Blood Hunt
In Dangerous Prey, the Amazons have fallen foul of a merciless killer, and it's up to Xena to wreak revenge on the hunter. Kate Barker steps out of the Auckland sunlight to witness these dark goings-on in Renee O’Connor’s much-touted sixth season directorial outing.
Official Xena Magazine: Issue 16
Dangerous Prey is one of those Xena episodes where it's really dark - literally.
In a maze of watery caves, Xena is out to catch Prince Morloch, a hunter whose latest prey is the tribe of Amazons from the season opener Coming Home. Morloch has already killed Marga, the Amazon Queen, which leads Xena to have to contend with Marga’s headstrong second-in- command, Varia, whose thirst for revenge is likely to get them all killed...
Inside the caves, water drips from stalactites to a shallow pool below, and cobwebbed sand covers most of the ground and cavern walls. It’s very dark, and the maze of rock walls seems to go on forever. Shadowed shafts of light from above catch slivers of rock and sand, and you can almost smell the seawater... until a crewmember deftly picks up a nearby stalagmite and carries it effortlessly to somewhere else on set. Yes folks, it's all done with mirrors (angled to reflect the water). The cavern walls are no more than painted foam, and the sun isn't really creating those great effects with the light. It might just as well be, though; as usual, the creations here seem incredibly real.
Speaking of creating, there's a familiar figure in the director’s chair. Swapping her sais for a pink pullover and jeans, Renee O’Connor is back behind the camera instead of in front of it. There’s a lot of action going on in this scene, and although she’s frantically busy, O’Connor is loving it. Between discussing camera angles with director of photography Aaron Morton and continuously making notes all over her copy of the script, O’Connor frequently moves into the heart of the set, going over actions and cues with Tsianina Joelson (Varia) and Lucy Lawless.
The main thrust of this set of shots involves ‘pinball action’, which describes, in this particular case, the effect of Xena's chakram and Morloch’s sharp-edged throwing stars hurtling through the air, bouncing off the cavern walls and basically looking very effective. In a trick of the trade revealed, a crewmember walks slowly through the line of trajectory of one of Varia’s stars, turning the weapon over and over with his hands as he holds it carefully by the edges. The same will be done with Xena's chakram, and in post-production the crewmember will be edited out, leaving spectacular shots of the weapons doing their thing.
Somewhere along the line, Xena gets distracted while trying to protect Varia, and one of the spinning stars hits her in the arm. Lawless doesn’t have to be there to film this; it’ll be done in CGI too. The spinning star shot is what's known in the business as a ‘CGI reference’. It's said just before ‘action!’, and is necessary for the actors to know what to react to, and so that those in post-production know where and when to put in their effects.
In the following shot, Xena is crouched by a hole in the rock, watching the star’s journey, or at least watching the places where it would hit if it was being thrown in such a way as the finished product would suggest. The sequence follows on with Xena letting fly with the chakram, watching as it zooms out of shot, then supposedly catching it when it returns. In reality, Lawless throws one chakram - a soft foam or rubber one - out of shot, and it lands safely on a mat off-camera, while Lawless plays at watching where it’s supposed to be going. When the time comes to catch it, her hand reaches out of shot and indeed comes back into frame with a chakram. Except this time it's the steel one, which has just been handed to her. The reason? Apart from the fact that the actual weapons don't boomerang back like they appear to on screen, metal is much better than foam rubber for close-ups.
During this crossfire, Xena and Varia are doing a lot of ducking for cover. The current altercation is begun with a bit of a shouting match between Xena and Morloch, and quickly escalates into all-out warfare. At this point in the scene, Xena spins sideways towards a very convenient hole in the cavern wall, which she will jump through and continue the fight from the other side of. In the first rehearsal, the action is done in a flash as Lawless very deftly does her bit. In fact, it's almost too good. “Lucy,” calls O'Connor after the end of the shot. “Visually spot the hole before you go for it, okay?”
“Oh,” answers Lawless in mock surprise, “going for the hole; is that what I’m doing?”
Of course Lawless knows exactly what she's doing; it all runs smoothly and the crew are soon setting up for the next shot. It's not hard at all, especially since at right-angles to the hole in question there’s an adjoining piece of set with another hole in it, which looks remarkably like the first one would if shot from the other side. The cameras don't need to move much because of this, and it saves a lot of work. This shot takes very little time; for Lawless it’s just a matter of repeating the last shot's moves, but from the opposite direction. One particular take is more than perfect, and O'Connor reacts suitably with an encouraging “Whoo-hoo!” It's great when things like this come together.
Opening the studio door - which seems incongruous so close to these wonderfully dark caverns - the sunlight of Auckland's warm spring afternoon is almost blinding. A few feet away, the Xena, Varia and Morloch stunt doubles are going through some of the fight scenes, practising moves with each other and having great fun doing it. “Now you kids," quips a passing crewmember, “play nice..."
For the actors it’s a lot like playing. As guest actor Sandy Winton (Prince Morloch) says, “It’s the best game of Cowboys and Indians you’ve ever seen!”