed “The Hills”. I mean booed!

Prior to showing the episode, they ran a clip from “The Outer Limits”. It was a scene in which a man who thought he was very much human finds out that he is indeed a robot with the ability to save the human race. Everyone in the audience was pretty much laughing at this clip only because if you see it today it looks pretty ridiculous. However, the scene did set the stage up great for the type of events that start to unfold in the Caprica pilot.

The screening involved showing the unrated/uncensored version of the Caprica pilot. By unrated/uncensored I mean that there were breasts, sexual scenes and profanity. Not to give too much away but there’s a club that teenagers had created for themselves where they can go to have free sex, shoot people (yes, shoot people) and sacrifice virgins to the Gods. Pretty weird stuff if you ask me. However, the show was also about a great struggle/battle between those people who believe in more than one possible entity (God) and those who believe that there is only one possible entity (God). A terrorist bombing aboard a train brings people’s lives together in ways they couldn’t have imagined. When you see the show (if you wish to see the show) then you’ll find out that there’s much more to the surface than just some standard Sci Fi robots and weapons type of thing.

I personally found the episode a bit long in the tooth. There was some dialogue I could’ve done without, but overall I thought it was a well done show. Of course, I may have to give it a few episodes (when it comes out in 2010) to really see how much I’ll get into it, but at the moment, it seemed better as say a 2-hour movie event than a regular series.



The panel discussion was moderated by Seth Green, who was an avid fan of the show. He was really personable and down-to-earth. The questions that he asked of the panel were really well done and gave everyone an inside look into the thought process behind some of the events in both BSG and Caprica. The executive producers of the show (pictured above) were very insightful and forthright about what they were thinking when they did certain parts of the shows and certain story arcs that they took. The actors were very humorous and seemed to have a lot of fun talking about their roles and feelings about the show.

Some of the actors even admitted that they weren’t all that familiar with BSG prior to accepting roles in Caprica. Probably, for me, one of the highlights was when one of the actresses had to excuse herself in the middle of questions because she really had to go to the bathroom.

And for some odd reason, the panel was fixated on the word “penetration”. I’ll just let you create your own jokes here.




After the panel discussion, they offered a quiz in which people were able to win prizes. Obviously, they offered Zunes but they were pre-loaded Zunes with Battlestar Galactica media synced to them. Brian (Seitz) gave me one that I could giveaway and when I figure out the proper contest for that I’ll be sure to post it somewhere (here or Twitter or sky writing, who knows!?)

This is a picture of Brian and me, by the way.



The evening was capped off with a reception at the ArcLight Hollywood Theatre. Free booze and a chance for an up-close one-on-one with the actors. It was great to get a chance to thank people for some great work that they do on television and I even got to tell Seth Green that he did an awesome job moderating (and I didn’t sound like a total idiot doing that).

Overall, I had a lot of fun. It’s not all of the time that you get to go to such events like this and I was thrilled that Brian was able to get me tickets. I should point out that the Paleyfest events are public events, you just have to make sure you get tickets as soon as they are available as these events quickly sell out.
Much kudos also goes to Zune for sponsoring, simply because this really puts the name out there. With the Hollywood buzz around this event and having your name all over the place it really puts you into people’s mind. Seth (Green) did poke a bit of fun at Zune’s expense during the giveaway. He’d say the giveaway like: “And you’re getting a ZUUUUNNNEEE with some BSG stuff on it!” You just had to hear how he said it.

Overall good event and I think Caprica will end up being a hot show.

Editor’s Note: I sat next to one of the XBOX MVPs who took some great shots of the event. You can check them out here.