Once a month I’m going to talk about a specific production,
what it was like to film it, and what was involved in making it happen. This month I’m going to talk about Dream Chasers.
Dream Chasers is a
TV show/Mini-series of 8 half-hour episodes. It was written as 6 episodes, but shows tend to grow in the
edit bay (I should probably stop feeding them). The idea came from a dream I had shortly after my grandfather
- Adolphenini Corastasheffski, aka Edward Stasheff (the first) - died, and so
the series is dedicated to him.
The dream was basically about a female demon hunter who captures
nightmares. The fact that the series is based on a bizarre but oddly fun dream
from when I was in a weird mood explains why the show is both very bizarre and
oddly fun.
I regretted not wrapping up The Curse in 2001, so when I was
looking for a project to do I wanted to do something set in that universe and
decided to do a prequel, building a show around the character Maria Sanchez who
alludes to having been cursed herself.
So prequel + curses + nightmare demon hunter = Dream Chasers.
That’s the basics, but what’s the plot? Well, that’s a good
question.
Yeah, I have no idea.
It’s basically about learning how to survive tragedy and rebuild your
life with the help of friends, I guess.
Or possibly it’s the search for both survival and identity. Maybe. Yeah, I really don’t know, and that’s sad. Very sad.
Let’s talk about what it was like to film it. That’s a lot easier to write
about. I had the dream in August,
but didn’t write the scripts until October when I sat down and mind-vomited six
episodes in like three weeks. Then
I decided to get everything filmed and edited by the second week in
December. Can we say manic?
We started filming the first week in November, 2002 and
finished filming by December 7th or 8th (I think), and
everything was edited (super fast!) by December 15th, 2002. Yikes. Say it with me, folks:
M-A-N-I-C.
The casting was the easiest part of the whole
production. Morgan Thomas returned
to play the role of her character in the Curse before she took the name and
became Maria Sanchez. Prior to
that her name was Marion Smith and her best friend was named Maria Sanchez.
Confused yet? There’s more!
For Marion’s other half, I cast
Holly Simons who I had been longing to cast in a major role since she played in
extra in The Gift Bearer and was awesome. Brittany Ann Whalen was cast as the sassy and sexy ghost hunter Zoey
Zurrell, and Paul Costello agreed to play the duel role of Morpheus and Namtaru –
the gods of Dreams and Nightmares respectively who looked identical for reasons
that might not be fully explained.
The only other major part was Death, who was originally written as the
male Thanatos but ended up being switched to the female Atropos when Syndi
Eller stepped in at the last minute and accepted the role.
Filming was fast and frequent – all day Saturday and Sunday
of every weekend, and sometimes on days and nights during the week when actors
were available, for five and a half weeks.
“Days went by so quickly,” Brittany Ann Whalen said in an
interview at the end of 2002, “but this was more fun then I’ve ever had filming
for anything before – ever.”
“It was really interesting,” said Holly Simons. “I had a
really good time, but it was long…but it was really good.”
There were scenes that took forever to film because the cast
couldn’t stop laughing and goofing around. This show currently holds the record for the Most Number of Takes in a Single Shot
with 21 takes to shoot a scene in Episode 7. It wasn’t all fun and games though. There were a number of serious scenes
to film as well.
“The most memorable moment for me,” recalled Morgan Thomas,
“would be when we shot a scene for the last episode and my character had to
cry. And I actually did cry, which..you know…surprised me.”
“I had two memorable moments,” said Holly Simons. “The first
would be me in a corset; that was interesting – first time for that. I couldn’t
bend. The second one was when I had to cry with an onion. I could get the emotions, but not the
tears so I had to put onion oil in eyes to make myself cry.”
One of the most memorable filming days for everyone,
however, was the day we filmed the horse scenes in Mount Vernon, IL. We crammed six people into a five
person car and drove an hour and a half to the Gibbs Farm where Holly’s family
lived. Eric Gibbs helped saddle up
the horses and gave everyone a brief introduction to horseback riding for those
who had never ridden one before.
Holly and Brittany both had experience riding horses, and I think Morgan
had ridden a horse once or twice but none of the other actors had. 
