Evolution of Filming, Part 2 - Smoking

Every now and then I’ll be writing a post about certain things that evolved while filming over the past seventeen years.  The vast majority of people in the cast and crew were in high school – including me - when everything started and many of those people still participate from time to time.  Being young and (in my case at least) somewhat sheltered I was not really (or at all) into drinking, smoking, sex, swearing, etc. But as I, and the others, matured (or in my case just got older), went to college, and included new and older company members, many of these things were slowly introduced into the productions over the years.   This is the first in a randomly published series about how and when those changes occurred and what level they’re at today.

Evolution of Filming

Part 2

“You need a smoke break again?!?”

Ah, smoking. That’s something that did not take place on set or in the scripts during the early years. During the first three years of filming (1996-1998) the only person that I know of who was smoking was my brother Edward.  Of course he was older and in college, so it makes more sense since he could legally buy them and…well, he was in college.  Apparently college is when rules like don’t swear, smoke, or get drunk are often broken.

I guess it’s not too surprising then that the script he wrote – Mind Games which was filmed in 1999 – features the first on screen smoking.  The crew is all military personal, and the ship’s gunner is a hardcore, stereotypical fighter type so of course he smokes whenever he can.  It was a character quirk that really worked well.  However, he’s the only character to smoke in the movie and really only smokes in the first scene. 

This was interesting to film because Chris Hutchens had never smoked before (and probably still doesn’t), so he had to fake it.  Mostly he just held the lit cigarette and flicked the ash off it, but did take a few puffs.  The best part of having the cigarettes on set was the outtakes of Annamarie and Chris goofing off with them.  This is where I learned the invaluable information that cigarettes smell like raisons.  Here are some of those beautiful bloopers.

Pandora’s Box was the next show to be filmed, and although it too featured some hardcore army fighters, not actually smokes.  I guess cigarettes didn’t survive the apocalypse.  Because I still didn’t smoke and was only just starting to be around people who did (at college), it didn’t really affect the scripts I wrote.  A couple of the guest stars in Episodes 8-10 – friends from college - did smoke off screen while waiting to film.

It wasn’t until filming The Curse in 2001 that another two characters started smoking on screen and more actors were smoking off screen.  I know at least two of the main actors smoked regularly and required several smoke breaks over a long shooting day.  There’s a scene in Episode 4 where Cory is smoking a cigarette while being held hostage.  The only reason she’s smoking in that scene is because I didn’t want to have to stop filming and she really needed a cig.

The actor playing Mordecai also smoked and although I couldn’t have him smoking when he just woke up from a thousand year sleep in a cave, I did have his character start smoking once he gets used to the modern world, so that Mike could smoke on screen and I could keep filming.  I actually wrote a smoke break into the script in Episode 9 when Mordecai, trying to figure out a riddle, says to Maria, “Come on, I’ll figure it out where I can smoke.”  A few scenes latter Maria suggests figuring out another clue in a place where he can smoke, which suggests the character is a pretty heavy smoker. That episode contained the first scripted smoke breaks. 

It was also while filming The Curse when I smoked for the first time (betcha didn’t know I smoked!).  I also bought my first pack of cigarettes that spring.  I didn’t smoke very often – only about five or six from the pack in five months, but I did it to relieve the stress of what I now know was an impending breakdown.

After The Curse, I pretty much made it a practice to start writing smoke breaks into the script by having the actors who smoked play characters who smoked.  Often that meant that the first few episodes that were written before the parts were cast did not have a certain character smoke, but the character started to once I knew the actor did. Xavier was the main character who smoked in The Gift Bearer (although others did as well), which actually really fits the character.

However, Xavier is a time-traveler, which limited the episodes and scenes where Russell could smoke on screen.  Because I couldn’t write a smoke break into the script, I had to allow time for them in the shooting schedule. Thankfully by Episode 11 most of the scenes were taking place in modern day – and would continue to for most of the rest of the series – so once more I could write smoke breaks into the script.

