Production Diary - Twisted Tales: The Stranger

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 Stranger.

THE STORY

The Stranger 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.  At the end of December in 2010, I needed to film some pick up shots and the final scene for Hulde, and I wanted to film another Twisted Tale as well. I thought about what kind of story I wanted to do and what I had to work with, then looked for a tale that would work with it.

I had never done a Christmas movie or even a real Holiday episode for a TV Show.  The closest I ever came was in Pandora’s Box in the two-part episode In Memoriam (Eps 6 & 7) which officially takes place during the Winter Solstice, but doesn’t really have any celebrations in it, and a few episodes that had Christmas decorations (because we were filming in the Virginia Theater right after Christmas) and they were referenced a few times.

Picture from here

So I really wanted to do a Christmas movie, and there was lots of snow on the ground and blowing around, so it seemed like a perfect time to make one.  I knew there were plenty of Christmas/Holiday legends and folktales so I set about searching for one.  I found several that could be fun like The Christmas Rose, and  The Snow Maiden, but the one I kept coming back to was The Stranger Child, a legend retold and written down by Count Franz Pocci.

Picture from here

 The story is about a poor woodcutter and his family – a wife and two small children.  On Christmas eve they are having dinner – a loaf of bread and that’s all - when a small child appears at their door and asks to be let in.  He is cold and hungry and the parents let him in at once.  The family doesn’t have much but the children share their bread with the strange child and offer him their bed to sleep in saying they will sleep on the little couch by the fire.  He accepts and everyone goes to sleep for the night.  Late in the night the children are woken up by the sound of beautiful singing and looking out the window they see a group of angels. Then the child – who reveals that he is the Christ child – comes towards the children then steps outside.  He takes a fir tree branch and plants it into the ground.  Then he blesses them and leaves and the tree magically grows into a huge fir tree covered in gold, silver, and fruit and blooms every year at Christmas.

It’s a very sweet story and has all the elements of most Christmas tales – sharing the little you have with those around you and giving gifts from the heart.  It appealed to me because I’ve always loved the mythic archetype of the Kindness of Strangers (such as Baucis and Philemon from Greek Mythology).  I twisted it by making a modern tale of a farmer and his adult daughter (instead of a woodcutter and two children), and making the stranger be Mary instead of Jesus as a child (mostly because of who I had available to cast).  I’m normally not fond of having a heavy religious message in my productions, but this is a more serene and sweet tale that, as the word archetype suggests, can have pretty much any divine being swapped out for the Christian figures of Mary or Jesus.

THE CASTING

So many of my movies these days are cast by who’s available, not by who would be the most awesome actor to play the part.  In fact, most of the scripts aren’t even written until I know who’s available so I write the parts for who I want to play them of the people that I know will be at the shoot.  It’s kind of a back-assward way to do things, but it works and lets face it – the real reason I keep filming at the point isn’t to make grand works of art, but to have an excuse to get a bunch of my friends together when they live scattered across the country.

I knew I had Annamarie MacLeod on board and I knew she would be perfect to play Mary.  I needed someone for the farmer and I was pretty sure that I could talk Mark MacLeod into playing the part.  Virginia McCreary happened to be available that day as well, so she played the daughter.  Jen Weber was there to play a character in the Hulde pick up scenes and was willing to stay and be my assistant director (yay!)

THE FILMING

We filmed on December 27, 2010 and since the script was short (5 ½ pages) and all located in the same place (the MacLeod Farm) we were able to shoot it all in one day (in one afternoon really).  Unfortunately I had been sick for several days before the shoot and had lost my voice to laryngitis so I needed Jen, my assistant director for the day, to be my ”voice” on the set and repeat my directions to the actors if they were farther away then a few feet.  Annamarie was also sick with a bad cold and, if I recall correctly, almost thought about begging out of filming after we were done with the pick up shots from Hulde, but after hearing my raspy voice and coughing she realized there would be little sympathy from me on it (in other words, if I could do it, so could she).

