Survivor's Club: Fighting the Cold

There are a lot of days when we film in bad weather - days so hot your eyeballs feel like they're frying, days so cold your hands might fall off, and rain pouring so hard you could almost drown on set. Each month we'll remember one of those horrible weather days and celebrate the survivors who braved the elements in order to film.  Why would we want to remember those days?  Because going through hell on set has a way of bringing everyone closer together when they can say they survived mother nature AND filming on a Yibble set.

FIGHTING THE COLD

The Dragon & The Unicorn was the fifth production we filmed and was shot between the fall of 1997 and the spring of 1998.  The previous productions we’d filmed had mostly been shot in the late spring or summer.  The only production that had been filmed in the winter at that point was Destiny II and only one scene was shot outside. It was a quick scene with only one shot in the courtyard of Wesley United Methodist Church and it was chilly but not too cold. The only weather issues we’d had at this point had been hot weather in the unair-conditioned Great Hall. 

The actors had never experienced a freezing cold set before, so of course I had to introduce them to one. There’s a flashback scene – actually it’s the first scene of the movie – that takes place in a forest at an unspecified point in history (early Middle Ages).  It starts off with running, which keeps the actors warm, but then they stop and talk which is when the cold really starts to set in.  

The costumes were tunics over turtlenecks and pants with boots and cloaks, I think the tunics were made of wool, but maybe it was just knit made to look like wool. Yeah, probably not real wool.  It’s not like they were naked or in short sleeves, but they weren’t in Victorian garb with heavy coats.  Now that I think about it I’ve never filmed a scene with heavy Victorian clothing when it was actually cold outside. Maybe I should try that one of these days.

Anyway, it was cold. Very cold. Not just chilly or a little breezy, but bone-chilling, teeth-chattering, hypothermia inducing cold with a sharp wind that feels like it’s cutting through you. The kind of cold that even in the sunlight you’re still shivering and your breath in the air is more like fog then mist.  You know, a typical Illinois Saturday in late November. 

Luckily we were filming a fight scene and moving around helps warm the actors up.  Unfortunately most of the fight scene takes place rolling around on the ground – the dirty, leafy, freezing cold ground. We choreographed the fight on set, of course (because that’s how I roll), so it took even longer to film than a typical scene.  We were freezing in the forest for at least two if not three hours.

I took a photo with the actors after the filming was over and what I love most about this photo is the fact that the actors – especially Nina and Annamarie – are clearly freezing their butts off and I’m grinning like an idiot while wearing a super warm coat.  I’m not just a sadist, I’m clearly a selfish one.  To be fair though I often took off my coat or didn’t wear one on other cold shoots to go through what the actors were going through – but only if I had a tripod, because I have trouble holding the camera steady on a good day. 

The poor actors were so cold that when we got back to the my house they were still shivering.  The Homestead had this wonderful long radiator with a thick marble slab on top that was perfect to sit on and warm up.  The actors’ hand were so cold to the touch that I heated up towels and wrapped their hands in them.  I made a pot of hot tea and did my best to thaw them out.  I was worried they might get sick from being out in the cold so long.

But they did thaw out eventually and none of them lost any fingers or toes or ended up with pneumonia, so it worked out well in the end.

Thank you to Annamarie MacLeod, Nina Samii, and Danny Skirvin – the brave warriors who fought the cold (as well as each other) on the very first frozen film shoot!  The next time I find a marble-topped radiator I’ll call you and we can have a hot tea and towel reunion.

Production Diary - The Gift Bearer, Part 1

Production Diary – The Gift Bearer, Part 1

Pre-Production

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 Gift Bearer. 

However, since it’s a complicated TV Show with quite a bit of behind-the-scenes stuff, I’m going to split this into four posts: Pre-Production, The First Half of Production, The Second Half of Production, and Post Production.

