All The World’s A Stage: Norse Whisperer
Our exclusive report on Xena's Ring trilogy continue this issue as Kate Barker goes behind the scenes on the second and third episodes in the saga, The Ring and Return of the Valkyrie...
Official Xena Magazine: Issue 16
The Ring
The Ring, the second episode of the Ring trilogy, directed by Rick Jacobson, features a spectacular aerial battle, complete with armour-clad Valkyries atop beautiful flying horses. ‘Valkyrie- Xena’ leads the charge, and the visual effects are nothing less than stunning.
So how exactly does one create the image of flying Valkyries on horseback? Apart from post-production computer editing, those at Pacific Renaissance utilise the talents of stunt riders, blue screens, specially trained horses and head wrangler Sandy Raynor’s team of talented riders.
According to Raynor, the time needed to train these stunt horses for one particular sequence of riding up into the sky and then back down to Earth has been surprisingly short. In the middle of a soft-floored, blue-screened studio, the horses have only been practising these sequences for an hour... and now they’re ready to be filmed.
Of course, it takes a bit of imagination to picture what these scenes will eventually look like. Here in the studio, the riders lead the horses up and down a narrow sloping rostrum covered with a blue screen to give the illusion that the animals are taking off into the sky and then landing. “If you looked at that horse riding down that slope and you didn’t see that rostrum there, it would look like the horse was landing,” Raynor points out. “The rostrum isn’t particularly wide, so the horses are just getting used to it. If you listen, the sound when they're on the rostrum is hollow, which is very strange for a horse.”
During these explanations, the final practice is just finishing, and it's quite useful to be able to match Raynor’s descriptions with what is actually happening. Now, we just have to be able to spot the sequence in the finished episode... A Xena riding double is currently talking a beautiful black horse called Zulu through the scenes. “This horse is taking off into the sky,” explains Raynor. “They go up the ramp of the rostrum and then the scene goes into CG-land, where it looks like they’re flying.”
Computer generation plays a large part in the flying horse scenes, mostly for wide and distance shots and when the faces of the actors don't have to be seen. “Basically, all the take-off and landing shots, and all the shots where we can see the actors clearly, will be practical [that is, live action],” Raynor reveals. “They'll do actors on horses in this studio on blue screen. The actors won’t be doing anything like we’ve just seen; they’re going to be doing some tighter shots, like riding towards the camera - anything where you really see their face.”
“All the blue-screen shots for the trilogy are scheduled to be done together, and for these episodes it’s structured so we have three film units going at once. We have Main Unit going with actors on horses; we have Second Unit with all the 'pick-up' outdoor shots; and then there’s the Third Unit, which is basically doing only the blue-screen horses. So we're very busy!”
Now some of this is starting to make more sense. For instance, I find out that the white cross-marks all over the horse studio’s blue-screen walls are there as reference points for the CGI element. A cross at one point on the wall might be a cloud, while another somewhere else could represent the tip of a snow-capped mountain.
“Because the ground isn’t blue-screen, it's difficult to film anything that’s very low practically,” Raynor explains. “So everything from the knees up will be shot practically, and anything that shows the horses’ feet will be CGI. They've got some really great-looking CGI horses,” she adds, smiling. “If they get any more technical, I’ll be out of a job!”
But in actual fact, Raynor is far from being out of a job. Most sequences like this with horses or other animals are filmed practically as often as possible, mainly for the purposes of realism.
The horses - and the actors and crew who work with them - have been very well trained, and the most important thing is to keep everyone feeling comfortable and safe. The concrete floor of this studio is fine for actors, but not so great for horses. “We investigated all sorts of different surfaces,” says Raynor, “and finally we came up with post-peelings. When posts are made at the timber mills, they shred the outer layers, and you get bark and then post-peelings. You put them down, wet them and roll them, and what happens is that the peelings lock into each other like matting. You just keep layering it, wetting it and rolling it, and it doesn't move. So that’s perfect for horses.”
In fact, the whole studio is perfect for horses. According to Raynor, even with the cameras and hanging lights, there is more than enough space in the studio for “our biggest horse to canter quite easily. This studio is as big as a normal dressage arena.” That's fine, but wouldn’t Valkyries in full battle armour be literally a weight on the horses’ shoulders? It seems not. “The weight makes absolutely no difference whatsoever to the horse,” Raynor tells us reassuringly.
John Fawcett, director of the trilogy’s other two episodes, knows the aerial battle with these horses is going to be great. “We're getting into some crazy stuff,” he says enthusiastically. “Aerial sequences, fighting on flying horses... it’s a show with big effects.”
Return of the Valkyrie
Picture this scene from Return of the Valkyrie, the third and final chapter in the Xena Ring trilogy: the candle-lit great hall of a fine castle, lavishly decorated for a grand Danish wedding. Well-intentioned King Hrothgar (John Leigh, best known for his role as Lionel in the New Zealand soap Shortland Street) is about to wed the beautiful yet slightly confused Wealthea. It seems Hrothgar found her washed up on the beach with no memory of who she was, took her back to his castle to take care of her, and decided to make her “the luckiest woman in Denmark.”
But hang on a minute: don’t those deep blue eyes of the stunningly dressed Wealthea remind us of someone? You bet they do...
This Danish castle hall is very impressive, not your average stock-standard brick and stone. There are ornate candelabras everywhere - including a wondrous chandelier that looks like it’s been made completely out of stag antlers, along with family crests, carved wooden goblets and even a working fireplace. Standing in the middle of all this, not facing the cameras or any of the unused areas of the studio, it’s very easy to suspend one’s disbelief, if only for a few seconds.
At the beginning of the shot, Lucy Lawless as Xena/Wealthea rides into the hall on the back of a cow, which is destined to be the sacrifice in honour of the wedding. The cow itself is decorated almost as lavishly as the rest of the set. But it seems the cow is not too keen on the idea of dying by the sword - even though it’s not actually going to happen - and tests the crew’s patience by mooing loudly in the middle of the shot! “Swing the sword, but don’t hit the cow!” Director Rick Jacobson warns John Leigh. But there really is no danger of that actually happening, and wranglers are standing at the cow's side, just out of shot, making sure it stays steady and calm.
During a break in filming. Lawless is kind enough to fill us in on the plotline of Return of the Valkyrie. “Gabrielle is trapped in this ring of fire, and a lot of men die trying to get her out,” she explains, “because only Xena - only her soul mate - can release her. But Xena's heart - her essence - has been stolen from her. So she’s not Xena; she’s just a collection of impulses, without ideology and without personal references. She doesn’t believe she's Xena - she’s never heard of her - and has no feelings or memories of Gabrielle and the adventures they've been through. But by and by, she’s convinced by Beowulf that she must be Xena and that she has to come and save Gabrielle.”
So what are the challenges of this particular role? “This has been the first time in a long while that I haven't played Xena as such,” Lawless points out, “and I’ve been well out of my comfort zone. A lot of the other times have been easy, like Xena with the Furies in her head, or Meg, which was the last character I played who wasn't Xena. It’s easier to play those variations in comedies rather than dramas. This is almost like playing the shell of Xena.
“But it’s an interesting part for me to play; it’s nice.”