Production Diary – The Gift Bearer, Part 2

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 three posts.

Previously on ProductionDiary – The Gift Bearer we learned about the show that didn’t get filmed, where the idea for The Gift Bearer came from, went through characters, casting, and even auditions, and spent three pages reading Yibble mind-vomit about how the story evolved.  How did you survive reading all that?  Are you a masochist? If so, would you like to film next Saturday?

The Gift Bearer was filmed and edited between September of 2001 and May of 2002.  The fall was devoted to filming Season 1 – the original 7 scripts.  Each script was written as an hour-long episode even though I knew it would be edited into half hour parts.  So to minimize confusion I’ll refer to the episode number rather than the scripts.

THE FILMING

The parts were cast, the crew was set, and the first big weekend of filming had arrived.  On Friday evening we filmed five scenes from Episodes 9, 10, & 11 with just the sisters to get Marta, Morgan, and Brittany used to working together. That shoot was great, the actors really worked well together and I knew it was going to be an awesome show.  I couldn’t wait to film the next day.

Saturday was our first big, long out of town shoot for Episodes 1 & 2 at Fort Massac.  I was so excited for fun times with costumes at a recreated French fort. So cool!  We even had a crew for that day: Peter Normand was the Location Manager and Second Unit Director/Cameraman, Ryan Homberg as the Boom Mic Operator, Christine Komiskey was the Set Photographer, and Diana Neatrour, who was the series Script Editor, had traveled to SIUC from Central IL just for that weekend of filming to be the on set Script Assistant.

Everyone was scheduled to gather in front of the Student Center at 8am (or was it 7?) and one by one the actors arrived.  It took a while for everyone to get together. Marta, who was set to play Atlanta, was one of the last to arrive.  Jeremy, who was set to play Shaw (the main villain in Episodes 1 & 2) never showed up. That didn’t surprise me since he had seemed angry that he didn’t get the part of General and I ended up giving the part of Shaw to Ryan Homberg who did a great job and had a lot of fun (I hope).

Shortly after Marta showed up she pulled me aside and dropped a bombshell on me: she didn’t want to be in the show anymore.

Well, that’s not exactly true. She wanted to be in the show, but life had thrown her a curveball and she was an emotional wreck. She wasn’t sure if she could be a part of the whole production and didn’t want to film that day then quit later.  I really respected her for that.  She’s one of the few actors who quit in person, and I understood the problems she was facing and how complicated and difficult her semester would be. Her boyfriend, Rob, who had come with her that morning and was cast as another character in a different episode, still filmed with us, but Marta just couldn’t do it.  I thanked her for her consideration and tried not to show how upset I was.  Wait, that was before I was medicated so I probably did show how upset I was and that would have made everything worse. Sorry, Marta!

That left a HUGE problem.  We had lost our Atlanta.  It was about 8:30am on the morning of our first big, out of town shoot and we had no one to play one of the lead characters.  I didn’t know what to do.  I quickly conference with Peter and Diana, and I even considered cancelling the show.  Losing a lead actor right after you start filming and having to reschedule such a major day of shooting at the last minute makes you feel pretty hopeless about the future of the project.  I might have called a couple of people to beg them to play the part, but I can’t remember.

Peter suggested Christine, the Set Photographer.  At that point I didn’t care who it was as long as she could walk and talk and we could still film.  The trouble would be convincing her to do it. I’d had good luck throwing people into major parts at the very last minute in the past – it’s how I got Morgan Thomas to play Maria in The Curse, after all – but I didn’t know if Christine would be up for it. It was a lot to ask of her on the spur of the moment.

“A very nice friend of mine asked me if I would was interested in being set photographer knowing that I was a photography major,” Christine remembers, “and I was like ‘sure I’ll come along’ and me being horribly shy I was just going to tote my camera and hang out in the corner by myself and take pictures and be quiet and hope nobody even talked to me." 

"I get there the first day and Eleanore goes ‘hey um…so our main character quit and we can either cancel the shoot or find a new one’ and looks right at me.  I froze. I didn’t know what to do, but everybody – everybody– was staring at me with all these hopeful faces hoping that somebody would actually take this role. So I agreed.”

Yeah, I’m a bit heavy handed at times. I’m like a mafia enforcer:  I’m not saying I’ll break your legs if you don’t agree, but I’m saying walking might not be in your future. Well, whatever. It worked. Although Christine probably came to regret her choice because of problems later on, I am still extremely thankful that she came to the rescue that day and played the part. Seriously, The Gift Bearer might never have been filmed if she hadn’t stepped up that day. 

So here’s a HUGE THANK YOU Christine, from the bottom of my heart!