The Gift Bearer was filmed and edited during September of 2001 until May of 2002.  It was an ambitious production in many ways requiring more travel to out of town locations then any other production, including Eidolon. Eidolon had many actors from all over the state and we drove to multiple places during production, but that was once a month. During the Gift Bearer we were filming at locations one-two hours away on a regular basis, sometimes every weekend. The Gift Bearer is also the first and only production that took the actors out of state to film at a location over two hundred miles away, but more on that in part 2.

The Gift Bearer is one of the few productions where I started planning one project and ended up with something completely different.  After the Curse ended (i.e. after I imploded from insanity and canceled it), I wanted to film a new TV series.  Peter Normand had introduced me to a lot of amazing historical sites and cool places where I could film and that, combined with my natural love of costumes, made me determined to film a show about time travel.

I was excited and decided to create the landmark production T.O.A.S.T.T. It was a landmark show because of how hard it crashed and burned.  Yes, I ended up with burned TOASTT. 

It was a show about a group of criminals sanctioned by the government to travel through time on specific missions in exchange for having their records erased. It really isn’t the best concept and there are a lot of questions about why criminals and why not government soldiers, etc.  It was also set in an underground base and would have required the construction of huge set for the time machine and computer room.  That was a something that I really didn’t think through.

There are a lot of details about TOASTT that were actually recycled into plot elements, costumes, outlines, and characters for The Gift Bearer.  For more information on TOASTT and it’s legacy check out this Lost Production post.

So I threw TOASTT out the window (luckily I didn’t hit anyone with it), and had to start from scratch, if I wanted to film a show at all, which I really wasn’t sure about after the dreadful fiasco at the read through. All the negative things cast members said about it were true, I just didn’t want to hear it, let alone acknowledge it at the time.  The read through was at the beginning of May and I went home for summer vacation seriously bummed out. I really wanted to do a show about time travel, but I had no other ideas so I gave up.

                                            THE IDEA

One of the things I did for fun back then (and still sometimes do) was to dress people up in costumes, take them out to the woods, and shoot them - with a camera (not a gun).  It's a lot of fun and a good creative outlet for me. During July of 2001 I managed to talk Jen Weber and Margaret Olson into doing one of those photo shoots.

We went out to Allerton Park – a wonderful location I have used for both video productions and other photo shoots.  Jen and Margaret dressed up in a few different outfits and we had a lot of fun frolicing around taking photos. Two of the outfits kind of looked like something from Ancient Greece (okay, they actually looked like the Art Nouveau/Mucha version of Ancient Grecians), and two of the outfits were early 1900s Edwardian style.  These lovely ladies and this photo shoot inspired the show and that’s why it’s actually dedicated to them in the credits of the last episode.

At some point during the shoot I began to think about what if the women in these photos from different eras were actually the same characters and were actually time travelers.  I decided that instead of travelling through time with specific missions and working for the government, they were just a pair of sisters who travelled through time just for fun – like taking a vacation.  I liked the idea, and continued to think about it in the back of my mind until I got the film back from being developed (back in the old days before digital cameras we had to wait). 

Sometimes ideas for productions just pop into my head, but sometimes they emerge slowly.  For some strange reason I distinctly remember the creative process of how I came up with The Gift Bearer.  I would often think about it while doing dishes or other mindless tasks.  I spent several days tackling different aspects of the idea. I realize now that I wanted to make it a good, solid concept in order to avoid another mess like TOASTT. 

The process went a little something like this:

Okay, so we have two sisters who like to travel through time just for fun.

Why two sisters? Two sisters seems odd. How about three? Everything’s better in threes. A trio just seems better than a duo.

Okay, so three sisters who travel through time just for fun.

