Art Decor
During filming of the recently aired episode Old Ares Had a Farm, showcased in the last issue of Xena Magazine, Kate Barker had the good fortune to talk to Art Director Roger Guise about his contribution to the Xenaverse…
Official Xena Magazine: Issue 18
We’re all aware that part of the magic of Xena is the weird and wonderful places our heroes find themselves in each week. Sometimes it may seem that, for example, a scene of Xena and Gabrielle walking off down a simple dirt path could be filmed anywhere outdoors with no need at all to alter the look of the landscape. After all, how much trouble can it be to find a simple dirt track to film? Most of the time, it’s no more trouble than the simple addition of foliage here and there, and great communication. With a team as good as the crew of Xena, this job is made considerably easier...
As one of the art directors on Xena: Warrior Princess, Roger Guise is part of the team responsible for the successful delivery of the fantastic looks of the various locations in the world of Xena. He gets to interpret the ideas of Production Designer Rob Gillies and carry them forward to the finished product. “Essentially," says Guise, “I’m responsible for maximising the ideas of the designer to deliver the best look to the screen. On the day of filming, I introduce anything that I think can enhance the scene, and make sure it's as pretty and perfect as possible for the cameras.”
It’s not simply a matter of enhancing whatever’s there on the day, however. Guise and his team are just one link in the chain leading to the creation of the perfect scene. “There’s a lot of work to be done before things get to me on set,” he explains. “Each department is a separate individual part of why Xena is so successful, because they’re all strong departments in their own right. For instance, the Art Department works with Wardrobe to ensure that whatever the Art Department makes, such as swords and armour, the overall design fits with the style and colour of the costumes.
“Before an episode is filmed, I spend a couple of weeks prepping. That involves receiving notes from the director, reading the script to see what’s required, and designing weapons and other props that may enhance the set that’s been provided by the designer and construction department. Then there’s liaising with the set dressers for additions that I think may be suitable. Often, things are changed somewhere in the process and you have to be prepared and ready to leap into action if there are difficulties. You either become a genius or experience teaches you quick short cuts. The Art Department is quite large and diverse; by no means do I turn up on set alone. We all work together and everything’s connected.”
Speaking of sets, there are many semi-permanent sets and locations (mostly outdoors) that have been used frequently and altered a little or a lot, depending on the settings that each episode requires. “On the locations for each episode, we get an idea of what would be the best camera angles for each particular scene,” Guise reveals. “A scene might have been arranged to be shot at one angle, but on the day it might change altogether."
Guise is used to dealing with these sorts of things on a regular basis. “It’s part of the game,” he acknowledges. “We get to know which areas might need to be altered a lot, and which will need just a little touch-up. You put into a scene what you need to put into a scene, depending on where you are and how the scene is constructed. Everybody’s working to put in as much as they can to make each scene and each episode visually interesting.”
Visually interesting is something of an understatement when describing the fantastic sets we see in Xena. What some of us may not immediately realise is that to make a particular scene look that great from every camera angle is not generally a quick process. For instance, if part of the set is destroyed while filming with the Main Unit, that same set must be redressed exactly (not a fern frond out of place) for Second Unit when they come to film their scenes the following week.
“It’s often very difficult to maintain continuity on set,” Guise admits, “especially when they shoot the order of the scenes back to front. We have Second Unit going over a series of scenes to do inserts on an overgrown path set on this episode,” he adds of Old Ares Had a Farm, “but the Main Unit’s been there all day and the set dressing’s been obliterated. So trying to match what it was originally can often be a nightmare.
“I’m responsible for passing on any set information that Second Unit may require,” says Guise. “That information might include which bits of set and location were used. Also, while the whole set is still intact, we take photos from the angles of the cameras and say, 'This is how it looked.’ Then, if Second Unit are coming in to do an insert, we can say, ‘this is how the stones were or where the bushes were laid out,’ to help them with resetting.”
The set in question might be as simple as the overgrown path, or, as in the case of this episode, a farmyard filled with animals. According to Guise, having animals as part of the set dressing isn’t actually as difficult as one might think. “On the day, animals will do what animals do, and we have animal wranglers to deal with that, so most of the time it’s not too much of a problem.”
It sounds like nothing is much of a problem to Guise, who has a very definite theory as to how to approach his work. “I see my job as 80 per cent organisation and 20 per cent art,” he explains. “It’s very much a time and motion study, where everything needs to be there on time. On the day, it’s about making sure that everything is as nice as possible... if ‘nice’ is the right word.”
So what are Guise’s favourite Xena episodes? “I’ve been fortunate enough to do some quite large episodes that have been on the scale of almost epic movies,” he says enthusiastically. “These are episodes that often contain what we call ‘money shots’. When there’s a scene that all the departments have invested a lot of time in, so that the background can actually stand out and be noticed, we call these money shots because they add another level of visual, valuable richness to the scene.”
Guise is referring to epic episodes such as Who’s Gurkhan, Antony and Cleopatra and Amphipolis Under Siege, that proved “visually bigger in scope” than some of the other shows. “They weren't necessarily easier as far as the work needed for the episode,” he says, “but from an Art Department point of view, they enabled us to pull some more tricks out of the bag and basically go for broke. We were playing with the big toys of the past like catapults and Roman armies fighting on ships.”
Guise admits that it’s working on these kinds of episodes which makes his job on Xena so pleasurable. “It’s a lot of fun here,” he says honestly. “It’s like every boy’s dream.”