With an Atlanta onboard the shoot was back on and we hit the road to Fort Massac in Metropolis, IL.  There just so happened to be a reenactment that weekend and although they were dressed about a century after the episode was set, we were able to convince many of them to participate as extras.  I say we, but really it was Peter Normand who gathered them all together and got them to agree.  He’s awesome at that.  It was a script that needed angry villagers and soldiers and lots of extras and thanks to Peter, and the good fortune of filming on a weekend when reenactors were there, we were able to make the episode look great. Thank you Peter! 

It was a long day with many tortures including a hot attic, the girls getting tied up, stumbles, slips, and falls galore, but there were a lot of memories made and fun times like bloopers, and flubs, and the dick drawing on the wall that kept cracking Ryan up. Overall the shoot was a success. Peter filmed a lot of b-roll footage that really came in handing during editing, the actors got to know each other and it was a lot of fun – exhausting, but fun. 

“One of my favorite days was the first day,” Russell remembers, “there was so much raw energy going on that we finally found an outlet for after all the build up and excitement of wanting to do the series.” 

Although there were nearby restaurants, we opted to picnic at the Fort.  We probably should have gone outside since the attic was pretty dang warm, but for some reason we didn't.  Ah, good times.

We had caravanned to the fort and after filming ended at sunset, we all caravanned the hour+ home to Carbondale for a good night’s sleep.

The next day we were scheduled to film the Law Office scenes from Episodes 7 & 8.  I had a room reserved in the Student Center and all the actors called for that shoot gathered together at 10am to film. Well, all but one.  The scenes include the big reveal of the main villain Victor Drake and he’s in more than half of the scenes. J’ae DeSoto was cast in the role, and of course, he’s the one who didn’t show up.  I felt bad for the actors who were there that ended up wasting their time, but it wasn’t all a waste.  We were able to film all the scenes outside the conference room with Taget, Xavier, and Atlanta.  It was frustrating that it didn’t work out as planned, but at least we got something done, and four scenes is better than none.

I honestly don’t remember the order of shooting days after that.   I know that the next weekend we filmed the scenes with Drake and Peri for episodes 3 & 4 in the Old Main Restaurant, which wasn't easy to arrange, but they did and they actually made dinner for the two of them in exchange for a little advertising.  After the restaurant scenes we went to the library to film more scenes with Peri and Drake.  That shoot had a lot of laughs, but also made poor Brittany get sick.  Juicy Juice is bad. 

I had arranged a reshoot of the Law Office scenes for that sunday.  So we were schedule to film the Law Office scenes again, and everyone was there. Everyone except J’ae.  F—cker.  Seriously, this is the only time I ever had to reschedule a film shoot TWICE.  I rarely have to reschedule a shoot even once, but twice is unheard of and made me go into ScaryInsaneYibble Mode.  Which is like regular Yibble, only with a LOT more swearing - and possibly some shattered objects.  We filmed Loki and Hela’s lines so that at least they hadn’t shown up for nothing and wasted their time again.  We also filmed pretty much everything we could without Drake.  

Why didn’t I fire him?  Well, a good bad guy is hard to find and by the that time we had already filmed the hard-to-arrange restaurant scenes. Honestly, J’ae was perfect for the role and he did a fantastic job playing the vile Drake. I gave him a stern lecture about showing up or letting me know ahead of time if he couldn’t make it, and I don’t think he ever missed a shoot again (but I could be wrong). 

I think the next weekend was when we filmed a bunch of scenes for Episode 14 including Crumby’s death scene, but I can’t remember when that was. We shot the Crumby scenes on Saturday, where poor Darren had to lie on the ground in a bunch of weeds for like two hours.  He was only there visiting Christine, so he was hanging out on set with us and for those of you who haven’t figured it out yet – if you step on my set assume you will be playing a part.  That’s where I get my victims – extras!  I mean extras!

The day after we filmed Crumby's death we were able to film the rest of the Law Office scenes – with Drake – and they turned out great.  He finally showed up! Yay!  However, on that shoot – the third and thankfully final one for the Law scenes – the actor playing Hela didn’t show up, but given what had happened on the past two shoots I really couldn’t blame her.  Besides we had her lines already filmed so it wasn’t that big of a deal.  In the end, however, she wasn’t able to keep filming and we had to get creative in recasting the role.  Finding a new Hela took a while, but more on that later.

I think the next day big of filming after that was when we went to Fort De Chartres for the first time to film Episodes 3 & 4. The night before the shoot I had arranged to film the shots where Atlanta is boxing in Episodes 1 and 10 at the student gym.  I very stupidly didn’t bother getting her boxing gloves which I realized later how dangerous and irresponsible that was because she could sprained or even broken her hands.  I’m so sorry I put you in that kind of danger Christine! 

