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 Curse. However, since the Curse is a
complicated TV Show with quite a bit of behind-the-scenes back-story, I’m going
to split this into three posts.
Previously on Production Diary – The Curse we found out how Morgan
became Maria, spent three pages learning more than we ever wanted to know about
the Goreville shoot, discovered how wonderful Peter Normand is at finding
locations, filmed a few scenes running through the hallways screaming for help
while managing not to get in trouble with the RAs (or arrested), and figured
out how to fake an archaeological dig site twelve years too late.
The Curse was filmed and edited in the Winter/Spring of
2001. It’s a landmark show for
Sine Fine Films for a number of reasons.
To find out what they are read this. In Part 3 we’re going to talk about Yibble’s decent into
madness…I mean filming, and learn how the series came to a tragic end.
THE FILMING CONTINUES
A nervous breakdown was on the horizon for me, but I
honestly don’t remember now what really made it happen, I don’t remember the
exact trigger. I know that I
unfairly blamed Liz and Mike D separately for various problems on set, but the
real problem was me.
After Spring Break we filmed the big murder scene in Episode
5 where Tony Tarino gets killed.
The scene has three people in it and was filmed in three separate shoots
– each person by him/herself because I couldn’t seem to get everyone together
at the same time. It would
probably have been more dramatic to see the characters on screen at the same
time, but I think I made it work.
The hardest part by far was that two of the characters have to bump into
each other which is really hard to do without both actors on the set and a wide
shot.
Then we turned to filming most of Episode 9 and some scenes
from Episode 8. I wasn’t too bad
yet (comparatively speaking at least), and I think we all had fun filming the
campus “treasure hunt” scenes from Episode 9 which we filmed all in one
day. I remember it being
very fun to watch everyone working together as their characters. There was a lot of running around –
literally running, so by the end of the very long day of shooting everyone was
tired.
You can tell which scenes
were filmed last on that day because there’s a sudden drop in both energy and
volume in the scenes at the library.
You’d think I’d have learned to exhaust my actors less by now, but no. There was also a great outtake on that
day with a coffee machine that totally refused to give us coffee. As the memories…of no Folger’s in our
cups.
Actually the exhaustion was a recurring theme on the Curse
set I think. Every production has
some running…well not always a joke but something that actors like to do when
the camera’s off or there’s a pause in the filming. In Destiny series it was “stir?”, in Pandora’s Box it was
dancing, in the Curse it was sleeping.
Several of the actors lay down on the nearest semi-comfortable piece of
furniture and dozed until it was time for them to shoot. I don’t know what made this set more
exhausting then the others but apparently it was. Or maybe it was late-night research papers or weekend
parties and hangovers. Or maybe it
was me…maybe it was exhausting just being around me and my crazy weird mood
swings at that time. 
Whatever. By
this point I was foaming at the mouth for unknown reasons (my bi-polar disorder
was in full form at the time, though I didn’t know it quite yet), and on April
1st I finally had my complete meltdown. 
The series premiered on SPC-TV on April 1st, and
that same day I cracked in a thousand shattered pieces, put up a note of the
SPC-TV studio door that basically said “The Curse is cancelled” and possibly a
few expletives, I really don’t remember.
Then I went home, half-heartedly tried to kill myself, obviously failed,
and ended up bawling my eyes on a concrete staircase in a corner of the
dorm. Yeah…not good day for
me. Then of course I decided to
blame all of my problems on other people, as I used to do in these situations
(not so much anymore, now that I have my oh so loverly medication). 
The next day some of the cast members were surprised to find
out I was seriously. They thought
it was a joke. I was totally
serious – why did they think it was a joke?!? Oh right, because I had posted the note on April Fool’s
Day! If only it had been a
joke…*le sigh*. So there was some
‘splaning to do and it wasn’t pretty and I went home for the weekend. I returned determined to finish up
filming the rest of the episodes written and finish out the first and only
season, rather than just calling it quits there. I didn’t want to just drop the episodes that were only
half-finished, that just seemed…rude. (oh sure, I find that rude, but not everything else)
However, I didn’t think I could do all the directing because
I was insane and channeling unfounded anger at some of the actors (primarily
Liz), so I decided to see if I could get some guest directors on board to help
out. I have always wanted to encourage
people to do behind-the-scenes stuff like directing to test things out before
doing a project completely on their own.
