Production Diary - Eidolon, Part 1

Production Diary – Eidolon, Part 1

Pre-Production

Once a month (or every few months, you know, whenever I feel like it) 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 Eidolon. 

However, since Eidolon is the biggest production in SFF history, in many ways, and broke a lot of records before it was completed, it would make for one seriously long ass post. So I’m going to split this into three posts: Pre-Production, The First Half of Production, and The Second Half of Production.

This year – 2015 – actually marks the 10^th Anniversary of Eidolon (I always count the anniversary from when the show ended, not when it began).  So let’s talk about how it all began.

Eidolon is a sequel to The Curse, and I wrote it to wrap up a lot of loose ends from both The Curse and from Dream Chasers (a prequel to the Curse).  Obviously I really loved the Curse.  I loved the characters and I liked the mythos of the world I had started to create with it.  It took until Eidolon to full fix the basic structure of that universe, which I call the Cursiverse, but I now have a very solid and practical understanding of how the Cursiverse works.  It took four years, but all things considered that’s not too bad.

The Curse, filmed in 2001, was originally supposed to have three “seasons” of ten episodes each, but was cut short due to my going bat-shit crazy in the middle of filming the first season.  I was shortly thereafter diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder (which totally explains my delusions of grandeur in regards to how amazingly spectacular I thought my shows were.)  Once I was medicated, had calmed down, and filmed another show, I decided that I wanted to revisit The Curse and see if I could find some conclusion for it.  To this day it’s the only TV show that doesn’t contain a sense of closure in its final episode. It took two more shows to find closure for it, but better late than never, right?

So, in the fall of 2002, I wrote and filmed Dream Chasers, a prequel to the Curse.  I really loved the character of Maria and wanted to explore her “origins”, which I did but I didn’t really do it in a functional or even understandable way.  Dream Chasers is an interesting and engaging show, but it’s also hard to understand, very confusing, and asks way more questions than it answers.  In fact, I’m not sure it answers any questions at all. 

It’s a messed up mess that probably seems like it was written while I was doing acid and seeing giant purple lizards.  The truth is that I was not doing drugs of any kind, not even the prescription ones I was supposed to be taking to keep me sane.  In fact I was messing with the prescriptions by taking one and not the other, and different doses, and skipping doses for days – it was a mess.  I was a mess. As my brother once beautifully summarized, Dream Chasers is the essence of Bipolar distilled on screen.  So, it’s not a surprise that I had a terrible breakdown while filming Dream Chasers.  

Now that I think about it, filming shows in the Cursiverse almost seems like they’re cursed.  Then again I had a relapse while filming The Gift Bearer, and a small breakdown during the last summer of shooting for Pandora’s Box, so I think I just had a whole CRAZY time going on then.  But I’m medicated now.  And I’m also rambling.  Let’s get back to Eidolon.

THE IDEA

After finishing Dream Chasers in the winter of 2002, I vowed (for like the 5^th time) that I would never film another project again. 

That resolve lasted for about eight or nine months – which is probably a record for me.  Slowly I started thinking about all the unanswered questions and loose ends in both shows and how I could resolve them.  I really wanted to film another TV show to wrap it all up.  Somehow it felt like I couldn’t move on until I had a solid conclusion to the saga – like I owed it to the characters or something. Yes, I was medicated at this point.  Ask other writers and they’ll tell you their characters yell at them sometimes when they’re being ignored.  It’s a writer’s thing. Just trust me on this.

I shared this idea with Brittany Ann Whalen and Morgan Thomas, because they were involved in both shows.  Brittany was a small part in the Curse but a major part in Dream Chasers, and Morgan was one of the major characters in the Curse and the lead in Dream Chasers – playing the same character in both.  I talked about it and said things like “pity we’re never going to film this”, which is apparently Yibble speak for “we’re probably going to film this.”

And film it we did. Obviously.