That same night we practiced the move where Xavier grabs Atlanta and throws her over his shoulder in Episode 3.  Christine was nervous about that and I understand why, so we practiced it the night before we were going to shoot it.  Russell, obviously, came with us to the gym and while goofing around he kicked the strong and heavy punching bag.

The next day we gathered at the Student Center early to head off to Fort De Chartres, ready to film.  “We were filming Episode (3 & 4) stuff,” Russell recalls. “Unfortunately I hurt my foot and didn’t tell Eleanore about it and she got a little bit upset that we went out and filmed and I didn’t tell her how bad I really was hurt.”

A little bit upset is putting it mildly - I was furious. Unmediated me lost my temper not because he hurt himself, but because he didn’t tell me about it.  That’s the kind of thing I would have cancelled the shoot for.  I could just filmed something else with the sisters instead.  The last thing I wanted was to knowingly allow someone to film with a serious injury – and yet I did.  It still bothers me that I made him film after finding out. 

Being a trouper and a professional (and probably wanting to calm me down) Russell decided that he could still film. He tried to down play the pain, but it didn’t work. “You can actually see when I go to pick up Atlanta,” says Russell, “you can tell the look on my face – that’s not strain, that’s pain from my foot hurting.  That was probably my worst day both physically and emotionally – and all three, mentally too.”

I filmed another scene  with him but it became very clear very quickly that he was in too much pain to continue.  I went ahead and filmed all the scenes I could without Russell, which wasn’t much, and we headed home early.  I considered that a day from hell – it certainly was for poor Russell!  I know he felt bad about it, I think he felt that he let us all down and at the time I agreed with him.  Now I want to kick myself for being an inconsiderate egomaniac.  I’m sorry Russell!  After the shoot was over Brittany took him to the emergency room.  That’s the only time I know of where someone on the set actually ended up at the hospital, although it wasn’t exactly filming related or because I had asked him to do something super dangerous. Luckily it turned out to only be a sprain, I think, and not a full on fracture or break. I think.

Another problem, although it was minor compared to Russell's foot and I guess it was more of an inconvenience then a problem, was that there were some reenactors there that day and although that would normally be awesome, the episode is set in an abandoned fort, so I had to shoot around unnecessary extras (I didn’t know there was such a thing before that).  They still made it into some of the shots, but hopefully no one really notices them in the end.

There were a lot of little shoots here and there, filming shots of the sisters for montages in various episodes, specifically for Episodes 10 and 11.  We also did the reshoot with Christine for the scenes from Episodes 9, 10, & 11 that we had shot with Marta, as well as other scenes that took place in the dorm.

One night of filming consisted of all the dorm shots from the montage in Episode 11 where the sisters travel to many different times with no luck in finding Camilla and Xavier.  Their efforts are represented in the many different costume changes they have.  I’m actually going to go count the number of changes they had right now.

Okay, I’m back. They each had six time-travel costume changes.  That’s not as many as I thought. But multiply each change of clothes by three and you have 18 costumes. We also filmed a couple other scenes with different costumes so there were over twenty that night.  Twenty costumes plus accessories like hats and scarves and such. That’s a LOT.  By the end of the shoot clothing was strewn across the room and piled up in heaps.  

I had the brilliant idea of filming the sisters (i.e. the actors) cleaning up the mess so that I didn’t have to – I mean it did it for the artistic images full of depth and meaning.  It dissolved into a clothing fight, then a giant-feather fight ending with Morgan getting hurt after being tackled with a blanket and that brought the fun evening to a screeching halt.  It really is true that it’s all fun and games until someone gets hurt.

Then there’s the Nashville shoot. On October 12, 2001, twelve people – eight actors and four crew members – piled into three cars and drove over 200 miles from Carbondale, IL to Nashville, TN to film scenes from Episodes 5 & 6 at the recreation of the Parthenon.  We left after 6pm because it was a Friday and people still had classes.

“The Nashville trip was extremely fun – especially the car ride there,” Brittany recalls. “The car ride was lots of singing and talking and getting to know the cast.”  We actually used walkie talkies to make sure we could stay in communication during the drive so no one got lost (this was before everyone had cell phones).  Driving in a caravan for 200 miles without losing anyone is not easy.  We all had to stop and gas up together, and all stopped at the same rest stop where the actors had a lot of fun goofing off on the playground before we hit the road again.

“It was a great trip, we all carpool down there and had some really good bonding experiences,” remembers Russell.  “We all had a good time, we enjoyed the hotel room and staying up late.”  It was between 11pm and midnight when we arrived at the Holiday Inn, after a harrowing experience where Mike decided to switch lanes really fast. When traveling in caravan fast lane switches and turns are a big no-no.  