Luckily Adam Herriks was happy to direct Episode 6 - The Lost Colony, and J’ae
volunteered to direct Episode 7 - The Gift Bearer. 
The next day I went along after 
This was a fun day (at least it was for me) and had some
very memorable moments. I remember there was some drama on the set with two of the
actors that I had stupidly gotten in the middle of and made ten times
worse. There was also a time when
Mike Meyer wasn’t filming and he and I sat on the boulder talking about life
and sanity that was very important to me (and still is). 
Non “drama” wise, there were some fabulous moments. Mike was playing Richard Rowse who
turns into a monstrous cannibal demony sort of thing and so he had to strip off
his shirt, cover himself in mud and blood and act all rabid-demon-spirity. He really threw himself into the part, dousing himself
from the fake-blood bottle and practically rolling in the mud.
He was fantastic and hilarious. I think he had to wash it all off in a
cold stream nearby. Huge props to
you, Mike, for being bold, brave, funny, and willing to be monsterificly
grossified. 
But I think the most memorable thing to me was the fact that
the canyon sort of area we were using as the set was also being used by a group
of military rock climbers who enjoyed repelling directly onto the set (I think
they were military since they were wearing camo-outfits, but maybe they
weren’t). They started doing fancy
moves and clearly showing off when they realized there was a camera. We had to wait for them to finish
before we could continue shooting and they kept coming back so…yeah, that was
annoying. Annoying, kind of funny,
and definitely memorable.
The other guest director was J’ae who left an unusual legacy
during his short stint as a director.
He was scheduled to shoot Episode 7. I did the producing work as I usually do and lined up
locations, actors, set the schedule, etc.
All he had to do was read over the script and show up to direct on the
day of the shoot. On that day he
was late to the set and I had to call him and remind him to get over to the
Student Center if he still wanted to direct. We were slated to film almost all of the non-beach scenes
from the episode that day and time was precious. Looking back I really should have just said “never mind,
I’ll direct today” but my head was so far up my…well, I was an idiot. 
At one point they checked in with me and J’ae was happy about some of the shots he’d gotten. The actors, however, were less than thrilled and he was taking a long time to shoot things without much in the way of good communication. I joined them on the set for the second half and understood some of where they were coming from. By the end of the day everyone was frustrated and there were several scenes left unfilmed that I figured we could pick up another day.
When I looked at the footage that night was shocked and
dismayed to find out that J’ae had no idea how to compose a shot. The actors were at the bottom of the
screen with a huge amount of wall and ceiling behind them filling up the
rest. It was terrible. I had no idea anyone could shoot that
badly. I briefly mentioned it to him
the next day and he apologized and said he wasn’t feeling well that day. It wasn’t until over a year later (if
not longer) that I found out why he had left so much space at the top of each
shot – he was making room for the Giant Purple Lizard. 
That’s right.
The.
Giant.
Purple.
Lizard.
The one apparently crawling on the wall and sitting in every shot – the
whole day. I only found out when I
made a comment about the terrible framing to Morgan Thomas and she gave me a
funny look and said something like “you don’t know?”. That’s when she told me that he was leaving room for the GPL
and his framing was not bad if you took that into consideration.
He had told Morgan on the day of
shooting that before showing up at the set he had just dropped Acid, so he
spent the say seeing giant purple lizards and god knows what else. When I found this out all I could say
was “that explains soooo much!”
Now I think back on that day, look at those terrible shots,
and laugh. And there are many
jokes in SFF to this day involving Giant Purple Lizards. It was truly J’ae’s biggest
contribution to the company.
And I'm going to take a quick moment to thank Morgan Thomas for the lovely coloring of the Purple Lizard!
But it left us with a lot of scenes that had not yet been
filmed. I had already realized
Episode 5 – Buried Treasure was never going to get filmed and had scratched
that, but the majority of Episode 7 still had to be done. Several of the scenes take place at a
beach. I arranged an all-day shoot
to film it. A couple of the actors
were late so we didn’t hit the road until 11am and it turned out that one of
the leads had to leave by 1pm (I didn’t know that when I set up the
shoot). Since there’s a beach at
Campus Lake I just assumed we could shoot there, but when we arrived there it
was closed. Apparently it didn’t
open until after school was over and closed shortly after school began – that’s
just stupid. Stupid and
annoying. 
