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 The Devil & Kitta Gray.
THE STORY
 |
| Dutch Proverbs by Pieter Bruegel the Elder |
The Devil & Kitta
Gray is a short film in the Twisted Tales series, which involves taking a
fairytale and putting a different twist on it like changing the genders,
modernizing it, etc. After combing
through some of my fairy and folk tale books, I had several ideas for short
films. One common theme in a lot
of Western folklore is stories about people tricking the Devil. Now, I love villains and the Devil is
really the most famous villain of all so of course I couldn’t resist doing a
Twisted Tale involving him.
But which tale should I do? I gave it a lot of thought and read a bunch of tales and in
the end decided to go with Kitta Gray – a character found in Swedish folklore
that isn’t very famous but is a lot of fun. I first discovered her in Gray Heroes: Elder Tales from Around the World by Jane Yolen (which is a great read by the way). William J. Bausch describes her in his
book Touching the Heart: Tales for the Human Journey: “Kitta Gray was famous, not for her
beauty—she was in fact an ugly old crone—but for the fact that she had outsmarted
the Devil.” |
| Die Lekture by Carl Spitzwig |
There are two main stories about how she outsmarted the
Devil. In the first tale she
challenges the Devil to a foot race, not for a bag of gold or beauty or youth
but simply for the prize of being famous as the woman who beat the Devil. If the Devil wins he gets her soul. She wins through trickery of course and
gains fame which leads to the next story about her. In the second story a merchant who can’t sell anything sells
his soul to the Devil in exchange for customers. The deal is that when the last item in the store is sold
then the Devil will collect his soul.
The merchant agrees since he has so much stuff, but within a short time
almost everything has been sold.
He has heard of Kitta Gray and begs her to help him. She cleverly figures out a plan to
cheat the Devil – who is furious with her but has to admit defeat once again.
 |
| Woman with Coffee Cup by Anders Montan |
I decided to use the second story as a basis for my short
film, making the twist that she has to help people get out of their contracts
with the Devil in order to make up for the sin of Pride, which she has plenty
of. It’s set up like it could
become a series of short films involving Kitta getting different people out of trouble. What drew me most to the character of
Kitta Gray is that she is a very unlikely hero. She’s not a strong warrior or a beautiful maid, she’s an
ugly old crone who just so happens to be one of the most clever women in the
world. I changed the appearance of
the character to be younger and prettier, but I still wanted her to be someone
that you wouldn’t expect to be the Devil’s nemesis.
THE CASTING
I decided right away that I wanted Rachel Zoralee to play
the part – I knew she would be as amazing as always. And I wanted Tanino Minneci to play the Devil because he’s
also amazing and has never really had the chance to play a villain before. I had discovered that Tanino Minneci was back in the
Champaign-Urbana area, which is where I was going to be filming, so I knew it
would be possible to cast him. I asked him if he would be interested in playing
the Devil and he agreed. 
By this point I decided that if I couldn’t get both Rachel
and Tanino to play those parts then I didn’t want to do the movie, because so
much depended on the charisma of the leads and their ability to play off of
each other. Rachel's talent,
personality, and on-screen presence are so great that she has a tendency to
metaphorically “wipe the floor” with
any other actors who are new or inexperienced. I have always had to cast her opposite very talented people
or she’ll dominate any scene she’s in whether her character should or not. It’s not that she’s trying to steal the
show, she just has such a presence on
screen and is so funny and talented that it’s hard not to watch her.
I
needed a dynamic duo for the Devil and Kitta so I knew that if I cast Rachel as
Kitta (and I refused to cast anyone else in the part because she was perfect) I needed a very talented actor
with an equal amount of presence to
play the Devil – hence the casting of Tanino who fit the bill perfectly. He can hold his own against anyone and
seeing Rachel and Tanino square off on screen was one of the most wonderful
moments of my filming career. No,
I’m serious – it was amazing. Ah. Maz. Ing.
I had not worked with either of them in over ten years and
had never seen them acting together one-on-one. In fact they had rarely shared the screen before and it was
never in equal roles. I was
excited to work with them again and super excited to work with them together. In fact I was so excited that I think I scared them a
little. I was positively giddy with excitement. I don’t think they realized just how
must I had missed working with them. After all, not only are they both talented
and hilarious to work with, they are also super nice.