But before the first filming day, there was a lot of planning that had to happen.  First, I had to talk it over with the main actors I wanted to work with to make sure they were on board with the project.  Morgan had to be in it as the main character and luckily she readily agreed to participate.  Brittany was on board as well,  which was good because I wanted to bring back Zoey, and James McKinley joined in the fun too.  They were not only actors, they also became co-producers.

When I start a project, this is the typical process of Pre-Production:

-  Come up with an idea, flesh it out

-  Create the characters

-  Write the outline for the script

-  Come up with titles – pick one

-  Write the Script

After that is casting, choosing locations, and other important things, but Eidolon was different right from the start. 

THE CHARACTERS

I came up with a vague idea, but mostly I started with the characters I wanted to include and worked from there.  I knew Maria Sanchez (played by Morgan Thomas) had to be one of the lead characters because she is the only character in both The Curse and Dream Chasers and her storyline was one that needed to be wrapped up.  Plus, she's an awesome character and I really enjoy seeing how Morgan was able to merge her ideas and interpretations of the character with my own version of Maria. I know she had some differing opinions on what I did with the character, but I tried to respect her ideas for Maria's background and even if I didn't incorporate her suggestions, I really respect her for challenging me when Maria did something that was, well, out of character for her. 

Zoey Zurrell (played by Brittany Ann Whalen) was a major character in Dream Chasers whose story also needed closure.  The character dies at the end, but her soul is stuck in the Dream World as a slave to Namtaru due to the fact that Marion killed Maria and…well…it’s confusing. The point is, the only thing we know about Zoey at the end of Dream Chasers is that her soul was supposed to be saved but Maria/Marion screwed it up.  I loved Zoey’s character and wanted her to have a happy ending, plus I adore working with Brittany. 

I decided from the beginning that Zoey’s soul was going to be reincarnated in the form of Zandra’s daughter, Zelda.  It was a way for Namtaru to destroy Maria for ruining all his plans in Dream Chasers and getting him banished to the Dream World for 500 years, by using Maria/Marion's guilt about choosing to save Maria's soul instead of Zoey's.  He needed a surrogate to get revenge and Zoey needed him to set her soul free.  I went through a few different names for the character - including Chriselda which eventually became Zelda. In each version of the script she had a different last name, but I finally settled on Graves for obvious reasons.

Mordecai, the thousand year old sorcerer and Zandra’s love interest in the Curse, was another character that I adored and wanted to bring back.  He didn't have enough screen time to really showcase his fun personality and sarcastic sense of humor.  I had all kinds of ideas for him that I wanted to use in episodes of The Curse (some of which are partially written), but I didn't because the show was cut short.  He, too, had some loose ends to tie up, and although he was the primary antagonist in The Curse, he was never truly a villain.  I wanted him to be one of the “heroes” of the story this time around.

Then came Skyler Jackson.  James McKinley had worked with me on, and been in, both the Curse and Dream Chasers (as well as other shows), but never really had a big part.  He mostly played extras and bit parts and only had a few lines here and there.  I wanted to see him in a real role – to see him play a main character that multi-faceted and as amazing as he is.  Although James and Skyler have very little – if anything – in common, James sank his teeth into the role and helped create a very dynamic character.

There were several other characters that either I liked a lot or had unresolved endings (or both) that I wanted to make sure and bring them back for the sequel – including Atropos, Morpheus, Namtaru, and the “original” Maria from Dream Chasers, as well as Zandra, Labarta, Tony Tarino, and White Feather from The Curse.  Some of them I wanted or needed to bring back just as they were in the previous show for various reasons (mostly because they were ghosts and had stopped aging), such as Atropos, Labarta, and Tony Tarino. 

However, some of them needed to be played by other, older actors because those characters have aged and had kids.  The main character I wanted to have aged was Zandra, since she has a daughter Zelda and the show is set 20 years after The Curse.  She seems to be the only character who aged, however, since the other characters (and their actors of course) hadn't aged in the two years since we had filmed the shows.  I'm not sure I ever fully explained why Maria still looks so young when she's actually close to being 40 years old in Eidolon. 