It was great weather for a late autumn
day – not too chilly and partly cloudy with some sunlight. The horses – Magic, Lady, and Clancy –
were wonderfully well behaved and a delight to film with. I actually wrote in the scenes that
take place in the Sorcerer’s World just so I could film with the horses after
Holly told me we could film with them. 
- I’ve only had a chance to film with a horse once – in The King of Eflin’s Daughter – and have always wanted to film with horses again, so it was a great experience and everyone had a lot of fun except Morgan who got piled on the top of people for the car ride to and from Mount Vernon. (thanks Morgan!)
Although the weather was beautiful for the horse shoot, it
pretty much sucked most of the time.
Being November in Southern Illinois, it was a crap-shoot as to what kind
of weather we’d have that day.
There were rainy days, snowy days, the frozen day at Fort De Chartres, a
day where the wind was so strong it almost blew away both the scripts and the
actors. And of course there were lots
and lots of cold days.
The scene with the Sorcerer’s Council in Episode 4 was one
of the last scenes filmed, and the day it was scheduled for ended up being a
cold day after a snowstorm. The
scene comes right after they disappear from a house and thus have no coats
on. The three girls – Morgan,
Brittany, and Holly – huddled together for warmth between each take.
One a chilly day in late November, I somehow managed to
convince Brittany to fall backwards into a lake wearing basically pajamas for a
nightmare sequence. Michael
Bunnell volunteered to rise out of the lake as a demon and chase her – and
although he volunteered, I’m not sure he realized exactly what he was
volunteering for. 
In Episode 6 there are several scenes where the main
characters end up camping out for several days. The original day scheduled to shoot this group of scenes
turned out to be very cold and rainy.
I wasn’t fully prepared with props, either, and none of the characters
in the scenes were wearing coats so everyone was miserable. We filmed what scenes we could before
realizing that it was just too cold and damp to keep going. In the interest of not killing the actors via frostbite and pneumonia, I decided to call it a day. 
We headed back to Morgan’s house to
hang out and possibly film some indoor scenes. We tried to roast marshmallows over candles and make smores,
but it didn’t work too well, but at least it was fun…and warm!
I rescheduled the camping scenes for a different day and
that day turned out to be perfect weather for it. The day started out sunny and warm – a perfect autumn day –
and slowly turned cloudy and a little windy, and it ended with a brief
downpour. We had chosen a location
(in Giant City State Park) that had a pavilion, so we stayed dry during the
storm. Since most of the shoot was
getting different shots for a montage of “time passing”, the different weather types
was wonderful. Everyone had fun
roasting marshmallows and hot dogs and playing in the leaves. 
Overall, Morgan froze the most, having to film several scenes
with little or no coat on during snowy days and some really cold nights. I’m amazed (and very glad) she didn’t
catch pnemonia and die. For all
the times she froze her butt off on this show, Morgan deserves a golden
band-aid away. 
Another problem with the production was the scripts. And I’m not just talking about the fact
that the storyline was confusing at best and like a bad acid trip at worst, but
the scripts themselves were hard to read because I don’t spell check them. Also, I wrote these scripts so fast and
handed them out without going back over them to catch mistakes and such which led
to a lot of confusion and running jokes.
“A lot of times we didn’t know what to say,” said Brittany
Ann Whalen. “It was more like ‘why don’t leave me alone’ or ‘why did bring me
here’. We didn’t know what the hell she was trying to get us to say because
she’d leave out words!”
Despite the bad weather days, and me having a huge breakdown
between shoots towards the end of filming (Bi-polar!!!), it was a really great
experience and a whole lot of fun.
There was a lot of drama off the set involving other people and
situations, but filming with everyone was a blast and we all had a great time.
“Best aspect of the show was the people,” said Syndi Eller.
“I had a great time. It was my first time acting and everyone was so cool.”
“It was really great how people just got together,” said
Morgan Thomas. “We got a long really well, and were coming together like a big
family.”
“I think that (the people) probably is the best part of the
series” said Brittany Ann Whalen, “because we had a lot of fun.”
“We had a blast together,” recalls Holly Simons, “and we all
just became really good friends and really close and it was all absolutely
wonderful.”
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