We started with a read through, then filmed the first scene between Mike and Sarah (Mark and Virginia).  After that we went outside in the cold and snow to film Scene 2 with the dogs.   Working with animals on set is always tricky because they don’t listen to directions as well as the actors do.

Willow, Lucy, and Bone (the MacLeod dogs) are all sweet and wonderful, and are pretty well behaved and well trained (and so CUTE!).  However, they were excited to be let out and have all these people around them, so getting them to do exactly what we wanted wasn’t easy - as you can see in this little featurette from the DVD:

After that scene we went back inside to warm up.  Shooting the next scene where Mary is welcomed into their home to stay the night, since there’s no phone service due to the blizzard outside.  It was actually snowing for a while during the shoot, but wasn’t really a blizzard and luckily it was mostly when we were inside. 

In that scene, Sarah is making soup and Mary helps her set the table, then they all sit down to eat.  The scene ends there and starts up after dinner was over, so it only made sense to stop shooting and have lunch at that point. Virginia had added some seasoning to the can of condensed tomato soup I had brought for the set and the cast and crew chowed down on and chatted while we all took a break. 

After lunch we continued the shoot, filming the longest scene in the movie where everyone opens gifts.  I didn’t think to bring extra paper so they could only unwrap them once for the camera.  We did three full takes with close ups of each actor for the lines where they pretended to open invisible gifts – which lead to a lot of bloopers and fun times.  Technically speaking the gift scene really should have been filmed at night, but that would have required staying on set longer to wait for it to get dark.  I gave the actors the choice of whether they wanted to wait and film that scene at night or just ignore the hints about it being at night and shoot it during the afternoon so the shoot would be done sooner.  Since it was right after Christmas and some of the actors were only in town for a short period of time or had other things to do that evening, we opted for an afternoon shoot.

When that scene was done we got ready to shoot the last scene, which I wanted to film around sunset so that it might look like dawn.  Virginia changed into pajamas and (after throwing on boots and coat in the scene) ran outside into the snow to shoot by the Christmas tree (which had supposedly been decorated by Mary) and watch Mary go all-angelic and disappear in the distance.

After running out and seeing Mary disappear, Sarah returns to the house to find her father standing by a table filled with Christmas presents.  The funny thing is that all the gifts we used were actually presents from my father and mother that I had wrapped to give to my sister's, rather than ship them I just took them back on the train with me when I returned to Kansas City after the New Year.  So, since I needed a bunch of wrapped packages at the end I just packed those in a box and took them to the shoot.  Since no one had to open them it worked out quite well.

The final shot of the day was Mary walking away and disappearing.  She starts off walking in her snow outfit, but turns back and looks at Sarah when she calls.  Then a light shines around her and she is suddenly clothed like Mary the mother of Jesus.  I didn’t have a lot of time to get ready for the shoot and I couldn’t find the outfit I wanted to use – a long white sequined and beaded gown with long beaded lace sleeves and a blue chiffon veil – and had to settle for what I could find – a white tunic-y thing and a sheer-ish white veil that looked more like cheesecloth then chiffon but it worked out okay since I knew I would add some glow to it in post-production.

However, it was cold, snowy, - pretty much everything outside was frozen – and I was asking Annamarie to walk away in a field for several yards wearing only what was basically a thin white sheet and a sheer curtain on her head.  She agreed (yay!) but insisted on wearing her snow pants and boots – which I had no problem with of course, I mean since when did I ever care about period or stylish footwear?

However, getting her from the house to the spot where we were filming without turning her into a popsicle was a bit of an issue.  Luckily Mark had a down coat that we were able to just drape on her and quickly take off as soon as we were ready to shoot.  As soon as she was done, she ran back into the sanctuary of the down coat and we all returned to the house to thaw out and wrap things up.

It was a really fun, simple shoot and it’s one of my favorite movies because it’s so sweet and festive.  I have actually watched it on Christmas Eve every year since it was edited and finished in early 2011.  If you want to get in the Christmas or Generic Holiday spirit then I highly recommend watching this wonderful short film.