Even though we had twelve people we could only afford two hotel rooms so we had to sneak four people up the backstairs and into the room. 

Once we were settled into the rooms we did a full read through of script and did a little bit of rehearsing for the next day. 


One of the rooms was an “awake” room and the other was the “sleeping” room. Those who wanted to party were in the “awake” room and obviously those who wanted to actually sleep that night stayed in the other one. More than half the cast decided to stay awake and party all night. The smart ones decided to get some sleep.  I insisted that everyone get at least an hour and a half of sleep and declared lights out at 4:45am, then woke them up at 6:15 so everyone could get ready.  I wanted to arrive at the location as soon as it opened at 8am.

Arriving at the Parthenon was quite an experience.  None of us, including me, had been there and it was so huge and so awesome.  “It was gorgeous, so seeing the actual recreation was amazing.” Brittany recalls.  It was beautiful inside and out, although part of it was under repair at the time so there was scaffolding outside most of it.

“My favorite day of filming would have to be in Nashville shooting at the Parthenon,” Christine remembers, “because it was so cool, and there was that statue that was SO cool, and it was my birthday so I had a lot of fun.”  We celebrated Christine’s birthday the night before and she was one of the people who chose to sleep so she actually remembers what happened that day.

We were incredibly lucky to get to film there. I had called the museum six weeks before we filmed to set it up and they allowed us to film there without any fees – just as long as we didn’t interfere with any of the visitors and tried to keep things quiet.  The staff was very nice and welcome, but I spent the day afraid that we would end up getting kicked out because there were so many of us. 

Getting that many actors together – especially creative and goofing ones – could lead to hijinks and problems.  Luckily most of the actors were too tired to even do their lines, let alone get into trouble. “In Nashville it was fun still but the fact that we got no sleep led people to very tired and very anxious to get things done,” remembers Brittany.

“What I remember was fun,” says Ryan Homberg. He came along as crew and was the boom mic operator for most of the shoot. “ I was just too tired to do much of anything and I fell asleep on the floor of the recreation of the Parthenon – two or three times – and I don’t even know what happened that day.” 

More than half the cast passed out in various places around the Parthenon when they weren’t filming. 

The only people alert were those who slept. They were smart.

“I think the best part when we were in Nashville was the scenes with Mike Meyer,” Morgan Thomas recalls. “He was dancing around as Persephone, Goddess of Spring. I was so distracted that I could not do my lines.”  The only reason that Octavious looks like Crumby is because I wanted Michael Meyer to play both parts. Some of the things the characters does are only in there because I know Mike would probably be game for anything and would be absolutely hysterical.”

For me one of the best parts of the Nashville shoot was getting to work with one of my favorite people – the extremely talented Annamarie MacLeod. She’s not just an amazing actress, she’s really laid back and easy to work – and she’s a lot of fun!  Originally Annamarie was cast as Dimitria, Evil Minerva’s sidekick, and Margaret Olson was set to play Venitia.  Margaret wasn’t able to make it to the shoot, however, so Annamarie stepped into the Venitia role and Paul Castille played Dimitrius.  The casting change did have an effect later on because we had already filmed some scenes using photos of Margaret as Venitia.

Not everything about the shoot was great. Besides the lack of sleep there were also problems with the costumes – mostly because I forgot hairpins and safety pins. As a result peoples clothing and hair get falling out or getting messed up. The beautiful armor that Evil Minerva and Dimitrius wore was made by a talented costumer named Heather and she had loaned them to me for the shoot, however pieces of them kept falling off and having to be stuck back on because it was so warm the glue holding them on melted (I think).

We also didn’t have time to stop for breakfast because the sleepless actors had trouble getting ready on time and we needed to be there right when it opened.  We had snacks and such, but the actors were left hungry as well as tired.  We didn’t break for lunch until around 1pm or so. The poor starving actors.  I didn’t want to take the time to go to a restaurant so we had a picnic lunch in the park around the Parthenon. 

There was a pond near the spot we chose to eat and there were so many pigeons it’s kind of ridiculous.  The actors had fun feeding them – or chasing them around in some cases.  We had three cameras with us so that people could film some behind-the-scenes stuff on this monumental trip, and because of that we ended up with a ton of footage involving pigeons.  So much pigeon footage…

There were two scenes that I worried about filming, because they involved things that might get us kicked out. I saved those two scenes to film last. The first of those scenes involved Peri singing “I Will Survive” to Octavious and the pair of them dancing. Their singing is interrupted by a four-way fight between Atlanta, Camilla, Minerva, and Venitia which ends up on the floor.  Singing is odd but fighting is disruptive and I was worried we would upset the visitors.