THE SCRIPT
I decided not to write the script until I knew for certain
that I would have both of them on board for the project and ready for the
shoot. It took a while to nail
down the date, but I was only going to be in CU for a short time so the options
were limited. We ended up filming
on the last Saturday in June – June 26, 2010. By the time I had both actors scheduled for the shoot it was
almost time to head to CU. I had
trouble figuring out the exact plot but I drew inspiration from the first Kitta
story and decided to make it a switcharoo. For several days the story simmered in my head (as is
usually the case) but I couldn’t seem to get it together enough to write
it.
Finally with little choice,
and a lot of free time while I traveled from KC to CU, I wrote the script in a
notebook on the train. Now, for a
lot of people that makes total sense and probably doesn’t seem unusual, but I
don’t write whole stories or scripts on paper, not since I learned how to type
(because my handwriting is terrible).
I write notes in notebooks and compose at the computer, so for me it was
a pretty big deal to write a whole script in a notebook, on a train, in about
four hours. It was only five
pages, but still it was a whole script. In four hours. On a train. I’ll stop repeating myself now. Four hours. Train. I lied.
THE READ THROUGH
There are three characters in the script – The Devil, Kitta
Gray, and Chris (although I toyed with including Chris’s daughter in it, but
decided against that). Okay, so there’s
four if you count the nameless bad-ass looking girl in the café but I don’t
really. Chris was written to be
either a woman or a man – basically a plot device because I needed someone to
need help. Who played the part
would entirely depend on who else was available that weekend, which happened to
be Kevin Meyer. I preferred that
Chris be male so I was very happy to have Kevin play the part and he did a
great job, holding his own with Tanino and Rachel pretty well. All three actors got along and worked
together wonderfully. 
The actors arrived at Base Camp (my parents house) early in
the morning where we did a quick read through. I had typed up the script and emailed it the day before, I
think, so most of them did not have a chance to read it before arriving at Base
Camp. There were some funny script
errors and the actors seemed to like the script (always good).
THE COSTUMES
I had gathered costumes and props the day before, but had
trouble finding a wedding dress for Kitta Gray, so we used a white sheath dress
and long jacket and found some white sparkle tulle for the veil (I already had
a tiara), but we had to layer the veil heavily so you couldn’t see Rachel’s
face, which made it a little hard for Rachel to see. The only other costume Kitta needed was a professional
looking outfit which she provided herself.
For the Devil’s outfit (he only had one), I preferred to go
with an elegant black suit ensemble.
I had a lovely black tailcoat in four sizes, but I could only find one
of them at the time so of course the one I found was a little big. With some help from Mary (my mother and
a professional costumer) I was able to get the outfit to work.
Chris had the most costume changes – three outfits – but
they were all simple and basic things like shirts, pants, and a suit, all of
which Kevin was able to provide. (Thanks Kevin!)
THE FILMING
Gussied up and ready to roll, we headed for the UIUC Arboretum
to film the last, and longest, scene.
We shot Tanino’s scenes first since he had to leave around noon. The last scene is supposed to be a sort
of weddingish location and I thought the Arboretum was nice and it wasn’t too
far away like Allerton would have been.
Unfortunately, I had no idea how little shade there was there or how beastly hot it was going to be. For more information and a video about how hot it was check
out the Survivor’s Club post about it.
The boys in black suits suffered the most, but everyone was
hot and somewhat miserable – it’s hard to be completely miserable when you’re
laughing at bloopers on the set.
We took a break at McDonald’s before filming the next scene because everyone
needed to cool off, including the camera, and I was worried about the guys
getting heat stroke. After that we
headed back into the heat to film Scene 2, where the Devil and Chris make a
deal, by the fountain at the Hallene Gateway. 
The digital-8 camera I was using, Hamlet (he was named that
since he complains so often and is more melodramatic than Horatio ever was),
was having serious issues and kept eating the tape. We managed to film the scene, although between the loudness
of the fountain and the camera issues it took a lot longer than expected, and
said a fond farewell to Tanino.
Then we headed to Café Kopi to film Scenes 1 and 3. 