There were also a few new characters that I really wanted to introduce including Skyler (obviously), Lucifer, James Ford, and Baste.  James Ford is based on a really evil historical person with a fun legend about him and a great nickname - Satan's Ferryman.  So of course I had to include him!  I wanted to have Ryan Homberg to play the part and man did he look good in that period outfit do a great acting job!  Actually look good and did a great acting job - he had has much fun playing the part as I did writing it (though I screwed over the character a bit at the end).

Baste (or Bastet) was another character I really wanted to introduce.  I had first come up with the concept of, or rather my take on the ancient Egyptian goddess for the original season two of The Gift Bearer.  I loved my idea for her (especially the outfit), even if others might not like it, and I was very happy to be able to work her into Eidolon as the goddess of Life.  

From the moment I thought about adding the character into the Gift Bearer I knew that I wanted Annamarie MacLeod to play her because she just seemed so right for the part.  I also knew that Annamarie was quite comfortable climbing into and lounging around in a tree, so that helped (although she had to take off the kick-ass boots first).  And of course, Annamarie was as brilliant in that part as I knew she would be, since she is in brilliant in every role she undertakes.

So I had to come up with a plot that could utilize all these characters, answer all the unanswered questions and tie up all the loose ends from two previous TV shows, all while being enjoyable, entertaining, and as non-confusing as possible. 

Yeah, that’s a really tall order.

But, I was determined, and with a lot of hard work, hours upon hours of creative thinking, and slamming my head into a few brick walls (but thankfully no padded ones this time!), I came up with a great idea that brought it all together and was, quite frankly, brilliant.  That concept, plot, and episode outline became what is now known as Eidolon.

Actually that’s a total lie. 

The “brilliant” idea I came up with was a massively re-worked and seriously trimmed down version of a role-playing game I created based on a novel I was going to write some day.  I love the idea, and I still might write the book at some point, but it just didn’t work out right with these characters.  However, I didn’t realize that until I got stuck after writing four pages of the first script.  I did plot the whole series as an 8-episode arc, and used that for the first half of pre-production.

That show was called How to Save the World, and it bears very little resemblance to Eidolon. 

Here’s the basic plot:

The universe is out of control and the world is doomed because some idiot left the door to hell open and seven demon lords – who are prophesied to destroy the world – escape.  Two of Spirit-Sorcerers (basically the gods) are assigned to round up some prophesied heroes and stop the prophesy while being all prophetically heroic.  The two in charge are Atropos, the Goddess of Death, and Baste, the Goddess of Life.  They gather together a motley group that includes Maria, Mordecai, Zelda, and Skyler.   Each episode sees them hunting down and defeating one of the seven demon lords in order to save the world (the alternate title for the show was Saving the World 101.)

There’s a lot more to it than that and it gets pretty complicated, but that’s the plot in a nutshell.  If you want to read a quick (and far less complicated) outline of the episodes, just so you can see what could have been and almost was, you can check out the How to Save the World episode guide.

IMPROVE IT WITH IMPROV

Once I had the general idea, I arranged a weekend of pre-production fun with Morgan, James, and Brittany at Brittany’s place near Chicago.  By this time it was clear that the three of them were Co-Producers and had both a major influence, and a major investment in the production.  

We decided to hang out for the weekend and work on the characters and scripts together.  In order to get to know their characters better (and for me to get to know them), I created very detailed character sheets, and we all did a role-playing game with the characters in a save-the-world style adventure.