Why would they do it just for fun? I mean, if I could time travel I’d do it just for fun, but that doesn’t really work in a TV show.  They need to have a reason. What if they start out just travelling for fun and end up meeting another time traveler or something and then they decide to keep traveling in order to meet that person again?  Maybe it’s their mother or their father?  No, too cliché, but having it be a relative might be a good idea. That would create questions for the girls about their family and they would need to catch that person in order to get their questions answered.  Maybe that relative is part of a secret organization like the one in TOASTT or maybe not.  What kind of relative should it be? A sibling? No, again too cliché. What about a cousin? No, that’s not a close enough relative and I don’t think they should be from the same generation. The relative needs to be older. A grandparent? No, too old. What about a long lost Aunt or Uncle? That would work.

Okay, so three sisters who travel through time looking for their Aunt.

Do they know she’s a traveler? No, they should meet her as a surprise.  Why do they need to find her?  What drives them to look for her? And once they find her why does she keep running away from them?  Maybe they need her to be their legal guardian because their mother has died. Or maybe they said she was their guardian after their mom died, but didn’t actually know where their Aunt was so they made it all up and now their in trouble if they don’t actually find her. That could work.

Okay, so three sisters who travel through time looking for their Aunt in order to prove she exists and keep their family together.

How do they travel through time? They’re not part of a secret organization.  No science because that requires machines and logic and facts and sets.  Do they use magic? Are they sorcerers or wizards?  No, if they had magic they could find other ways around the problem of not having their Aunt. They could create her, or put a spell on someone else, or magically shrink her and put her in their pockets then take her home.  So they aren’t magical themselves, but they need something magical to allow them travel through time. 

Okay, so three sisters who travel through time using a magic object who are looking for their Aunt in order to prove she exists and keep their family together.

What kind of object?  Does the object contain a magical character like a genie or is it just an item like a pocket watch? Wait, in The Curse there was this cool statue called The Gift Bearer – and I freaking LOVE the statue.  Maybe the statue could magically create an object that would allow them to travel through time?  I like that idea. Then they would have something to magically give them period clothing, money, and anything else they need. The Gift Bearer could be like a genie granting wishes.  A freaking adorable cat statue genie! But it can’t talk, so how do they communicate with it?  Presumably it can hear and understand them, but they wouldn’t know that.  There would probably be a lot of trial and error to figure out how to make it work.  

Okay, so three sisters who travel through time using a magic statue who are looking for their Aunt in order to prove she exists and keep their family together.

Where do they get the statue from? Have they always had it? Does it come in the mail? Did they order it from QVC?  Maybe it just shows up on their doorstep one day and they have no idea who gave it to them. Ooh!  Maybe it’s in a box addressed to their long lost Aunt and they’re all like “What the hell? She doesn’t even live here!”But why would they send it to the Aunt? Who sends it to them anyway? Well, I'll figure that part out later. 

Okay, so three sisters who travel through time using a magic statue that mysteriously showed up on their doorstep and they are looking for their Aunt in order to prove she exists and keep their family together.

Do they use the statue itself to travel or does the statue give them a magic object to travel.  The time travel object should be different from the statue, given to them by the statue. On purpose or do they get it accidentally?  Accidental sounds more fun. It should be something strange or unusual, not cliché like a watch.  Let’s see, what’s in my prop box?  A gun? Heck no, way too time period specific and if they travel through time by shooting that could cause all kinds of bad situations that would be hard to explain.  A teapot? Too breakable, and wouldn’t make sense. A muffin? No, Yibble, just no. And why do I have a muffin in my prop box?  Oh it’s fake, that’s fine then. Ooh, my fake potato!  Time traveling potato?  Spudnik? No, that’s stupid.  Oh hey, that’s the gold ball I used in the fantasy photo shoot that one time. The gold ball is timeless, different, and shiny. Extra points for shiny. I’m going with the gold ball.

Okay, so three sisters who travel through time using a shiny gold ball they got from a magic statue that mysteriously showed up on their doorstep and they are looking for their Aunt in order to prove she exists and keep their family together.

Did you actually read all of that? I’m shocked. It’s like creative mind-vomit. But that is actually how I came up with the idea. It slowly and gradually took form over several weeks.  