 That scene didn’t seem to upset people, but the last one did and I knew we would probably get kicked out for that one which is why I saved it for last.  The scene is pretty much a fight between all the characters, and in the middle of it Octavius appears thinking he’s cupid and wearing nothing but a pair of gold wings and a short pink ruffled skirt.  The shot where he enters the fight we saved for last and rehearsed with him in his regular costume before filming it.  I knew we would only get one shot at it so we filmed it with two cameras (wide shot and close ups) and did it in one crazy take which involved fighting, mayhem, actors getting their costumes ripped, and Mike running around half naked shooting invisible arrows.

Right after we finished filming that scene I was politely, but firmly, asked to leave since we were disturbing the visitors and I assured them we were packing up fast and on our way out. I apologized for causing trouble and thanked them several times for letting us film there. I knew we were going to get kicked out over that one, but hell if it wasn’t worth it!

After leaving the Parthenon we went to film another few scenes elsewhere.  There were two scenes set outside the Parthenon that were supposed to take place on the steps outside, but since those steps were covered with non-period scaffolding we had to find another place to film.  While we were shooting in the museum, Peter Normand and Russell went touring Nashville to see if they could find a place.  They found a nice location that worked well enough and we ended out shooting there.

Unfortunately it had started raining while we were wrapping up at the museum, and I forced the actors to film a long scene that involved fighting in the rain. It wasn’t too bad at first, but the light drizzle turned into heavy rain that was close to a downpour at one point. The poor actors – who were either exhausted or beyond exhausted – ended up cold, wet, and hungry, but they were troupers about it and pulled through.  As soon as the scenes were done we packed up, grabbed some grub, and hit the road home.

We got back pretty late at night.  I had arranged with the Student Center to let a few people stay at SPC-TV overnight since we had to film early the next morning. Honestly, I shouldn’t have filmed anything the next day, but Annamarie was only in town for that weekend and wouldn’t be able to come back that fall so we had to film all the scenes she was in.

“My least favorite day would be the one after Nashville,” recalls Christine, “because everyone was just really tired.”  It was a difficult day that started out filming a fight scene in the SPC-TV station where I had put together a terrible looking but functional enough set to be Evil Minvera’s bedroom.  After that we went to film several scenes at the Kinkaid Lake Spillway. That day was one for the Survivor’s Club and I’ll talk about it in a separate post.

After the great expedition to Nashville, filming resumed as normal.  The SUIC dorms have this annoying habit of turning the heaters on in mid-September, even though there can still be warm days in October.  I lived in Neely Hall and the windows didn’t open.  My heater broke and was blasting full force when we filmed a bunch of scenes from Episodes 11-14 in October. It was SO hot, we were miserable, but people had fun despite that and we filmed what we needed to.

During October we returned to Fort De Chartres to film the medieval scenes from Episodes 9 & 10, on two different days.  We didn’t make it long enough at the last shoot to worry about where to get lunch and I assumed there would be a fast food place nearby.  I was wrong. Fort De Chartres is just outside Prairie Du Rocher, which has a population of 400 people and apparently has no place to get food.  To top it off I ran out of tape halfway through the day and didn’t bother to bring an extra (because I’m stupid), so a group of actors hit the road on a mission to find video tape and something resembling lunch. 

While they were gone I took the chance to actually plan and choreograph the big fight scene in Episode 10 between Xavier and Drake.  Russell and J’ae helped me work it out and practiced it multiple times.  The fight turned out fantastic and I’m actually really glad I ran out of tape because I wouldn’t have bothered to spend that much time on blocking the fight otherwise – and it was quite a long time. 

In order to complete their mission, the search party had to drive about an hour away to find tape and food.  When they arrived back at the fort two hours later everyone was starving and we were behind schedule. But that’s okay, we still got a lot filmed and I wasn’t too worried because I knew we would be coming back on another day to finish whatever we couldn’t that day.  We all picnicked on the lawn outside one of the buildings before getting back to work.

The next time we filmed at the fort it was during a reenactors event and we had crowds of people, many of them tourists, to deal with on set.  As always when we film at a museum the deal is that we try not to get in the way of visitors, however many people ended up gathering around us while we filmed which made things a little difficult, especially with the audio due to background noise. And the reenactors kept firing muskets and shooting off cannons so…that was fun.

During those years SIUC closed it’s campus at the end of October, for a reason I won’t go into, and everyone had a week off for Fall Break.  I took the opportunity to make the actors travel north to my hometown where my parents lived in a big house built in 1898. We spent three days filming dozens of scenes, including all of the Silverstone Mansion scenes, from Episodes 1-8.

