Second Best
Kate Barker meets the directors of Xena's Second Unit crew and finds out how these specialists have contributed to the Xena legend…
Official Xena Magazine: Issue 23
Did you ever watch an episode of Xena and wish you could have been where all the action was?
Well, most of it took place on the Second Unit set. It's the Second Unit crew members who, working with stunt performers, doubles and extras, created those wonderful - and sometimes unbelievable - fights, flips and fantastic feats which have made Xena the kick-ass show that it is.
Second Unit is a separate, specialist action, fight and stunt crew, which works a few days behind Main Unit (the crew that shoots all the drama, dialogue and action shots involving the actors). Second Unit operates in many different ways to the Main Unit, and it's a department that is vital to the production and creation of any television show.
Second Unit Director Paul Grinder has been with Xena for its entire six-year run. He spent his first three years with the show as First Assistant Director on Main Unit before moving on to helm the Second Unit action. It's clear that action is the appropriate word, as Grinder outlines the differences between the two units. “Main Unit deals with the story more strongly than we do, while we deal with the action much more strongly than they do,” he explains. “That lends itself to two totally different sets and crews. On set, Main Unit are quietly supporting their actors and their performances, while on the other, we're loudly encouraging the stuntees and their performances! Basically, we're just a totally different kettle of fish.
“Lucy [Lawless] might do a jump out of frame on Main Unit, for example, and then they'll show me roughly what stunt they have in mind for her. After that, we'll have a meeting with the stunt coordinator and the rigging coordinator and come up with moves that need certain rigging harnesses. Then myself and Aaron Morton, the DOP [director of photography], will figure out the best way to cover it. We have as many rehearsals with the stuntees as time will allow, and then we shoot the sucker!
“Traditionally, the Second Unit is more of an insert unit,” Grinder remarks. “We're probably a freakish entity, in so much as we're probably a larger working Second Unit crew than on just about any other show. I haven't heard of a series that has a Second Unit this large, working an equal amount of days as the Main Unit. But because Xena is so action-based, we literally take chunks of each episode and deal with them on that basis.”
Also of great assistance to Second Unit is being able to refer to Main Unit tapes of previous scenes to clarify when and where the various Second Unit shots need to be inserted. This enables them to match the action, angles and lighting.
At the time of this conversation, Second Unit is shooting a rigged stunt for the episode When Fates Collide which involves two Ambassadors from Chin being lifted and flung to the ground by the evil Shamaness Alti. As this is happening, Grinder keeps one eye on the action and one eye on the video monitor, watching a previously filmed shot of Xena and Caesar which may be linked to the present action. “We’re constantly referring to what Main Unit has just shot,” Grinder confirms. “It often helps to go back to those tapes because then you know what’s been done before and whether our shot is working or not.”
The Second Unit works mainly with stuntees and extras, but every so often the main actors get the chance to experience this side of the action as well. In the fifth season musical episode Lyre, Lyre, Hearts On Fire, Second Unit “got handed a song [‘Gettin’ Ready’], because 90 per cent of it was devoid of main characters. 10 per cent of it had Renee [O’Connor] in, so she just came over to us for half a day or so.”
According to Grinder, filming the musicals was generally much easier for Second Unit than shooting standard episodes. “You’ve already got a set parameter,” he explains, “so rather than being obtuse, you can do any shot you like. With that comes a certain amount of freedom.”
As Grinder explains, the more usual Second Unit shots are time-consuming and require painstaking attention to detail. For example, the current shots of the Chin emissaries being killed will eventually only take up a few seconds on screen and, according to Grinder, these few shots are likely to take half a day to film. Another scene Grinder uses to illustrate the point is the chariot race from The God You Know. “That chariot sequence was our baby,” he says. “It was about five days’ shooting for us, and ended up being about three minutes of screen time.”
The days can certainly be long, and Grinder admits he’s looking forward to a break once the series ends. “We arrive at about 6:30am and shoot until 7pm," he says of his schedule on the show. “After that we generally do about two hours of viewing the rushes from the previous day. So I can usually clock off work between 9 and 10.
“After Xena, there are a few projects in my head that have been festering for years,” he reveals, “so I’ll have a break and then get on with something else.”