Morgan, Brittany, and James also did a series of improv skits where I provided the set up based on a scene in one of the scripts and they acted out the scenario.  This helped me to figure out how the scene should go and how the characters would interact with each other.  We filmed all the skits and I have three hours of improv I haven’t watched since we recorded them almost eleven years ago.  I should watch those one of these days…

This is one of my favorite memories of filming, and it was the only time I ever really got to do this kind of character work with the actors before filming.  It was also fun just to hang out with three of my favorite people that I hadn’t seen in several months. Overall, it was an awesome weekend filled with laughter, work, and play.  It also included a very badly done Cursiverse game of life, and some questionable Denny’s eggs.  Poor Morgan. 

LET’S NOT SAVE THE WORLD

How to Save the World was a good idea in its way, but no less confusing then the other shows.  We did a lot of work with this plotline, but in the end it just didn’t work for me.  I couldn’t write more than a few pages, despite having a detailed outline.  The massive writer’s block eventually made me realize I was trying to write the wrong script and I needed to switch to a different concept.

The new plotline came with a new name.  

Can you guess what it was?

Nope.  It was called GhostHunter.

This plotline bore much more of a resemblance to Eidolon, but it still wasn’t quite there yet.  It began with Zandra’s wedding, as everyone was exciting the church, and lead to a scene with Maria and Mordecai who was watching from across the street.  

Then we skip ahead twenty years to find Maria working in an office about to leave.  Apparently I didn’t give her a profession at that point.  She gets a phone call and is told about Zandra dying in a car accident.  She then meets with a lawyer named Ms. Foster about Maria assuming guardianship of Zandra’s daughter Zelda.  Maria is floored, having forgotten about agreeing to that years before.

 She goes home and that’s when we find out that she is married to Mordecai and has been for several years.  They have a totally different dynamic to their relationship then we see in the actual show. He's introduced doing dishes and doesn't seem to have a profession, which honestly doesn't really fit with his character. Being the producer and star of his own TV Show with a horde of fan girls following him around is much more in character for him.  

The script continues with Maria bringing Zelda home to live with them and Zelda repeatedly trying to seduce Mordecai, which just keeps freaking him out.  Zelda plays nice with Maria but in reality she harbors hatred because she has all of Zoey’s memories and knows that Maria betrayed her.  She plots to kill Maria and when Mordecai finds out, he takes matters into his own hands.

By this time he’s learned that Zelda can see ghosts, just like her mother could, although Zandra was cursed to see ghosts and the curse is not genetic.  However, Zoey could see ghosts and apparently that skill is stuck to her soul, hence Zelda being able to see ghosts.  Mordecai knows that Zelda is a Ghost Hunter, that she enjoys hurting others – whether they’re alive or dead – and he decides she needs to be punished.  He drags her to a burial ground and leaves her there, where she promptly throws a temper tantrum and gets cursed by White Feather. 

This curse was still the original one I had imagined, which was for her to feel ten times the pain that she caused others.  Zelda was always imagined to be a bitter, manipulative, and violent little bitch at the beginning, very much like Marion was at the beginning of Dream Chasers. It’s quite a nasty curse, but it’s also very generic and not quite as neat as Zandra’s. Interestingly enough, we never actually learn the specific wording of Maria’s curse.  Because I’m lazy and didn’t feel like figuring it out.  So there.

From there the idea was for Zelda to try and take revenge on Mordecai, but only  hurting herself in the process due to the curse.  Maria makes Mordecai help her make amends and find a way to not only lift the curse, but also to get Namtaru to set Zelda’s soul free.  The three of them were going to enter the Dream World with help from Morpheus, find Namtaru, and eventually cross to the Spirit World to find White Feather. 

That’s as far as I got before realizing I didn’t like this plotline any more than the last one.  In fact I liked it less.  I didn’t like Maria and Mordecai being married already, I wanted to see them get together during the show.  Also, Zelda’s character was too much like Zoey.  I wanted Zelda to be different from her past life self and decided that I didn’t want her to remember anything about being Zoey until she was forced to by Namtaru.  Brittany was playing Zelda as less sultry than Zoey and I wanted to have a clear distinction between the two.  