“My favorite day of filming would probably be when we went to Champaign,” Morgan remembers. “The day when we were doing the Victorian scenes was fun – except for the corsets." They were in real corsets for several hours, and that's a very different kind of pain.  Despite the corsets, Morgan still enjoyed it.  "We had so much fun that day just goofing off and ad-libing as well as getting work done.  And we got fed… that was the best part.”

The first day of filming was for the Victorian scenes from Episodes 7 & 8, and since there weren’t too many we were able to have a more relaxing day.  Unfortunately we were missing one of the actors so we couldn’t film all the scenes.  I stupidly decided to put off filming the remaining Victorian Scenes until the last day which meant that LT, whose only scene left to film was one of those Victorian scenes, was stuck on the set for two days with nothing to film. She actually asked why we couldn’t film the scene she was in sooner so she could go home, at which point I was like “oh yeah, we should do that”.  I feel really bad I didn’t film that scene as soon as I had all the actors for it since she wasn’t precious free time just doing nothing on the set. That was totally my bad. Sorry LT!

There’s also a bit in one of the Victorian scenes where Minerva makes a hangover remedy for Xavier.  I was really mean to Russell on the set sometimes, I don’t know why, but I was. This was one of those times. I mixed up a mystery brew and he had to drink all of it on screen.  I don’t remember what all was in it but I know there was both milk and Mountain Dew and I think ketchup as well as some other things. It was gross, but he drank it without much complaint. Sorry for torturing you Russell and thanks for being such a trouper!

Those three days were long and exhausting, especially for Christine, Morgan, and Brittany.  Almost all the scenes involved at least one, and often all three, of the sisters so none of the actors got much in the way of down time.  I even wrote food scenes into the script because I knew it would be faster to have the actors eat on screen rather then let them take time for a meal off screen.  I’m so considerate. 

Even though the filming began early and didn’t wrap until late, the actors still found time to chillax, hang out, and party.  Since we all camped out at my parents’ house (thanks mom and dad!) there was a lot of extra bonding time. After shooting wrapped up some of the actors would go out to eat, or even just hang out and play board games together just for fun. It was actually really nice to have that time together.

Most of the scenes inside the Silverstone Mansion were filmed in my parents’ house, but we needed an actually mansion for the exterior shots.  I knew of the perfect place to film those scenes and was lucky enough to get permission to film inside and outside for a couple of hours at the Allerton Mansion in Monticello, IL.  We only had two hours so the scenes had to be shot quickly, but we did it and all the mansion scenes look amazing.

Although the shooting schedule was tightly packed since there were so many scenes to shoot in a short amount of time, I did make sure to add in time for the actors to explore the beautiful Allerton Park and Gardens around the mansion.  I love introducing people to this amazing oasis in Central Illinois, and the cast really seemed to enjoy exploring the Formal Gardens.  Unfortunately we didn’t really have time to explore everything, since the park is HUGE and there’s a lot to see.  Still, I’m pretty sure everyone enjoyed taking a breather and wander around an amazing place.

There’s one last thing I want to say about the Champaign Shoot, and that is how grateful I am that none of the actors were allergic to cats.  We had four cats living there at the time and the place was covered in cat hair.  It was everywhere.  All four cats actually made it on screen as well.  Two of them were captured and forced to film against their will (like some of the actors – I mean…never mind), but two of them just felt like hanging out on the set and refused to move when the actors invaded their space.  In fact one of the cats, Lacy, decided to sit on the actors whenever she wanted and it was really hard to get her off their laps when they had to leave the shot. I think claws were involved. Sorry, that must have hurt.

After the shoot was over the actors returned to their respective homes for some much needed downtime during the rest of the Fall Break.  Once everyone returned to SIUC in November we resumed filming.  Although there were many short shoots again, there were a few big, main shoots primarily for Episodes 11-13.  Those episodes have several scenes at night that take place at the Student Center.

So late night shooting was involved.  Both of the big shoots at the Student Center started filming after sunset (because the episodes are set at night) and didn’t wrap up until very late – like 2 or 3am.  The poor actors, they suffer so much. Why do they still film with me?  Russell suffered the most during those two shoots because he not only had to stay up late, he was also tied up for several hours during one of them. There are two Survivor’s Club posts about both of those, you just have to scroll down until you find the Gift Bearer sections.

By the end of November we had finished filming most of the Episodes, but there were still two big shooting days left.  One of them was a long, exhausting, complicated, and hellish shoot where we filmed the rest of the scenes for Episodes 13 & 14.  The first half of the day included running around inside and outside the Student Center, and that wasn’t so bad.  Then we filmed this huge, important and action packed scene in Episode 14 in a dark, over-heated part of the Student Center basement and things went south very quickly.