                                    THE CHARACTERS

I fleshed out the ideas and decided on basic character traits for the girls based on the traditional archetypes for a three or four person group. The basic archetypes are the Intuitive, the Intellectual, the Active, and the Emotional, i.e. the leader, the brains, the muscle, and the heart.  I made the oldest sister both the Intuitive and the Active, the middle sister became the Intellectual, and the youngest was the Emotional. 

I don’t remember why I named them after characters in Roman/Greek mythology, but I wanted them to share traits with their namesakes. Minerva is the Roman Goddess of Wisdom and War (and Arts and Crafts), so that was a perfect name for the middle child. I wanted Minerva to be very smart, but also silly and strange and kind of crazy at times.  She’s basically a Mary Sue with a couple of screws loose, and Morgan played her to perfection.

I’ve always liked the name Persephone and the youngest being named after the Goddess of Spring worked well. Plus Persephone married Hades, the god of the Underworld, so I could have her be drawn to the bad boy types. However I had to give her a nickname – Peri – because always calling her Persephone seemed long and awkward.  I had fun writing all the characters, but Peri is actually my favorite to write because she’s such a deliciously dumb diva.  She’s a total ditz, and personally I think she gets all the best lines.

And then there’s Atlanta. Yeah, I got the name wrong. It should have been Atalanta, not Atlanta. In Greek mythology Atalanta is a beautiful princess, but she is a strong and fiercely competitive athlete who doesn’t want to get married. I thought I remembered the name correctly so I didn’t bother looking it up until much later – like years later. That’s why she’s named after a city instead of a mythical badass female athlete. My bad. Oh well, it’s way too late to change it now.

                                        THE SCRIPT

By the beginning of August I was ready to start writing.  Although thinking up the idea was a slow process, writing the scripts was not.  I wrote each script as an hour-long episode.  Even though I knew I would be editing them into half-hour episodes I didn’t feel that 24-26 pages would be enough time for a good, solid script involving time travel. So the scripts were written as Episodes 1-7, but through editing they became Episodes 1-14. It's a bit confusing, even for more, but it's not nearly as confusing as the episode numbering for Pandora's Box, so...um...that's something.  I guess.

I wrote the first three scripts (Episodes 1-6) in five days, and the first seven scripts (Episodes 1-14) in two weeks. That’s crazy fast. I was clearly in a manic phase at the time.  Once I had figured out the basic concept and started typing, the scripts pretty much wrote themselves.  I’m not kidding. Writing the first seven scripts – especially the first three – was like watching the TV show in my head.  I couldn’t stop writing because I wanted to know what happened next.

The first part where they get the statue, the gold ball appears, and they travel through time accidentally were all planned. Even meeting their Aunt Camilla was planned, of course. What wasn’t planned was the male character who turned out to also be a time traveler.  When I was writing the scene where the sisters are captured and confronted by one of the villagers, and he reveals to them that he is also a time traveler, I was like WTF?  Who the hell is this guy? They’re reactions to him in the scene were basically my reactions to his character showing up in the first place.

Xavier wrote himself.

I decided that the Berry (aka the Gift Bearer) was a trickster and that any “gift” from him would be fickle.  I thought it would be funny if the gold ball rarely took them to whatever period in time they wanted to be, or if they got to the right time they ended up in an awkward situation, like in the middle of a lake.  They could plan to be in 15^th century France and end up in 18^th century Illinois, which is exactly what happens in the second script (episodes 3-4).  I planned that. 

What I didn’t plan was that time traveler guy showing up again. 

I don't think he even had a name in the initial rough drafts of the first two episodes, I just called him "X" which led to Xavier (which is a name I've always liked anyway). I have a very clear memory of writing the scene where he appears for the first time in the episode and recognizes the girls. He groans and talks about all the times he’s met them before and how they keep messing things up for him. I was just sitting there typing it going WTF?!?  He’s met them how many times? Victorian fiasco? What the hell is going on?!?  