So Ghost Hunter wasn’t what I wanted, but it was closer, and I at least I made it to page 16 before I quit (I only made it to page 4 with the other one).  I liked the idea of having Maria become Zelda guardian after Zandra’s funeral and I ended up taking it from there.

There were some other plots I considered, a few bits of dialogue here and a short outline there, but it wasn’t until late March that I finally found the plot I was searching for.   However, throughout the long process there were a few plot elements and ideas that never changed and made it into the final version.

1.     I always wanted to start with Zelda being cursed (because each previous show began with one of the leads being cursed, so it was kind of a thing), but what the curse was, how she got to the burial mound, and what happened afterwards kept changing.

2.     There was always going to be an episode where the main characters got stuck in a mutual dream that turned into a nightmare. How they got into that situation, what the dreams and nightmares were about, and how they got out of the situation changed with each plotline.

3.     For some reason, every version (including the one we filmed) has Maria getting pregnant. How she gets pregnant, when she does, who the father is, and what happens with the baby is different in each time, but it happens in every single one.  Apparently I really wanted that to happen in .0the show.  I have no idea why.

4.    I wanted Maria and Mordecai to end up together.  Ever since the last episode of The Curse, I have secretly wanted to get these two together.  Maria and Mordecai seem to get along rather well in the last episode, and there’s one scene where how Maria responds to a question from Mordecai – combined with what she says to Zandra at the end of the episode (He's too good for you) – could be taken to mean that she has a crush on Mordecai. 

Finally I came up with the plot that became Eidolon as we know it, and this time I was able to actually write a full script – and five more – that I really liked.  It helped a lot when I realized that, instead of being a minor villain in one or two episodes, Namtaru really needed to be the big bad guy for the whole series.  

Eventually I wrote five additional scripts, bringing the total to 11 episodes (which became 13 in the edit bay), which caused a little drama, but that’s a story for part 2.

Before I wrote the script, however, I wrote to Morgan, Brittany, and James and asked them to vote on which plotline they liked better – Saving the World 101 or Introduction to Being a Ghost (which was Eidolon’s original name).  Obviously they all voted for the later.  But I felt the need to have their approval before continuing with the project because they were Co-Producers (although I was the Executive Producer) and were so closely involved in the project.

WRITING ASSIGNMENTS

Throughout the process of writing the script, I was constantly in touch with my co-producers, the Southern Trio, as I called them since we all met at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale.  Whenever I would hit a snag or feel writer’s block coming, or simply because I wanted their reactions to specific situation, I would email the trio and ask for their opinion. 

Each one helped write – or entirely wrote – several scenes that focused on their character.  They answered my email questions with bits of dialogue, summarized scenes, and general ideas, which greatly influenced each script. I relied on the extensive work they had each done on their characters and used a lot of the back-story they had created for themselves.  I tried my best to work in unique tidbits that they had come up with, such as the fact that Skyler has a serious crush on Maria, Maria was a professor who taught metaphysics as well as anthropology, and Zelda had a horrible encounter with a ghost in her basement as a child.

For example, I asked each one to come up with three examples of dreams and nightmares their characters might have, and used some of those ideas for what is now Episode 7 (but was originally Episode 6).  Although most of the dreams were not used, I did use some of the nightmares - especially James idea about what Skyler would have nightmares about.

There were certain scenes that were the direct result of their answers and that, in some cases, contained a lot of dialogue that the actors either suggested or wrote.  I consider those scripts and scenes to be co-written by those actors, because even if I smoothed them out and typed them up, the gist of the scene (and sometimes more) was theirs.

Morgan had several ideas for several scenes, many of which were included, but the scenes she had the most influence on – and pretty much wrote all of – were the scenes between Maria and Mordecai in Episode 3.  The fact that Maria gets Mordecai’s attention in the midst of all his fan girls by flashing him – and his reaction to it - was totally Morgan’s idea. 