Morgan remembers that being her least favorite day of all time, not just for this show but out of all the productions she’s been in. “It was way too hot where we were filming, and there were people there who shouldn’t have been there. It was just very stressful down there – too many directors on the set.”

We needed a dead body and I had no one else to throw on the ground and cover in blood, so I did it myself.  Although I very much enjoyed being a dead body, this left the set without the director.  All of the actors on set were involved in the scene, so three people switched off being director when they weren’t on screen.  That was three directors too many, especially since they had their own style and ideas and the rest of the actors were used to my unique style of “shoot it fast and get it done”. I don’t try to make art. Even unmediated I preferred quantity over quality.

“I got a little too frustrated with things that were going on…so I wasn’t really sure what was going on,” Morgan recalls, ten years later.  “I completely lost myself for a minute. Yeah, that day was kind of scary for a lot of people.”  Things got very confusing and very frustrating and of course that led to me getting angry and yelling at people.  I had a mini-break down and I wasn’t the only one. We still had half a day of filming after that but we all a break before getting back to the schedule. 

The rest of the day focused on filming the 1950s scenes in Episode 14, and although we were outside for all of it and it was much cooler, people were still frustrated and emotions were still high and volatile.  Although most of us had calmed down, it wasn’t enough to do more then get us through the rest of the day. We made it, but barely, and I think everyone was grateful when it was over and we could all go home.

I’m not sure which one was the last day of shooting for the semester – it was probably the hellish basement day, but I’m going to say it was the second shoot at Fort De Chartres for Episodes 3 & 4 instead.  In my mind the De Chartres shoot was the last day because that was a really enjoyable day and I like to think we wrapped shooting on a good note.

“I have to say my favorite day of filming was the last time we went to Fort De Chartres,” Brittany recalls, “and even though I only acted for one scene it was more beneficial to the cast to bond because we had a lot of fun, we played on the playground – on the seesaw and on the swings – and it was just enjoyable off camera and on.”

We arrived at the Fort and took time to goof off before starting the shoot.  We began with some short and easy scenes in the meadow, then headed off to shoot inside the Fort.  We still had a lot to shoot, but not as much as there could have been since we had already filmed several scenes on the first Fort shoot.  The contrast between those two shoot was night and day. On the first one Russell had hurt his foot and since everyone was worried about him there was a general lack of focus. 

The second one was full of joy and fun for the most part and for most people, although not everyone had a blast.  There were some tense moments while filming a minor fight scene in the attic, but some amusing ad-libbing solved that and turned the day around.  It ended up being one of Russell’s favorite days as well. “That day the energy was building back up again and it was incredible what was done during that time.” 

The day was long but fun and we ended the big final scene with fighting and kidnapping.  Despite the beautiful sunny weather and comfortable temperature, the shoot was filming in December so the sunset came sooner then I expected.  We wound up filming at sunset but that actually turned out to be awesome since the stone fort walls were with this beautiful glowing light.  I was a little worried we wouldn’t be done before the light faded, but we thankfully finished in time. We wrapped up filming season one with a happy and successful shoot.

ACTORS AND CHARACTERS: RYAN HOMBERG

I had some fun with one of the characters in the Fort De Chartres episodes – or should I say two of the characters.  Ryan Homberg had been cast as Will, one of Blackheart's crew.  He had shaved his head before the first shoot.  There were almost two months between the first shoot and the second and  during that time his hair had grown back. 

I had also lost his costume somehow (shirt and pants), but we still needed him to be one of the thugs.  He and I decided that he would be his own twin and so he took on the dual role of John and Will, there's even a line where John is sent on an errand and says "I'll make Will do it".  Most people watching probably wouldn’t even notice the difference or care, but I still find it funny.

Ryan ended up joining us on a lot of shoots and became the all-purpose extra.  He took on whatever part was needed no matter how big or how small.  For some strange reason almost every part he ended up playing had the character die in the end and almost always on screen. It became a running joke that the episode wasn’t over until Ryan had died.

CHARACTERS AND ACTORS: HELA

The woman originally cast as Hela dropped out halfway through filming and had to be replaced with someone else. Luckily she had really only filmed one set of scenes as (the law office from Episodes 7 & 8) besides playing Evil Minerva in Episodes 5 & 6.  However, Hela appears in a several other episodes and I had trouble finding someone who could commit to the intensive shooting schedule to play the part. 

In episodes 9 & 10, Hela appears in the Middle Ages with Drake. There’s another character – Princess Catherina – who dies at the beginning of the episode. I decided to have the same actress play both the princess and Hela since by then it was clear (to me at least) that shape shifting was one of many magic abilities of Drake and his “associates”.  

