There are a lot of days when we film in bad weather - days so hot your
eyeballs feel like they're frying, days so cold your hands might fall off, and
rain pouring so hard you could almost drown on set. Each month we'll remember
one of those horrible weather days and celebrate the survivors who braved the
elements in order to film. Why would we want to remember those days?
Because going through hell on set has a way of bringing everyone closer
together when they can say they survived mother nature AND filming on a Yibble
set.
The Great Hall of Hell
The first truly miserable day of filming was during production of the
first movie – Destiny. I guess you
could say that’s the day the Survivors’ Club began. It was also the first really long, all day shoot. We were filming a bunch of scenes from
the end of the script at Wesley United Methodist Church in Urbana, IL. The shoot began early in the morning,
probably around 9am, and ended after 5pm I think. 
Oh yeah, and it was August. No one was prepared for how hot that day
would be, but given the weather of Central Illinois summers, we probably should
have been. We filmed the majority
of scenes in the room called the Great Hall on the second floor of an
un-air-conditioned building. It
was a wee bit warm. A “wee bit”
being a freaking huge heaping helping of deathly heat. (points for
alliteration? Yes? No? Anyone?).
Let me set the scene for you: the Great Hall looks like the great hall
from English castle so it’s amazingly cool and was a perfect location for the palace
at Traldon. However, it’s situated on the top floor of a stone building that
collects and stores heat and had been storing heat for three months. The room is very tall and open, but at
that point had no fans on the ceiling, and opening the narrow windows on a
breezeless, humid August day didn’t do any good. It was like a stone oven in which I baked actor-cookies for
eight hours. (mmm…actor-cookies.
Wait, is that anything like man-corn?) It all looked cool, but everyone
was pretty much fried (I would say baked but that has a different meaning these
days).
We began the day filming in the Great Hall, then went to the chapel to film the wedding scenes. To get from the Great Hall to the chapel, you pass through an air-conditioned corridor. Neither the Great Hall nor the chapel, are air-conditioned of course, so everyone sort of walked slowly from one location to the next. There are some places in Wesley that are air-conditioned, obviously, but of course with me being a sadist we didn’t film any of the scenes in those areas. Honestly it was because those areas looked too modern and didn’t have the feel of a 17th century castle not because I’m a sadist. I had to film in the almost 100 degree heat too, remember? I’m a sadist, not a masochist.
And of course, no sweltering day would be complete without everyone
being dressed in heavy and layered period clothing. Jacob had to be boiling in
the black, multi-layered Balthazar costume, but the girls who played the OOPS
had it the worst. They’re outfits
weren’t really period – they were more of a nod to cartoonish Robin-esque
attire – and primarily consisted of a very long green sweatshirt with oddly
made some-what short ¾ length sleeves, and a pair of shorts or pants. I think they all wore shorts that day
and since the sweatshirts were so bizarrely long it they almost completely
covered the shorts, making it look like the girls were wearing no pants which
lead to the running joke of Traldon – NO
PANTS!
The only one who wasn’t miserable in her outfits was Annamarie. When I first showed her the “slave
girl” garb she was very hesitant to wear it. It consisted of a cream-colored belly-dancer style cropped
top and a matching floor-length skirt with a slit up one side that went almost
to the waist and white shorts underneath. She wasn’t happy about the fact
that it didn’t really cover a lot – until the very hot day of filming at Wesley,
than suddenly she was happy to ditch the satin coat. Her wedding outfit was also short sleeved with few layers that were fairly light. So was very glad to be
wearing the coolest costumes – literally. 
Whenever the actors weren’t filming, they were hiding out in the closest
air-conditioned hallways, which made it relatively easy to find them as needed (that’s
not always as easy as it sounds – actors can wander off if you’re not watching
them). That was smart, considering
several of the scenes we were shooting involved either running, fighting, or
both. 
I think the first big fight scene injury also occurred on that day. We finished the day with filming the
big sword fight between Ketlan and Balthazar, and used actual fencing foils
provided by Annamarie and Jacob.
Unknown to me at the time the tip on one of the foils either wasn’t
there are wasn’t secure or something. 
Now, I don’t usually choreograph my fight scenes – I really should, but
very rarely do. This was one of
those “here’s a sword, go at it” fights and they almost never end well. Somehow during the fight between Chris
and Jacob, Chris got cut and ended up with a bloody nose. It was an accident
that probably could have been prevented if I had done my job and blocked out
the fight before filming it, but it’s about seventeen years too late to do it
over. Sorry Chris!
To those who survived the hellish heat of the Great Hall, I thank you
and salute you:
Rachel Anderson
Morgan Dietkus
Chris Hutchens
Jill Hutchison
Annamarie MacLeod
Jacob MacLeod
Tanino Minneci
Chris Stasheff
Edward Stasheff
Jen Weber
Kate Weber
Now turn up the AC, kick back and relax.
Here, have a cookie (just don’t
ask what’s in it).
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