Behind The Scenes: Who’s Gurkhan?
Part Four
The Chakram Newsletter: Issue 16
A Very Expensive Extra
We’re on our fourth article, but it's still day one of shooting this episode and we’re off to the dungeon. Blocking begins for different angles of the scene where Xena and Gabrielle find Sarah. For example, they'll cover Xena and Gabrielle coming into the dungeon, Gabrielle and Sarah together, Xena watching the two of them and Xena bringing Gurkhan into the cell. They’ll also be shooting Xena getting beaten by the guards and then hung upside down.
The dungeon is on a soundstage that also contains, for example, Gurkhan's bedroom and the hole in the ground to Mephistopheles’ kingdom from “The Haunting Of Amphipolis.” The place is filled with dark corners and walkways between the sets. It’s also quite nippy inside. The dungeon itself consists of three walls — the one on the right has the cell door. There is another wall butting up against this set which makes the area outside the door very dark.
Lucy and Renee are dressed in their harem outfits and wearing robes to keep the chill air at bay. As the blocking starts, however, Lucy takes her arms out of her robe, drops the top part down to her waist and uses the sleeves as a belt. I was wearing a t-shirt, 2 sweaters and a jacket. I would have added mittens and earmuffs if I'd had them. She’s gotta be one hot-blooded woman to peel down in that place!
To put everyone in position: Calvin (Gurkhan) is outside the door, Lucy is just inside it, Renee and Tandi (Sarah) are on the left side of the cell.
My cameraman, Fred, gets the brilliant idea to go over into the area outside the cell door. Timely accident or brilliant intuition. You’ll see in a moment as he catches our leading ladies goofing around in the dark.
Lucy practices hauling Calvin into the cell. Michael is telling them he'd like Calvin to slide down the wall after Lucy drags him inside. They go through the move and Lucy makes sliding noises as Calvin slips to the floor.
As Michael then works on the two-shot of Gabrielle and Sarah on the other side of the room, Lucy turns to our camera. She whispers that she doesn’t have much to do in this scene and chuckles that she's a very expensive extra standing in the background as Gabrielle confronts Sarah.
Renee wanders over to Lucy and asks, “Do you want to say (the line), ‘We should get out of here’ or should I?” They discuss which makes more sense. Lucy likes Renee's idea for this bit.
Michael is ready to rehearse the scene so Lucy, Renee and Calvin close the door and are enveloped by the darkness. They decide Gabrielle will open the door while Xena hides the fact that she’s got Gurkhan with her. Bet you thought every move was written in the script. Not true. It’s amazing the amount of detail that needs to be worked out minute by minute.
As the door closes and darkness descends, Lucy and Renee get playful. Lucy: “It's scary in here!” Renee: “It's dark!” Renee sticks her hands through the bars then grabs them and makes as if she's trying to escape. Lucy: ’”Let us out!” They stick their faces up against the bars. Tandi notices what's going on and laughingly says, “Get outta my dungeon!” Michael yells, “Action,” Renee makes “ching-ching” door-opening noises and they enter the cell. Fred scoots back around to the front of the set again and we pick up the scene from that angle.
The set is lit with rays of light striping the walls. Fred catches a shot of Renee leaning against the wall, half in shadow, half in light. She looks like an exquisite carved statue. She then slides down the wall to sit next to Tandi and chat a bit while Michael works with Lucy and Calvin.
Xena is bringing the semi-conscious Gurkhan into the cell. Michael and Calvin would love it if Xena could slam Gurkhan up against the wall after she hauls him in. But someone from the crew calls out that the wall isn’t strong enough and the lights are attached to it and they would shake. Rueful smiles cross everyone’s face as they realize they’ll have to fake it.
Let me introduce you to the “walls” of the sets. Many of them are made of chicken wire, egg carton-shaped material and painted aluminum foil. Easy to go up, come down and mold to whatever shape or form is needed. Ingenious and they look absolutely real.
Lucy suggests she hold Gurkhan up by his neck. In order to demonstrate what she wants, she asks Calvin, who’s taller than she is, to “break his height” — bend his knees. At first she holds his head with her hands under his chin. Then she changes position and wraps her arm fully around his neck in a headlock. Michael chirps up, “Oh, I like that — that looks good.” Lucy delivers her line, “I found a hole in the system,” while giving Calvin a noogie which makes him smile. She then taps him on the shoulder to let Calvin know he can stand up again and whispers, “Thank you” for having stayed in a crouch while they worked out this bit of business.
Michael goes back over to Renee and Tandi for the scene where Gabrielle finds Sarah, tells her she is Sarah's aunt and tries to convince the young girl it’s not her fault she adapted to life in Gurkhan’s harem. Sarah is filled with guilt.