I can’t quite remember how I found the actress to play her for that shoot, but I remember being desperate and I’m pretty sure I resorted to asking random women in the student center if they wanted to be in a TV show that was filming tomorrow.  In the end I was able to get the lovely Selena to agree to hop into a car with a bunch of strangers and drive to an old fort in the middle of nowhere. I don’t look like a typical ax murderer so I guess she thought it was safe (it was of course, that day at least).

In order to play up Hela’s fondness for shape shifting I decided to have a different actress play her in every episode until she appears in Episode 11.  While I was editing the Law Office scenes in Episodes 7 & 8 I realized I needed to reshoot Hela’s lines and so I grabbed a fellow member of SPC-TV who had managed to avoid acting in my show up until then, and convinced her to do the lines. I did a very bad job of reshooting Hela’s lines. Although Sarah, did a great job I messed up the filming and it didn’t look very good. Oh well, my bad.

By the time we were filming the Student Center scenes for Episode 11-13, I had finally found an actress willing and able to take on the role – Katie Johnston. By this point all but one of the actresses playing Hela had been blonde, so I decided to keep with that tradition when I reshoot lines with Hela years later (more on that in Part 4). Katie did a fantastic job playing the sexy and sassy Hela and I was happy to have her jump on board to ride the Gift Bearer train.  She may have come to regret that though because the GB train is full of crazy turns and derailments.

THE DRAMA

I know this post is already ridiculously long, but we’re not done yet!  You can’t talk about filming the Gift Bearer without talking about all the drama that went on behind the scenes.  There was a LOT of drama.  Many productions have some drama going on behind the scenes, but I think the Gift Bearer was the most drama fueled production of them all. We’re just going to focus on Season 1 (the Fall Semester) for now, there was similar-yet-different drama while filming Season 2. 

Everyone on set became really close – some closer than others. Actors started dating other actors and it’s seriously obnoxious to deal with flirting outbreaks on the set. I had some weird rules about no flirting on the set and some people actually let me know ahead of time that they were starting to date because I stupidly put out the vibe (or did I actually say it?) that my permission was needed for the actors to date each other.  I’m such a jerk. Thank god for psychiatrists and medication!

As many people said in their interviews for the show, we were all like a big family, and as one person point out in their interview were like a big dysfunctional family. Boy, were we ever!  There was more drama going on then I can remember, honestly, and a lot of it revolved around me being an asshole as both a person and a director.  I wrote multiple letters to the cast to let them know how angry I was to lay down rules I probably broke myself eventually.  I still can’t believe the entire cast didn’t quit considering my craziness, let alone be willing to go another semester!  I’m so sorry, everyone! 

I do remember that the guy who played Drake got kicked out of his girlfriend’s apartment, possibly got kicked out of rehab as well, and ended up homeless. I let him live with me for a few months, but it wasn’t really out of the kindness of my heart.  It’s because I wanted to know where he was and how to get a hold of him for filming.  That’s messed up, dude.

However, the person who had it the worst was Christine. Sometime after the Nashville shoot she started to get people’s nerves. She wasn’t an actor, had no training, and only got cast because I was desperate.  Other actors starting bad-mouthing her in all kinds of ways about things like her talent, her looks, and her “attention seeking” habits like coughing all the time. It turns out she had undiagnosed asthma and all that running and fighting caused asthma attacks. 

Christine had to deal with body-shaming, insults, and shunning from the rest of the cast. At first I did try to shut it down (especially the body-shaming), but then she pissed me off at a shoot (don’t know how or why, but it wasn’t hard to make me angry back then), and I started joining in on the “I hate Christine” bandwagon. We were like a pack of wolves turning on one of their own.  

Christine stood strong against us and I know we hurt her deeply.  We were REALLY mean to her.  It was like you weren’t one of the cool kids unless you were picking on Christine.  We were like stupid high school bullies. I was a huge bully to her, talked behind her back (but in front of her other friends) about how I was going to destroy her, and even officially fired her from the show.  She took it all and left with her head up. She was probably relieved to get away from everyone.

I am SO sorry, Christine!  I have apologized to you in person many times, but I still hate and regret how awful we were to you.  Without you taking on the role of Atlanta the show would probably never have been filmed, let alone completed.  You were and are amazingly strong and I want to thank you for being a part of this production from the bottom of my heart.

Tune in next month for The Gift Bearer, Part 3 – The Second Half of Production, where we’ll find out played Atlanta in Season 2, discover what happened at the read through of Season 2, learn about how and why Season 2 evolved and changed (hint it involves Yibble taking a long trip to Crazytown), which actors quit and who replaced them, and how many times Yibble can get lost in Giant City while trying to find a place to film. We’ll hit the road to travel to some familiar locations, build a few sets, and go through yet another round of DRAMA.