Having said that, there’s no doubt that Grinder does enjoy the job, even though he’s ready for a rest. “It’s interesting here,” he admits. “We’re always trying to create something that will make us say, ‘Cool!’ Within the constraints of a television schedule, we’re creating the same types of effects as you'd see on films like The Matrix and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. They're exactly the same techniques and we use the same kind of wire devices and rigs, so essentially the only difference is how little time we have to perfect it.
“The greatest compliment we’ve been given as a unit was from Renee and a few of the other Main Unit actors, who mentioned that what they like about Second Unit is that in the final edit, they can’t tell the Main Unit scenes from Second Unit scenes. That's basically our brief, so it’s the biggest compliment we can have.”
Every film unit needs a First Assistant Director, and the Second Unit of Xena is no exception. The First AD on this crew is Tim Hanson, who also comes from a successful history on Main Unit as Second assistant director.
First and Second ADs have similar responsibilities, with the main differences being on which days in the shooting schedule they focus. “As a Second AD,” Hanson explains, “you are primarily planning for the next day of shooting. As a First AD on set, you’re in charge of keeping that day running. Essentially, the First AD’s job is scheduling the fighting and special effects of the show, which is the fundamental Second Unit coverage.”
Okay, so that highlights the difference in jobs, but aside from the fact that Second Unit is more focused on action and effects, there are other significant comparisons to be made. One of these is simply the difference in noise; nothing being filmed on Second Unit records sound or dialogue. This, according to Hanson, makes for much easier on-set communication. “Because we don’t have to worry about sound, we can talk during shots if it helps us get that shot more easily. Also, we can usually keep our phones and radios on, so it’s easier for us to keep communication channels open throughout the day.”
Of course, a certain amount of communication is required between units, especially because each episode requires linking the Second Unit inserts into Main Unit’s already existing footage. “As a general rule, Main Unit will shoot on a set and establish positions and geographies,” Hanson explains, “and then we’ll look at what they’ve done and provide pieces to link those parts as they’re required. Generally it's a simple affair for us to do that after they’ve set it up and we’ve digested their coverage.”
Hanson makes the point in reference to the scene currently being filmed in which Alti is tossing around the Chin messengers. “Today, the elements of the rigs are relatively basic, so we’re familiar with them. Essentially, Second Unit coverage is anything that doesn’t include an actor’s face. So in this particular sequence, we’re looking at Main Unit’s tapes and providing inserts and wider coverage to match what they shot on this set a couple of days ago.
“In this piece of the scene, Alti was lifting the messengers into the air and throwing them into a corner. On Main Unit they would have had the actors standing on a box and looking like they were being held in the air; on Second Unit, we put the doubles on rigs and pulled them in the air and threw them into the corner.”
This is where the digital effects come in. “When we use the flip or flying rigs that the stunt people are attached to, the wires need to be removed by the visual effects people in [post-production].”
That brings us to another major reason why the majority of the action and rig work is done with Second Unit and stunt doubles: the stuntees are paid to take the falls, and the actors can’t afford to get hurt. “We do a lot of rig work on Xena,” Hanson says. "The shots we’ve been doing today have been pretty easy, but that’s not always the case. For example, with something like a spectacular explosion, Main Unit will do a harmless, smaller effect, and it'll be cut between their footage and ours so it looks like Xena’s in danger, but without actually putting Lucy Lawless in danger.”
In actual fact, the actors have done some of their own stuntwork in a few episodes of Xena. As reported in our behind-the-scenes feature on season five’s Amphipolis Under Siege, it was actually Lucy Lawless running down the tunnel with a real fireball hot on her heels. But of course, those in charge of the fireball effect made certain that there was absolutely no danger to Lawless or anyone else.
Back to Second Unit, it basically seems to be a lot of flying, jumping, falling, flipping and blowing things up; what more could you want out of a career? “We do sometimes have difficult shots,” Hanson admits. “They’re the ones that involve a lot of movement around a set, where Xena is maybe flying through the air and we have rigs taking her from one level to another. That might involve two people interacting while they’re both in ropes and harnesses and rigs. That's certainly where we spend a lot of our time.
“It can sometimes be quite tough on the stuntees,” Hanson adds, “say on Zoe [Bell, Xena’s stunt double] and whoever she may be fighting. If we’re not using any visual effects, we’re getting a very realistic flip. But without the rigs it’s physically impossible.
