Production Diary – Eidolon, Part 3
The Second Half of 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.
Previously on ProductionDiary – Eidolon we learned that 2015
celebrates the 10th Anniversary of Eidolon. Since it’s now 2018 the
main thing we learned is that Yibble is lazy and hasn’t updated the
blog/website in a long freaking time.
Figured we should wrap this up in general in case anyone wanted to
hear/read about the rest of it.
We also learned that
Adam is super allergic to cats which resulted in hotel rooms for shoots instead
of crashing at cat-filled houses, thus tripling the budget. We filmed in a
lovely park, on a beach, at the MacLeod Farm, and in a new home called “The
Villa” where Yibble lived with Bryan and Jen. We also filmed a wedding in a 100
degree weather and Yibble nearly killed her actors with a 18 hour, 31 scenes
film-a-thon.
THE FILMING CONTINUES
Due to the fact that both the actors and the locations were scattered
all across Illinois, we were only able to film once a month. September had two shoots but that was
an anomaly. Actually there were
many mini-shoots that took place in the Champaign-Urbana area with one or two
actors at a time throughout the year.
These were with actors who lived around CU and scenes that didn’t
require much to shoot and I had to grab the actor to shoot his or her lines
when I could.
One of these many mini-shoots involved Annamarie MacLeod as
Baste. She originally filmed her
part during the May shoot, but I wrote more lines for her in later
scripts. It was clear her schedule
would not line up with the other actors in those scenes so we just filmed her
separately one sunny Saturday in September. I had to do that with a few other
actors too – like Anita who played the older Zandra - when later scripts had
lines for characters we were already done filming with written into them. That was an error on my part, but
people were really understanding (and nice) about reprising their parts and
filming again as needed.
THE OCTOBER SHOOT
The next major shoot was in October. I tried to have at least one filming weekend in places
closer to each group of actors so that they didn’t always have to travel to
every single shoot. Several actors were near or in Chicago, most were in
central Illinois in the CU area, and the rest were in Southern Illinois in or
near Carbondale where many of us had met at SIUC. So July was the Chicago Shoot and October was the Southern
Shoot.
There are several scenes in Episodes 10 and 11 that take place in the
same cave we filmed in for The Curse. Although Brittany wasn’t on the shooting
schedule that weekend she decided to come anyway and be crew, just for fun. And
I’m glad she did because having a dedicated crewmember is AWESOME!
Illinois weather in unpredictable at best and no one quite knew what
October would bring. Luckily it
turned out to be a sunny weekend. Unluckily it was cold. Luckily most of the
actors had to run around so much they were probably too hot to care. Unluckily
they were completely exhausted by the end of the day and promptly got cold as
soon as they stopped moving.
One of the biggest challenges in shooting the cave scenes is that we
had to try and recreate the set up we used in the original Curse scenes – rock
pillow and all. Luckily
(apparently that’s my word of the day) I still had all the props from the
wake-up spell in The Curse. The
spell scenes went pretty well and we wrapped those up in good time. The running and fighting scenes took a
lot longer, as those kind of scenes always do.
There’s a shot where Maria has to hide in a small space between two
rocks and Morgan barely fit, having to contort herself somewhat to get in
there. I made her stay in that
cramped space WAY too long because I was stupidly worried about continuity over
comfort. I thought shooting the
next few shots would be quick and she wouldn’t spend much time in there, but
when I reviewed the footage I realized she had to be in there for at least a
half an hour. I am SO SORRY Morgan!
I promise I will never do that to you again!
Poor Morgan and Adam had to run, fight, jump, and climb all over the
boulders and through the rocks and on the dusty ground. They were both covered in dirt and I’m
pretty sure Morgan’s lovely black velvet shirt (that I had her wear without
realizing how much dirt would get caked onto it) got ruined. Adam’s shirt probably didn’t fare much
better. I think they’re pants were
okay though. Bryan’s clothes were
probably toast as well since fake blood was involved.
Although Bryan didn’t have to run and fight as much he wore himself
out just from the sheer excitement of that awesome cave. As soon as we got there he started
jumping from boulder to boulder like a mountain goat and probably wore himself
out before we even started filming.