He tells them he's going to do this in a two-shot (camera on both of them at the same time) and that he will let the camera keep rolling while the emotion builds. They don’t have to stick to the exact words in the script, Michael advises. They should let their emotions “break.” He’ll let the camera roll until the scene finds its natural conclusion when Sarah gives in to Gabrielle.
Michael then describes the path the camera will take. It will be low on Sarah and as Renee walks closer, it will see Gabrielle's leg. As Gabrielle kneels down, it becomes the two- shot. Then the camera will follow whatever Renee and Tandi do. The first AD comes over and asks Michael if it's time for final checks and he agrees.
Cameras roll as Xena and Gabrielle open the cell door and see Sarah. As they try to convince her who they are, Renee walks forward. The camera starts on a wide shot and as she moves toward Sarah, it gets tighter and tighter on her face. Renee keeps coming forward until she’s only inches away from the lens. This is where the actor is oblivious of a huge piece of machinery and the two people running it. Her focus is on Tandi sitting on the ground delivering her lines off camera for Renee to respond to. The intimacy of Renee’s whispered, agonized voice, as Gabrielle tells Sarah they’ve come to take her home, fills the silent set.
Remember, the camera was facing the cell door. As Renee crouches down to sit next to Tandi, the camera moves toward Xena standing in the doorway. Behind the camera, Renee and Tandi continue the dialogue as Gabrielle tries to get through to Sarah. They deliver their dialogue full-out so that Lucy will have their emotion to react to as the camera shoots her closeup. Renee looks up at Lucy during the argument to give her another point of connection. Gabrielle and Sarah come to an agreement, Xena hauls in Gurkhan and Michael says, “Cut.”
As Lucy and Renee stated during the recent Pasadena convention, the quality of an actor's off-camera work is part of their responsibility to their fellow actors. And this is the first place I had a chance to see it in action.
The next setup is Tandi’s closeup and the two-shot as Gabrielle kneels next to her. Their argument goes smoothly, comes to a natural end and Michael says, “Cut.” Both actresses have been brought to tears by the emotion of the scene.
Next up, Xena tortured by Gurkhan's guards. Xena gets back- handed by one guard, grabbed by two others and slammed up against the wall. The unusual part of this scene is the man sitting just under the camera with a glass of fake blood. As Xena is hit, he has to throw it at the wall.
First take, the blood splatter isn’t big enough for the camera to register. It goes too far and too thinly. Clean off the wall and try again. This time it stays more in one place. It’s a keeper.
Now comes the closeup, slo-mo version of the hit. Michael says he wants to go from 24 frames to a million. Probably a bit of an exaggeration, but I'm sure Dana, the cameraman, will do his best. The crew gathers around as Michael explains the action. Lucy, bundled up in her robe, stands, in the dark, over against the wall, listening. They lay down a mattress for Lucy to fall on after she gets hit. I think it’s been dragged around a lot so they give it a swipe to get some of the dirt and grit off.
As they get ready to shoot, Lucy takes a deep breath, blows out and then puts a dixie cupful of blood into her mouth. Anyone reading previous interviews In the newsletters knows this stuff tastes awful. David Franklin, Brutus, was gagging after having a mouthful of it. The guard takes a swing at her, Lucy spins around and falls down. She pops right up wanting to do it again as she didn’t feel it was right. They reset and have another go at it. Lucy's makeup person, Vanessa, asks if she needs more blood in her mouth, but Lucy says she's got enough left over. Waiting for the word “action,” Lucy exchanges a few words with the stunt guard - at least as much as you can talk with a mouthful of blood.
The guard swings, the blood shoots out of Lucy’s mouth and she falls to the ground. When she gets up, it’s obvious she feels like it was a good one. As Michael checks with Dana to see if the take was good for the slo-mo camera, Lucy stands listening closely to see if she needs to do it again. But no, this take was perfect.
Here's another look at an odd job in the TV world. As the camera followed Xena falling to the floor, Michael wanted a bit of a guard’s body in frame. So one of the men knelt on the floor, below the camera, with just a costumed knee and foot showing. As Lucy was going to be spitting blood toward him, he had his head covered in a towel.
Now we move on to the closeup of Xena's head hitting the floor after she falls. Lucy gets a touch-up of facial wounds and lays down on a mat. The camera is on the ground with her, right in her face. Rehearsal is called. Lucy sits up and falls to the ground making falling noises to see if her face will land in the right spot. It's lined up perfectly.