Peter knew a place where some other SPC-TV people had filmed
some beach scenes for a movie, but when we got to the area we couldn’t find
it. We spent over an over looking
for it, but ended up giving up and going home and I think we called it a
day. We were never able to film
those scenes and that’s still one of my biggest regrets. Marc Ring was cast as
Marcus, the Roman ghost. Although he didn’t actually film any
scenes, and I really wish I had been able to work with him more, I do want to
take a moment to remember him.
Marcus Ring passed away a few years ago. He was a very talented actor and great friend of many of the
SFF members including Neil Cappetta and Michelle Chapman and although I didn’t
really know him very well, I did like him and I enjoyed watching him as co-host
of B- TV, the show he and Neil produced together. The still above is the only footage I have of him, waiting with Michelle Chapman.
By this point in the filming tempers were flared, time was
running out, and I was bat-shit crazy.
I managed to compile a list of the scenes we still needed to film and scheduled
an intense, all day shoot that would get it all done in one fell swoop. The schedule was set, the day arrived,
and the lead actor did not show up.
I called and she said she didn’t want to come. Crap. So I
basically took the actors I had, improved some segway stuff to explain some of
the missing scenes and called it a day.
That was the last day of filming. 
We ended up with three unfinished episodes out of nine total
and a fourth that was never filmed at all. Two important scenes were missing from Episode 6 – the set
up and conclusion at the hotel that we couldn’t seem to get everyone together
for and it makes the episode less cohesive. Episode 7 was missing almost half the episode with 7 out of
15 scenes unfilmed (including two very long ones). Episode 8 was almost as bad with 6 out of 14 scenes
unfilmed. 
I ended up combining
what I had from Episode 7 and 8, adding the ad-lib scene to sort of bridge the
gap, and used title cards to explain the content of some of the missing
scenes. I edited it together to
make it seem like all the Ep 7 scenes were part of a “previously on the Curse”
sort of thing. I still considered
this Frankenstein like episode to be Ep 8, and I did have all of Ep 9 so that
left no officially Episode 7. I
started referring to it as the “lost” episode, but it didn’t fool anyone. Not sure I was really trying to
honestly.
THE LEGACY
I have to say that my biggest regret of all the mistakes and blunders I have made in regards to SFF productions, cancelling The Curse was the worst. It still haunts me to this day and writing this particular pro-diary, especially part 3, is pretty hard for me even now. I wasn’t ready to let the characters go and the story had no end. It took me two more TV Shows – a prequel (Dream Chasers) and a sequel (Eidolon) – to finally feel some sort of closure for the whole project. I deeply apologize to all the people I hurt while making The Curse and I am extremely grateful to those who stuck by the project through the bitter end and gave it their all every day.
Although there was a prequel and a sequel, there was also a
strange sort of semi-spin-off involving the statue from Episode 7. The statue, and the name of the episode
was “The Gift Bearer”, which, as most of you already know, is also the name for
another TV show by SFF. The
statue, name and all, became the central figure and plot device in a new show,
developing a personality of his own along the way. The show was filmed in the Fall of 2001 through the Spring
of 2002.
Originally there were
three seasons of The Curse, planned to be filmed through that same time period
but with the cancellation of the show, that left me free to plan other projects
which led to The Gift Bearer. If I
had not cancelled the Curse, I might not have done The Gift Bearer which is a
wonderful show in it’s own right.
So, although I am sad at how everything turned out with The Curse and
have a lot of regrets with it I am glad that I did get to do The Gift Bearer.
Now, about all that missing stuff…
I’ve set up an account on fictionpress to as a place to
publish documents like missing episodes and fan fiction (believe it or not
there is some fanfic, and it’s not all written by me). Here are links to the following episodes,
including all of the missing scenes for those of you who have seen the show and
are curious to know what was missing, or simply for nostalgia’s sake for those
who were in it.
Please forgive the plot holes, bad grammar/spelling, and
cheesy dialogue. I swear I’m a
much better writer now.
I also had some scenes written for future episodes and
episode summaries for Season 2 and Season 3. I’m posting those too, for anyone who is curious to see what
other episodes might have been filmed.
Thanks to those who have actually read all of this post and
all of the previous two posts.
It’s a lot of needless information and fun (mostly) memories. For those who have stayed with it I
leave you this beautiful present of a Giant Purple Lizard. Enjoy.
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