That guy has endless amounts of energy and that night was the only time
I’ve ever seen him actually look tired, which means the cave shoot REALLY wore
him out!
The scenes were both physically and emotionally exhausting for all the
actors, so naturally when we got back to the hotel I immediately made them
shoot more scenes. Because I’m a sadist. Also because I wasn’t really
exhausted, just the usual amount of tired from a long shooting day. I figured since I was ready and willing
to shoot more scenes the others would be too. We filmed a couple Maria and Mordecai scenes that take place
in a hotel room, but for some strange reason neither actor had much
energy. I was a little annoyed,
but knew they were probably somewhat tired so we did what we could and called
it a day.
Later when I reviewed the footage, I realized just how completely and
totally exhausted those two must have been by the time we filmed at the hotel.
I was like “holy crap, how did I expect them to shoot more after all that? How
were even able to move after all that?!?”
So, sorry you two, I should have been more aware and considerate, since
I’m medicated and all. This
incident made me realize something about myself – I can still be a thoughtless
sadist even with medication. Guess
it’s just the director in me.
Karma got me back for that day though because I had an allergic reaction
to something in the hot tub water that night. That was bad. Itchy, painful, and
bad. Karma, baby, Karma.
One of the actors – I’m not sure if it was Brittany or Morgan – had
brought a light up flaming skull and we played around with it for some
nightmare montage shots the next morning while everyone was getting ready to
leave the hotel. We goofed around with it more than we filmed I think. After checking
out of the hotel we headed for Giant City State Park.
There we met up with Neil Cappetta where he reprised his role as the
lovably unlucky Tony Tarino. The
actors had pretty much recovered from the day before and had enough energy back
to do really well with the Tony and Dream World scenes. We filmed all afternoon – taking a
break for a cold pizza lunch, then wrapped shooting and headed back home.
This weekend goes on record as being the DIRTIEST weekend ever in SFF
history. Obviously since the cave
was full of dirt and actors were rolling around in it, it was very dirty
physically. But for some reason
everyone’s minds were in the gutter all weekend and almost every thing seemed
to be a dirty joke, a double entendre, or just bizarrely smexy.
THE NOVEMBER SHOOT
Although I tried to give each of the main actors a weekend/month off
from shooting, there was one person who didn’t get a break – Morgan. Since
Maria was in the vast majority of the scenes in all the episodes that meant she
had to be at ALL the shoots. She bounced between Carbondale and Springfield
throughout the year depending on her schedule, so she ended up taking the train
to CU a LOT. I remember a lot of
weekends began with everyone converging at the train station to pick her up and
send her off. But she was a real
trouper about it all and never complained.
At the end of Dream Chasers Namtaru is banished to the Dream World for
500 years and can’t interact with the living except through dreams
anymore. For some reason I decided
that he must be living in a cave instead of in a mansion. It doesn’t make sense
– he is a god after all, but apparently I decided that as part of his
punishment had to have a crappie place to live. I was going to film all the Namtaru’s room scenes in the
Cave suite at a fantasy hotel a couple of hours away – I got permission from
them and everything – but in the end it was too expensive, too far, and too
much trouble to film there.
So we just set up the basement of the Villa as Namtaru’s place. It was
a terrible set for a god’s apartment, but it explained why Namtaru wanted
revenge on the people that put him there.
And it had a stocked bar with a non-working fridge so that made it okay,
right? There was no bathroom though so that would be a problem if it was an
actual residence…
Anyway, we needed a bed down there so I volunteered mine (then was too
lazy to put it back in my room for almost a month, go figure) and we dressed up
the place as best we could.
Honestly it wasn’t too bad.
It worked well enough and that’s what counts! We spent most of the time filming all the various Namtaru
scenes that weekend.
However we did spend part of the day on Saturday filming outside the
house. We went to Meadowbrook Park and filmed some nightmare montage footage
with Morgan, we well as some of the Dream World scenes from Episode 11 with
Skyler and Zelda. Since we had
planned to shoot everything in the summer and didn’t except to be filming in
November the actors were only wearing t-shirts and jeans – and it was November
in central Illinois so it was not just chilly, it was downright COLD. But all the actors, as usual, braved
the weather and filmed like pros.
