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Recap It has been a couple of weeks from our wrap and some images and thoughts on the making of Legend of Earthsea remain with me … the sun just coming up as we finished our last shot of the production in the middle of a beautiful forest … everyone and their gear loaded on our flotilla of support boats and barges, heading out from the dock for a day’s work … walking onto the set of Roke school for the first time … the first day of shooting and meeting the crew — and later saying goodbye to new friends. The first part of the schedule was a real meat grinder thanks to the one-hour-plus drive to locations; a number of the crew stayed in nearby motels (sorry, no stories to tell there) to cut down on the driving time. The mud and rain in the beginning of the shoot, added to long hours, still stays with me. Filmmaking is not all ribbons and bows, but also a tough slog. The most memorable location would have to be out on the water, shooting the Ged sailing stuff. The weather was sunny and warm and the seas were calm. A lot of the crew had to get used to the pacing that shooting on the ocean brought, especially when the marine coordinator announced, "We need to get out of here now!" There was also a location up a long, steep path on the top of the Baden Powell Trail, named for the founder of the Boy Scouts, where Ged first flies, and it had a spectacular view over the ocean. The weirdest location would have to be the former potash silo that was hot and dusty but awesome-looking. Even when you walked out of the silo, there was an onslaught of noise from the conveyor belts loading sulfur from the rail cars onto ships. Everyone had to wear hard hats, steel-toed boots and safety vests — though by Day 5, some of the crew weren't strictly adhering to the rules. One of the funniest sights on set was 3rd assistant director Graham Cairns — a quiet guy with a dry sense of humor — riding around the studio on his push scooter that he brought to work. The studio was a sprawling building, so it was faster for him to scoot about when he had to talk to someone in the flesh. Most everyone who passed by the AD office took it for a spin. Our stunt coordinator, Marshall Virtue, is one of the younger coordinators in Vancouver. He did a lot of stunt work on The Chronicles of Riddick, as he likes to take a break between getting beaten up as a stuntman and coordinating. He said Legend of Earthsea was a fabulous project to work on, as each day it provided him with something new and creative to pull off. Often he would precede production and choreograph a fight sequence, shoot it on video for Rob Lieberman and then get Shawn and the actors to run through it. Marshall marveled at the amount of work we did on Legend of Earthsea — a high fall from a lift, a two-man high fall from a cliff into the water, a fight on a small boat, a sword fight, a body-burn, an underwater fight, flying rigs and more. The only thing he didn't do was car crashes, which would be hard to do in a fantasy piece. As a production assistant, I'm still starting out in my career. It's still clear to me that on Legend of Earthsea, all the departments got to do some very creative things. The costume people all said this is very unlike a contemporary show, where they mostly hit clothing stores in the malls for the costumes. Here everything is designed, built and aged. Extras were chosen for a specific look, and unlike on other shows, they all had to be costumed, get their hair done and have makeup applied — mostly to look dirty. From a creative point of view, there are not too many shows that allow you to be so involved. I might repeat myself here, but the cast on the show was great to work with. I've heard a lot of the crew say they prefer to work on these fantasy productions as it gives their children a chance to view their parents' work — often, if the show has a lot of violence or adult-themed content, their children can't see what mom or dad does. We had a number of crew wives/husbands with children visit the sets and locations to see what was going on. I'm sure the scope, design and attention to detail was very impressive to someone who hadn't been on a film set before. Rob Lieberman had his sons up from Los Angeles, Isabella Rossellini had her son out from New York, Jennifer Calvert had her daughter out from England — it was very busy on set at times. Isabella said one of the reasons she took the role of Thar was so her son could see one of her movies. That's it, then! I hope the completed show reflects all our hard work! |
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