Production Diary - The Dragon & The Unicorn

 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 Dragon & The Unicorn.

The Dragon & The Unicorn was the fifth production filmed in SFF history, and was the first fully scripted movie to be produced after the Destiny Trilogy.  The idea was conceived as a way to let Annamarie MacLeod play a villain.  I also had a couple of cool looking daggers, two holographic-type pendant necklaces that had a dragon one and a unicorn on the other.  All those elements some how turned into a script.  Not sure how all the reincarnation stuff got in there but it was fun and I really like the script so I’m not going to complain.  I wrote the script shortly after filming Destiny III.  We began filming it on Labor Day weekend in 1997 and completed production in March of 1998.  

The basic plot is that for thousands of years two sisters — Leona the Good and Asarai the Evil — have been waging a war against each other, preserving the universal balance. Leona dies but is reborn every hundred years to continue the fight, while Asarai remains undead — a vampire waiting to find a way to end her sister’s existence permanently. Lily, and ordinary teenager, through a series of dreams and a fateful trip to a magic shop discovers she is the reincarnation of Leona and is forced to fight her sister throughout time in order to find a way to stop the cycle forever.

The casting wasn’t difficult.  Obviously I wanted Annamarie to play Asarai and since Lily/Leona was her sister I thought Nina Samii would be a great choice.  Also I realized Nina Samii had a lot of talent and wanted to work with her in a lead role.  Danny Skirvin is fun to work with and I wanted to see how well he’d work as the romantic lead – the one thing I didn’t take into account was how tall he was compared to the others which made it a little challenging.  And of course I simply adore the incredibly talented and hilarious Rachel Zoralee.  It was a fabulous cast and I had a lot of fun working with everyone.

The Roman scenes were fun (and I loved the costumes of course), and it was the first time that Annamarie got to try out her gothic makeup (which she always did herself).  

There were a few problems on the set, most notably there was someone nearby using a buzz saw, which lead to a scene or two taking longer to film than necessary.  We ended the day at the beautiful fountain at Parkland College.

Most of the filming days were sporadic – a Saturday here, a Sunday there – since all the actors were still in high school at the time. I’m not sure the order in which things were filmed after that, but I know we shot the training sequence scenes in late September or early October. 

We were filming at Prairie Play in Meadowbrook Park, starting with some of the JJ and Asarai scenes. While waiting for Rachel to arrive we had some time to kill so Annamarie and Nina decided to have their characters fight via a swing set contest.  In the background of all the footage from the day is a field full of tents where apparently a troop of boy scouts had decided to camp.  To explain their appearance in the background someone (Annamarie maybe?) decided they were actually Asarai’s demon minions, and that became a bit of a running joke. 

 

Mid-afternoon we filmed the pirate scene, which involved Danny being tied to telephone pole (aka “the mast”) for at least an hour. I believe he described that as not being fun. Rachel was unable to make it for filming that day and we shot what we could without her – which was still a lot.

I don’t know what possessed me to film a training sequence on a playground, but it really wasn’t an impressive place to train and of course on the day we filmed there were a LOT of kids there, which made it even more bizarre as a training ground. My favorite moment of that day was when Nina said: "Yeah, this would be impressive -- if I was two!"

At some point in the fall, not sure when, we filmed most of the outdoor Lily and Dottie scenes at a park that is no longer exists (I think it was called Dobbs Park).  We also filmed some of the indoor Lily and Dottie scenes like the first scene in Dottie’s bookstore.

I’m pretty sure we filmed the scenes in Asarai’s lair with Asarai and JJ sometime in October.  Filming the tango scene was challenging because of their height difference, but turned out to be very funny because of it. Everyone had a blast and Annamarie and Danny worked really well together.

Sometime in late November or early December we filmed the Medieval flashback scenes in Lincoln Woods. It was the first time we used the vampire teeth for a single shot and they turned out to be too big for Annamarie’s mouth which lead to some hilarity and a limited number of shots with the teeth later on.  

Also, that was one of the coldest shooting days and the actors costumes were not exactly warm, at least not warm enough to fend off the extreme cold. I wheeled home three ice-cubes and set them on the marble topped radiator at the Homestead to thaw them out.  I’m lucky no one got either pneumonia or frostbite from filming that day.  Inside filming is all good in winter, a lesson that I should have remembered down the road but never really did. 

We had a fire going in the fireplace in no time and some hot tea to help defrost the actors before tackling the long and very important chess scenes.  I guess I needed to feed the actors as well since they decided that the chess pieces tasted delicious. 

The next big shoot - the longest and most important day – was filmed at some point in January at the house of the assistant director, Melina Trejo (thanks Melina).  We filmed all the scenes at the climax of the movie there, including the big fight scene (what I like to call the “battle in a ball gown”).  

That was also the only other day we had the entire main cast there as well as several extras playing Asarai’s minions. It was a long, exhausting day but a lot of fun.  We ended the shoot with some Lily and Asarai scenes from the beginning of the movie and had a bit with a Christmas tree.

There was a break from filming at that point and we picked up again in February, filming whatever scenes still needed to be shot, including all of Dottie’s lines from the chess scenes, drunken Asarai, and the Renaissance flashback scenes, which were a challenge to film because I couldn’t get the space I wanted for them (Wesley United Methodist Church) and ended up filming them in my dining room, which had some nice murals so it worked out okay.  It actually turned out to be a really fun day of filming.

The last thing we filmed for The Dragon & The Unicorn was some footage I needed for the training montage.  By the end of March or early April, the movie was edited (with help from my father, Chris Stasheff) and premiered to an audience of five or ten people in one of the rooms of the Homestead.  

I really like the costume design for this movie with the general color scheme of black, gold, and green for Asarai and white, silver, and blue for Lily/Leona.  I actually made from scratch the Renaissance costumes, and tailored or remade several others.  I won’t bore you with any more costume details, just know I really had fun designing this one.

The single biggest tragedy of the production (and one of my biggest regrets) is that somehow one of the tapes for Dragon & The Unicorn – the really important one will all the scenes for the end and several for the beginning – was lost somewhere along the way.  This means, sadly, that I can never re-edit this movie which I think is one of my best films.  It has a pretty good script and a great cast.  

Thanks to everyone who participated in the fun little film, especially Annamarie, Nina, Danny, and Rachel.  I’ll leave you now with some clips from the special features on the DVD.