This happened again when he confronts them in the attic and calls their bluff.  That was a problem for me because I didn’t know how to give the girls the upper hand in a situation Xavier was already familiar with and prepared for. I hate it when my characters suddenly become smarter then me. It makes things complicated (General Leffridge did the same thing to me while writing Episode 3 of Pandora’s Box). I wrote that episode in record time because I really wanted to know who that guy was, what he was doing there, and how he fit into the series as a whole.  After I had written the first seven scripts I had to go back and make sure that everything foreshadowed by Xavier happened and made sense, since Xavier had a different timeline. 

Even then I got things wrong, the best example being that in Episode 8 when Crumby says that he was captured by the sisters Xavier asks him, “did they hide in a corner and hit you with a mirror?” but Peri doesn’t actually do that to Xavier until after that point in his timeline.  Crumby rejoins the Echelon in Episode 8, but when Xavier is hit with a mirror by Peri in Episode 9 Xavier and Crumby are working together.  Does that make sense? Basically, I messed up.

Writing the first seven scripts for the Gift Bearer, especially the first three, is an experience that I will never forget. It was a magical creative moment in my life where the characters and scenes wrote themselves and I felt like I was just along for the ride. 

                                                CASTING

When it came time to head back to SIU at the end of August, I knew I wanted to film the Gift Bearer and was both excited and ready to make it happen. I was the Director of SPC-TV at the time and unfortunately in my eagerness to film the Gift Bearer I did a bad job being in charge of the TV station.  It took me all semester to realize that though.

Anyway, I had done some casting in my head by this point and I had decided that the five main actors I was going to cast in the lead parts for TOASTT were going to be the leads for The Gift Bearer.  I probably should have asked the actors how they felt about that first.  The original cast (in my head) was Michelle Chapman as Atlanta, Morgan Thomas as Minerva, Brittany Ann Whalen as Peri, Mike D as Xavier, and Michael Meyer as Crumby.  Although Morgan, Brittany, and Michael were willing and able to play Minerva, Peri, and Crumby, Michelle and Mike D were not able to play Atlanta and Xavier, so I had to find new people for those parts.

There were other major and minor characters that I was able to cast without having to audition them.  When Morgan introduced me to her sister, LT, I immediately decided that she had to play Camilla.  She was a really great actress who did a wonderful job in the part. Unfortunately LT wanted to play Morgana and wasn’t sure she wanted to take on such a big role. I managed to convince her, with Morgan’s help, and I’m glad I did (although I don’t know if she is. I think she still wishes she could have played Morgana).

I cast Morgan’s boyfriend as Minerva’s boyfriend Tez (for obvious reasons), and got Paul Costello to play Loki, one of Drake’s henchmen.  I also talked Mike H into playing Blackheart, the main villain in Episodes 3 & 4.  I asked Ja’e DeSoto to play Victor Drake, the primary villain of season 1, and he agreed Whatever else you may say about him, he did a kick ass job playing Drake. Seriously, he played the character with just the right amount of smirk and sleaze.

Two of the characters in the third script (Episodes 5 & 6) were going to be played by actors from CU who were planning to travel down to Carbondale to film with us for one weekend – Annamarie MacLeod as Dimitria, the villain’s henchman/sidekick, and Margaret Olson as Venitia, aka the sisters’ mother.  I wrote the parts in that script specifically for those two. I can’t remember if Annamarie wanted to play an evil sidekick or just wanted to participate and was willing to play any part. However, I do remember that Margaret wanted to play a character who was clumsy which is why Venitia is always bumping into things and tripping over her tunic.

I decided to hold auditions to fill out the rest of the cast. This was the first and only time I have ever actually held auditions for any of my productions.  I wrote up monologues for each character that I needed to cast.  I also had short dialogue scenes written so that I could test the chemistry between the person being auditioned and those already cast, primarily the sisters.  I needed to make sure that the person cast as Atlanta would work well with Morgan and Brittany, who helped out in the casting process.