MARIA:  Now that I have your attention, we need to talk!

MORDECAi:  Hello to you too.  Or should I say hello to you two. (points to each boob)

Almost all the dialogue in the two scenes with them later in the episode were written by Morgan, and although I would love to claim such wonderful quips as…

MARIA:  She got cursed.

MORDECAI:  (pause pause, amused) Well, what do you know?  I’m sorry I missed it.  I’ll send a card…maybe a fruit basket.

…I can’t, because I didn’t write them – Morgan did.  Many of the best banter between Maria and Mordecai was from Morgan and she had a great understanding of both their characters and how they interacted with each other.  So thank you Morgan, you’re amazing.

Brittany also contributed to some of the dialogue for her character, but her biggest contribution was the Zelda scenes towards the end of the final episode.  Brittany felt that Zelda needed closure with her mother before she could move on with her life, and asked me if she could write a scene about it.  I completely agreed and was happy to let her write it.  Unfortunately, the final episode had long since been written by this point, so we sandwiched the scene between two other ones.  It worked out okay, but the transition into and out of that scene is not as smooth as I would like.  Still, the show is MUCH better for those scenes, which she wrote completely by herself.  Brittany, you’re also amazing.

Of course James helped write some of the Skyler scenes as well.  One of the biggest scenes he contributed to was the scene in Episode 3 where Skyler follows Zelda’s ghost into Madame Genna’s psychic shop.  What he says and does, how he reacts to Madame Genna’s clearly un-psychic reading and Zelda constantly mocking him was all based on James emailed reply to the scenario I presented to him. 

In fact, all of Skyler’s character was created by James (except his name I think), and I adore him.   The darkness of the character, combined with his shy and geeky demeanor, the tenderness of his heart which was broken by the murder of his wife, and the thirst for vengeance he has, creates a richly layered, three-dimensional character that honestly should have been explored even more then it was.   

For god’s sake, the man is the most extreme kind of ghost hunter there is – he hunts down serial killers, murders them, then catches their ghosts and traps them in a hellish existence for all eternity!  That’s some pretty dark shit, dude. (Of course he releases them all when he retires from ghost hunting after being freed from the temporary curse Morpheus placed on him…so that probably wasn’t a good plan.  I didn’t think about that until just now.  Damn it!)  James, you are so amazing, and Skyler is a brilliantly crafted character.

The trio also helped decide some elements of what ultimately happens to the characters, and gave me CDs with song suggestions for the show, many of which I used in creating the final soundtrack.  Between their contributions as co-writers, co-producers, and their musical suggestions – all of which they were given credit for – they also had their own production company names attached to the show.  I seriously could not have done Eidolon without them, and even if I could have it would not have been half as good as it is.

THE TITLE

As you’ve seen, there have been many titles for each version of the project, which I mostly referred to as “the Curse Sequel”.  Coming up for a final title was not as easy as it had been for other shows.  Each actor/producer had suggestions which were good, but somehow didn’t seem right.

In the end, I turned to a thesaurus and looked up the word ghost.  I explored each option, but when I clicked on the word eidolon – which means both a phantom/apparition and an ideal, I knew I had my title. 

CASTING

Obviously the parts of Maria Sanchez, Zelda Graves (whose last name changed several times throughout the process), and Skyler Jackson were all cast. 

I was able to get back in touch with Mike D, who played Mordecai in the Curse, and he agreed (miraculously, since I was crazy and unfair to him when we filmed the Curse) to reprise the role.  Since he had done a fantastic job as Mordecai, I was very excited at the thought of seeing him play Mordecai again.

The actor who originally played both Namtaru and Morpheus (who looked alike for a somewhat confusing reason) in Dream Chasers was…well, to put it nicely, let’s just say he was unavailable.  Luckily, I had recently met the ever awesome Bryan Kieft who agreed to play the part and pretty much rocked it.  The fact that he got to play a character who could basically teleport himself anywhere and use magic definitely helped win him over.