“Not even Lucy or Zoe can flip three times over two horses!”
SIDEBAR: Action Man
Stunt Coordinator Stu Thorpe began his career with Pacific Renaissance as a stunt fighter back on Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, and his first Xena appearance was in the debut episode Sins of the Past.
During his time in front of the camera, Thorpe’s interest in being involved in other aspects of the action grew, and eventually led to his becoming stunt co-ordinator. “I had a lot of interest in working behind the camera,” he confirms, “and in choreographing the action and making it work on the screen.”
As one of two stunt coordinators on the show, Thorpe also works on Main Unit, and estimates that he spends about 75 per cent of his time with Second Unit and 25 per cent on Main Unit, depending on the stunt requirements of the day. He agrees that the atmospheres of the two units are often quite different.
“Second Unit is a little more relaxed, because we don’t have a lot of the pressures that Main Unit has,” he reveals. “We obviously have to work to a schedule, but we really only have to worry about our action, so the pressures are different. Second Unit operates the same department structure as Main Unit, but on a smaller scale. And it’s a smaller crew. For instance, we don't have as many wardrobe or make-up people, although that differs according to the amount of extras we have.
“Basically, we get together and collaborate in terms of choreographing the show, based on the script,” Thorpe explains. “We know what Main Unit are doing and we follow in behind and shadow them, filling in the gaps. It's a good system and it works really well.
“In the week or two before filming on the episode starts, we’ll have script meetings so everyone knows the kinds of things that the director wants,” Thorpe continues, going into more detail about the working process between Second and Main Unit. “Then we can start working on things, and eventually we end up in a space where everybody is working from the same page. The art department starts the whole process and they work with us, especially if it's something like a big fight scene. They’ll go around taking Polaroids of the set. This is so that if the stunt boys end up wrecking the place, we can see how everything looked before it got trashed.
“We may not shoot things in order, and the art director might come up to me and say, ‘Okay, what stage of the fight are we at?’, and we would have to know. We’d have to know things like, say, where Gabrielle would be, or whether her staff would be broken at this stage of the scene. So we have to pay a lot of attention to the continuity side of things, making sure it all hangs together.”
Thorpe gives an example of the way he operates between the two units on a fight sequence. “We might have been on Main Unit and done part of a fight, and then we’d come back to Second Unit and fill in the blanks. The basic fight stuff we do here is inserts, like a hand picking up the chakram or drawing a sword; anything that doesn’t have to be done with the lead or guest actors. We’ll also do reverses of Lucy’s coverage of Xena fighting, so on Main Unit you see her opponent’s point of view, that is, all her fight shots where the audience sees her face. Then we do the opponent's action, so we basically film over the shoulder of our Xena stunt double, Zoe Bell.
“If we have a rig effect of Xena flipping from one side of the room to the other, or doing some sort of fighting rig stunt, then on Main Unit we would get Lucy to start whatever it is, jumping up as if she’s going to do a front somersault or leaning back for a back flip. And then on Second Unit we shoot three or four different angles of Zoe flipping through the air on a rig, so we know it’s going to fit in nicely with what Lucy's done. Then we just fill in the gaps.”
To further illustrate the point, Thorpe refers to the current example of various scenes in When Fates Collide. “We’re working with Claire Stansfield’s character Alti, and she's just killed these two emissaries from Chin,” he says, “We’ve just got them lifting up - we’ve got a rig that’s doing the actual lifting - then we pull them off to the side so that it looks like she’s throwing them away.
“Once we’ve shot that, we’re into a section that Lucy and Claire did on Main Unit yesterday, which was a fight on the balcony of Caesar’s bed chamber which involved a couple of acrobatic moves. What we have here are two doubles, which puts another view on things. When we’ve got two doubles - the Alti double and the Xena double - we have to shoot it in a slightly different way. We can’t shoot over Zoe’s shoulder and onto the face of the Alti double, so we have to come out with a wider profile so that both doubles somehow mask each other’s faces.”
At this point, there are only a few weeks left before filming on Xena ceases completely. Thorpe has thoroughly enjoyed his time on the show, and a part of him wishes he could get back in front of the camera once more and perform some of those stunts he’s helped to create. “I would still like to be doing some of the stunts myself,” he admits. “It’s a different camaraderie when everyone’s in costume together and slogging it out. So I miss being part of the action.”