There was a scene that we filmed at Meadowbrook that required a
totally new person as an extra with one line. Skyler and Zelda ask directions from a person living in the
Spirit World, but in true Yibble fashion I hadn’t bothered to find anyone for
that small part. Luckily there were other people wandering around the park that
day so I asked some random people if they wanted to be in a TV show. One girl
said yes, so I want to thank that person who’s name I can’t remember (and am
too lazy to look up) for joining in that day!
We also filmed the scene from Episode 3 where Mordecai is mobbed by
adoring fans. We didn’t really
have any extras at that point expect one and we needed more than one person to
make up a mob, so all the other actors dressed up in weird outfits – supposedly
cosplaying characters from the show we never actually get to see a whole
episode from – so it worked…sort of…maybe. It was all we had so we did what we could and had a
blast. The part where Maria has to
flash Mordecai her bra to get his attention was probably the worst part for
Morgan because I think she actually ended up having to really flash people – in
November – in the cold. Sorry Morgan!
Saturday night we ended up reshooting footage that had filmed before
for the nightmare montage. I wanted masked people dancing and confusing Maria
in her nightmare and we filmed that in September, but I wasn’t in love with the
footage and wanted to try again – this time dressing everyone in white instead
of black and using a backlight. Brittany brought a fog machine and strobe light
with her which made everything look so awesome!
I didn’t have masks that would work though and someone had the idea to
get paint. Brittany managed to find glow-in-the-dark paint, but it wasn’t for
use on people, just on craft materials.
She insisted that since it was non-toxic it would be fine and that
became a running joke through the rest of the film shoots. Everyone wanted to use the glow paint
regardless of toxicity to humans and I have to admit it did look super
cool! By the time we were ready to
film the shots, however, it was well past midnight. I think we wrapped shooting
around 2am. I still made the
actors get up around 9am the next morning. Sadist alert.
We reshot the hotel scenes from October on Sunday morning and even
though they were tired from the night before, the actors still had more energy
than they did after shooting the cave scenes. While I checked out of the hotel,
James and Brittany filmed montage footage for the scenes where Mordecai won’t
let Maria out of the hotel room.
Everyone collaborated on the jokes and bits (but I think it was Morgan
who came up with the ironing board part) and we ended up with some great
footage.
The afternoon was spent
filming the rest of scenes that took place in Namtaru’s digs, then we wrapped
shooting and disbursed. We didn’t
film in December because everyone was busy with various things like family,
holidays, and final exams. And it was cold. Not that it stops me from filming,
but it was a good thing we didn’t or some of the actors might have ended up
with hypothermia.
THE JANUARY SHOOT
Shooting didn’t really resume until February but we had a mini-shoot
in January. Bryan, Jen, and I
threw the most AWESOME New Year’s Eve party that year. It was a masquerade ball (but there was
more drinking than dancing) and we rang in the New Year playing pretty much every
board and card game in the house and stayed up until dawn. There were mostly SFF members there (and others) so it was almost like a mini-reunion. Honestly, it was one of the
best nights of my life.
Why mention a party when we weren’t filming? Well, because two people
who attended that party and were willing to film after it. Holly Simons, who played the original
Maria Sanchez in Dream Chasers was willing and able to reprise her role and
record her lines for a couple of scenes in the final episode. Since Maria only appeared as a
reflection in a mirror it only required Holly for that part of the seen so we
could film it without Morgan. It
was written that way on purpose since I didn’t know if I could even get Holly
to reprise her role and when I would be able with her if I could. Since she made it to the New Year’s
Party I jumped at the chance to film her lines. I will say it is really hard to film a person’s reflection
in the mirror because the angle at which the camera can see the person is not
the angle at which that person can see herself. It’s kind of weird.
James was able to stick around until the day after the party when we
could reshoot the scene between Skyler and Namtaru in Episode 3. We had originally shot that scene in
May at Allerton, but it didn’t look right. In the scene Namtaru is supposed to look powerful and in
charge, but Bryan is significantly shorter than James so having Bryan lording
his power over James just looked silly.
They agreed to reshoot the scene and since it takes place in a dream we
decided to use several locations for it.