Terri Madison was a character who only emerged in the final plotline, and seems wonderfully reminiscent of Cory in The Curse while still being an excellent character in her own right. I originally thought about casting Annamarie MacLeod to play Terri (since I had also imagined her playing Cory in the Curse when I thought I would film it in the CU area), but I really wanted her to play Baste instead.  

I ended up casting Jen Weber as Terri, and it was the perfect choice!  Jen hadn’t really played a main character since she was Erion in the Destiny Trilogy, so it was long past time for her to step into the spotlight again.  She took the part of Terri and made it her own, creating a fun, kind, man-crazy fan girl character that I have since come to adore. She took a potentially two-dimensional character and turned her into a wonderfully three-dimensional character that's a favorite character with a lot of people.

It helps that Jen Weber is one of the funniest people I know, and she positively sparkled both on the set and on the screen.  If you want to die laughing, then give Jen a play-set with accessories, then sit back and watch the fun. 

With that our main characters were cast.  I set about casting the recurring characters and guest parts as best I could.  As previously mentioned, the roles of Baste and Ford were performed by Annamarie MacLeod and Ryan Homberg respectively.  I asked Anita Stein to play the older version of Zandra, and she very nicely to agreed to do it (and did it wonderfully). 

Syndi Eller was more than willing to reprise her role as Atropos, the sarcastic and chocolate-loving Goddess of Death.  Which was good, because I can’t imagine anyone else in that part.  She added an element of fun and a little goofiness to what would otherwise have been a dark and really rather one dimensional character.

I was very lucky that Russell Martin was willing to play Lucifer, the God of Evil.  He was supposed to have played an evil version of Xavier in the originally second season of The Gift Bearer, so when I included the devil in Eidolon I really wanted him to play the part.  I wanted to see such a talented actor get to play a bad guy and I was not disappointed (Russell might have been though, since Lucifer didn’t get to be as evil as Namtaru, but hopefully not).  It was great to work with both of those actors again. 


Although I was able to get Neil Cappetta reprise his role as the unlucky, but good hearted Tony Tarino from Episode 5 of The Curse (for which I was very glad), I had no idea how to get in touch with the woman who played Labarta in the Curse, so I had to recast her.  There were a few people I considered for the part, but in the end Nina Samii agreed to play the role (and on short notice), and it was wonderful to work with her again

I wrote the part of Madame Genna with Jen Weber in mind, since she’s good at playing goofy parts.  That’s also why we first see Genna in a position she’s stuck in.  It was supposed to be a complicated yoga position that she couldn’t get out of – which as a very flexible and active yoga practitioner I knew Jen could do.  However, I ended up casting Jen as Terri, and needed to find someone else to play Genna.  When looking for an actor to play a somewhat bizarre fake psychic who seems kind of “out there” at times, I immediately thought of Rachel Anderson, because I always cast her in those kinds of roles.  Poor Rachel.  She always gets cast as the crazy characters (but she does them so well).

I was able to get Margaret Olson to play the villainous Martina in Episode 2 and was overjoyed at the chance of working with Ryan Davis again when he agreed to play Martina’s equally evil brother Todd.  Margaret’s then boyfriend, Matt, was willing to play the reluctant Scott, Martina’s boyfriend.  I try to cast the boyfriend/girlfriend of an actor in a role that requires kissing whenever possible, although obviously that doesn’t always work out.

James really wanted Virginia McCreary to play the ghost of Skyler’s wife, Elise, because he was a huge fan of Zarc in Pandora’s Box and wanted to meet and work with the actress who played her.  Getting to act opposite of her was quite possibly a dream come true for him (although he totally played it cool when they filmed together).  I was happy to oblige if possible, and Virginia had no problem with being cast in the role, since it was a small part that really only required one day to film. Thanks Virginia!