Michael decides a hand should enter the frame pulling Xena’s head back as if slamming it to the ground. A stunt guard is called over to play the “hand.” Vanessa comes over and adds more blood to Lucy’s mouth. As she puts it on with a Q-Tip, Lucy shudders a bit at the taste on her lips. Lucy says, “The hand should come In immediately as I hit the floor, right?” Michael agrees. While they’re discussing the mechanics of this, Vanessa sprays water on Lucy’s face and hair to simulate sweat.
Lucy takes the guard’s hand and shows him how to play this. She explains that he doesn’t need to actually grab her hair, just put his hand on the side of her head and she'll push herself up to make it look as if he's pulling her. As they’re setting up, Lucy playfully does a dying Camille routine and swoons to the floor.
The camera rolls - slo-mo cameras make a tremendous amount of noise - Lucy falls to the floor, the guard pulls her head back as his partner walks past them. Lucy pops up and yells out, “Again.” The walking guard hurries back into place and she hits the floor again. She pops up one last time and hits the floor a third time even without the walking guard or the hand coming in. She comes up giggling. “Sort of a quickie there,” she says, laughing. She teases Michael saying, “It's hard to tell a story in such a short moment, but I did it.” Bundling up, she gets ready to have a bucket of water thrown on her.
Suddenly, Shona, the choreographer, comes running up to me. “I'm going to work with Renee on her dance now,” she says, knowing I wanted some footage of this. Fred and I scurry off to the room around the corner. As we peek our heads in the door, Renee looks up. I ask if we can film some of the rehearsal. She's hesitant at first, but then grins and invites us in.
She’ll be doing the dance four days from now, so I suspect Renee will be taking the dance scarf home to practice. The scarf is the toughest thing about the dance - oh, right, the backbends. Nah, I’ll bet Renee had no trouble with those - just that darn scarf winding itself around her body and getting tangled underfoot and in her jewelry. It’s twice as big as she is. Renee always enjoys working with Shona; the way she teaches a routine, her patience and how she incorporates what comes naturally to Renee. Renee loves dancing and a couple times she shook her beaded skirt at us and giggled. We stayed for about eight minutes and then scurried back to the dungeon for the water-tossing sequence.
Lucy was having Polaroids taken of her Stage One Torture makeup for continuity. As the day goes on, it gets colder on set and she's holding her arms to her body trying to keep warm. Lucy looks over at the man in charge of the bucket “It's nice warm water, right?” she asks, hopefully. He assures her it is, but she looks as if she’s just been told “the check is in the mail.” Then she makes a joke and laughs.
She’s given some stage directions about facing three-quarters toward the camera that will shoot her standing and then where to land for the closeup camera that will catch her once she falls to the floor. I peek inside the actor’s mind; “Gabrielle's niece is in here and I need to find out where. Gabrielle wants to kill Gurkhan and I need to stop her. These men are beating the shit out of me. Face this way, then that. And don’t think about that bucket of water heading my way.” Got all that?
The camera rolls, the water is tossed, Lucy slides to the bare floor and registers Xena’s despair and pain. “Cut!” Lucy pops up from the floor, “I loved it, actually. Shall we just go again?” The crew laughs and tells her there’s no need. Everything worked fine. She does a little wiggle and hums a silly tune. A towel is draped over Lucy’s shoulders for a bit of warmth and she’s allowed a quick dab of her face to remove some of the water, but not too much as the bedraggled look is needed for the next scene when Xena hallucinates seeing Gabrielle. The call goes out to bring Renee over in her dancing clothes.
I found this next bit almost too private to witness. The shot is a closeup of Xena lying on the ground. All that will be seen of Gabrielle is her hand coming in to touch Xena’s face. Renee is seated on a stool right under the camera with her robe around her waist and legs. They talk together and smile for a moment while Vanessa sprays Lucy’s face with water again and checks her makeup. It's amazing how much time is spent on making sure tangled hair and a beat up face look just right.
“Action.” Lucy's gaze is toward the ground while Renee looks away from her. Xena rolls partway over as Gabrielle slowly leans toward her, reaches out and gently strokes her cheek. Xena takes Gabrielle’s hand and holds it. On Michael’s word, Renee slides her hand out of Lucy’s grasp, folds her hands in her lap, looks down at them and sits absolutely still. Xena registers the loss of the vision of Gabrielle and feels her face where the hand of her soulmate touched her. Her arm falls to her side as she slides into unconsciousness. “Cut.”
While still lying on the ground, Lucy is offered her robe, but waves it away until she sees if Michael is satisfied with the take. Renee looks over to him as well. Michael declares himself pleased. Lucy goes off to the makeup trailer to have her fake bloody eye put on for the next scene where she will be hung upside down. Renee's day is over.
(to be continued)