We traipsed all over CU and filmed parts of the scenes in a variety of
places, always finding a way for Bryan to be physically higher in the shot than
James until the end of the scene where Namtaru’s power has been asserted. Then
we used the final shots of the scene we shot in May to wrap it up. The final scene is MUCH better than the
first version!
THE FEBRUARY SHOOT
We returned to do a full, intensive shoot on the third weekend in
February. Actually it wasn’t that
intense because the number of scenes left to film was a pretty small number at
that point. I think we were about 75% done by then. The main thing we filmed that weekend were miscellaneous
shots for the opening credit sequence of Mordecai’s show Sorcerer. The show-with-in-a-show was based on the
adventures of Zandra, Cory, and Maria in The Curse but focused more on Mordecai
as the title character where he – of course – played himself in this supposedly
very successful show that Terri was a diehard fan of. She is often seen wearing
Sorcerer themed t-shirts and tops throughout the show.
I needed to find actors willing to step into the roles of these
characters who had no scripted lines, which is easier then finding actors who
have to speak. Annamarie happened
to be free that weekend so she donned a wig and played the starring character
Alex (aka Zandra), and I coerced convinced Diana Neatour to play Marie (aka
Maria), and she brought along her sister Julia Mayfair to play Gwen (aka Cory). Dan Zangerl joined us to be a random
extra who played lots of little parts and some of the other actors decided to
don new costumes and frolic in the background.
There’s something both confusing and freeing filming random stuff for
opening credits to an action-adventure TV show. The actors were often confused
as why they were doing certain things and I felt free to just do random
goofiness or fun ideas without having to explain why it was happening. We filmed in my edit bay at work, in
the hallways of the WILL-TV building on campus, in Lincoln Park, the Villa, and
some other places.
We did bizarre things like having Annamarie hide in a fridge, which
had been unplugged and cleared out by the previous tenants but never cleaned so
it smelled bad. Sorry Annamarie. Thanks for going in there. Was it her idea to
go in there or mine? Or someone else’s? I have no idea, but thanks for doing
it! We were able to put random
outfits on the characters, do random things in random places, and in general
just had a lot of fun goofing off.
The resulting opening credit montage is for a show that will never exist
but that I kind of want to watch.
That weekend we also filmed the scenes with Labarta, played by the
talented Nina Samii who I had not worked with in years and it was wonderful to
film with her again. Of course it
was cloudy and actually rained a little while we were filming (but not enough
to make me stop) and there was a badly choreographed fight scene on slippery
gravel stones in the rain that had falls and bloopers and bad things
happen.
But everyone was a trouper – as they always are of my often sadistic
set – and we were able to end the day having dinner at the Courier Café – one
of the best and most unique restaurants in Urbana. While there we had a surprise – Nina was our waitress! Yes, after filming in the rain she went
to work, donned an apron, and served us food. You are amazing Nina and I hope we left you a big tip. That'd be really mean of me if I didn't.
I think we filmed more that weekend, I just can’t remember what it
was. I know there was a lot more downtime
and general hanging out and having fun then there is usually and honestly those
shoots are the better ones.
Sometimes it’s nice to film a little and hang out a lot then to film a
lot and be so tired you’re rather sleep than hang out. This is probably the weekend I realized
that filming SFF productions is less about the script and more about the excuse
to get together with people who live far away and that you rarely get to see
except on set.
THE MARCH SHOOT
Like the February shoot there wasn’t a lot left to film. This was actually the last big full
weekend shoot for the whole production.
After this there were only mini-shoots that were done in a single day,
often in just a couple of hours.
The main thing we filmed on Saturday, and the biggest part left to
film, were the hotel room scenes from the final episode.
The scene with Skyler, Terri, and Zelda
in the hotel hallway was fun to film because the script calls for them to end
up in another hotel room and since we only had the one they just ended up
walking into some stranger’s room that had left the door open at the end of the
shot. I think the room was empty and being cleaned, but still it was criminally
amusing.
Inside the room we filmed the big fight scenes at the end. Luckily the
choreography was exactly the same as the other part of the fight we filmed back
in September so we didn’t have to waste a lot of time blocking it out. We just had to adjust everything for
the different set up and location as we filmed. Since the fight actually ended
up leaving the room and had two actors running down the hallway – one with a
gun – and ended in a stairwell I had to make sure the hotel was okay with us
doing that and filming there in general.