I (almost) always call ahead to clear filming with an indoor
location, and Café Kopi always seems to appreciate that which is why they let
us film there (yay!). I wanted to
establish right away that Kitta Gray looks nothing like you would expect for a
hero who battles Satan every other day.
I chose to do that with a voice-over and a bait-and-switch mini-montage
of a sassy, sexy, black leather clad woman walking into the café with a
determined stride. Cafe Girl (as she’s referred to in the script) was
played by Brittany Ann Whalen, who is no stranger to sassy vamp roles, so she
was an obvious choice. Plus she was on the set already as my Assistant Director,
so that was a bonus.
Anyway, Chris
sees the woman and asks if she’s Kitta Gray, but she says no and looks confused
– turns out she just walked in to get a coffee. Originally I wanted to have Kitta Gray waiting in line at
the counter to immediately say “I’m Kitta Gray”, but for some reason I chose
not to do that and had her sitting at the back of the café instead. I hate the choice I made there and
really wish I could go back and film as it was written. Oh well.
We had to be somewhat quiet so we wouldn’t disturb the other
customers, so the energy level dropped a bit as well as the volume. Of course that could have just been the
relief of being in air-conditioning after filming in the hot sun all morning. The scenes went well, and pretty
quickly since it was pretty much two people talking at a table so there was no
complicated blocking. We wrapped
shooting and had lunch before heading back to Base Camp to film the final
scene, Scene 4. 
Filming in my parents house can be tricky because it’s not
very tidy but mostly because there is a big fan in the heating/cooling system
in the house that is extremely noisy and turns on, runs a while, then turns off
for a while. In order to hear what
the actors were saying, and to avoid hearing the obnoxious fan in the
background we could only film when the fan was off, which made things take a
lot longer then I had hoped.
However, we made it through the scene and Brittany and Kevin got to rest
while I filmed Rachel’s voice over for the beginning and took some publicity
photos of her for the poster and stuff. 
Then we watched some of the footage, only to discover that
the camera issues we had been experiencing while we were filming at the
fountain caused some of the shots to be cut short. I usually only film exactly what I need – so if the actors
get the lines right I move on, therefore I had no safety shots and the footage
for half the scene was either unusable or incomplete. I tried not to flip out. Luckily Kevin’s lines were all okay, so I didn’t have to
reshoot those, but several of Tanino’s lines were gone so I knew I would have
to do a reshoot with him before I left town. Tanino was very understanding and we scheduled a reshoot for
the scene the next weekend. Since there were no wide or long shots needed, we
only costumed him from the waist up, which was kind of funny looking, but a
whole lot cooler on a hot day.
Although Tanino lived in CU, Kevin did not and I would not
be able to get them together to do a reshoot. There was only one shot that got messed up that I needed
them both on screen for but it was a critical shot where Chris signs the
contract. I had to quickly figure
out a way to edit around the problem while I could still film with Kevin and
film whatever shots I needed to cover it, like a close up on Chris signing the
contract – a shot I had not intended to include. I filmed the shots with Kevin and somehow made the scene
work out okay in post. **whew**
So, yeah, that’s pretty much the story. Here’s the movie if you want to watch
it:
And here’s a few bloopers just to show how much fun it was to
work with Rachel and Tanino - and Kevin! (I won’t forget about you Kevin!
You’re awesome too!):
On a side note, there is a third story about Kitta
Gray. It’s a darker story and
shows a different side of her, when the Devil comes to her for help. There is
a happy, old couple that have never fought, although he’s tried for years to
make them argue. He makes a deal
with Kitta that if she can get the pair to argue then he will give her a new pair
of beautiful wooden shoes (it’s Sweden).
She does the job so well that the Devil actually becomes afraid of her
and slides the shoes into the middle of a lake of ice, then shoves her across
the ice when she reaches for them in order to give him enough time to get away
from her. That makes it clear that
Kitta isn’t just a hero, she’s a very interesting and multi-layered character
who has a dark side.
If you want read these stories about Kitta Gray, which I
highly recommend, then check out the following books:
by
Jane Yolen
by
William J. Bausch
edited by John Lindow
edited by Reimund Kvideland and Henning K
Sehmsdorf
No comments:
Post a Comment