By this time I was buying packs of cigarettes on a fairly regular basis – not for me, but for the actors so that they would never run out when they really needed on. This is when I started becoming even more of a terrible enabler for the smokers on my set. By the end of production in 2002, at least half the cast smoked, a few having been corrupted by the others’ influence and by college in general.  I still smoked the occasional cigarette, but it was rare – maybe one or two a month – and would continue to smoke off and on at that rate for the rest of the year.

In late 2002, Dream Chasers followed in the footsteps of The Gift Bearer in terms of smoking, but there were less smoke breaks written into the script and less of the cast smoked.  Of the five actors, only two smoked, and both played villains or deviants so it worked out well. This officially marked the beginning of the decline of smokers on the set. I had also stopped carrying a pack of cigs in the camera bag.

The next production was Eidolon and although it was in pre-production since the spring of 2003, we didn’t actually start filming until May of 2004.  This time I knew all the actors who would be cast in the main parts, so I could write in smoke breaks from the very beginning.  Zelda, Mordecai, and Skyler were all smokers because the actors playing them were as well.  However, since Zelda was cursed to be in a deathlike state she couldn’t actually smoke in the scenes, which was probably a little annoying for Brittany when the other actors got to smoke on screen.

Towards the end of production I began to encounter a problem with my scripted smoke breaks.  Two of the actors whose characters smoked had decided to give up smoking (since they were not longer in college, I guess).  Unfortunately the scripts were already written, and the characters firmly established as smokers. There’s a scene in Episode 12 where Zelda and Skyler, both free from their respective curses and finally able to smoke again, enjoy several cigarettes. The weekend where we were shooting this scene was the first time I found out that Brittany and James were both trying to quit smoking.  I didn’t feel like I could write it out of the script at that point, so poor Brittany and James both had to fake smoking and I’m pretty sure it lead to them falling off the wagon and taking up smoking again.  I felt terrible, but not enough to rewrite the script. I’m a horrible enabler.

After Eidolon I very rarely created a character who smoked, and never wrote in a smoke break just for the actors to feed their habit. Also, I hadn’t smoked at all since Dream Chasers ended, but during the labor day shoot of Eidolon in 2004 I ended up being so frustrated on set that I bummed a cig from one of the actors and smoked.  Obviously I never really inhaled ever because I never really enjoyed it much – I just used it as an emotional crutch upon occasion – and never became addicted.  I realized that day how stupid and pathetic I was to lit up a cig just to release tension that, let’s face, wasn’t going to go away with a smoke. I haven’t smoked a cigarette since.

After Eidolon cigarettes virtually disappeared from Sine Fine productions, and were only brought in as a plot or character device, not because an actor smoked.  Of course a few actors still smoked off set, but many had quit by this point. In Quatrain, filmed in 2007 and completed a week from never, an actor holds a cigarette in one scene as an ironic statement because he’s taking about his father who died from cancer, and in the end throws the cigarette away.  The only other cigarettes used in that production were to create smoke near the camera to make it look like smoke was coming from a car that had crashed. 

In 2010 we shot the short film Little Red for the Twisted Tales series.  The script is a dark twist on Little Red Riding hood and because of that the character of Ruby Red, who has been completely corrupted and is a hooker and murderer, smokes like a chimney. I wrote the part for Brittany, who I knew was still smoking, so that worked out well. This was the last time (thus far) that smoking was written into the script.

It was two more years before another character smoked on screen, but it wasn’t actually written that way. In 2012 we filmed Fortunate Ones: Only You, Brittany and I decided to add that into the scene. Bethany is starring down an empty road after the apocalypse and smoking a cigarette.  She gets rid of it as she heads back to the tipi.  Considering the character is the last woman on earth and the only other human still alive is her ex-boyfriend, it makes sense that she’s smoking.  After all, cancer is the least of that character’s problems. The majority of smoke on that shoot actually came from the fire, not from cigarettes!

By now most of the regular actors in SFF productions no longer smoke for various reasons, including the fact that several of them now have children and the things that their parents taught them about smoking, they are now telling their children.  Ah, the circle of life.