Finding a hotel that would allow that actually took a little time and I
ended up being approved to film at the Holiday Inn Express in Tuscola, IL.
It was a fairly laid back weekend since there wasn’t much to shoot and
since we were all stayed in the hotel in Tuscola overnight (instead of some us
staying at home and the cat-allergic ones in the hotel) is was a great night to
just hang out after filming, go out to dinner, swim for a while, and just
relax. The next day we finished up whatever was left to shoot and went out
separate ways.
SPRING SHOOTS
There were a few more mini-shoots in the spring. There were two shoots in April, the
first one was with Anita Stein reprising her role as the older Zandra. Sometime in the winter Brittany had
written a resolution scene between Zandra and Zelda, but we were never able to
get both actors together at the same time. We filmed Brittany’s lines in March and I filmed Zandra’s
lines in April. I also filmed
Zandra’s lines in another scene from Episode 13 that had some problems in the
edit bay.
Morgan’s lines for the scene were filmed in February when everything
was brown and gray and still looked like winter. Anita’s lines were filmed in
April when the grass was green and it was clearly spring. When I edited them
together they looked ridiculous. That’s the problem with shooting different
characters lines at different times for the same scene, you can’t always get
them to match. Luckily that scene was part a dream and I was able to make it
black and white where the difference is not as noticeable.
The other shoot in April, concerned the
opening credits for the Sorcerer show.
We filmed a lot in February, but we needed more shots to make it work.
Annamarie donned the blonde wig again, then we reunited with Diana and Julia
and went to Lake of the Woods to film more random footage. We had a blast just goofing off for
random parts of unscripted scenes that for some reason included such things as
barbequing pinecones, handcuffs, and Annamarie in a shopping cart.
One of the flashback scenes in Episode 6 required a couple of
children. Morgan had three younger siblings who were the right age so I
travelled to their house one spring night and filmed those scenes plus some
footage of Drew Thomas looking creepy as a nameless villain for the opening
credits of Sorcerer (he eventually did get a name – Gemini Drake, which Drew
came up with).
Another mini-shoot took place at the end of May, close to when
everyone was coming to watch the completed show and have a party, so I left it
pretty late. The scene involved two of the Primes, who are the same power rank
as White Feather. I think it was one of those situations where I was doing the
final edits of the episodes and realized that particular scene had a title
place holder that said “Insert scene later” and I was all like “HOLY CRAP! I need to shoot that!” So I called up everyone I knew and
found two people who were willing to film that Saturday, threw them in
costumes, drove to the MacLeod Farm, and shot them. That sounds bad…and
weird..and weirdly bad. Although
it true that I threw people in costumes, drive them to out of the way areas and
shoot them all the time, just not in criminal way. A big, huge thank you to Michael Steen and Nghi Vo for
stepping in to play Red Fox and Gold Ring.
OTHER MINI-SHOOTS
Brittany, who ended up being co-executive producer because she ended
up putting in almost as much time and money into the project as I did, did a
lot of filming on her own. Since
she had a camera and friends up in the Chicago area where she lived she was
able to film some of the Zelda scenes by herself. Images of ocean, the moon, the tombstones in the credits,
and lot of other graveyard cutaways were filming by her. There are a lot of shots of Zelda just
walking around look angry or miserable or confused (or all three) around random
parts of town for multiple montages (I really nailed the “lets look sadly into
the distance” montage on this show), which she filmed as well.
She was also able to film the scenes from Episode 1 where Zelda gets
into a fight with a random guy (played by her boyfriend at the time), the
burial mound scenes where she gets cursed by White Feather (or rather stock
footage of her) after chasing a ghost, played by Amy Kaup.
There was also a scene at a bus/train
station where Zelda tries to ask multiple people for help but they all ignore
her. She hasn’t realized she’s a
ghost yet and it was important for there to be several and different people
there. Brittany found some great extras for it – more than I could have!
Brittany also filmed the scene with Mordecai and his agent, played by
the late (and great) Marilyn Whalen, from Episode 4 and various montage footage
of Mordecai since Adam lived in the Chicago area too. She’s a great director and both she and Adam came up with
some hilarious bits for that scene.