Amy Kaup was cast as Ms. Foster, the lawyer in charge of handling Zandra's Estate and making sure that Zelda is taken care of. It may not seem to be an important role since she only appears in the first episode, but the character is actually the one who brings the two leads - Zelda and Maria - together.  She provides a neutral party to bridge their separate worlds.  Okay, she's a glorified plot device, but I find it interesting that she's the only one of the two new characters created for the Ghost Hunter version to survive the cut (so to speak).  She would actually have been a recurring character in Ghost Hunter, but that didn't work well in the final version.

Since I'm talking about casting, obviously I'm dealing with the characters that made it into Eidolon, but I'm going to pause for a moment to talk about two who didn't.  One was a major part in How to Save the World, and the other a major role in Ghost Hunter.

In How to Save the World, one of the main characters and a major plot device is Athena - a sorcerer we met in Dream Chasers.  I really loved how Christi Gerrish played the role (she was a natural choice for Athena), and I really wanted to work with her again.  However, she didn't make the final cut because in Dream Chasers her character turned evil and died (at the hands of Death), so finding a good enough reason for her to magically be alive again was too complicated to deal with in an already complicated plot line. 

In Ghost Hunter there was a character that I had actually forgotten about until I was reading over the info from the Eidolon file. Her name was Felicity, who was given the nickname Tia by Zelda. There was an idea I had created for an episode of The Curse which never got filmed (called Cupid's Knife), about a haunted object and a ghost that came attached to it. Although the plot of Cupid's Knife and the original characters created for that episode were different, I decided to bring back the haunted knife idea.  Felicity was a young woman who helped her lover with the robbery of a coach and ended up killed by his knife for her loyalty to him. Now her spirit is attached to the knife she was killed with.  

Basically Maria and Mordecai cast a spell on this object they find, and resurrect Felicity to be both a mediator between them and their new "daughter" and also to be a baby-sitter for Zelda when they can't deal with her.  In return she would get a second chance at life. It's an interesting idea, but her personality wasn't really developed and even if it had been, she would have been no match for the darker version of Zelda in that show.  Her role of mediator and babysitter was eventually filled, accidentally, by Terri.  Some where along the way, I realized that Zelda needed an outsider to connect with other than Skyler - who was too similar to her in mood and personality.  There was a desperate need for a kind, patient person who was funny but could also stand up for herself and kick some ass when necessary, and Felicity just did not fit the bill.

So, now all the major and minor parts were cast, and any other parts that needed to be filled would be cast on set (mostly by actors who were already there of course, or by me. I ended up on screen more times in Eidolon by necessity than I had on purpose in The Perfect Combination).  The next thing to think about was where all of this was going to be filmed.  

LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION

Between places in Chicago that Brittany had found, places in Southern Illinois where we had filmed before, and the many usual places to film in the CU area, our locations were pretty much set.  The actors were located all over Illinois – some in the Chicago area, some in the Carbondale area, many in CU, and everywhere in between - and all had to travel to get to the set.  

So, I purposely varied the locations across the state so that each actor would have at least one weekend of shooting that took place near them.  As you can see though, this was a huge project if for no other reason then the actors living so far apart and having to traipse all around Illinois to film.

READY TO GO

With the cast chosen, the first six scripts finished, the costumes and props assembled, the shooting schedule…um…sort of figured out…more or less, we were finally all set to film.

Tune in next month for Eidolon, Part 2 – The First Half of Production, where we’ll find out who really played Mordecai, how he got the part, and what happened to Mike D.  We’ll film over two holiday weekends, on a beach, in some random guy’s apartment, and in a new house, while breaking several SFF records.  We’ll deal with serious allergies, some unusual solutions, some physical injuries, and a very bad fall.  Also, stay tuned to see Yibble’s flirtation with another breakdown and find out how the budget literally tripled overnight.  All this and more in Part 2 of Eidolon’s Production Diary!