I really regret not having taped the auditions.  I meant to, but didn’t, and I so wish I had because there were some awesome performances.  Russell was a brand new member of SPC-TV and I had my eye on him as a possible actor to play Xavier, but when he did the audition it blew me away.  He was amazing and I knew he would be perfect for the part.  Russell is an incredible actor, versatile and professional, and I very lucky to be able to work with him.  I can’t imagine anyone else playing that part.

The character of General, who doesn’t appear until Episode 13, was originally written to be a male character but I’m open to switching genders for characters where gender doesn’t really matter.  When LaQuesha Harris performed General’s monologue, she was beyond amazing.  She actually scared me with her ferocity and although the monologue was never intended to be used in the script I had to find a way to write it into a future episode because she was phenomenal.

The character was expanded just because I wanted to see her do more. To this day LaQuesha is one of the most talented actors I have ever worked with and I would jump at the chance to work with her again. She was in the acting program at SIUC and should be staring in major motion pictures by now but I don’t think she ever got her big break, which is a very sad thing for the rest of the world. Everyone should be able to see how amazing she is. She does star in a movie that you can watch on Amazon and other streaming platforms called The Gift of Grace (her stage name is now BlaQue Pearl).  She's amazing - go watch it!

I knew the hardest part to cast would be Atlanta, because she was a lead character who would need to be at almost every film shoot.  I needed someone who could look like she was Morgan and Brittany’s sister, who was comfortable playing a lead role, and could devote a lot of time to the production. We filmed almost every weekend and some times on week days or evenings as well. That’s a tall order to fill. There were two women at the audition who were both really talented and had good chemistry with Morgan and Brittany.  

Technically speaking Latasha did a better job at the audition, but this is one of the few times I could not cast colorblind. I hate the fact that I couldn’t cast her as Atlanta, but the other two sisters were already cast and I wanted it to be a surprise that they had different fathers, so they all had to look Caucasian.  I cast Latasha in the second largest female role available – Hela – and expanded it by having the character of the other Minerva (aka Minerva II) in Episodes 5 & 6 be Hela in disguise. In the end she was only able to play Minerva II and had to drop out of playing Hela because of the time commitment it required.

So I cast M.W. as Atlanta and she was great. During her audition she portrayed a combination of confidence and vulnerability that worked really well for Atlanta. Also, she had wonderful chemistry with Morgan and Brittany and they seemed to get along really well. I was excited to start filming.

Other characters cast at the auditions were Morgana and Taget, Shaw the villain from Episodes 1 & 2, Verner and Will the henchmen in Episodes 3 & 4 (played by R. A. and Ryan Homberg respectively), Electrode, and Genna There were still some characters that hadn’t been cast, but I figured I could cast them later (i.e. grab some poor crew person and fling them in front of the camera).

Once everything was ready and the cast list was assembled, the actors gathered together for a big, long read through of the first seven scripts, except a few people like Annamarie and Margaret.  

I think we only got through the first five scripts at the read through though.  It was great to see how everyone interacted and it felt like I was doing a real TV show somehow.

I scheduled the first weekend of shooting.  On Friday evening we would film five scenes from Episodes 9, 10, & 11 with just the sisters to get M.W., Morgan, and Brittany used to working together before our first big, long out of town shoot for Episodes 1 & 2 at Fort Massac on Saturday. We would conclude our first full weekend by shooting the law office scenes in Episodes 7 & 8 on Sunday.

That was the plan.

It didn’t work out that way.

Well, it sort of did, but not exactly. Let’s just say there were some major setbacks and serious problems that would have a lasting impact on the show.  I almost had to cancel the whole production just when we were about to start.

Tune in next month for The Gift Bearer, Part 2 – The First Half of Production, where we’ll find out who really played Atlanta, meet some reenactors when we film in a few forts, drown in costumes, and take an amazing trip to shoot in an amazing place. Oh, and Yibble goes crazy. Again. (Damn it Yibble!)