If she hadn’t been able to film all of that on her own it would have
taken a lot longer to finish shooting the show.
POST PRODUCTION
Not only did Brittany film a lot of stuff on her own, she also edited
a lot as well. She edited more
than half of Episode 2 and almost all of Episodes 4 & 5 by herself. We split the production and since both
of us had tapes we decided to have an editing marathon in early May. I took the train up to her place and we
spent three days in an amazing edit fest. We edited for almost 72 hours
straight, taking turns when each other got sleepy. We would eat while the computer was rendering special
effects and only took breaks to go to the bathroom. As we were editing we kept coming across scenes or bits that
weren’t filmed – most of which involved Zelda luckily. So while I was editing
she and her boyfriend (now husband) Kevin went out to film various scenes like
Zelda being trapped in the demon bowl from Episode 6 and flashback scenes from
the same episode and others.
After that weekend we both collapsed in our separate places and I
resumed editing the following week.
We made it through the rough cut of 11 out of 13 episodes so that was
really good (amazing in fact). I
finished the rest and did the final cuts and put it all together. After everything was done we had a big
party and watched all the episodes then, just because I felt like it, we handed
out awards voted on by those present.
IN CONCLUSION
Eidolon was a HUGE project that ended up being the most expensive and
expansive production I have ever filmed.
It finally brought the two groups of SFF actors together – the ones who
filmed with me in CU from 1996-2000 and the ones I met and filmed with at SIUC
in Carbondale from 2001-2002 as well as some new people. Eidolon merged everyone together, but
it required a lot of effort, time, and travel to get all the actors in one
place long enough to film it all.
What began as a project I thought about writing, but never intended to film,
turned into the biggest – and one of the best – productions I’ve ever
done. Traveling all around Illinois and filmed everywhere was challenging but it was also exciting and a lot of fun. It was fantastic to work
with all these talented people and there was a lot less drama on this set than
one previous ones. That’s because
I was medicated. YAY
MEDICATION! I like being sane. Well, mostly sane. Some what sane. Still sadistic, but mostly sane.
Thank you to everyone who not only acted in Eidolon, but also those
who helped out on crew, provided transportation, food, drink, party supplies,
and of course those people and locations who allowed us to film on their
premises. This project – like all
of them – was a collaborative effort that wouldn’t have been possible without
everyone’s help. A special thanks, of course, to my co-producers Brittany Ann
Whalen, Morgan Thomas, and James McKinley!
All this reminiscing has made me want to watch the show again. If you
need me I’ll be spending the next seven hours watching all the episodes – nine
hours if I watch the bloopers reel.
The first real film I made – using actual film – was made for a school assignment in Film Production
class at SIUC. It was shot on 8MM and that’s when I learned why lights and knowing
about proper exposure settings are so freaking important when dealing with real
film. I mean it’s always important, and I almost never pay attention to that,
but having to reshoot something that’s too dark on video tape is annoying but
okay. Having to reshoot anything
for any reason on actual film is not only annoying – it’s expensive. It’s like really freaking expensive and
my exposure problems with this film and The Long Take left me broke. 
Speaking of exposure, let’s talk about one of the actors in the film –
specifically Jacob MacLeod. The
basic plot is a woman running through the woods away from something
(reality). She ends up in a
beautiful garden (Allerton) and doesn’t notice someone stalking her (Jacob) who
throws roses at her from far away and leaves a trail of rose petals for her to
follow. 
There was no way I would film Jacob wandering around Allerton park buck
ass naked, so at the very least he needed pants. Wandering around Allerton in
just pants would also look weird, and since it was a fantasy with fantasy
costumes (because it’s me) I put him in a white satin vest with a big white
belt as well as white pants. In the end the outfit looked pretty weird too, but it was better than nakedness. Aside from looking a little silly - something that happens all the time in SFF productions, and that Jacob was more than used to at this point - it wast that big of a deal, right? 
In Central Illinois that means there’s a 50/50 chance of it
being rainy and/or freezing cold.
It happened to be quite a cold day and Jacob had to run around outside
with no sleeves, a half-naked chest, and a thin vest and pants for at least
three hours. 
